Communications minister Stephen Conroy has attacked internet giant Google regarding the company’s protests against the Federal Government’s filtering legislation.
“We have a number of other concerns, including that filtering may give a false sense of security to parents, it could damage Australia’s international reputation and it can be easily circumvented,” Google wrote in a statement.
Conroy responded harshly on ABC Radio, referencing the company’s recent spat with China regarding its decision to no longer censor search results for the country’s Government.
“Recently the founders of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because notwithstanding their alleged ‘do no evil’ policy, they recently created something called Buzz, and there was a reaction, and people said well, look, aren’t you publishing private information?” Conroy said.
“[Google CEO Eric] Schmidt said the following: ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place’. This is the founder of Google. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, ‘we love cash’, so people say, shouldn’t we just leave it up to the Google’s of this world to determine what the filtering policy should be…”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
