Alexandra Carlton, a new bubble headed booby for The Punch, and bring on the meaningless filter ...

(Above: danger Will Robinson, danger, Dr. Smith is not as he seems).

You know at first I thought of penning a lengthy tome - something along the lines of War and Peace - and then I thought of putting War and Peace down on Twitter - that's how I like to write recreationally - and then I thought I might be inclined to mix a little fruit and meat on a plate - I do so love eating melon and ham all rolled up together - and then as I slipped in to something comfortable - I do so love flat shoes - I suddenly realised some of these things might be problematic for Alexandra Carlton:

When she’s not being paid to write she writes recreationally - either on Twitter or in the form of long-winded emails to friends, family and her infinitely tolerant partner. Her likes include the bands Animal Collective, The Dirty Projectors and YACHT and fashion labels Marni, Willow and Alexander Wang. Dislikes include fruit and meat on the same plate, flat shoes and people who write the word “tome” when “book” will do.

Yep, roll over Tory Maguire, The Punch has a new bubble headed booby, and she thinks Senator Stephen Conroy is wonderful, and so is his filter.

There's a sucker born every minute, but Alexandra Carlton is a classy all day sucker, because she scribbles her stuff in Child welfare is more important than net freedom under the profound delusion that Conroy's filter will somehow stop child pornography on the intertubes.

Because it seems she once stumbled into a child porn chatroom - brave investigative journalist that she is - and it shocked her. And it seems it must have tempted her:

There are those of us who, after stumbling upon a site like this may have disturbed a kernel of previously unacknowledged interest, a dormant twitch of arousal that had finally found an outlet. A few posts here, a couple of links there, a handful of supportive, private emails from established forum members assuring the newcomer that they’re “not alone” – and you have yourself the makings of child porn fetishist.

Oh no Alexandra, say it ain't so. Or at least don't use the piously inclusionary "there are those of us", which I find as about as offensive as calling a tome a book.

Yep, one experience seven years ago, obtained by googling or yahooing - she can't remember - suddenly produces a level of expertise about the intertubes and the best way to catch child porn producers and their customers which is astonishingly revelatory.

There's nothing like a true delusionary as to the way the web works, or for that matter the policing of it:

Pre-internet, someone with a flutter of sexual interest in children may never have had the opportunity to take that desire beyond a masturbatory fantasy.

Except of course if you happen to be a member of the clergy? What planet has she come from? Pre-internet "someone with a flutter of sexual interest in children" might never have done anything about it? Tell that to the folks who assembled the report into the Irish branch of the Catholic church.

Now, he is potentially just a few clicks away from paying money to witness real, live children acting out everything he’s ever imagined – and get a validating pat on the back from others who are doing the same.

Um, actually, paying money is about the best kind of trail you can get to nail child pornographers. Some of the best busts have come about as a result of dumbos using credit cards to pay. And the more cops to hand to pursue them, the better, and don't give me that jurisdictional crap. There are all kinds of ways for cops to cooperate internationally.

And if Conroy had handed over the money he's going to spend on a useless filter system to the federal and state police to nail child pornographers he would have been doing a useful thing.

But then when you're a bubble headed booby rational thinking isn't the go:

When the government announced yesterday that it was pushing ahead with its planned Clean Feed internet blocking proposal, the blogosphere, Twitter and national news sites bayed for the blood of what it saw as the legislation’s oppressive architects.

Dearie me, I wonder why. Never mind, the bubble headed booby seems to have grasped a few of the basic issues and explains them to herself in a disbelieving way:

Opponents thundered about disruptions to internet speed, the predicted impracticalities, the dangers of catching benign websites in the censorship list and of course, the slippery slope to a nation of North Korean-style totalitarianism that would inevitably follow.

These points may well prove valid.

Uh huh. You mean, on the one hand, and on the other hand, I'd like to have an each way bet. Perhaps even a trifecta or a quinella. Say on soothsayer.

At this stage the feds appear to have bigger plans for their Clean Feed scheme than stamping out child porn. They want to round up and abolish everything from sites promoting drug use to religious extremism. When we start sweeping everything unpalatable into an indiscriminate grab-bag of baddies, we set ourselves up for real problems.

Uh huh. But I'm sure since you started with hysteria, you can end with a rousing clarion call of hysteria.

But in principle, anything that will impede our access to child porn is beyond reproach. “Freedoms” be damned.

