The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has today officially announced the introduction of its ‘Internet Filtering’ system.  The system will be voluntarily available to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in New Zealand within a couple of months.

For those who fear the wider impact of Internet Filtering (aka Censorship), the DIA states that the system “will focus solely on websites offering clearly objectionable images of child sexual abuse, which is a serious offence for anyone in New Zealand to access.”

NATCOM supports the restriction to combat child abuse and we believe initiatives such as this can help.  However, we remain sceptical on the future of this system and how it may evolve into something much more than intended.

As such, and as we reported earlier in the month, NATCOM will not opt in to the scheme in belief of Open Internet.  Instead, we will leave the decision to filter the Internet with our business customers, by including our SLAM™ Firewall service free with all of our fibre Internet services.  Content filtering in SLAM™ is optional and in it, a business can easily decide what they want to filter, if anything at all.

SLAM is also available to non-NATCOM managed Internet customers.

If you’re concerned, talk to us!