As abhorrent a statistic as it may be, it’s a real one, going by a recent review conducted by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC). Telstra, one of a number of ISPs on board with the government’s voluntary filter scheme, utilised an Interpol blacklist to single out and redirect the offending searches.
As The Australian points out, it works out to be around 700 redirects a day. The stats were clocked over a four-month period, starting in July 2011 and ending in mid-October the same year. Telstra wasn’t required to offer up the data, but did so anyway, the report states.
The article mentions Telstra users make up half of the country’s numbers and that both Optus and Primus previously admitted they’re using the filter too. No numbers from them are provided.
I’m not sure if the voluntary filter is able to handle proxies and other “anonymiser” services, and I would imagine the more intelligent purveyors offer clandestine avenues to view their wares. Who knows how much larger this number would be if these uses were included, as well as the rest of the country’s ISPs. Now there’s a chilling thought.
Image: Charles Fettinger / Flickr