Issue Update: Big bad bots monitoring activity online.
You'd have to have been living underneath a very comfortable rock for the past few months to not hear about the censorship issue that Australia's government is currently still working on doing for the 'good' of the people.
This has already hit the UK in a big way, with the latest news surfacing about their restrictions - not only do they have them now, but the government is considering some very invasive plans.
Called the Intercept Modernisation Programme, this is effectively:
"a government proposal, introduced last year, for legislation to use mass monitoring of traffic data as an anti-terrorism tool. The IMP has two strands: that the government use deep packet inspection to monitor the web communications of all UK citizens; and that all of the traffic data relating to those communications are stored in a centralised government database."
Rumoured to be expanded to FaceBook and Myspace, as well as all the other social networking sites, this is all in the name of anti-terrorism. It also happens to mean that you can't mention anything about your weekend while you're in the UK without the government knowing about it, assuming the government goes ahead with their plans.
We've got the beginnings of a very bad situation here in Australia, and this is the next step that the government might take on our very shores. We certainly don't want bots monitoring our every activity online, just the same as we wouldn't be comfortable with big black vans following us down the street wherever we went.
Feel free to comment with your thoughts on this, whether or not you think it's likely for Australia, but the UK's fate already seems sealed.
ZDNet has a lot more on the issue too, and has a detailed look at the impact of what this could mean.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012