Stage 1: Hardworking people like you and me toil for hundreds of thousands of man-hours
Stage 2: Government taxes hardworking people like you and me
Stage 3: After much debate, Government decides to protect hardworking people like you and me from Internet pornography
Stage 4: 30 minutes after launching an $84 million porn filter, 16 year old boy hacks it.
Stage 5: Hardworking people like you and me wonder why the Government wasted $84 million on a porn filter, then go back to working…
If it makes you feel any better, at least this happened in Australia, where $84 million only equals $69 million in American money. Most hilariously, after scrambling to release a patch to re-activate the filter, the kid, Tom Wood (ironic last name), overrode the update again, this time in 40 minutes.
Luckily there are people in Australia’s government who see the real problem with using millions of tax dollars to create Internet filters:
Family First senator Steve Fielding, a cyber safety campaigner, said cracking the software highlighted the need for compulsory filtering by internet providers. [emphasis added]
“You need both. You need it at the ISP and at the PC level,” Senator Fielding said. “The Government has not listened to common sense and it leaves kids exposed.”
Common sense? Common sense says a 16 year old boy is going to find pornography on the internet even if it means spending 3 solid days cracking filter after filter. But no, I’m sure that if we just had one more layer of filtering, Mr. Wood would be totally stumped. Good thinking, Senator Fielding.
