MattR

I'm willing to bet that the Great Firewall of Australia will not be making an appearance on this blog, no matter how much we may bring it up. Let me posit an alternate scenario for you: in spite of knowing already that the GFoA is a BAD IDEA (TM), the government needs a way to back out of it without too great a loss of face (if such a deed is still possible at all). Consider: why else would you bother to have a 'live trial' which is conducted on a closed network? Posting a blog entry about the filter (while cathartic for all of us) would open a huge can of worms for the government. Rohan, it may be that the government is pretending to ignore the elephant in the room, hoping to get it back out the door before too many more people arrive at the party. (Of course, for those of us already in the room, the stench lingers...)

I'm not suggesting we should let the issue go (far from it -- we should continue to be vocal about all the repercussions on these areas which the government has not considered), but I won't be holding my breath for a post about it until one of two things happens: (a) the government issues a statement along the lines of 'after careful consideration, we have decided that implementing the filter would not be feasible with the current infrastructure', in which case it becomes a moot point (so may not get more than a brief press release even then); or (b) the filter gets implemented. Of course, in the case of the latter, chances are none of us will find out about it since we won't be able to access the intertubes anymore...