We’ve covered similar territory before, but the post at Gizmodo by Colin Jacobs from the EFA showing five ways any filter can be avoided in two minutes is well worth checking out. What exactly is this plan to create a secret government list of banned sites protecting us from again? [Gizmodo]
Remember that poll we featured a week or so ago asking if you’d vote for a party which supports the Labor Internet filter? Having run on 17 Australian technology sites, the poll is now closed and the results are clear: virtually no-one wants to vote for the filter. More »
Gizmodo’s Fight The Filter campaign continues to produce great material on why Internet filtering is a bad idea, even if it’s been deferred by a year. Today’s contribution from SAG-AU member Andy Leyden offers a technical-but-not-confusing explanation of why the planned technology is doomed to failure, no matter when it gets deployed. Well worth a read. [Gizmodo]
Despite being deferred, mandatory filtering remains a key government policy and one that’s likely to feature heavily in tech-centric discussions of the forthcoming election. But will it make a difference to your vote? More »
I was on a plane when the government’s partial about-face on Internet censorship and filtering got announced. But a few hours delay absorbing the news makes the essential fact — that there’s no real change in policy — even clearer. More »
We’ve all been making lots of noise about the government’s proposed mandatory Internet filter, and it’s just possible it’s had an effect: it now looks like the legislation might not be passed prior to the next election. More »
Now that Optus has joined the government’s controversial mandatory Web filtering trial , a lot more people are potentially going to be included than with the original list of small ISPs. But with Optus offering an opt-out option, the question arises: should you say yes or no if you get asked to participate? More »
Besieged by spam, reader Nick writes in: You know how so many spam messages have Chinese or Russian writing in them? Well, what if one sets up a filter in Gmail to remove all messages containing common Chinese or Russian words? I’m trying to do that now, except I don’t know Mandarin for “the” — I’m just finding short words.
An undocumented Gmail advanced search operator lets you narrow down messages by language—using lang:Chinese for example—but several readers report the results are inconsistent and often imperfect. Do you filter email based on language? How do you do it? Help Nick out in the comments.
