Dear Department of Internal Affairs,

I would like to request under the Official Information Act some information regarding the Department of Internal Affairs’ Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System.

1) It is stated in the 3rd February 2010 minutes of the Independent Reference Group that “The Group was advised that the issue of Steve O’Brien’s membership had been raised in correspondence with the Minister and the Department”. I would like to request copies of that correspondence.

2) I would also like to request any documentation, correspondence, papers, emails, or other information that explain the reasons why the Independent Reference Group thought that “Steve O’Brien’s continued membership makes sense”

3) The website that the System uses to block requests, dce.net.nz, contains Google Analytics to track visitor information. I would like to request a report of the information that Google Analytics collected from this website, in PDF format, for the 1st November 2011 – 2nd December 2011 period.

4) The IRG 4th Quarter Briefing Document states that there have been four appeals over the classification of sites on the filter. I would like to request copies of these four appeals.

5) I would also like to request all correspondence, reports, emails, or other information related to these appeals.

6) Article 5.4 of the Code of Practice for the filter states that "The process for the submission of an appeal shall... ensure the privacy of the requester is maintained by allowing an appeal to be lodged anonymously". I would like to request how, if appeals are anonymous, according to the April 2011 minutes of the Independent Reference Group, the URL which the appellate attempted to access was identified.

7) The press release on the 16th of July 2009, “Web filter will focus solely on child sex abuse images”, states that the filter filters out “over 7000” websites. According to the IRG 4th Quarter Briefing Document this had fallen to 507 entries. I would like to request the reason for this dramatic fall in number.

8) Article 4.3 of the Code of Practice for the operation of the filtering system states that “The list will be reviewed monthly, to ensure that it is up to date and that the possibility of false positives is removed. Inspectors of Publications will examine each site to ensure that it continues to meet the criteria for inclusion on the filtering list.” I would like to ask whether this has been done fully for each month in the 2011 period.

9) The minutes of the Independent Reference Group for the 17th of August 2011 mention “written material.” I would like to request whether the filter list has ever contained sites that contained solely written material, and if so, the amount of sites.

Feel free to contact me if you wish to clarify my request. Thank you very much for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Grainger.

Dear Department of Internal Affairs,

According to the Ombudsmen's Calculator (http://www.ombudsmen.parliament.nz/index...), the legal deadline for responding to my request expired yesterday. Can I please have an immediate update of the status of my request?

Yours faithfully,

Joshua Grainger

Dear Lloyd Bezett and Steve O'Brien,

Thank you very much for your detailed response to my request. It is much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Grainger