Clever Girl Bess

In a revelation that perfectly demonstrates the nexus between moral posturing and greed in America, MSNBC reported Friday that tracking data on student web-surfing is being sold by one of the largest manufacturers of content-blocking software -- and in the name of protecting kids, of course. That software is called Bess, and it restricts the browsing of more than 12 million students -- and thanks to the noxious Children's Internet Protection Act passed by Congress last year, that number is going to get much higher. Guess who one of the first customers was? The U.S. Department of Defense. [Note: jamie posted about this last Friday as well. Read on for Jon's take.]

You can blame the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), passed by Congress last year over the violent objections of educators, civil libertarians and librarians. The election-year law takes control of children's online information lives away from schools, parents and local communities. Instead, CIPA requires all schools and libraries that want federal E-rate funds to help pay for Net access to install blocking and filtering software. This is the same dreary, censorious software that can't distinguish between porn sites and poetry passages, not to mention intelligently discriminate between breast-cancer education pages and breast-ogling sites.

Nearly half of all schools and libraries now use some sort of filtering software, according to research firm International Data Corp. N2H2 Corp.,the makers of Bess, has about 20 percent of this market, the Wall Street Journal reports. That means that Bess controls the Web choices of more than 12 million students kindergarten through high school, and the CIPA is expected to push those numbers much higher.

Now we learn that late last year, N2H2 began selling the data that Bess collects on children's Net and Web use. The information, called Class Clicks, is aggregated, says the company, meaning it can't be used to identify the habits of individual specific students, or even of specific schools. And Bess is a clever girl. Schools use the program as a gatekeeper, and nobody knows more than she does about where kids go, for how long, or which sites they try and access.

But for $15,000 a year, marketers and Web site operators can receive regular reports detailing exactly where kids are going on the Net, along with aggregate estimates of their ages and race. The company insists there's no way for users of this data to figure out precisely who the students are, but it isn't clear whether N2H2 or makers of the filtering programs know, or if so, what they are legally allowed to do with that information.

How do the info-peddlers feel about it? "This is a real nonissue for us," a spokesman for N2H2 told the Journal. "This information is so anonymous and vague."

But if it's so vague, why would anybody pay thousands of dollars for it? And it is definitely an issue for others, including the Electronic Privacy Center in Washington, whose general counsel, David Sobel, told the Journal: "Students just should not be contributing to marketing tools and subjected to profiling based on how they are using the educational tools of the Internet."

Nor, in fact, should anyone buy the notion that filtering software protects children. It doesn't. Statistically kids are in no danger on the Net. Their greatest source of harm comes from physical abuse from family members and people they know, according to U.S. Justice Department statistical abstracts on violence and the FBI Uniform Crime Report, and firearms and other accidents. Congress seems in no rush to block any of those dangers.

So far, just two clients have purchased the information N2H2 is selling. One is the New York-based education portal Big Chalk Inc. The other, strangely enough, is the U.S. DOD, which refused to tell the Journal what it plans to do with the data collected by Bess.

N2H2 says it began tracking kids' Net use in late 1999, believing the data might be useful to teachers and creators of youth-oriented websites. Last year, it began looking into other uses for this information, and began working with the marketing firm Roper Starch Worldwide to figure out what the two companies could sell.

According to the Journal, SurfControl PLC, another maker of blocking programs, said it doesn't collect data of any sort on its users' surfing habits and believes it would be inappropriate to do so.

Is this data-collection the kind of protection Congress had in mind when it compelled libraries and schools to install commercial censorship software, depriving parents, educators and local institutions and politicians of the right to make such choices?

Filtering software is a complex civil liberties problem on several levels, most unappreciated either by Congress or the general pubic:

• Most filtering programs don't disclose what they block or why, so the users have no real idea what level of protection is being offered. Parents think they are purchasing safety and morality, yet they have no idea what their children are being deprived access to.
• Blocking software doesn't protect kids, literally or morally. There is no evidence of any sort by any credible source that one single child is safer or more moral because of censorship technology installed on their computers, or because of limited access to the Net.
• Filtering software legitimizes censorship and invasion of privacy. Many parents buy filtering programs that permit them to re-trace the websites their children have visited. They aren't teaching kids morality but Orwellian intrusions of privacy, dignity, and, yes -- morality itself.

• Blocking sofware is an illusory technology. It permits the abdication of moral responsibility -- especially that of teachers and parents -- to supervise their children and provide moral direction.

What we have with Bess and CIPA is one more insight into the warped way American politicians exploit children while proclaiming that they're protecting their moral purity. William Bennett, our self-styled national "morals" czar, and a close adviser to President Bush, is a master at this, denouncing the immorality of music, TV, and the Net and Web and making millions off of books, calendars and stickers offering and celebrating "morally correct" stories for kids about hardworking bumblebees and frogs who can't wait to get to school.

Net use is statistically one of the safest things an American kid can do. When kids get in trouble online, it is usually adolescents drawn into powerful or obsessive relationships. Those are rare. Crime rates among the young have been dropping for years, and are now at their lowest levels in a half-century. Children are very rarely harmed as a result of going online. According to child safety experts, online safety rules are easy to learn and follow. So the idea of "protective" legislation is already spurious.

Moreover, even the sale of the aggregate behavior of children (almost always, says the Journal, without the knowledge of kids, parents or schools), has serious implications for privacy and free speech. It promises a future marked by ever-more-sophistiated digital tracking and eavesdropping. Obviously, aggregate figures can't be collected without access to individual statistics. What, exactly, is the boundary?

And once legitimized -- by the U.S. Congress, no less -- the notion of ever more specialized tracking of kids by business and government is now being built into the infrastructure of the Net as well as schools and libraries. It's an awful precedent, even though it's a "non-issue" to the corporation doing it. Even if Bess isn't tracking specific students or targeting specific schools -- yet -- who's to say that the next generation of software will do, or what a different company couldn't or wouldn't gather and sell, especially as Congress forgot to prohibit the marketing of this data in it's rush to "protect" kids from the Net.

Every significant law Congress has passed relating to speech and content on the Net, from the two Communications Decency Acts to the Sonny Bono and Digital Millenium Copyright Acts to CIPA has been offensive and menacing to privacy, free speech, and individual freedom to choose information. American kids seem much saner and more rational about technology than their so-called leaders and protectors. And this doesn't seem likely to get any better under the Bush administration, which has made the moral lives of children and the immoral content in TV, movies and on the Net a central campaign issue and policy priority.

The forced use of CIPA-mandated blocking (and tracking) software is bad enough, meaning that kids online have already relinquished much of their right to free speech, information choice and privacy. Selling the information that results takes away most of the rest of it, and is doubly appalling.

Comments

COPA

[alehmann]

Doesn't the Child Online Protection Act (ugh) have protection against abuses like this?

Re:COPA

[xpccx]

Not really. From the article:

Congress moved to protect children's online privacy with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa, which took effect in April 2000. The act was designed, in part, to protect young children from marketing efforts. But privacy advocates argue that it doesn't go far enough and note that it doesn't prohibit the kind of data collection N2H2 is doing. The act, which applies to children younger than 13, prohibits the collection of personal information that can be used to identify someone.

Re:COPA

[Oaktreeman]

However, I would be interested to see how the term "personal information" is defined. The article makes it sound as though the information collected is anonymous in nature and not linked to one specific user. (If that is true or not, who knows, I sure dont)

Re:COPA

[Confound]

strictly speaking, aggregated data isn't personal.

- confound

I dont belive in this sort of thing

[gwizah]

Its just an excuse for big business to get into schools and use filtering software to track kids spending habits. read more about CIPA and COPA here

Re:I dont belive in this sort of thing

[SunlightMoon]

>>get into schools and use filtering software to track kids spending habits

Are kids allowed to make online purchases at school now?

Since I doubt very seriously that this is the case, I must wonder at what exactly "big business" hopes to learn by tracking schoolchildren.

Am I the only one who would never *think* of giving a child access to a credit card? Or permission to buy anything while unsupervised by a responsible adult?

Tracking generic spending habits doesn't overly alarm me, but the motives for this particular transaction *do*.

Re:I dont belive in this sort of thing

[Golias]

I must wonder at what exactly "big business" hopes to learn by tracking schoolchildren.

They want to know where kids' eyeballs are pointing, so they know where to put their ads. They are choosing which web sites to advertise on, and would rather do so on the sites students read most. Nothing more (or less) nefarious than that.

Pretty obvious if you stop to think about it.

Re:I dont belive in this sort of thing

[SunlightMoon]

I suppose my difficulty with this bit of marketing brilliance is the idea of children as significant consumers of advertised products. During my stint as a minor, shopping was *the* most boring thing a person could do, and I didn't have an income anyway, so why the interest in kids' browsing habits as a demographic?

The fact that kids spend money is not really at question. I only question the value of tracking the spending habits of a group which is dependent on other people for financial resources. Unfortunately, it seems that I'm wandering into an area covered by personal judgment, so I'll shut up now. :-)

Re:I dont belive in this sort of thing

[Confound]

disposable income for people under the age of 13 has increased drastically over the past 10 years. I too was astonished to see 10 and 11 year olds with their own cell phones and mommy's credit cards.

pre-teens and teenagers may be dependent on parents for their financial resources, but parents are increasingly open to suggestion from kids for their purchases. (see Strauss and Howe's book / online forum Millenials Rising . most of the book is pretty deluded and biased, but there is some useful stuff.)

pre-teens and teenagers are massive consumers of everything from music to movies to clothes and junk food. they're over-protected, over-marketed and over-rated as far as i'm concerned.

- confound

Re:I dont belive in this sort of thing

[Golias]

Such was always the case. Why do you think the high-sugar cerials are advertised during Saturday Morning cartoons? Sell to the kids, and they will talk their folks into buying.

<P>P tags

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like katz needs more practice in HTML.

In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[AugstWest]

This doesn't surprise me at all.

As a people, we are far less useful for our labor than we are for what we spend it on. The economy is of utmost importance in this country, no matter how much our new US leader goes on about "faith"...

With the constant barrage of "targeted" advertising becoming more and more insistent, more and more precise, more and more prevalent and more and more psychologically driven, it's any wonder we can think for ourselves at all.

Psychology these days is used more to sell things than it is for spiritual healing. This shows where our priorities as a nation lie.

At this point, our constitution might as well be changed to read "We, the Corporations, of the United States of America..."

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[mighty jebus]

With the constant barrage of "targeted" advertising becoming more and more insistent, more and more precise, more and more prevalent and more and more psychologically driven, it's any wonder we can think for ourselves at all.

Turn off your TV and your radio. I guarantee that the level of marketing out there is still low enough to be easily relegated to line noise.

It's the point at which you no longer have a choice about advertising that people have to start getting shot.

Leading the partnership for a Jon Katz-free universe,
Son of Dog

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[defunc]

Citizens are mere consumers, and societies are now viewed as mass markets. Sad, but that's what we get for a free market. I wish we had a solution to this.

--

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[Moofie]

The problem is not explicitly that there are mass markets. (I like mass markets because it means cheap gear) The problem is that the mass markets snuff out niche markets, limiting choice. Choice good. No choice bad.

The wider problem is that capitalism is no longer about making money by building and selling valuable products, it's about making money by controlling and manipulating markets. (Yes, maybe I'm naive to think it was ever any different...leave me to my fantasies, thank you!)

In other words, I agree, and the problem's going to get worse before it gets better.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[Prince of Jupiter]

I've got mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, I'm *really* tired of all the "Save the Children!" knee-jerk issues we're subjected to. On the other hand, though, it's depressing to look around at how consumption oriented and possessive our society (myself included)has become; and even *more* depressing to realize how hard the push is to keep that materialistic machine a' turnin' into the next generation. Do we really want state assisted marketing operations going?
I can see it now... Are tax preparation companies going to be given lists of people who itemized in the past to focus advertisements to? Are people who received some type of government assistance in the past year going to be put on a list for temp agencies?
I realize that the revenue may help offset the cost of the censoring software (which is of dubious benefit anyway, but...), but is this a precedent we want to establish? It doesn't seem like a long leap to get to "Open your algebra books, which were provided by Pepsi, to Chapter 16. Remember, drink Pepsi for its great taste, and to support your school!" Hyperbole, yes.
..But think about exactly how much we want the government involved in assisting corporate marketing.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[Schnedt Microne]

There is a solution, and it is socialism.

