The Australian Government has today issued their request for expressions of interest for ISPs who would want to participate in the live trials of the Government’s ISP-Level Internet Filtering scheme.  So far, there has been no further information released by El Senor Senator Conroy, his office or anyone else in the Government for that matter.

The fight is still continuing and raging, while the Government continues to run away with their fingers in their ears tralalalala’ing that it will still work. Even the countries that Conroy have claimed that Australia would be emulating are going WTF.

Actions taken by the online community have been mostly met with standard policy lines and template emails from the L&L parties that are normally based around “We value the protection of the children” toe-lines. That’s understandable given pretty much every member of the House of Representatives or the Senate has no previous history in a technical field.

Except perhaps one Liberal lower house rep who has responded with his own email saying that “The bottom line is that mandatory filtering does not work and it is up to the individual to protect themselves and their families.”  It was expected though as his own experiences in the big old technology world include a decade-plus history for the military in Intelligence and Security, a Masters in IT, Masters in Business Administration, Graduate Diploma in Information Analysis and founded an IT services firm who featured in BRW’s Fast 100 list.

Then there’s Malcolm Turnbull, new Leader of the Opposition – ex-Chairman of ISP OzEmail. (Who remembers them?)

Seems there’s lots of little fires that have sprung up in recent. Adult classification for games teasing the public with a let’s talk then scrubbing talks before it even began; The National Broadband Network is getting sucked under the waterfall as poor requirements and lack of decision makings bite back; and then the Government is determined to make Australia the first country in the world to protect the children from the big bad Internet.

Which brings me to the point, how can people who have absolutely no understanding themselves of the things that they are bringing into effect “in representation” of the Australian population have the final say?

Bring on the engineer politicians.

UserFriendly.org has some advice for the Australian Government.

Further reading:

• ? OCAU Wiki on Australian Internet Filtering
• ? Mark Newton, Filter advocates need to check their facts

Left 4 Dead is really really awesome.