If, as is being suggest by some, Australia institutes the toughest measures to censor the Web for "criminal information", it will constitute the most far-reaching restriction on individual freedom this country has ever seen.

Our society is a society where people can be in fear of their lives because of threats from a spouse but the police cannot do anything about it until a crime is actually committed. This means that actual harm must be done, the law must be broken. Assumption of intent is not enough.

"Criminal" information of the type being railed about is freely available in print, and it is not, as yet, illegal to know something, even if it might be illegal, in certain contexts and for certain purposes, to put that knowledge to practical use. Yet it now appears that it is assumed that access and knowing constitutes a danger to society of such magnitude that common sense should be dispensed with.

Information is of itself neutral. There cannot, therefore, be a category of information called "criminal", and it should be a matter of concern to all Australians that the difference between criminal activity on the Internet and informat ion available on the Web which may (but equally very largely won't) be used for criminal purposes is being confused, either deliberately or as a result of ignorance.

Australian society has never required enabling legislation, we therefore have neither the protection, nor the restrictions of a First Amendment. We must maintain clear and public understanding of the difference between being socially irresponsible and criminal activity.

Pre-Mandela South Africa had extremely restrictive censorship policies and practices. Books in general were an object of great suspicion. Possession of books, particularly if the word "Russia" appeared in the title, was enough to label t he owners as dangerous subversives, and many books were presented as evidence in political trials. Substitute "crime" for "treason" and "digital" for "print" and we appear to be heading down the same road.

We appear to be heading down the same road in a manner that is highly inconsistent, and which ignores both the assumption of innocence and notion of intent. Print, radio, television and film are information carriers far more widely accessible than the Internet currently is. Most of us have picked up from these sources a large number of disparate pieces of information which could be put to criminal use. Despite the wide publicity relating to the composition of the explosive used in the Oklahoma Cit y bombing, and the widespread ownership of the ingredients by Australian householders, we haven't seen a multiplicity of police raids on garden sheds, nor a wild rampage of middle-aged gardeners bombing public buildings. Yet police concern about availabil ity of what they call "criminal information" seems to indicate an assumption that access to information equates to intent to use that information for criminal purposes. If we take this to its logical conclusion I can see librarians, and others, spending innumerable hours excising the neat recipe for molotov cocktails from the Macquarie Dictionary, the information on how to set and light fires from all scouting handbooks, and the detail of how the dastardly deed was done from all murder mysteries .

It will be impossible to effectively prevent those who are determined to do so from obtaining information published on servers located outside Australia even if such material is banned in Australia. I regularly use the "mail-to" facility in graphical browsers to email to colleagues information I have stumbled across which I believe will be of interest to them. Such facilities will be used across national boundaries to circumvent any censorship.

It will also be impossible to effectively censor the publication of material deemed to be "criminal" in Australia without the full cooperation of the local Internet community. In South Africa, the censorship system was, in effect, maintained by librarians who displayed a lamentable inability to grasp the essentially political nature of their work. The essential of authoritarian rule is confidence, psychological bluff and the occasional, though well-timed, demonstration of ruthless reaction to any transgression. Implementation of an equivalent censorship applied to dissemination of information via the Web will require that the Internet community not only takes the responsibility but actually does the work.