Senator Conroy’s office has responded to Asher Moses’ accusation of “fatal flaws” in Conroy’s internet filtering plan, printed in Fairfax Media publications The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

At the centre of the debate is a secret report commissioned by the Howard Government and produced by the Internet Industry Association, which cited many reasons why internet filtering was “definitely not going to be workable” and “fundamentally just not viable”.

In the wake of the story, the secret report has been released on the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy’s website.

In his press release, Senator Conroy goes to pains to point out that the report was not an analysis of ALP policy. Rather, he emphasises that it was commissioned by the previous Howard Government “at the instigation of the Internet Industry Association” and that “it involved no empirical testing of filtering technology”.

He reiterates his oft-quoted statement that the government is committed to a test to “provide evidence on the real world impacts of ISP content filtering” and still implies that internet censorship of some sort will take place.

The release also notes that the live trials, which were scheduled to start tomorrow (Wednesday 24 December), “will not begin until mid-January and an announcement regarding participants will be made at that time”.

Senator Conroy’s blog, which closes for comments at 3pm tomorrow (24th of December), made no mention of the Internet Industry Association’s report.

BanThisURL is currently reading the report and will have an analysis online shortly.