Well if you believe what you read on the wires, this would be probably the country’s greatest step towards a communist state after our somewhat draconian immigration policies.

I’m not a civil libertarian – in fact I get annoyed when the libertarians jump up and down about us losing our rights with this, that, and the other. Pick the battles worth fighting and fight until you win; that’s what I believe in. Otherwise, you run the risk of stretching yourself too thin.

However the news about a nation-wide internet filter has got me concerned. It wasn’t that long ago we sent an entire media cohort over to China for the Olympics and learnt that despite their initial promises, China still filtered what internet sites people could access. Did we (as a society) not learn from what we saw there? Where a dictator state has the infrastructure in place to police what should be a completely free medium? Clearly not. Seems like they’re pressing ahead with the bill and trying to lay down the foundation for such a system.

….And then where to? It starts with kiddy filtering and illegal activities, but then where to? Should the government be trying to stop us from accessing this kind of material, or should it be up to the parents to educate and/or prevent their kids from getting access to this content. The government’s rationale for taking such a progressive move? If we cant educate parents and children on how they can do it, we’ll just do it ourselves^{Citation needed}.

On the flip-side, I wonder if the government would continue to be so “progressive” and prevent people from hurting themselves by outlawing smoking? Or is that too cynical of me?