Do you approve of the Government blocking access to some internet sites?

Photo / Kenny Rodger

Internet service providers will soon begin blocking access to hundreds of websites that are on a secret blacklist compiled by the Department of Internal Affairs, but critics say the system lacks transparency.

The department this week announced its new Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, which it said would help fight child sex abuse. The $150,000 software will be provided free of charge to ISPs in a couple of months and will reroute all site requests to Government-owned servers. The software, called Whitebox, compares users' site requests with a list of banned links. If a match is found, the request is denied. It will not cover email, file sharing or borderline material.

Do you approve of the Government blocking access to some internet sites?