Darren Stokes

Although the current Australian Government does not regard this as a question of civil liberties or freedom of speech I am afraid I do. You can not just wish away these aspects of the issue by saying you don't consider it a problem. The Australian people trust their government to undertake a series of tasks as outlined in the Constitution but to be honest there is not sufficient trust to carry it far beyond that. The concept of allowing the Government to conduct filtering of potential information sources, regardless of how well intentioned, is both repugnant and reprehensible in a democratic society. I do not believe this is currently being established as a mechanism of wider social control through information shaping, but it has the potential to be used as such in the future. Australins rely on a wide range of information sources to make informed and ethical decisions and anything that could endager that now or into the future represents and unacceptable risk. The whole concept of 'blacklisting' suggests a level of government intervention at the individual level which is undesirable. The responsibility for this control should remain with the individual who is capable of making informed decisions on behalf of themselves and those they are responsible for. It is not the role of the Government to make those personal decisions which can be reasonbly made by the individual without Government assistance. I regard ISP filtering as an unwelcome and unacceptable intrusion of the into my personal decision making juristiction and a source of potential risk for future misuse. Even if I could trust the current government I can not make informed decisions about my level of faith in future governments and am unprepared to allow them this potential tool of oppression.

Regards,

Darren Stokes