Yesterday the Australian Communications and Media Authority released the “Closed environment testing of ISP-level internet content filtering – a report“. “This report presents the findings of the closed environment testing of ISP-level filters conducted in 2008. The trial was conducted in response to a ministerial direction received in June 2007. Among the report’s findings:
• Successful blocking (the proportion of illegal and inappropriate content that should have been blocked that was successfully blocked) was between 88% and 97% with most achieving over 92%. The median rate of successful blocking was improved from the previous trial.
• Overblocking (the proportion of content that was blocked that should not have been blocked) was between 1% and 6%, with most falling under 3%. The median overblocking rate was significantly improved from the previous trial.
These findings are consistent with other recent test of filtering effectiveness. I’ll add this to my Comprehensive Index of Filter Effectiveness Tests 1997-2008 later.
Filed under: Filtering, Governments, Research