And there is a precipitate, and it is freedom.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[AugstWest]

troll, my ass. this is SO non-troll and on-topic that it hurts.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[marxist]

Cunning! It's generally pretty hard convincing non-socialist people that socialism is a step forward. And for good reason, there are many examples of repressive regimes such as China which are associated with socialism. However these are not true socialist regimes, they are "social fascism" (i.e. Stalinism), socialism in contrast is the height of democracy, and hence the height of freedom within a society. It is not enforced by a supreme dictator, as you seem to assume.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[NecrosisLabs]

I realize that the revenue may help offset the cost of the censoring software (which is of dubious benefit anyway, but...), but is this a precedent we want to establish? It doesn't seem like a long leap to get to "Open your algebra books, which were provided by Pepsi, to Chapter 16. Remember, drink Pepsi for its great taste, and to support your school!" Hyperbole, yes.

Hyperbole, no . Remeber the case last year of the student who was kicked out of school for wearing a shirt (I believe for Pepsi) that had the logo of the compeitor of the drink company that gave the school a grant. Advertisers innundate teachers and schools with "teaching aids" that are glorified product placements ("If Timmy has three great tasting hot pockets, and gives one to Mary, how many of the tasty fun treats does he have?") There is always Whittle's Channel One, which beams news and advertising to a captive audience.
Why have we decided to allow advertisers to colonize every square inch of our space(sometimes literally). The advertising dream is that wherever you look, you see an ad. I remeber listening to an ad exec on the radio talking about how their research shows that children as young as two can recognise brands. Holy Shit! Does the fact that a.)They think this is a good thing and b.)They did the research at all, disturb anyone else?
As a new father, I am terrified that my child will be bombarded by (let's not mince words here)mind control at school as well as his environment. I can try to innoculate against these pernicious attacks, but I don't know how well...

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[kurioszyn]

What is the difference between socialism and democracy ?

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[synetic]

I'm currently working in NY. This is my first time in the US, I live in London. The atitude to the Web and what people to should be allowed to view is a lot more relexed then here (the RIP bill being the exception - it won't make it through parliment anyway). Something else I noticed about the US is marketing - to this outsiders eyes it seems to be everywhere and I mean *everywhere*. The current topic just shows what your Congress originally intended for good has being turned into a cynical drive by coperations to sell more and more and more and more.... P.S It also displays the utter studpidity of coperations - do you think most kids give a fuck about ads? These guys are *muppets* so don't worry about it - ignore it :-)

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[marxist]

Democracy is a government of the people. Socialsm is a economic and social theory, in which democracy plays an important part.

Maybe this quote will help better explain:

"From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism -- from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the "state" which consists of the armed workers, and which is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more rapidly every form of state begins to wither away. "Then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society [Socialism] to its higher phase [Communism], and with it the complete withering away of the state. Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution Chpt 5. The higher phase of Communist Society

Taken from the Marxists Internet Archive

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[marxist]

I messed up the formating, here it is again:

"From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism -- from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the "state" which consists of the armed workers, and which is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more rapidly every form of state begins to wither away.

"Then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society [Socialism] to its higher phase [Communism], and with it the complete withering away of the state.

Vladimir Lenin
The State and Revolution
Chpt 5. The higher phase of Communist Society

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[kurioszyn]

How sweet ...
Didn't this guy had a chance to put his theories into practice ?

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[Moofie]

Was his name Hari Seldon? I hate it when sci fi goes wrong. : )

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[Moofie]

He sure did! Then there was this guy named Stalin who came to power and mouthed the platitudes of The People and started killing them on an industrial scale. Things went south from there.

I have to be very skeptical of any philosophy of human interaction that tries to model people as being motivated by cooperation, rather than being motivated by (hopefully enlightened) self interest. If you think that the people in power are not going to be selfish, and you don't design your system of government with that in mind, you wind up with the Khmer Rouge. And that's bad.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[Schnedt Microne]

Look again at what I typed, please.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[marxist]

Yes,check out his bio And you can also even read a lot of his workshere.

I'm not sure the extent he succeded in putting his theories into practice, and I'm not in the position to asses his legacy on socialism. The archives above should answer these questions to some extent.

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[c0sm0]

how is the above funny? it's sad really....

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[TheBongo]

It'd be a lot funnier if it weren't so true =\

Re:In a Corporatocracy, we're all just targets.

[PlotFive]

You may live in London, but you're not paying attention to what happens there. The RIP bill is now the RIP act - it did make it through parliament. But hey, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. My ass.

The URL in the article SHOULD be:

[matth]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/521884.asp?cp1=1.html not with the slashdot.org

:)

Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Metal Machine Music]

I'm not sure if that is a serious question, but anonymous information is worth a great deal.

If I know that the magazine I'm thinking of advertising in has the anonymous profile of mainly 20-30 year-olds, that it makes my decision as to whether, and how to advertise with them more effective.

Similiarly, if I know that lots of children visit Slashdot (or MSN), then I'll advertise things here.

It's good news, because it means the government don't have to pay as much for the filtering because the people make more money other ways.

It also means that advertising is better focused, which is better for the recipient (good ads will be clicked on, and might be useful).

There is no issue about privacy, simply because there's no personal data.

There's no problem here. It's just that people worry because it's on the internet. This has been going on for years.

The fact that advertisers know that most Economist readers are male and middle-aged is not a privacy issue, and neither is this - exactly the same thing.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[still cynical]

The comparison to magazine subscribers is specious at best. The government does not mandate subscribing to any magazine, it is trying to force this software upon us. You freely give your information to the publisher, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. When you use a public computer, a reasonable amount of privacy/anonymity is expected.

Should we not be concerned that these companies are telling us what sites we can and cannot visit, effectively steering our use of the Internet, and then are profiting from the results of that? Should we not be even more concerned that our government is forcing this upon us?

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

You are completely right about this.

While I oppose the forced use of blocking software, this issue is a total red herring, and a waste of time that could be better spent addressing the more serious issues.

What I found much more troubling was this phrase: "...requires all schools and libraries that want federal E-rate funds..."

Those funds are our tax dollars, which the federal government has removed from our states to be used for education. However, if you don't play ball their way, they think the kids in your state suddenly don't deserve to have their computer labs funded. Every American should be outraged by this kind of Congressional behavior, but the truth is that it goes on all the time.

Want your highway funding? It used to be that you had to accept the Federal speed limit to get it... not you need to accept the Federal blood-alchohol-level limits.

This is why local control is almost always better than state control. The Federal government should run the military, arbitrate interstate commerce, enforce constitutionally mandaded human rights, and little else. Until we, as a nation, insist on limited government, the federal government will remain a powerful and dangerous tool for those with the resources to wield it.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[rawlink]

Here is the problem though. Once that information is sold and given to agencies that want to advertise (so they can pinpoint where they should advertise), the ad agencies can now track those children through banner clicks and put together more detailed information on individuals.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

You freely give your information to the publisher, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. When you use a public computer, a reasonable amount of privacy/anonymity is expected.

Those kids are still anonymous. That is why this whole argument is a red herring.

The magazine comparason is quite valid. Here's another: If you move into a house, marketers look at data that shows "people who own houses tend to spend their money thus..." and target you accordingly. Is looking at agregate data of how home-owners spend money an invasion of privacy? Of course not. Neither is looking at agragate data of what web sites students are likely to visit, which is all that they are doing here.

If one is going to get outraged, we should be objecting to the fact that web filters are there in the first place, not because they sell marketing data, but because their software is crap and they have no accountability in place to show otherwise.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

For that to happen, a kid has to volunterilly click on a banner, just as when they are browsing at home. If you want to talk about getting rid of banners, that is a discussion we can all have, but I think the Slash employees are likely to disagree. :)

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Mr. Slippery]

It also means that advertising is better focused, which is better for the recipient (good ads will be clicked on, and might be useful).

Targeted advertizing is not good for the recipient, it's just more effective at getting the recipient to do what the advertizers want - buy more stuff they don't really want or need.

It's about psychological manipulation, in this case the psychological manipulation of children. No wonder the DOD is so interested.

The fact that advertisers know that most Economist readers are male and middle-aged is not a privacy issue, and neither is this - exactly the same thing.

No, it's not at all the same thing, because:

• the information is being collected by software which is mandated by the federal government, not by "reader lifestyle" surveys in the magazine; and
• these are children, not adults. They cannot give meaningful consent to be tracked, singly or in aggregate.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[alister667]

For me the scarey bit is why the blazes the US DoD wants the info. What is the connection between the surfing habits of schoolchildren and the defence of the nation? Are they going to check if any of the children are checking out those pesky 'nuclear bombs for dummies' sites that proliferate the web?

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[sqlrob]

But this is a filter. Which means it can track EVERY URL went to/content of the pages. It doesn't require a banner click.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

Consent to be tracked in aggregate!?

You are tracked in aggregate every damned day, and there is NOTHING you can do to stop it.

I bet there's even marketing statistics available on the spending habits of kooky crypto-luddite hermits. ("17 percent of adult males who live in old woodsheds in Montana buy at least two bean-and-cheese burrito combos each week." "31 percent of people who send bombs through the mail prefer chocolate syrup in their milk over chocolate powder.")

Every time you hit a web page, every time you buy something, every step you take every move you make they'll be watching you.

...and none of them care who you are, or whether you want to be watched.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

Read the parent to my last post again. He is acknowledging that the data gathered by the filter is vague and anonymous, but that it might be used to place BANNERS, which, if clicked on, can get personal info.

If you were not reading in nested or threaded mode, I can see how you might have missed that point.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[rawlink]

As has been pointed out, a child is unable to make the decision to voluntarily commit their information for tracking. It is a hard thing to police, but there is a difference between arbitrary ad clicks and clicking an ad that has been targeted at a child.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Happy Monkey]

They want to increase their coolness factor, and therefore enrollment. Haven't you seen their new ads targeted at kids? "Join the Marines and you can swordfight giant lava demons!"
___

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Jaysyn]

You sound like a libertarian! That's a good thing.

http://www.aclu.org
http://www.lp.org
http://harrybrowne2000.org

The above links are a good start to preventing things like this from happening.

Jaysyn

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[DunbarTheInept]

Every time you hit a web page, every time you buy something, every step you take every move you make they'll be watching you.

Only if you are stupid enough to leave all cookies enabled in your browser. Limit it to just allowing cookies to be seen by the same sites as sent them and they have no clue what your browsing history is, or who you are, but you will still be able to take advantage of the remembered logins/password/context feature that cookies were originally meant for.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[nhavar]

So in essence what you are saying is that it is okay for marketers of products to target marketing at children who are visiting websites from school. So would you also agree that it's okay for those same marketers to come to the school without it's permission and put up alcahol/tobaco/movie posters etc. in the hallways? Because in essence this is what you are allowing for.

I have used many of the filtering programs and have found, humorous and disturbing as it is, that the filtering does not seem to block links provided from ads on approved web sites even though those ads may indeed contain information that I would prefer my children not be looking at. My children have no purchasing power, despite what statistics might say, I make the purchasing decisions in my household and I ignore ads because 99% are lies and misleading. I feel that all this effort being put into tracking statistics and ad targeting is for naught. Marketing is falling into the law of diminishing returns, new billboards, more magazine ads, more TV spots, more ad banners, and for what so someone can ignore them, fast forward through them, get up and get a soda during them, go directly to the table of contents and find what they want and not see them.

How many people here actually buy a product based on an ad? How many people here buy a product based on a need? How many people here buy a product after researching it? How many purchases are on a whim because you saw it in the store? How many purchases are made on products that have minimal or zero advertising?

