You wouldn’t have seen the headline in the media, but on November 10th 2008 Senator Conroy’s office was phone bombed. It’s alright, he is in good health. In fact, nobody was hurt in the latest skirmish in the war against the Rudd Filter. 

What is a phone bomb? 

People have always protested against the government but these days sometimes it can be hard to get the message across. They can delete an email, throw your letter in the bin, and ignore the mob of people outside their offices. They won’t take a petition seriously unless it has around 100,000 signatures and who has time to collect that many!? 

They won’t stop answering their phones though. 

A phone bomb is a scheduled series of phone calls from a network of people to a personal assistant over a short amount of time. If an hour of a person’s time is taken up by a single topic they will remember it, and will hopefully pass on the key elements of the message to whoever they are working for. The aim is not to be harmful which is why it should only be an hour – not over a number of days as some people have suggested. 

What is the Rudd Filter? 

The Rudd Filter is Kevin Rudd’s proposal to install a mandatory filter on our internet at the ISP-level. Sure they won the election after proposing that they would introduce a ‘clean feed’ that parents could opt-into to protect their kids, but this is vastly different to an opt-out filter as well as a higher level filter that you can’t opt out of. 

Senator Conroy has runs the portfolio and has discussed the issue on ABC Radio with Mark Pesce. 

Mark Pesce also spoke on Radio National which had some great discussion. Note though that nobody under the age of 30 is a part of the debate there. 

Why am I opposed?

• Mandatory ISP filtering doesn’t actually stop child porn. It is a social issue, not a technical issue. 
• There are some serious technical hurdles. The trials so far on a Tier 3 ISP setup have been published. MDs of iiNet, Internode and Telstra (Tier 1 ISPs) have said that it will drastically slow down our internet experience . 
• Schools already have Department of Education filters that are very strict and perform the same task where required. If you want a filter on your connection (home, business or government), go and sign up to an ISP like WebShield!
• There is already an opt-in filter system that John Howard’s government introduced, and only 29,000 people are using it. Where is the demand?

How did the Rudd Filter Phone Bomb work?

1. Steve heard the idea was used by Greenpeace and copy/pasted it for the current issue. 
2. He tweeted the idea and got a positive response. 
3. He picked a strategic time so that the message had a good chance of getting through. 
4. He set up a google docs spreadsheet to organise the phone bomb schedule. 
5. It spread, in true Made To Stick (link) style. 
6. The bomb was delivered on November 10th. 

Did it work?

and.. 

I think that is a pretty clear YES! 

What next? 

Elias Bizannes (www.liako.biz) has written a great summary of the Rudd Filter issue at Silicon Beach. Elias has also sent these thoughts to every Australian Senator.

Pat Allan has been talking about the issue before most of us, raising the censorship issue in January 2008. Pat has just set up a meeting to talk to his local member. 

The Phone Bomb started some positive momentum but more must be done. Steve Hopkins is going to blog about what happens next in the Phone Bomb campaign, so make sure you bookmark his blog, The Squiggly Line and of course follow him on twitter for updates.

By Ross Hill - November 24th, 2008 at 10:57am with 2,111 views - andrew sayer department of education elias bizannes iinet internode john howard kevin rudd mark pesce pat allan senator conroy silicon beach steve hopkins telstra webshield