Yesterday the article “ISP filtering gains momentum” was published in the Online edition of The Australian IT section of The Australian newspaper. We’ve posted about this initiative before.

From the article:

“As part of the federal budget, the Government allocated $125.8 million for a range of internet security initiatives, including the filtering program, over four years.

About $49 million of the allocation has been slated for online law enforcement, but it remains unclear how much has been set aside solely for web filtering, as the budget includes research, international collaboration and education programs.

But the actual cost of internet censorship to taxpayers has yet to be quantified.”

The other interesting snippet was:

“In June, Enex TestLab completed a closed trial of web filtering products at a Telstra laboratory in Tasmania.

Twenty-six ISP-based web filtering products were submitted for review but only six made the final cut.

The trial was conducted within parameters set out in June 2007 by the previous government, when Helen Coonan was communications minister.

About a month later, Senator Conroy hailed the Enex trial a success, within the closed-environment test conditions.

However, the results were broadly negative. It showed that most filters could not identify illegal or inappropriate content — as defined by the Australian Communications and Media Authority — using most non-web protocols.”

It will be interesting to see how this develops.