Pharmaceutical companies spend huge amounts of money on ignorant commercials that don't even seem to target anyone, many of those commercials don't even tell you what the product does, just makes you sit there and go 'WHAT?' Then the company decides to claim that the reason their products are so expensive is because of R&D when in truth it's because of the amount of money they are spending on crappy useless commercials.

I don't realistically think that any amount of targeting or better ad placement is going to help the sales of most products. I think the major thing that would help most products is just the creation of a better product, because the best advertising in the world is word of mouth.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Mr. Slippery]

You are tracked in aggregate every damned day, and there is NOTHING you can do to stop it.

Of course there is. I can decline to give out demographic data, or to use payment methods which make tracking possilble. I filter my web cookies, I answered the census (long form) with "2 people live here, that's all you need to know", I make most of my purchases in cash.

So if I'm going to be tracked, it's (usually) just as "someone was here", not as "a Caucasian male aged 25-35, single, graduate degree, two dogs, owns own home, was here".

I'm not opposed to giving out information about myself. (I just did so above, and there's a wealth of personal data on my website.) I object to having that information taken from me. I object to being surreptitiously tracked, watched, monitored, pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, briefed, debriefed, and numbered, in the name of more efficient marketing to keep per-capita consumption on the rise.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[mvdwege]

A couple of years ago, the German government wanted to have a census. Now Germans were (given their history)quite leery about the idea of a large government database holding all their personal info. In order to counter this the German government set controls in place to make sure that all data was 'anonymous'. Guess what: German hackers (I believe the Chaos Computer Club) proved that any level of reidentification on this so-called anonymous data was possible, in fact easy.

The point: unless N2H2 discloses *exactly* how they anonyminize their data, aggregate data is no guarantee against privacy violations

Mart

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[mother pussbucket]

This is why local control is almost always better than state control.

Right. As in the religious right. As in favoring the teaching of creationism over evolution in Kansas public schools (since struck down). No thanks.

You did say "almost," so I won't ask how old you are.

I'm always amazed at how quickly people forget that everyone, not just the federal or state government, has an agenda. And no one lives in a vacuum.

--

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

If you accept no cookies your hits are still counted. Even more, in fact, because you look like a unique and new user each time.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

Interesting that you should quote "The Prisoner"... If there is one point that gets across loud and clear in that show, it is that the struggle of the individual to be left alone is ultimately a losing fight. Even when Number Six "escapes" the Village, he's not really out. (Note the apartment door closing for him.)

When you say you are being careful because you don't accept web cookies, you sound like those people who fear using a Visa card on Amazon, but never ask for their carbons when using the same card at B.Dalton.

If you have a Soc. Sec. number, and address, a phone number, a family... all that information is out there. If you rent a movie, subscribe to cable, or take advantage of pretty much any service anywhere, the numbers are being counted.

Do you buy your six-pack of Coke at a convenience store or a supermarket? Coca-Cola knows. They also know what quantity the Kwik-E-Mart people like to buy vs. the Save-A-Lot crowd. If you are Kwik-E-Mart buyer, are you more likely to switch to diet? Would you like to also buy some iced tea? You are being watched.

You have a lot of rights, but the right to not be noticed is not one which is protected in our society.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[JCCyC]

For me the scarey bit is why the blazes the US DoD wants the info.

Colonel: "General, where are we going to make our next bio-warfare experiment?"
General: "Wait a sec, lemme see that web stats... mmm, it seems in Whateverville, MA, schoolchildren read Noam Chomsky online 17% more than the national average. Yep, this is the place".
Colonel: "Yes, Sir!"

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

It seems to me that the phrase "since struck down" argues for my case very well.

Setting aside the factual errors in your version of what happened... if the Kansas decision was a federal mandate, I doubt it would have been struck down as easilly.

Since it was done by a LOCAL, and therefore ACCOUNTABLE group, the forces of democracy were able to override it within a matter of months. Good wins, evil loses, the system works.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[susano_otter]

Targeted advertizing is not good for the recipient, it's just more effective at getting the recipient to do what the advertizers want...

I think you meant to say that targeted advertising is both better and worse for the recipient. On the one hand, it does indeed make the task of brainwashing consumers easier for the advertisers.

On the other hand, it also means that you are much more likely to get timely information about products that you actually desire. I'd love to see less ads in general, but in the mean time I sure could use more information that's interesting and relevant to me.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[DunbarTheInept]

But they won't have the foggiest idea WHO you are. That's the point. This demographic data, where people compare interest in site X with interest in site Y requires that you let sites look at each others' cookies.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[leviramsey]

the psychological manipulation of children. No wonder the DOD is so interested.

I can tell you exactly why the DOD is interested: recruitment. With the exception of the Marines, none of the branches of the military have met their recruiting goals for years. The odds are, the DOD wants to know what sites teenargers are visiting so they can buy banner ads, and possibly make their own recruitment sites more like the popular sites with that crowd. Example: if they discover that 16 year-olds like sites with gobs of Flash, then navyjobs.com could be redesigned to make more use of Flash.

Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?

[Golias]

They know you are somebody interested in that site, because you're there. That information alone has value to marketing people. Data from other sites' cookies might be slightly more valuable in some situations (assuming site X's cookies contain the data in a format you can read), but even just knowing how many people show up is worthwhile, too.

In either case, it tells them nothing about your identity, at best, it tells them what sites you came from. Hardly an invasion of privacy... like they care if you were looking at goatse.cx

Hey.

[Stoutlimb]

John Katz notwithstanding in his lameness, this is just sick. Its good to see at least JK is doing some sort of good here, this kind of garbage needs to be exposed, so then someone with power can take this trash out.

Way to go.

What good is it?

[matth]

What good is Bess? We use it at the Internet Provider that I work for, UpLink. It seems to work fairly well... I've played around wtih it in the office. However, there are ways around it... I've played with it, and have figured out some ways to get around the service with the settings in place.... using proxy services and what not.. that I was running on my home computer.... so if it's this easy to get around Bess... why do schools care?

Re:What good is it?

[Starbreeze]

They care because school administrators are very naive and mostly care about the schools reputation. Using this software makes them look good on paper. And looking good on paper means attracting people moving to the area for that school. Not to mention, obviously more funding for the libraries, as mentioned in the article.

I know the point is more that the information is being sold but... am I correct in understanding that this software doesn't allow you to set the filters? So say a sex ed site was blocked because of the word sex in the meta tag or something, but it was actually educational, is there a way to change that if say, a health teacher, wants his/her students to be able to access it from the library?

Back on topic... I don't see much of a problem with selling the information to marketers, they claim its only anonymous aggregate data. If I'm going to get junkmail, I'd like it to at least be something I might be interested in... The problem I have is that it's still a privacy matter for people that are bothered by things like that, especially when they don't state up front that their application collects data for their profit. It's that whole Big Brother issue... I'd like to know who all is watching me when i websurf

Re:What good is it?

[demaria]

There are ways around getting around it.

I had to deal with Bess when admining at my high school. Nobody was able to get around it. Here's how.

We were using Macs and Netscape 2.02 and 3.04. I had lockdown software that wouldn't let people run unapproved programs, and software that wouldn't let a user edit the preferences files (netscape stores the proxy info in the pref file). I then opened up Netscape in ResEdit and hacked out the dialog box that lets you change the proxy settings. Literally deleted it (if you never used ResEdit, this may not make too much sense. But classic mac programs have two forks, data and 'resource'. Resedit is the resource fork editor, it's designed to make creating programs easier, and holds stuff like images, sounds, dialog boxes, and strings).

As such, you couldn't change it at all. If you had admin privilages, you could run an unhacked copy of netscape to temporarly change it. But students couldn't turn it off.

Re:What good is it?

[matth]

That is correct. You don't have control over the filterage (at least from what I've seen here).. they give you the filters and you put them in. So if I type in "children sex abuse" for a research paper I'm doing on sexual abuse... it probably wouldn't go =\. So basically all users in the school are banned from sites which may or may not be valid. Granted there is an override password... so it's good for home use... but not for schools...

Re:What good is it?

[cfish]

I understand that you are very proud of your effort stopping good christian children from corruption of the modern world, but.

Has it ever occured to you that the reason it's never worked around is because they are Mac users?

Re:What good is it?

[steffl]

what about www.safeweb.com?

erik

Bush Administration

[TheOutlawTorn]

Just couldn't resist getting in a shot or two at George W, could ya Jon? Geez, his administration is only a week old, and already it's the coming of the AntiChrist in your mind, isn't it? While I harbor no love for Bush and his agenda, at least he isn't married to Tipper "PMRC" Gore, and didn't have Joe L. as a running mate (huge proponent of filter software and other censorship)

Again, not that I support Bush' positions necessarily, but it could be worse

Re:Bush Administration

[sith]

Wait till you meet Cheney's wife...

Re:Bush Administration

[cfish]

Excuse me? John Ashcroft? Billions of dollars of "Faith" based money?

He argueably won by less than 600 votes, so what makes him think the ultra conservatives can do whatever they want and have a field day?

Re:Bush Administration

[TheOutlawTorn]

Again, I do not agree with most of Bush' stated agendas, but what I'm speaking about is that Jon is making some pretty large assumptions about how Bush will address things such as Internet censorship, filtering software, and related issues. The nomination of John Ashcroft as A.G. or the funding of "faith" based charities is, for the most part, unrelated to the issue Jon is speaking of. My point is that Jon shouldn't make those assumptions, let's see what Bush actually does, then condemn or praise him based on that. By contrast, both Tipper and Joe have long track records of advocating censorship of all sorts, all in the name of "protecting children".

My point is that, again, the Democratic alternative to GWB looked like the greater of two evils, comparativly, when looking at this particular issue

Re:Bush Administration

[Schnedt Microne]

I've bought and read her books (mostly they became immediatley unavailable on bibliofind.com a few weeks after he was nominated, but I moved fast). She has a refreshing sense of humor. One of her novels is one about a Vice President who has a heart attack (during sex with a mistress) who the administration then spends months faking is still alive for political purposes.

She's a sharp witted conservative woman.

Yep. Scares the hell out of the feminists.

Re:Bush Administration

[Schnedt Microne]

Your point, put into fewer words, is that Mr. Katz claims to be an objective journalist, but he brings the same liberal agenda and mindset to his work as many of the other 'objective' journalists.

What a crock.

It proves, once more, that when you flunk out of Calculus, you transfer to J-School.

Re:Bush Administration

[Jaysyn]

There were more "lost" votes than that in Duval Co. alone (I wish I had the URL to the newspaper)....it's going to be an interesting 4 years. Jaysyn

Re:Bush Administration

[Saragon]

John Ashcroft?

That is not an actual question. What about him, specifically?

Billions of dollars of "Faith" based money?

Another non-question. Those "billions of dollars" are normally simply called "welfare money", and what's your problem with the government handing it out to institutions which are proven to produce results? Would you rather the money be given to incompetent organizations who would waste it?

Re:Bush Administration

[Saragon]

I'm sorry, this term "lost" votes you are using...is that the same thing as a non-vote?

For example, during the post-election mess we heard lots about "overvotes". An "overvote", of course, being a special kind of non-vote.

Similarly, there were the ballots with no holes punched but which had "dimpled chads". Once again, this is merely a particular type of non-vote.

So when you brag about some newspaper article that talks about "lost votes", I just want to clarify: are you talking about non-votes, as in those other two examples? Thanks.

Re:Bush Administration

[Saragon]

It's a lot like how the republicans were hell-bent on crucifying Clinton before he even took the oath of office, huh.

I am a Republican, and this is not true of myself. The only reason I turned against clinton is that he committed crimes and abused the power of his office. I understand, however, that Democrats think that this is not possible - that no Democrat can ever commit a crime or be corrupt and therefore any opposition to a Democrat can not be honest and principled. You have your biases, and I understand them. That doesn't make your statements accurate.

What goes around comes around, or so they say.

As is common you make no actual attempt to defend the bias. Instead you appeal to this idea that "your side does it too", which, even if it were true, would not make it right.

Yeah, we could have a racist mysogynistic theocrat like John Ashcroft enforcing our laws. Oh, wait.

