Geordie Guy today has a blog post suggesting that The Greens will “probably” block the filter, but suggesting that the outcome is far from certain. He’s not alone. I’ve heard similar sentiments on the subject from other quarters, usually by those predisposed to be sceptical of The Greens for other reasons. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to come to a firm conclusion on this.

Let me put your minds at rest – The Greens will never vote for the filter. First, let’s see what’s on the record.

Looking at the official Greens policy on communications, point number 52 states:

ensure that regulation of the internet is transparent, accountable and protects freedom of speech, expression and access to information.

As a statement of principle to which the party is committed, it seems pretty hard to imagine any way in which support for the filter could be reconciled with this. This policy made it into the national platform only after significant debate and scrutiny, and is a true reflection of the will of the party as a whole. However, it’s broadly worded, and is far from an unequivocal repudiation of the particular proposal put forward by Conroy. But look at The Greens policy page itself, which provides a strong hint – the prominent inclusion of the #nocleanfeed and #openinternet tags as two of the four key policy bullet points. That should reassure some skeptical punters.

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I have a piece today in Crikey about a submission by the Australian Federal Police, worrying that the NBN would be a haven for criminals. Today I wrote over at EFA how the AFP are pushing for tough data retention laws. Given how powerful the police are as a lobby group – since no politician wants to be seen to be keeping necessary tools from the hands of police – these are both worrying signs. I’ll be keeping an eye on the data retention issue.

Today I had an op-ed in the National Times (Fairfax) about grassroots participation in party politics. It’s been a long time since politics was a genuine mass movement. That’s not good for the country. Here I do my bit to encourage people to think about giving it a go.

Take a look here.

Today I had a short spot on The 7PM Project discussing the Government’s plans for a National Broadband Network and contrasting it with the Liberal plan.  The NBN is a massive undertaking, at $43 billion, and given the cost we’d expect to see a pretty solid cost-benefit analysis, yet none has been forthcoming. It’s therefore hard to know quite how enthusiastically to support the NBN.

I do have a soft spot for a bold, forward thinking and long term project like this one, and I appreciate as well as anybody what this might mean in terms of future educational and business opportunities for the country. The need for connectivity will not go away, so I think the Commonwealth’s asset, in NBN Co, will have real value. I want this for myself and my business. It’s slightly concerning that it requires a leap of faith, but there you have it.

The biggest news for the filter in a while with Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey choosing JJJ’s Hack program to announce that the Coalition will not back the Conroy Curtain whether or not they win government. Due to the makeup of the Senate (both before and in all probability after the election) this might mean the policy is effectively dead. If you’re not up to speed, here I explain why:

Also on the dreaded filter, my video about “Five ways to get around the filter in 2 minutes” was chosen to be Crikey’s video of the day.

I did a short spot on Channel 7’s “The Morning Show” (which was helpfully  captured by a supporter on the web).

The issue surrounds this story that details how the Government have been secretly lobbying ISPs to come up with a new and far-reaching data retention system. This would oblige ISPs to preserve logs all all activities – up to and possibly including things like proxy logs that would detail web browsing history – in case they are needed in a criminal investigation.

What I didn’t get to say on the spot below – which was cut shorter than I expected due to a story about Orlando Bloom’s honeymoon – is that the real privacy risks come from the potential for data breaches and possibly rogue employees. Once these large databases exists, there can be no guarantee about what will happen with them; history has shown us that. Therefore the onus is on the Government to demonstrate why they would be necessary. Rather than do that, they have conducted the discussions in the utmost secrecy, and journalist Ben Grubb’s FOI request yielded a ridiculously paltry result – apparently due to fears  of sparking a “premature unnecessary debate”.

Can debate about a far-reaching policy like this ever be unnecessary? Is it premature when the Attorney-General’s department is already in meetings with your ISP?

Stephen Conroy, as usual on a Friday, made some major filter announcements today, using the excuse of a review of the “RC” classification category to put the filter on the back burner for 12 months. He also announced that three large ISPs – Bigpond, Optus and Primus – would begin a voluntary filtering scheme. Although that raises some red flags, it would be definitely preferable to having a compulsory government-controlled scheme. However, it looks like the old plan is still very much in the offing.

Read more on the SMH here, or listen to me discussing the issue on the ABC:

ABC – The World Today