Broadband Advisor

An ISP participating in the Federal Government's controversial Internet filtering trial has claimed the Australian public is missing the point of the scheme.

On the back of the purported ACMA block list leaking on Wikileaks and the announcement that iiNet has pulled the plug on their involvement in the filter trial, Tech 2U general manager, Andrew Robson, told ARN he was concerned how the content filter scheme is seen in the public eye.

“There is definitely a lot of misinformation out there,” he said. “We are not introducing filtering; we are doing a technical test and a commercial test on a range of technologies to see whether or not it is viable.”

Robson also claimed the purported ACMA ‘blacklist’ published on Wikileaks, was unreliable.

“The list on Wikileaks bares little resemblance to the list that we’ve got,” Robson said. “Interestingly, nobody is discussing that the ACMA blacklist only blocks sites that are illegal to be shown in Australia anyway.”

He said Betfair, the legitimate website that was listed on Wikileaks, was not on his current list and refuted speculation that any website could be added to the list without anybody knowing.

“Under this trial, one of the things we’ve been asked to do is that if you go to a website that is actually on the block list, it comes back with a page that says ‘the website you requested is blocked' and refers you to the Federal Government AMCA website, so you will definitely know as soon as it’s blocked,” he said.

“If people actually took the time to look at the creation of the list, the fear would go away."

Tech 2U is offering customers the filter on an opt in/opt out basis and has declared its continued support for the trial.