The criteria for assessment applied by the body responsible for
the examination, CSIRO (an Australian scientific and industrial
research organisation), concentrated on ease of use and
installation.
It has been criticised for not actually looking at the
effectiveness of the filtering software in blocking unsuitable
sites. This has led to attacks from civil liberty bodies including
the Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA).
Moreover, the EFA web site was blocked by the approved filter
Surfwatch last week although it contained no explicit material. The
way that the filter works means that it blocks sites by reference
to their IP addresses rather than their individual web addresses.
This means that an innocent web site can be blocked because it
shares its IP address with an offensive one.
A Surfwatch spokesman claimed that its team of surfers “lays
human eyes on every single page to determine which category of
filtered material the site should go into”.
However, this has been countered by members of the internet free
speech organisation Peacefire who assert that Surfwatch definitely
does not review every site that it blocks.
There is no similar program in the UK to that of the Australian
government, although there are a number of filtering systems
available. In general, these operate by analysing the text on a
site and searching for key words or groups of words that may be
offensive or explicit.