Explain exactly why you think John Ashcroft is a "racist mysogynistic theocrat", and give details. You don't want to come off sounding like you are good for nothing but echoing demagogic talking points spewed forth by the Democrats you see on TV, now, do you?

For example, the charge of "racist" usually comes from Ashcroft's opposition to the nomination of a man named Ronnie White (who happens to be black) to the federal bench.

Explain why you think Ronnie White should have been made a federal judge, specifically addressing that one case of the murdered sherriff's deputies and wife. Also explain why you think any opposition to White's judgeship was intellectually dishonest and necessarily based on racism.

Thanks! I'll be waiting.

Re:Bush Administration

[Saragon]

And everyone, except for you, already knew that W. Bush is a scumbag.

Demonstrably untrue. I, for one, do not think he is a scumbag.

Maybe you're missing it, but he's proving everyone right.

How has he proven himself to be a scumbag? Be specific. And I assume you realize that simply doing things in government which you disagree with because of your ideology does not make someone a "scumbag".

Re:Bush Administration

[Saragon]

It would have been better if you had made a longer list.

The charge that Bush is "allowing polluters to regulate themselves" is so vague and ambiguous and disconnected from reality that it is not necessary for me to "defend" it. All I need to do is point to that sentence and say "you need to elaborate a little before I can be convinced that you are sincere here".

What precisely do you mean by saying he is "allowing polluters to regulate themselves"?

Let me try to think through what you could possibly mean by this. Let's see. Regulations, technically, should only come from acts of Congress (since they are laws). Can you be saying that President Bush has disbanded Congress, put Polluters in the place of Congress, and let Polluters write laws instead, from now on? But no - that's just silly.

Of course another source of Regulations is from federal agencies (in this case, the EPA). For some reason a federal agency is allowed to write something called a Regulation, publish it in the Federal Register, wait for "comments", and Presto! it becomes a law.

Now, personally, I find this practice abominable in a supposedly free and "democratic" society. Laws are supposed to come from a Congress whose members are representatives of the people - not from unelected bureaucrats in the EPA.

But regardless, that's the way it works nowadays, and therefore when you speak of Regulations against Polluters, you are probably talking about the regulations which come from the EPA. So, what can you be saying? Can you be saying that Bush has fired everyone in the EPA and replaced them with Polluters?

Is that what you are saying? But no - that's just silly. You don't honestly believe that, do you?

So what are you saying?

One more possibility I can think of. One method of "regulating" something is to punish people by fining them. For example, if you are driving your car and you exceed the speed limit, you are violating a regulation (the speed limit) and you can be ticketed and fined. In one sense, you are punished for violating the Regulation. In another sense, the government is letting you regulate yourself, because if you want to, you can pay the fine and violate the regulation. You see, the Regulation against excessive speed does not prevent you from speeding in any absolute sense, it simply discourages you from speeding.

This is probably the kind of thing you have in mind when you accuse President Bush of "allowing polluters to regulate themselves". (Correct me if I'm wrong.) There is a system in place, involving "pollution credits" and quotas and (yes) fines, and, as I understand things, it is the method of pollution reduction which Bush advocated in Texas and (conceivably) could advocate as President.

You know something? I don't have a problem with that.

Do you? If so, explain why your method of pollution reduction is obviously superior. And explain why anyone who disagrees with you is necessarily a "scumbag". Thanks.

Re:Bush Administration

[Jaysyn]

I belive it was lost ballots, and I know there were some districts that had more votes than they had reg. voters. And oh yeah...front page of the Florida Times Union...

Jaysyn

Uhhh, no.

[AFCArchvile]

[Note: jamie posted about this last Friday as well. Read on for Jon's take.]

Well, I'll read Jamie's take on it, but not Jon's. He's well known as the mother of all Slashdot trolls.

Mom says

[the_mom]

Adult supervision is always better than software!! My kids go wherever they want, and I am always aware of what they do online. IT should be the same in schools with the teachers aware of what is going on. In a library setting, I don't agree that filtering software is needed.

Granted, some library users will be visiting sites that children should NOT see, so put the adult access computers in a separate area from the children's access systems. And have the librarian (and the kids parents!!!) supervise.

I certainly believe parental involvement results in acceptable behavior most of the time!! My kids certainly know what is right and wrong.... (I had to get rid of my .whatthefuck email address because they were checking up in my history!!)

-mom

because I said so

Hi jon!

[Shoeboy]

I'm sorry, but you just don't have a clue.
But if it's so vague, why would anybody pay thousands of dollars for it?
Quick question for you Jon,
If you were an advertiser, what information would you find more valuable:
a) Suzy Radcliffe age 9 likes to read Kuro5hin and keep abreast of the latest benchmarks on tpc.org.
b) Children who use altavista rather than yahoo also prefer pepsi to coke.
Well?
I think it's obvious that general information is more valuable than specific information.
--Shoeboy

Re:Hi jon!

[jotaeleemeese]

If I was an advertiser I would want both pieces of information. I would like to know exactly what Suzy buys every time, then I would have a better idea if my next "Barbie SM"(tm) would appeal to her.

The point is not that any way, the point is that this company has the power (because the US Congress had given them that power) to snoop in 12 million children while pretending to be the keepers against all the Internet evils.

I find this unethical and immoral.

Re:Hi jon!

[scrytch]

> a) Suzy Radcliffe age 9 likes to read Kuro5hin and keep abreast of the latest benchmarks on tpc.org.

She certainly won't be doing anything of the sort at her school.
--

Re:Hi jon!

[gorilla]

I'd find a) more valuable.

If you have the specific information, you can create the general information, the reverse is not true.

new idea

[brad3378]

Okay, So we've proven that online filters don't work.

How about a service that doesn't "blacklist" websites, but instead only lets visitor's view approved sites from a certain list.

When people try to access sites from off the approved list, the URL gets logged to a database. Somebody at a computer in Nebraska then checks to see if this URL should be allowed to be put on the approved list.

Yeah, I know it's censorship, but haven't we already agreed that the old way is also censorship? At least this way would work.

Re:new idea

[still cynical]

No, even worse. Instead of someone telling you that you can't see something, now they're telling you you can't see ANYTHING without checking with them first.

"Sure, those sites will be approved. Just try again later. Oh, BTW, there's a three month backlog on approving new sites. Hopefully it will still be up/the information you need will still be there by then. What? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe you'll go into remission before then. Besides, once it's on the approved list, maybe that cure will help someone else if it's too late for you."

Re:new idea

[cfish]

... Or you can return to Amish lifestyle.

Aren't you missing the whole point?

Why doesn't the open source comunity make a filter

[LennyDotCom]

An free filter to be given to all the schools
Dominate the market
put all the filter company's out of biz
then stop development
and not not worry about it

"violent objections"

[FFFish]

Whu? I'm quite startled by that one line, Jon. I hadn't heard of anyone getting violent in protest. Please, elucidate!

--

Is this a slippery-slope kind of issue?

[falloutboy]

In the past, I've advocated education as an alternative to censoring software. I always meant that we needed to educate kids on how to use the net responsibly, but now it seems that our government is in dire need of that education.

I have to wonder, is the DOD's purchase of this data the kind of thing that leads to targeting specific kids? I usually don't buy into the slippery slope argument, but it isn't inconceivable that N2H2 is lying about how specific the data being collected is.

On a related topic, does the Freedom of Information Act require the DOD to make publicly available the data that they've bought?

Re:Is this a slippery-slope kind of issue?

[dvk]

Not really... your mistake is you're thinking like an individual, not like a borg.

What DOD most likely needs this for is the following: some manager/officer now has the statistics that XXX # of kids visit their recruitment pages for Air Force, YYY visit Army, etc... , and it all is sampled by race/age, so they got themselves a mighty valuable recriuting marketing aid. I know that screaming liberals like Katz are against anything with DoD on it (when will you stop using TCP/IP based software, Katz?), but please, have a clue! Some people actually care about doing their job better, not spying on you for nefarious purposes.

If DoD wanted to actually track which user tries to DDoS them, they can do it using normal networking tools without resorting to aggregate statistics from some company.

"Big Brother Doesn't Care About You"

-DVK

So, they show their true face at last...

[Millennium]

So now we find out that not only are these guys bookburners, but they're spies as well. I suppose this should not surprise anyone.

But this is exactly why I'm almost thinking that censorship may be good in a single case: banning censorship itself. I'm sorry, but if parents aren't going to invest the time needed to teach their children right from wrong (and don't give me that crap about "I don't have time"; you know you do) then we shouldn't be allowing them to entrust their kids to a piece of mindless software that literally can't tell the Mona Lisa from the goatse.cx guy.

I really think we need to put more effort into compiling lists of blocked sites. Show the blacklists for what they are. Maybe that will get people's attention. It seems nothing else has yet. And who knows; maybe we'll finally realize that there is no substitute for simple responsible parenting and schooling.
----------

Re:So, they show their true face at last...

[Jaysyn]

Check out http://www.peacefire.org. They _have_ blacklists from a couple of major filter companies...it's kinda neat to see where the motivation of the people who created this stuff lie.

Jaysyn

One big clusterfrick.

[dave-fu]

See also: an answer without a question.
See also: you can cure cancer by cutting a patient's head off; doesn't mean their condition's gonna improve anytime soon.

Rigging the Marketing Information?

[UdoKeir]

So if a cunning schoolkid were to set up a perl script that loads Slashdot 50 times a second all day from his/her school, does it mean that the school will receive free samples of Uncle Ben's Hot Grits in a week or two?

Re:Rigging the Marketing Information?

[Hallow]

That's if slashdot isn't blocked. I've actually seen a couple of elem. schools that've blocked /. as material not suited for children. Sad huh?

Re:Rigging the Marketing Information?

[maligor]

Yes, we are the lowlife of the world, we teach how to "hack" school machines, or maybe it's just that there are newsbits of Linux, the schoolkid brainwashing os.

Re:Rigging the Marketing Information?

[DunbarTheInept]

seen a couple of elem. schools that've blocked /. as material not suited for children

Are you sure about that? Was it the school that chose to block the site or was it being done by the third-party blocking software they installed? The school may be unaware of what is being blocked - none of these filter packages publish their blacklists. CyberSitter is known to block Slashdot because CyberSitter blocks sites with unflattering (i.e. truthful) reviews of CyberSitter. (A real eye-opener about why these companies are scum.)

Re:Rigging the Marketing Information?

[Hallow]

It was the school, as a neighboring school in the same county was able to access /.

Re:Rigging the Marketing Information?

[SmokeSerpent]

CyberSitter's blocking of slashdot of course bears no relationship to the quantity of foul language and links to sites clearly unsuitable for children in the AC peanut gallery... Interestingly enough, it's pretty clear that most of this "offensive" material on slashdot is being generated by children.

Re:Rigging the Marketing Information?

[DunbarTheInept]

That would have been a reasonable argument were it not for the fact that the ban on Slashdot by cybersitter appeared after slashdot began covering cybersitter and ridiculing it. The foul language postings existed long before then.

suing machines for not doing parent's job

[kipple]

..this is where we are going, I think. Look at the issues:
1. by making the congress approving such laws, it's demonstrated that parents have not only fear of the society *they* created, but also that they admit not being able to *grow* their kids
2. trying to level a generation to the same way of thinking is typical of a *closed* political system: nazism, communism, fascism, all those ways began with kids.
3. by the time they realized that nazism was bad, whops! too late! we already have a generation grown up in this state of mind
4. what is happening is that they'll try to make money from everything was thought as a way to protect 'children'

...I have grown watching pr0n sometimes, even when I was *very* young, 'cause of some friends of mine (I'm talking about age of ten or so). And no, I'm not a serial killer, nor a perv, or whatever they think their children may become. And I suppose I'm not the only one here.

I wonder if congress really cares about the next generation. It's already clear that US kids, due to an excessive protectionism, cannot be compared to kids in the rest of the world (in a matter of math, language, logic skills). I know there are exceptions, but for those of you who have been oversea what I'm saying will look reasonable.

