The criteria for assessment applied by the body responsible for the examination, CSIRO (an Australian scientific and industrial research organisation), concentrated on ease of use and installation.
It has been criticised for not actually looking at the effectiveness of the filtering software in blocking unsuitable sites. This has led to attacks from civil liberty bodies including the Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA).
Moreover, the EFA web site was blocked by the approved filter Surfwatch last week although it contained no explicit material. The way that the filter works means that it blocks sites by reference to their IP addresses rather than their individual web addresses. This means that an innocent web site can be blocked because it shares its IP address with an offensive one.
A Surfwatch spokesman claimed that its team of surfers “lays human eyes on every single page to determine which category of filtered material the site should go into”.
However, this has been countered by members of the internet free speech organisation Peacefire who assert that Surfwatch definitely does not review every site that it blocks.
There is no similar program in the UK to that of the Australian government, although there are a number of filtering systems available. In general, these operate by analysing the text on a site and searching for key words or groups of words that may be offensive or explicit.