The Price of Freedom
Saturday, November 1st, 2008Australia’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.
Walking The Beat
Sunday, June 15th, 2008[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]
On Tuesday the Daily Post published a Pacific News Service article about the Project Wickenby debacle, in which Vanuatu-based members of the Australian Federal Police raided four local financial institutions for evidence of misdeeds by Vanuatu citizen Robert Agius.
The raids raised a storm of controversy concerning the [...]
Power and Politics - a Sketch
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008I had the privilege this week of being asked to take some photographs at the Vanuatu unveiling of the Pacific Economic Survey. The event was attended by two Australian Parliamentary Secretaries and by a number of fairly senior individuals in Vanuatu. The photos I took will be collected here.
I was proudest of the photo above. [...]
Policing Piracy
Friday, February 22nd, 2008The Australian government recently announced that it was taking the issue of Internet piracy very seriously. They were, according to reports, considering their own version of a British proposal to require Internet Service Providers to cut off so-called ‘repeat offenders’. People who were suspected of deliberately and repeatedly downloading unauthorised music and video files would [...]