I myself have been in the US for more than a year in college and I noticed how low the average was: all of my from-all-over-the-world friends noticed that US 'kids' do in college what we do five years before.

conclusion: excessive protectionism will only bring the US to demand for more and more 'talents' coming from other countries if they want to be a leader in world economy.

and sorry for the broken english

Re:suing machines for not doing parent's job

[rayamor]

Your words make so much sense my fellow Slashdotter. As a person who has grown up in the US, I have always wondered why students from Japan, and other countries excel is many areas over students in the US. I totally agree with your view on overprotection. The United States in general relies on such actions in order to exist peacefully in a shelled lifstyle. "If I don't see or hear it, then it doesn't exist". Students from other countries excel because they are not exposed to such limits. They are given the opportunity to excel farther than a US student because they are not what I consider "doubted". Instead of pushing a young mind further, the US has introduced almost unbreakable standard where "if you are in 1st grade then you must learn addition. Multiplication will come in second grade", and so on. There are alot of students that are gifted to the point where they comprehend "advanced" concepts but are forced to learn at the same pace as those that might not understand as well. I think that if the bar was raised and young minds were pushed further then the US wouldnt be so far behind other countries.
Expose young minds to advanced concepts early on. Whose is to say that a 9 yr old cant understand the basic concepts of Java? C++? I was programming at 12. Many have started at 9, 10 and so on. The mind is limitless. With enough work, we can understand almost anything.

I remember watching an episode of Star Trek. A young child was studying calculus around the 1st grade. Although this may seem unrealistic, I know many of you understand where I am headed. Thank you.

I don't care what they say!

[Dick Richards]

Keep writing Jon, we all love you .

how exactly does this impact free speech?

[Wakko Warner]

If all they're doing is tracking aggregate hits to websites, I can see how this might be a bit of a privacy issue, but how does it affect the right to free speech?

- A.P.

--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Re:how exactly does this impact free speech?

[smoke'n'mirrors]

I think the issue is less whether it is a threat to free speech than it is a threat to free thought. When we raise a generation of kids who are used to their every move being watched, we raise a generation who sees no harm in the government overseeing everything we do. (i.e. why else would people think it is OK to have cameras watching intersections in our cities?) When parents quit relinquishing the right to raise their own children as they see fit, maybe then the government will back off. Until then, people who are too "busy"/ill-equipped/lazy/ ___ (your word here) will continue to demand that the government raise their kids for them. Then we end up with a generation of kids unable to have independent thought. And that's scary.

Accidents, far more than firearms

[Jay Maynard]

Jon, your liberal bias is showing. While accidents are indeed a major cause of injury and death for kids, firearms accidents are a tiny minority of that number. Ten times as many kids die in swimming pools than in firearms accidents, and more kids have been killed by airbags than school shootings since airbags were made mandatory on US cars. Further, deaths from firearms accidents have declined every year since the 1920s.

While your overall point is good, please don't taint it by pandering to a stereotype - that's the whole reason that geek profiling is bad, yet you insist on gun owner profiling.
--

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[wolfen]

Glad to see someone else noticed the general silliness of that statement. He included firearms in his list of causes. Wouldn't it have been better to list WHO was using them to hurt children? Oh dear... there I go again... trying to use logic in a discussion of this type... :P

--

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[kyz]

deaths from firearms accidents have declined every year since the 1920s.

Whereas, deaths from non-accidental firearms use have gone up every year since the 1920s!

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[Jay Maynard]

Whereas, deaths from non-accidental firearms use have gone up every year since the 1920s!

You're emphasizing the wrong thing. The firearm itself isn't the killer...it's the person holding it. Blaming the tool for the person using it's criminal intent is not the answer.
--

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[Shimmer]

Blaming the tool for the person using it's criminal intent is not the answer.

Criminy, no one is blaming the tool. We blame the criminals and thus seek to prevent them from using the tool to commit crimes in the future.

Aside from being unconstitutional (in the US), this seems like a perfectly reasonable plan. Why is it so hard for you to understand?

-- Brian

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[Tsian]

You are absolutely right, blaming the gun does nothing, it is the shooter who is to blame... so, how do you keep firearms away from psychos? Two words: Gun Control!
------------------------------------

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[ahodgson]

Yep, despite all the gun control measures introduced in the last 50 years. Hmm, maybe something other than firearm availability is at fault?

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[Jaysyn]

Did you know that last year football killed as many childeren _at school_ as guns....let's ban football ok, ok...I know I'm trolling now Jaysyn

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[mr_death]

You are absolutely right, blaming the gun does nothing, it is the shooter who is to blame... so, how do you keep firearms away from psychos? Two words: Gun Control!

And for your next trick, you'll join Mothers Against Cars Driven By Drunks.

Hoplophobes are so clueless ...

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[warpeightbot]

...more kids have been killed by airbags than school shootings since airbags were made mandatory on US cars.

Once again showing the stupidity of passive safety devices as opposed to training one's young people to Do The Right Thing. Children can be taught gun safety. Many, many of my generation of people brought up in my native Dixie were raised around guns, taught to shoot by their fathers, and I never knew of anyone being killed in a firearms-related accident until I left home. My next door neighbor, however, was killed in a car accident.... he was not wearing his seat belt. My mother has been in three rather nasty accidents - two in which the car was totalled - seat belt, NO air bag, no more than minor soreness.

Do The Right Thing. Teach them firearms safety. Teach them to wear their seat belt, ALWAYS. (I really admired a friend's kid who would pitch a fit if the car started moving before he managed to get his seat belt fastened.) And don't censor them. Let their little minds roam free... they'll surprise you by how sensible they are, if you teach them to think.

And don't give the Imperial Federal Government one iota more than you can get away with. Not in bits or bucks. That goes double for the other Big Brothers in our lives. Anything you give them just gives them more power over your life.

warp eight bot
American by birth
Southern by the Grace of the Lady
Seattle by choice

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[rw2]

Jon, your liberal bias is showing. While accidents are indeed a major cause of injury and death for kids, firearms accidents are a tiny minority of that number. Ten times as many kids die in swimming pools than in firearms accidents, and more kids have been killed by airbags than school shootings since airbags were made mandatory on US cars.

And your right wing bias is showing.

The facts are thus. If you choose a cut off for childhood that ends at something like age 10 then drownings dominate. This is because little kids drown a lot. If you choose and end for childhood at something like 18 (when most 'adult' permissions kick in) then firearms dominate. This is because big kids shoot each other and can get out of buckets they fall in.

You are being every bit as deceitful as Jon if you claim to correct him, but also don't illuminate what your claim is based on.

It's a shame that this is what the gun debate has become.

--

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[wolfen]

Bzzt... sorry... we have plenty of laws that make it illegal for criminals to own or use firearms...

Guess what... it makes no difference. There's no legal gun ownership in Japan and guess what... their rate of gun crimes has been steadily climbing.

When are people going to wake up and take a look around and realize that disarming non-criminals isn't going to help anybody except the criminals.

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[rjh]

We blame the criminals and thus seek to prevent them from using the tool to commit crimes in the future.

Bravo. Clear, cogent and bang-on accurate.

Aside from being unconstitutional

Excuse me? Where in the Constitution does it forbid the States the authority to deny criminals the use or possession of firearms? It doesn't, not anywhere. It forbids the government from denying law-abiding citizens the possession or use of firearms; it in no way restricts the ability of the government to deny criminals the same.

The problem with most attempts at gun control is that they use a sledgehammer to try and achieve a result which calls for a scalpel instead. Laws which overwhelmingly target law-abiding gun owners over criminals, the mentally ill, etc., are vigorously opposed by the NRA. Laws which overwhelmingly target criminal use and possession of firearms are vigorously endorsed by the NRA.

(For real world examples... Look at the Clinton Omnibus Crime Bill, which has had an impact on almost every single competitive shooter I know; then look at Virginia's Project Exile, which has had no impact on any law-abiding citizen. The NRA opposes the former, and wholeheartedly endorses the latter.)

The politics of gun control aren't as black and white as people make them out to be. :)

Re:Accidents, far more than firearms

[rw2]

Bullshit. The number one killer of those 18 and under is drunk driving. http://www.sadd.org/ Lying does not support your arguement for being a liberal snob.


Ah, but it is you who are lying you cowardly fuck.

You lie by omission by claiming that I think that firearms deaths are the leading cause of death overall. In fact, I responded to a very different question. Drownings v firearms.

In that case, my comment is 100% accurate. Check CDC if you feel the need.

Now go back to your gun rack an get things ready. I think I hear a black helicopter coming for you.

--

The CIPA happened. . .

[gimple]

on Jon's beloved Democratic president's watch. Where was your leader when this happened? I'm betting he was busy--wink, wink, nod, nod.

Re:The CIPA happened. . .

[Glothar]

Unless you are not from the US, you should remember your US Gov't from High School:

Congress passed that law. The President just signed it. And if he hadn't have signed it, all of the puritanical hypocrite-Republicans would have been crying that the President was immoral anyways.

This law was created by Rebuplicans, not Democrats. Just look at it. Do you know what conservative means?

My question to all of my radical Republican friends (I am moderate-Democrat, partly as a reactionary response to them) was:

Who are you going to complain to now? It's Bush and a split Congress? I suppose you can say its all Bill Clinton's fault...for the next 20 years. Do you really think that Bush has that much more integrity? Oh. That's right, he has heart. And he's willing to sell it to the highest bidder.

I believe the solution is best stated by George W. Bush himself (supposedly):

What our children need are education

Final Note: Who said Bill Clinton was anyone's leader? Everyone knows the leader of the US is Alan Greenspan.

Re:The CIPA happened. . .

[Golias]

Do you know what conservative means?

It used to mean you resist radical change, because revolutionary changes, even good changes, can be destructive to society. In code-geek terms, social institutions should be carefully patched, rather than deleted and rewritten.

Over the last 40 years, the term has shifted. Most people that call themselves "conservative" today fit in to one of two camps:

1. libertarians - The philosophy of conservation of government, championed by Goldwater and Reagan, and inpsired by Locke, Voltaire, and Adam Smith, is one which states that (since power corrupts) a less powerful government is likely to be less corrupt.

2. religious conservatives - The "Jesus freak" movement of the 70's reached its peak when James Earl Carter was elected president, but quickly shifted parties under the leadership of several television evangelists, and has been fighting for control of the Republican Party ever since. Just as religious "nuts" formed the Republican Party around the 1860's to fight for the abolition of slavery, the current crop of religious conservatives rally mostly around the abolishon of abortion.

George W. Bush, while carefully gathering supporters from both camps, belongs to neither. He is largely a product of the thrid wing of the Republican Party... old-school, "moderate", big-money conservatives along the lines of the pre-Goldwater GOP. He was selected by a council of Republican governors (most of whom share this same mind-set) before the primaries even began, and while other candidates (such as McCain and Forbes) had far more grass-roots support, Bush had the institutional support of the party, thanks to all those governors who astutely agreed to line up behind one guy.

If you live in a state with a Republican governor (and most of you do), then you know what GWB's brand of "conservatism" looks like.

Personally, I don't think he is the best man for the job, but after 4 years of Bush the Elder, and 8 years of Clinon, I have come to acknowledge that bad presidents can be endured, so long as the people keep them in check. Thanks to the scandals of Nixon and Clinton, nobody completely trusts any President anymore, and I see that as a Good Thing.

Re:The CIPA happened. . .

[Saragon]

And if he hadn't have signed it, all of the puritanical hypocrite-Republicans would have been crying that the President was immoral anyways.

So let me get this straight. You don't like the law, you don't like the fact that Congress passed it, you wish the law didn't exist....but you refuse to blame bill clinton for signing the law (when a veto would have held up, because the R's did not have a veto-proof majority). Why?

Because "the puritanical hypocrite-Republicans would have been crying that the President was immoral anyways."

In other words, you would rather see a law which you abhor pass than see your beloved worshipped El Presidente criticized. How twisted is that?

This law was created by Rebuplicans, not Democrats. Just look at it. Do you know what conservative means?

There is no arguing the fact that it was passed by Republicans, since they were the majority and so it would not have passed otherwise.

