Dear Senator Conroy
Hello Senator Conroy,
I'm writing to express my concern regarding the plan to regulate and censor the internet. I understand the good intentions and motivations behind the scheme, but am deeply concerned from a logistical as well as ethical point of view. I will keep this brief as you will be receiving contact from thousands of other concerned Australians and I do want my voice to be heard.
We can't stop the flow of undesirable content on the internet, and to attempt to regulate the policed parts of the internet misses the point as the vast majority of the kind of content you're seeking to protect us from isn't located or disseminated in the same way as regular internet content. Protecting people from this kind of content is problematic at best.
Logic dictates that on the well regulated sections of the Internet can be more easily monitored and traced for law enforcement which would yield far better results than treating it like it doesn't exist. I (and the rest of the Australian internet community at large) would personally much prefer to see more resources put into the hands of the federal police and groups who tackle these sort of issues on the ground than in something we know to be fatally technically flawed from the outset.
The other technical issues aside and I'm sure you've heard them all before and are not likely to be dissuaded on this, there's a greater ethical issue at stake. It is inherently dishonest to represent this as an effective tool to fight child predators as banning access to websites certainly doesn't help identify them. The moral imperative to protect our community and our most vulnerable means that the most effective approach is surely the approach we must take.
It simply unethical to proceed down this road when there are other avenues that offer a much greater level of protection to our community. To squander our resources in this way when it could be more effectively used is sickening. Simply restricting access to certain sites provides no deterrent, it provides no way of monitoring these people, and it doesn't achieve what it sets out to achieve. I'm asking you to please reconsider and have a full and frank discussion with experts and the Australian public. We care deeply about our freedoms and we care deeply about our most vulnerable and we're convinced there are better ways of dealing with these issues.