A single bureaucrat rules the Australian Internet Filter

A recent discovery that the choice of which websites were blocked had no clear consultation process and could be performed by one member of staff has called into question the accountability of the Internet content filter from the Federal Government.

Concerns have been raised by advocacy groups for privacy that unless enough review and accountability is included in how websites are banned by the communications watchdog the impending content filter could become authoritarian.

The banning of an anti-abortionist website by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) without the classification board being consulted was attacked by Senator Scott Ludlam in a recent Senate Estimates meeting.

The threat of an $11 000 per day fine for the publication of a web link to an anti-abortion website that had been banned by online hosting company BulletProof Networks is the reason for the embarrassment for the ACMA due to its overly aggressive redress.

Following a request for the website to be banned by the watchdog in January the infringing web link, which was contained in an ACMA public relations department response, had been published in the online forum Whirlpool.

The threat of the $11 000 fine was sent out to media outlet around the country as the republished the web link that had been banned.

When the details of the banned anti-abortion web site were published on Wikileaks recently the ACMA promptly blacklisted it in yet another controversial move.

By including the link to the now blacklisted web site on its own Wikipedia page user are goading the watchdog into banning its own page, although at user edits have been removed and the site has now locked any further edits.

The ban on the anti-abortion web site took the ACMA under three months to put through.