Monthly Archives: November 2008

A Plausible Man

Outside the hotel the city was black, reflective. In the lobby, a Miles Davis number quietly contemplated heroin. The whole town was in fugue. Rain before and snow to come; nothing now but cloud and calm.

Aidan stepped out smartly as the Jetta rolled up. He was at the driver door before the occupant finished shifting into park. A fast Young Republican type, Brooks Brothers aspirant, tossed Aidan the keys, his eyes already scanning the entrance to the lounge. As if dodging a tackle, he swung smoothly round the quarter panel.

“You scratch it, I fuck you up,” he said, as if to the world in general.

Impassive, Aidan lowered himself into the driver’s seat, engaged the gear and slid away.

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The Price of Freedom

Australia’s Labour government recently announced that they would be implementing a two-tiered, national content-filtering scheme for all Internet traffic.  The proposal as it stands is that people will have a choice of Internet connections: The first will block all Internet content considered unsafe for children. The second will allow adult content, but block anything deemed illegal under Australian law. People can choose one or the other, but they must choose one.

As with all public content-filtering schemes, this idea is well-intentioned, but fatally flawed.

National content filtering is an inefficient and fundamentally faulty technical approach that deputises the nation’s Internet Service Providers to the role of neighbourhood sherriff, something they’re not at all comfortable with. Second, and more importantly, it creates a dangerous legal and moral precedent that is difficult to distinguish from the infamous Great Firewall of China, which is regularly used to stifle social and political dissent.

Indeed, a spokesman for the online rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia recently said, “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.”

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