However, it is not clear that you know what "conservative" means. Perhaps you would like to share with the rest of the class. For example, I know what conservative means (I am one), and I don't see what being conservative is supposed to have to do with supporting the "Children's Internet Protection Act" in your mind.

[My question...] Who are you going to complain to now? It's Bush and a split Congress? I suppose you can say its all Bill Clinton's fault...for the next 20 years. Do you really think that Bush has that much more integrity? Oh. That's right, he has heart. And he's willing to sell it to the highest bidder.

Um, good "question". (Actually by my count that's about 3 questions, but whatever.) I'll take them one at a time:

Who are you going to complain to now? I don't understand the question. Who do you think I was complaining to before, and why do you think this will change? If I have any complaining to do I expect I will complain to the same people I always have; does that answer your question?

It's Bush and a split Congress? Hmmm, upon closer inspection this isn't even a question.

I suppose you can say its all Bill Clinton's fault...for the next 20 years. You suppose I can say what's all bill clinton's fault? What are you talking about? The things which are bill clinton's fault (like technology transfers to China), I will say they are bill clinton's fault, and blame him for any repercussions which may arise. The things which aren't (Baltimore winning the Super Bowl), I won't. Fair enough?

Do you really think that Bush has that much more integrity? Yes, I do. I think Bush has more integrity in his little pinky than bill clinton has displayed in his entire life. (And this doesn't even mean I think Bush has a whole lot of integrity in general; it's just that clinton set the bar so low.)

Further, if you don't see this about clinton then this can only mean you are ignorant of his crimes and corruption. Which is fine with me, of course (you have the right to remain ignorant), but doesn't mean you should be taken very seriously when you sound off about the subject like this.

Oh. That's right, he has heart. And he's willing to sell it to the highest bidder. Explain, please. Who did GWBush sell his heart to? Just what the heck are you talking about? Do you even know, or do you just enjoy wallowing in your ignorance so much that you prefer making vague unsubstantiated charges to backing your assertions up with facts?

Who said Bill Clinton was anyone's leader? Everyone knows the leader of the US is Alan Greenspan. You are wrong on both accounts. (Who is the one who doesn't remember his High School Government lessons here?)

Neither one is (or was) our "leader". Alan Greenspan is the Fed Chairman (a position not even mentioned in the Constitution), while bill clinton was nothing more than the President (the head of the executive branch of the federal government (which has 3 branches), and commander-in-chief of the armed forces). But "leader"? No, sorry. You must be thinking of some other country.

What control of web viewing means...

[kettch]

That means that Bess controls the Web choices of more than 12 million students kindergarten through high school

Does this mean that pepsi could pay these guys a bunch of money, and suddenly, no matter how hard you try, nothing Coke related will come up?

Lots of people throw fits when it looks like corporations are screwing them over. Why is no one objecting to allowing a major company to control the content that their kids see?

In my opinion, it would be easier to do the following: First make all students who want to use the internet sign an agreement. Then make sure every student has a network login. If they dont sign the agreement, then their account doesnt get internet access. Then, there are plenty of products that will cache, and scan the incoming content. They can flag potential violations of the agreement, and then a human can look at them to make sure they really are bad. The software should also cache whose account the content went to, and then the student can be held accountable for his own actions.


----------------------

Re:What control of web viewing means...

[Knobby]

First make all students who want to use the internet sign an agreement

you can't do this.. The kids are not 18

Re:What control of web viewing means...

[kettch]

Yeah they can. I just forgot to include that The parents should sign the agreement as well. They tried to do that at my old school, but since they didn't have a proxy server, and all boxen could get directly onto the net they couldn't stop anybody who didn't have the permission slip.
----------------------

Re:What control of web viewing means...

[bluesninja]

I think a better question would be: why the hell would we want Kindergarten kids to be surfing the net at all? Are they checking their stocks? Downloading the latest kernel update? Christ, this blows my mind...

(then again, i guess that explains all the SlashDot trolls... :) )

/bluesninja

Re:What control of web viewing means...

[M-2]

The software should also cache whose account the content went to, and then the student can be held accountable for his own actions

Oh, come on. This is the USA. NO ONE is accountable for their own actions anymore. It doesn't matter what the hell happens, there's always some way for some idiot to get around it. Booze, pills, LACK of pills, my mother was mean to me this morning, there's a funny man walking by outside, it's raining, it's NOT raining, it's sunny, it's cloudy...

See, your idea makes SENSE. So of course it would be ignored by the mainstream, because they don't want to take responsibility for anything. Parents think their children are little angels, and if a teacher tries to say otherwise, they organize a group of people and get RID of the teacher.

And then, four years later, another Columbine. Because the people that were willing to listen or actually listened were chased away.
----

An idea - a lesser evil.

[Starship Titanic]

I know this goes against what most slashdotters (Or at least so it seems) and I, myself, believe in - but still:
How about starting a project to develop an Open-source Free (As in beer, AND as in speech, sortof ) CIPA-compliant filtering program?
The rationale is somewhat similar to the one of the WINE project: (And don't flame me if I got this wrong, please :) ) Although on one hand it might promote and legitimize the use of filtering software, it will still not have a large impact because the use of filters is already CIPA mandated. On the other hand it will allow schools and libraries to use filtering software that will bear no added costs AND have no hidden catches.
It can either be developed for a free platform (thus also trying to increase the acceptance of GNU/Linux in educational institutions) or for win32.

If anyone is already aware of such an effort, please post a link. Otherwise, just make your opinion clear.

Re:An idea - a lesser evil.

[Gordonjcp]

Couldn't you just hack up some sort of Junkbuster workalike, kind of a PornBuster Proxy?

I'm inclined to go with the idea of having each pupil log on for internet access, then trace them back with a cacheing proxy like squid.

Re:An idea - a lesser evil.

[Mr.roboto]

Yeah, a good idea in deed. Make it so you can add/remove sites manually so you don't get the orwellian factor goind as much.

Down at the COPA, COPA-cabanna!

[tenzig_112]

If it weren't for pr0n, none of us would have jobs.

Face. it.

ridiculopathy.com

There is one!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want open-source censorware, there is squidGuard, a redirector for the Squid proxy server. It provides a great deal of flexibility as to who's allowed access to what, and when.

Issues

[tethal91]

Why does the DOD want this information? I noticed that many of the posts advocated the selling of this information, and in general, demographic data is essential to advertising. However, the worry that is implied here is that the government might potentially use more specific data to hunt for hackers or make token arrests of warez or pr0n 'enthusiasts'. The government and industry have taken a fair amount of our privacy and anonimity(sp?) away over the past several decades, since Welfare in the 1930s IMHO. We in return for sacrificing our freedoms receive an all-powerful nanny-state that takes care for us in a lowest-common-denominator sort of way: what's good for the masses is good for everyone - except the rich. How much longer before every citizen has their DNA on file, analyzed and people forced into their 'ideal place' in society? Or in a different vein - before the state offers 'dole and circuses' to keep the mob happy. 1984 is unlikely, but we could be heading straight for Brave New World if we aren't careful. Yeah.

Re:Issues

[Snard]

Why does the DOD want this information?

It's fairly obvious to me - they want to track which kids are visiting all of the videogaming sites, so they can recruit them in the upcoming intergalactic war...

Oh wait, didn't they do a movie about that?

What about FOIA?

[vees]

Is this better or worse than having more specific information about a particular school being made available on demand through the Freedom of Information Act, as we've seen before?

Since these are largely public-funded organizations that own and pay for these filters, can the filtering company be hit with a FOIA request to disclose that information for a specific school or user? After all, taxpayer dollars made that data collection possible! We should have access to it.

If the answer is yes, then we have to consider the dangers of that information being collected in the first place,

If the answer is no, what would stop government organizations (like schools) from outsourcing all of their IT needs, so that they could protect that data against public inspection?

Tired of supermarkets following your every move? Check out my Giant BonusCard Swap Meet.

--

what is wrong with the idea ?

[vluther]

I don't get it.. what is wrong with the idea of blocking some sites kids go to ? If my money is going to the govt and some of that money is going to some E-rate program.. I don't want it going towards some kid who wants to visit porn sites on the web.

I do agree that Bess and other such tools don't do the job properly.. but Jon is set out to make anyone who has strong religous beliefs to be a fanatic and out of touch with the times.

The problem is not blocking access to adult sites, the problem is that the current software doesn't work very well. Instead of lobbying for removal
of this law.. why don't we come up with a better solution ? go through the logs of sites everyday.. and add sites that you feel are objectionable
to a blocklist. Don't just ban just because the words fuck, suck, tits show up in the url.. do some manual work as well.

I for one don't want my money going into a program that will allow some vagrant (not all kids).. to watch porn while in school. Kids are kids.. they will play pranks... and they will want to go to adult sites.. but i'll be dammned if they do it on my money. Remember I worked hard for this money.. I'm quite pissed that I have to give it to the govt.. they better put it to good use.

Re:what is wrong with the idea ?

[vluther]

addendum.. the blocking of sites you feel are objectionable.. should be changed to..
blocking of sites that are pornographic..
depict lewd acts of sex by men and women..

all i'm saying is.. I DON'T WANT PORN in my schools. If Jon or anyone else feels i'm too old fashioned.. then you guys need some serious counseling.

Re:what is wrong with the idea ?

[NiceGeek]

If you had done any research you would see that filtering software: A. Blocks non-porn sites it shouldn't B. Doesn't block all porn sites C. Is a waste of time Get a clue.

Re:what is wrong with the idea ?

[vluther]

thats why I said.. Change the software so that it does block ALL porn sites.

Did you read my entire message or just look for
stuff you can argue about ?
I do realize that currently the software does block non porn sites, that is why i said the process of adding lists should be done manually and should follow a strict guideline that the taxpayers agree upon. Not some company.

Re:what is wrong with the idea ?

[elmegil]

Don't you think if it was that easy, at least ONE company would be doing it right? Cluetrain about to hit you: none of them do it right.

Re:what is wrong with the idea ?

[ethereal]

Amen to that. And we should get rid of all those links that involve alcohol or women who aren't veiled either; everybody knows that God disapproves of that stuff too. Don't even get me started on all those web sites about dancing!

People tell me that I'm old-fashioned too, but I don't let it get to me. I'm really fairly progressive - I mean, I let my kids listen to that jazz music, even though we all know that it's likely the first step down the Dark Path. I just watch 'em close for any sign that they might be going over the edge, like makeup on the girls or those greased haircuts on the boys.

Yup, you can't be too careful in this day and age. Why, Amos' kid from down the street used to listen to that rock-n-roll music, and I hear now he doesn't even show up for morning prayers all the time! I don't know what this sinful world is coming to, but I don't want the nefarious influences of pornography, "soul" music (soul-stealing, maybe), and the world-wide-web seducing my kids.

Re:what is wrong with the idea ?

[Zara2]

I believe that he was trying to say that your solution would be great in a perfect world where we had software that could block well. However in the world we live in blocking software doesnt work this way and it would take a inordant amount of trained manpower to go through all x many billions of web pages to filter out the porn ones. Then they would just change thier domains and you have to start over agian.

Okay we've talked, now what are we gonna do?

[Dubber]

Okay so we all seem to be in agreement free speech = good and censorship = bad.

But how strongly do you believe that CDA/CIPA/filtering/gov't(or any)snooping is bad? Are you willing to go to jail for it?

In the name of free speech journalists have gone to jail for not revealing their sources, libraries have been sued for their server logs, librarians have stongly resisted orders from gov't agencies (FBI & the like) & from the judiciary (subpoenas) to turn over borrowing records. I suspect someone in the Michigan library that was sued for their logs pre-empted the probability of another suit by deleting the logs.

It takes action to defend what you believe. NO not guns & such, use what influence you have with whomever has more influence than you.

Letters are great. Only well thought out arguments logically presented work in print.
(otherwise they could be considered threats)

F2F conversations with politicians and/or their hangers-on are better, associate a face with the argument. Make the politician associate doing this with support from you & your friends (we all have freinds, whether we call them associates, the guy next door, or the pub crawl club we hang out with) Remember well thought out, non-confrontational, passionate persuasion -- not mumbled half threats (or full threats for that matter) get the point across.

