84 million dollars would be a nice bonus for anyone – but it seems the government has wasted that amount of funds
(again?). Reports are coming in now about the recently released ‘free net filter’ made available to Australian families.
The SMH reports that Tom, a Year 10 student, took about 30 minutes to break through the government’s new filter, released last Tuesday. He can deactivate the filter after several clicks, while making sure the software’s toolbar icon is not deleted. This way his parents would believe that the filter is still working.
Meanwhile another SMH report tells us that staff in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have been editing Wikipedia to remove details that might be damaging to the Government.
Oh dear!
UPDATE from John’s great post The Blush of Power: The Sydney Morning Herald Mashup page has a discussion on How Good Is NetAlert and Boredomistan has a run down on his test run of one of the filters.
judyoconnell.com 
Hi Judy,
It is a touch annoying to see money down the drain, even more interesting to see the pollies, (or their staffers) caught with digital whiteout on their fingers. The sad thing is that this behavior affects both sides of the political divide such is populism, (read the need to get re-elected). I had a go at this issue too see http://johnp.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/the-blush-of-power-oh-the-futility/ do you think the filters will get us put on the blacklist :).
Cheers John