Oh I say, well played and well done. But the trouble with the rhetorical flourish is the use of the words "in principle". Because you see in practise the damn thing is a curate's egg. But I guess ending the column with "Practicalities" be damned would have been a tad deflating.

But what's even worse than the deluded notion that the filter is going to do huge good cleaning up the intertubes and catching the baddies of child porn, driven by the 'won't someone think of the children' brigade, is that the rights of Australian adults to view what they want, and to read what they want, will suffer a blow, while those in the know will just go about their daily pornographic business.

Helped along by people who don't have the first clue about intertubes 101:

... when we’re talking about child porn, this crime needs a gold class of its own and the government is right to focus its attentions there. The British government recognises this and has run its own Clean Feed scheme since 2004, targeting only child pornography, and the EU looks set to follow.

Uh huh. But Conroy's filter won't just target child pornography, and will be ineffective at stopping child pornography - as indeed the British system has already shown.

Currently in the UK, all the major ISPs use the child pornography blocklist curated by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). A BT-developed system called Cleanfeed checks IP addresses against the list and blocks users from accessing their content.

Last month, child protection charities complained that some 700,000 internet connections in the UK served by small ISPs were still able to access material on the IWF blocklist. They pointed out that in 2006 the Home Office had pledged that it would tell all providers to implement filters by the end of 2007.

However, small ISPs such as Zen have so far resisted government pressure to filter voluntarily. They cite the expense of new hardware needed to run the system. They also argue minimal technical knowledge is required to circumvent the "politically motivated" IWF blocklist and that it has no effect on the trade in images of abuse. (here).

Yep they did window dressing too, and the circumvention techniques are easy for anyone with internet 101 skills.

Never mind. When confronted by reality and hard core truth, the best defence for the bubble headed booby is to shove their head in the sand. What about all this alarmist talk of censorship run riot?

Whether our representatives can demonstrate similar restraint and streamline its efforts where they’re most needed remains to be seen. There’s little precedent to suggest they have the skills or resources to pull off the execution of anything technology-related without fumbling the ball.

Uh huh. So you still think it's a good idea? Why? You really have no idea, do you Alexandra?

"Freedoms" be damned.

You silly goose. Freedom shouldn't be damned. Why does everybody yammer about the evils of internet censorship in Iran, China, North Korea, and such like places, then cluck approvingly when a half-baked ISP level filter is proposed for the intertubes in Australia?

Giving the government infinite capacity to interfere, and it must also be said, to produce ongoing cock-ups reminiscent of the nonsense Australia endured back in the first half of the twentieth century.

You see, illegal activities can be damned, and punished by people being locked up, including child porn, phishing, and any of dozens of other intertubes naughties. Which is why an effective, digitally aware, well funded capacity for policing is required for the inept and the unparanoid who don't realise it's a jungle out there.

But Conroy's filter will do diddly squat about catching the villains. It's a see no evil, hear no evil approach. You see Conroy's filter won't stop people accessing child porn on the intertubes, thought it might well drive them further underground, and into more devious mechanisms to feed their deviant vice, and it won't do a bloody thing to stop actual child pornographers or catch or punish them.

It's just window dressing, and expensive window dressing at that, designed for the mug punters.

All this has been noted by any number of experts over any number of articles any number of times. Try here:

Conroy's Clean Feed Won't Block Child Porn

Try here:

Govt to go ahead with easy to circumvent internet filter

Or here:

Conroy's internet filter: so what?

Or how about this bit of fun:

Bernard Keane's guide to writing to Ministers.

Or try any of hundreds of places on the intertube where the technical issues are discussed. Oh heck just have a look at the content of the sundry vehement comments you generated.

But then I guess it doesn't matter.

When last I looked, you'd generated 89 hits on The Punch and counting, and that's all that counts on The Punch.

Not intelligent conversation, not even a middling conversation, but 'won't someone think of the children' hysteria designed to stir up the hornet's nest.

Well here's the thing. It won't work, it's a waste of money, a policy designed to satisfy the easily satisfied, and it won't stop child porn. It won't stop smart end users circumventing it, and if you rely on it, and don't take appropriate steps via home filtering, expect your kids to cop some cyber nasties.

Oh dear, I suddenly feel exhausted. How to lift the spirits. Perhaps I should go off and get myself a little bracing bit of melon and ham, or perhaps I should settle for lamb, lime and mango?

Whatever. I do hope the rule about not mingling meat and fruit doesn't spread across the intertubes, and provoke a cry for the banning, or at least the filtering, of imagery offensive to Muslims ...