CANBERRA, Australia -- There are ways to police illegal material on the Internet without resorting to a mandatory filter such as the one proposed by Australia's government, a U.S. diplomat says.
The comments by Jeff Bleich, the U.S. ambassador to Australia, to the Australian news program "Q&A" on Monday came barely two weeks after the U.S. State Department expressed concern about the online restrictions, which would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.
"The Internet needs to be free," Bleich said. "We have been able to accomplish the goals that Australia has described, which is to capture and prosecute child pornographers ... without having to use Internet filters."
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