What? You don't know anyone in politics? What about the poor slobs "above" you in the corporate scheme of things? Above them? Think they might know "somebody"?

Did/do you vote? (if you didn't then you deserve the W) Do you pay taxes? Can you get to your representative's local office? (check the Phone Book) Chat up the office help, schmooze your way into a f2f. Make your point!

Get out of your version of the e-cliner and do something (there _are_ enough of us to matter)

DoD needs WebStats for Recruiting !

[redelm]

Maybe you haven't watched US TV much [I can't blame you] but the US Armed Forces Recruiting commercials are thick.

My guess is the US Armed Services are falling short of their recruiting targets and need to lure more unsuspecting youth to their unusual lifestyle.

Knowing the surfing habits of your prime targets would help in placing ads.

Or maybe it's all some nefarious back-room big-govt/police conspiracy :)

Re:DoD needs WebStats for Recruiting !

[Tackhead]

>My guess is the US Armed Services are falling short of their recruiting targets and need to lure more unsuspecting youth to their unusual lifestyle.

That's the most likely hypothesis. (Our .mil doesn't want dossiers on every grade-school kids, that's the FBI's job ;-)

Sadly, IMNSHO, it's not gonna solve the problem. The DoD's problem isn't recruiting new folks, it's retaining the people it already has.

Doubly sadly, no amount of advertising can solve that problem.

Of course, in an ironic note, some of the .mil advertising campaigns brought it on themselves - you know the ones, "Join the Army and get $25000 towards your college education, then quit after a year or two and take your skills elsewhere!"

>Or maybe it's all some nefarious back-room big-govt/police conspiracy :)

Hey, on Slashdot, it's always a back-room big-govt/police conspiracy ;-)

Re:DoD needs WebStats for Recruiting !

[Happy_Camper_SD]

The military also has a problem getting "smart" people to join. The $25000 ad also serves as a math test. The ones who figure out that signing up for four years to learn something they are interested in (but probably won't be assigned to) to get up to the $25000 matching funds (you basically can't spend what little money they do pay you) if you can get into one of the few selected colleges (otherwise the $25000 becomes more like $10000) all the while having somebody tell you when you can take a shit, probably are too smart to join. They flip burgers and go to a real college.

AOL and my brother-in-law

[sckeener]

I think the worst thing about censorware is the fact that most parents:
a) have no clue about the software
b) frequently have the child install the software because the kid is more computer literate
c) the pc is usually in the kids room

My brother-in-law connects to the Internet via AOL (sign) and uses their Parental Controls feature (argh) to protect his kid from the dangers of the Internet. What AOL's Parental Controls feature does though is tick him off because he can't get to the sites he wants, but his kid can!
Most children abuse the Internet because they can get away with it. They have no body watching them or the pc is in their room. Rather than deal with the child, interact with the child, we'll put a tattle tale in their computer. This just makes me sick.
Censorware is just another means for parents to not be parents. They don't have to be parents. The computer will do it for them. Jon Katz is right about the morals it's teaching. How can we expect kids to grow up defending privacy if we are not willing to give it to them?

oh well...I guess this is a trol or redundent...frag it. Censorware SUCKS!

Re:AOL and my brother-in-law

[catfood]

Sckeener sez:

I think the worst thing about censorware is the fact that most parents:

• a) have no clue about the software
• b) frequently have the child install the software because the kid is more computer literate
• c) the pc is usually in the kids room

Thanks for the validation. I'm pretty pleased that the kid's PC is in the dining room, for that reason among others. We don't automate any filtering; we just observe the BOFHlets at play on the computer the same way we watch 'em at the playground or in the backyard.

At some time in the future I might put something on the network to log HTTP accesses, "just in case," but I'm really not interested in filtering. Too inflexible and intrusive.

In a related note...

[El_Smack]

...it is learned that advertisers and marketers are obtaining data from the DMV about which roads have the most traffic. JonKatz is outraged, and a "Your Privacy is in Jeprody" article follows.

DOD also targets those with high SATs too

[yankeehack]

This outcry about the DOD purchasing demographic information on kids is a bunch of liberal rhetoric. Especially considering that the DOD (and civilian colleges/universities) also target those PSAT/SAT/ACT test takers who fit a certain criteria. For example, I remember way back in high school that everyone who scored 1200 or over on the SAT got cute glossy brochures imploring them to join the Long Gray Line.

What's so wrong about serving your country? Oh, wait, some folks apparently think it is an evil concept.

Re:DOD also targets those with high SATs too

[wolfen]

Bzzt... sorry... maybe folks who score over 1200
and listed criminal science as their primary
interests? I was over 1200 and never got a brochure... grumble... :P

Re:DOD also targets those with high SATs too

[agentZ]

I dunno. Areas that constantly browse to http://www.iWannaBeARealMan.com/ and http://www.GIJoeisCool.com/ are probably better recruiting targets for the DoD than http://www.PutGaysInTheMilitary.com/ and http://www.GivePeaceAChance.com/

It's just a way to recruit future soldiers...

Re:DOD also targets those with high SATs too

[heike]

Well, not quite. I think the DOD is just looking for new markets. They are analyzing what kind of weapons kids are most interested in, so they can sell more of those.

It's just normal market research.

Re:DOD also targets those with high SATs too

[FleaFlicker51]

Whats wrong with serving your country? How bout a country being served by soldiers who dont believe in what they're fighting--potentially DYING for? Can you say mutiny? You conservatives are your "patriotism". Quit being stubborn and think outside the box. I would NEVER fight for a country who slowly executes my civil liberties one by one. (And yes, I love the United States, but there has to be a shift in power from the few wealthy to the educated and affected middle class. With Mr. Stategery himself at the helm I dont think that will happen anytime soon.....)

A good workaround for the kids

[arnie_apesacrappin]

I've worked with a few different sets of filtering software (SmartFilter, SurfControl to name the two most recent). So far, I haven't seen any that block the "IP address to Decimal" representation of a site. So, for all the kiddies (and people with abusive filtering software at work), I'll post this.

If you know the ip address of the site your are going to, but it's blocked try this.

• Get IP address A.B.C.D (you can try dns411 or just nslookup)
• Compute this formula A*256^3 + B*256^2 + C*256 + D. For slashdot, this would be 64 * 256^3 + 28 * 256^2 + 67*256 + 48 = 1075594032
• Go to http://1075594032 /

Not the greatest trick in the world, but won't someone please think of the children.

Re:A good workaround for the kids

[kev-san]

Great solution, but there's a script that actually handles this. It can be found at http://www.xdata.org/ip.html. All you have to do is type in the URL and it converts to 32-bit decimal format. From personal experience [I attend a high school where the filter is used], because the BESS proxy blocks sites by TLD name, [i.e. slashdot.org, kuro5hin.org] the 32-bit decimal IP addresses work fantastically. :)

Re:A good workaround for the kids

[goat_attack]

Why not just use an akamai server?

Hop over to google and put in akamaitech.

Find a hit like this: a1392.g.akamaitech.net/7/1392/939/0001/www.eudora. com/download/

Copy the address into the browser and replace the second address with where you want to go. It will look like, say, this: a1392.g.akamaitech.net/7/1392/939/0001/slashdot.or g

Simple! Kudos to www.peacefire.org for this trick.

Free Content Filter

[mlensenm]

The school district I work for (Columbus Ohio Public Schools) is in the process of installing a filter called DotSafe. It should be up in 2 weeks. It will require an individual name and password for each login, so it can track every place a user goes. They can deliver a list of every web site a user goes to in a given period of time. So, everything is tracked and logged. They provide this to the system FREE. That is software AND hardware. They will also provide filtered e-mail and 25-meg of offline storage -- for over 70,000 users! I have no comments on the system yet, as it has not been installed. But, it is out there, and I would expect more districts to pick up on this. Anyone else know anything about DotSafe? Mark Lensenmayer

Re:Free Content Filter

[sqlrob]

It doesn't cost anything, but I tend to doubt it's free.

How are they paying for all this?

Re:Free Content Filter

[mlensenm]

No, I'm not kidding. DotSafe is providing ALL of the hardware at NO CHARGE to us. Thats for the filtering software, the storage, the e-mail and all of the hardware that goes with it. They will provide this at no charge to any school, as far as I understand it. And, its free for as long as we use it...no continuing fees. Remember, though, they track every move by every user. I think they believe that kind of information is valuable. It goes up around February 14, so we'll know then what it exactly involves. Mark L.

Re:Free Content Filter

[sqlrob]

Tracking every user IMHO, falls under a charge. You aren't getting any monetary charges, but you are paying in other ways, which is what I alluded to above. The question is, whether or not it will be worth it.

Why the DoD? Possibilities....

[AhNewBis]

Logically, let's see why the DoD would be interested in something like this.

First, the aggregate log data would deal with IP addresses, computer names, workgroups, dates, times, attempted websites, and perhaps even a deeper explaination as to why it was blocked (Nudity, graphic violence, what have you).

One would also probably know which sites were most visited, and as such, which sites were set as the home pages for the school (if they were set to outside of the local network, at least). From there, ad affiliates would be listed, so one would be able to find out which companies (doubleclick, et al.) were most prevalent. From there, you could determine what cookies were being set on the browsers, and coordinate with doubleclick to see a refined view of what is being served.

So what we would have is, possibly parsed by school topology, what grade teachers and grade students (I've seen schools where grades are seperated by location) are going to what websites, what sites are blocked, how often the blocked sites are hit, and manages to go through.

Maybe DoD wants to know how many people are visiting /., reading JK's article, and trying to order a copy of Voices in the Hellmouth ;) I highly doubt that the DoD would be looking for successfully visited sites. Advertising wouldn't have much to do with National Defense. Of course, maybe they're in cahoots with the NSA in looking for brainwashing ad services. Who knows.

Let's deal now with sites being blocked. It's well known that most, if not all of the filtering software out there doesn't publish which sites are blocked. There's just a huge string database and a list of blocked domains and IP addresses, or what have you. Maybe further information is being blocked through there.

Let's also look at the issues at hand: the ruling about public facilities paid by the government will have to use censorware to continue receiving funding. Public facilities are exactly that: any Joe Schmoe can come off the street and get to a computer.

Toss a little paranoia onto the fray, and anyone could come off of the street and get instructions on building bombs, or somehow get some subversive material, hate-mongering information, etc at your local library.

Let's go full scale in paranoia. Our own governmental facilities would be its own falldown! Criminals (or potential criminals) could come off the street, fire up IE or Netscape, and go to bombs.com or nuke-your-government.net or maybe suicide-bombers.middle-east.gov or something. And that would be a sad day in history, my friends, a sad day indeed that another domestic terrorist attack goes on that could have been prevented, if only we had the sense and decency to remove that demon-spawn, evil-filled internet!

If only we knew from whence that evil was spawned! ...oh yeah, that's right. ARPAnet. Something about government. I don't remember. But it wasn't OUR government. Must've been them damn Iraqis or something. Saddam Hussein's granddad did it.

Anyways.

My guess is that DoD is looking for aggregate ratios of visited to blocked sites. Maybe comparing that against information received from Pinkerton, comparing that against the Student Violence Prevention hotlines or whatever they're called. Find out where the next Columbine is going to go down. Maybe figure out what grade said students are in, and what area is most likely to break out. Then put a little more pressure on the Hive Students to rat out the 'dangerous' ones. Who knows. All kidding aside, I believe it's more for the blocked site information than kiddie marketing information. Don't look at the Black Text on the White Background, look at the White background itself. Something like that.

Which brings another issue: if the DoD is buying this, than we as taxpayers are paying for this information as well. I'm going to spend some time going over the Annual Defense Report for 2001 and see if there's any reason, or any other possible links, for buying this information.

