The Australian government is planning to install mandatory content filters at the ISP level to target not only web traffic - which is already worrisome by itself - but also peer to peer applications like BitTorrent. The move is supposedly aimed at filtering child pornography and terrorist websites, though rather than actually doing something about illegal content like tracking down criminals, they'll just filter peer to peer traffic along with a static blacklist of sites while ignoring obvious details such as false positives and the civil liberties problems inherent in this approach.

Such a plan has of course generated a wave of criticism and petitions against its proposals, but apparently the minister responsible for it, Stephen Conroy, has maintained its intention to go ahead with the initiative and is set to begin live testing any day now - even though the ISPs that want to participate haven't received instructions yet.