This result on searching for "Children" shows survey results for of-age teens going into the military, and how often they thought about it. Maybe DoD is doing some research. If a lot of .gov hits are coming from one school, toss a few more recruiters there? About halfway down on that site is a listing of 10 objectives that the DoD has on youth support. It's a good read, I won't toss em on here. Let's get a lot of seperate IP addresses hitting a few specific gov pages, just for fun ;)

Actually...I may have found it right here.

"So two years ago, we asked McKinsey and Company to start a very large marketing study for the Army and, as a result of a lot of their work, some of the insights they gave us is that we needed to do research-based advertising, understanding youth attitudes and needs. We had the Rand Corporation do a very large marketing study of more than 7,000 individuals, focusing precisely on youth attitudes and needs and how to communicate with today's 18- to 24-year-old. Every generation of 18-year-olds is different. Gen X is different from Gen Y, is different from today's 18- to 24-year-olds, is different from the one that will be here in a couple of years. So that research that we're doing, that market research, will now be an ongoing part of how the Army thinks about how it communicates with young people.

And later on...

"You will also note that in this advertising, we talk about 212 ways to be a soldier. We identify specific military specialties. Part of what we want them to understand is that the kind of interests they have in occupational training and work experience, they can get it through the Army; that they should come and explore those 212 ways to be a soldier to find the one that's right for them, whether it is as an infantryman, or as an artilleryman, or as a medical technician, a computer repairman, a helicopter repairman, a wheeled-vehicle generator repairman. We want to drive them to the web site where they're going to get more of that information about the opportunities that are available, and help them make an informed decision. Our goal is to make the Army one of the options that they are considering for the future."

And on the costs...

"Q: Could you talk about the budget for this and how much the -- particularly how much the spot will be that's debuting tomorrow night, and then the overall budget numbers?

Caldera: It's about $150 million for the advertising campaign. Over the last few years, actually, the amount of money we put into advertising has not kept pace with inflation in advertising. So it's fairly consistent with what we've done in the past. We are trying to take advantage of the ability to buy earlier and get better prices and be more targeted in the shows that actually fit the demographic that we're trying to reach.

And once more...

Wolf: The key with any advertising is understanding the target that that advertising is directed at. And that's we did, is we dug into our target and really understood them. To our target, to those young adults, "Be all you can be" was not motivating.

This report was dated the 10th of January, this year.

Anyways...if anyone finds anything else, please reply =)

----

Apple's KidSafe does this

[luiss]

Never tried it, but there it is:

iTools --Click "More about iTools" The page is different if you're on a MacOS PC

to be more precise

[cascadingstylesheet]

Statistically kids are in no danger on the Net. Their greatest source of harm comes from physical abuse from family members and people they know,

Actually, by far the most common abuser is the mother's boyfriend. Not popular to say in these PC times, though.

Human Test Subjects

[briancarnell]

Hmmm..once N2H2 markets a sample of data obtained from students, it is engaged in research. There are very strict guidelines about the rights of human test subjects in research including the ability to opt out of studies such as those being conductec by N2H2. The rights of human subjects to opt out of such studies are especially enhanced when the subjects are captive audiences such as students in school.

Unless N2H2 is offering students a way to have their data excluded from the aggregation, this would seem to be a straightforward violation of numerous laws governing human test subjects.

Censoring Software

[west]

Okay, let's get real. For an increasing number of schools and libraries, it's a question of filtered content or no content at all.

People here don't seem to be able to accept that depending on where you live, unfiltered access to the net is not acceptable to the majority of people concerned enough about the issue to raise a fuss. I think it's rather geek-centric thinking to assume that most people believe that net access is vital for education or is a right along with library books. If the cost is too high, then get rid of it.

Or look at it another way, if the every library (school or civic) automatically had an annex for pornography, most people (again regionally divided) would prefer not to have libraries available at all.

However, just maybe, if we can prove that filters don't stop most kids from stumbling onto pornography, we can get schools and libraries to get internet access removed altogether!

It's a backdoor attack

[eldurbarn]

The antithesis of net blocking is "freedome to choose".

The antithesis of selling browsing habits is also "freedom to choose".

...the sale of the aggregate behavior of children ... promises a future marked by ever-more-sophistiated (sic) digital tracking and eavesdropping.

It also promises a future marked by ever-more-sophisticated marketing techniques aimed at compelling us to choose, freely, what the marketer wants us to choose. If a marketer gets inside my child's head and knows what will make them do something, then does it, where has the freedom to choose gone?

And who is going to protect our oh-so-coddled (and oh-so-sequestered) children from the seeming benignity of a web site designed by these marketers? Parents? I think not. The average parent will not have the savvy of a major marketing department to recognize subliminal manipulation when they see it.

The FEDS scare me

[dprior]

The issue of the blocking software is not what is so troublesome here to me. I believe that schools who wish to institute blocking policies are totally within their rights. The supremem court agrees. The high court has ruled (on numerous occasions if memory serves) that Children have "more restricted" freedoms than adults. I believe this to be the correct ruling. HOWEVER, the involvement of the federal government is what scares me here. On one side, it is understanable that the feds don't just give money out without any conditions... would you? But on the other hand, requiring the use of blocking software seems too big brother. Perhaps requiring an Acceptable Use Policy and a plan to enforce it is better? I don't know. Also, the selling of any information gathered by Bess is wrong. I shouldn't have to explain that.

In a revelation...

[Schnedt Microne]

In a revelation that perfectly demonstrates the nexus between moral posturing and conceit in America, Jon Katz releases yet another wordy ill-thought-out screed on Slashdot.

We're talking about "Zero Tolerance" zealots!!

[clyons]

In my opinion, it would be easier to do the following: First make all students who want to use the internet sign an agreement. Then make sure every student has a network login. If they dont sign the agreement, then their account doesnt get internet access. Then, there are plenty of products that will cache, and scan the incoming content. They can flag potential violations of the agreement, and then a human can look at them to make sure they really are bad. The software should also cache whose account the content went to, and then the student can be held accountable for his own actions.

Unfortunatly, that would require cognitive thinking by a teacher or school administrator. "That kind of thing" is seriously poo-pooed in this age of zero tolerance. I prefer to refer to "zero tolerance" as "zero intelligence," as that seems to be what administrators are shooting for. "Zero intelligence" also seems to apply to some of the actions taken in the name of "zero tolerance," as highlighted by suspension of kindergartners for squirt guns, and girl wearing Tweety (ala Loony Tunes) flashlights on a small chain.

Now, I'm not exactly a fan of Dr. Laura, and certainly I don't agree with many of her views. However, I saw her show today and she raised a quite valid issue: It seems that we are no longer punishing kids for what they actually do, but for what they *MIGHT* do. Kindergartners being suspended for squrit guns, and calling a Tweety Bird (ala Loony Tunes) mini-flashlight on a 3 inch chain a weapon. But I'm going off on a tangent, here.

The points I'm trying to make are as follows:

It doesn't matter to administratiors whether an action makes sense or not. In fact, it seems that they are desperatly working towards not having to think or make judgement calls. After all, aren't we just trying to teach kids to live in a cookie cutter world where individual judgement and think for oneself is poo-pooed?

I just don't see administrators who are working towards avoiding anything that resembles a judgement call being very receptive to such a policy as outlined above.

--

Re:We're talking about "Zero Tolerance" zealots!!

[clyons]

Ok, that post had lots or errors, and wasn't well formatted, but I'm seriously distracted by some serious back pain here.

--

Re:We're talking about "Zero Tolerance" zealots!!

[kettch]

None of this has anything to do with computers, the internet or anything. At my school there was no policy like i outlined because of power tripping buracratic (l)users. People are just morons. They have no sense in there heads at all.

It just makes me glad im not one.
----------------------

Re:COPA or rather COPPA

[jezor]

COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, is about collecting personally-identifiable information, not aggregate data, so I'm not sure this is a violation. Also keep in mind that COPPA, which is constitutional, should not be confused with the anti-adult material Children's Online Protection Act, or COPA, which was found to be unconstitutional. Jonathan I. Ezor Dir. of Legal Affairs, CyberRebate.com Find out why Library Journal called Jonathan's book CLICKING THROUGH: A Survival Guide for Bringing Your Company Online (Bloomberg Press: 1999) one of "The Best Business Books of 1999"! Click here for free Internet legal news for your Web site or newsletter.

My experiences with Bess

[Vilk]

It was during my senior year of high school that Bess was installed on the systems at school; we were the recipients of a government grant and it seemed, politically naive that I am, that one of a few stipulations was the use of filtering software. Being a budding computer science major I did all that was within my power to work around it. I compiled a list of interesting sites that Bess blocked and managed, once or twice, to evade the software.

I discovered that Bess not only blocks the expected pronography, explicit language, etc, it denied access to sites such as Peacefire.org. While this site now offers software for download that will disable net censoring, when I first checked it out it was nothing but a simple site advocating freedom of surfing as an extension of freedom of speech. I understand that this is against the very concept of Bess itself, but when does the advocacy of the enforcement of the American constitution constitute a threat to our nations youth? Clearly the act of blocking peacefire.org was malicious and spiteful, the only reason being it threatened the moral stance of the corporation. What does this say about N2H2?

Why not just have a large host.deny file?

[swv3752]

I know this has been suggested before, but wouldn't a host.deny Or similiar file that would block out a large number of porn sites be enough to satisfy the requirements of the law? This way what gets blocked is known to the administrators, no huge fees paid to closed source software companies, no tracking of web usage. Put it on the http proxy, and little Johnny can't ust delete the file either.
Such files could also be posted pubilicly, heck I would like just so that I wouldn't have to deal with porn site with pop up ads, when I am researching Purdue and make the mistake of typing Chicken Farm in the search engine.

Re:Why not just have a large host.deny file?

[emperorpter]

Hmm... if you have ever seen the typical school technician, you would know why they do not have the whole host.deny file thing going... I swear, these people have lobotomy scars. I can get a blank look from one of em in a couple seconds, even without trying, saying things that they SHOULD know. These people are barely able to maintain their NT machines, so anyone rational would not let em near a machine with a capably less "(l)user friendly" OS, unless you want your network to be down for three weeks (Ive seen this happen at my school) I am pretty sure that a company that wants to keep it's employees from goofing off too much could sucessfully implement this, but the techs schools hire (in general, for what I have seen) are too dumb. If you go to a school with good techs, you are lucky.

Re:Why the DoD? Possibilities....

[putzin]

Ok, this is a little paranoid, but still, the point is valid. Personally, I don't look for quite so sinister a reason why the gov is interested. I think that maybe the DOD is actually screening for another group looking for information which may not want the fact that they are monitoring to come out. The FBI for instance looking for how many times someone visted (or tried) a bomb making site. Not so they can prevent the next Columbine, but so that they can see how prevelant the thinking is among kids. I doubt just because they are the DOD that they get any extra information from Bess than anyone else.

Next point. No one has really brought up the issue that this company has yet to make a profit. We now know what happens to dot.com's when they can't make money for an extended period of time. And, we know what happens when the failed dot.com has to sell it's assets. The article points out that to get the aggregate anonymous data, they have to collect a lot more data which I doubt is deleted as soon as the anonymous report is compiled. So what happens if this company fails? Do they destroy their database or do they try and sell it? The gov is interested, and so is every kids marketer in the known universe (I think many come from outside our galaxy anyway) as well as those in peripheral industries. The anonymous data is innocuous really, but the problem is later when the not so innocuous data is in question and is a commodity. Then what happens?

your brother-in-law is an idiot

[fuckface]

The point of AOL's parental controls is for a parent to set up a separate screenname for the kids and put the restrictions on that name. Then the parent changes the password on his/her original screenname so the kids can't login under it.

Get a clue TROLL.

Several points

[Masem]

First, children do not have the same rights as adults. Even if we did have rights to privacy (we don't, it's only implied by 'illegal search and seizure'), that right would not be granted to children, or at least, it would be proxied through their parents or guardians. Therefore, if as a parent I installed software that would normally invade an adult's "right" to privacy but was being used to monitor my child, there is no legal issues regarding this. And, truthfully, if I were a parent, I'd like to know where my child was going to, at least at some aggregate level, but at least thru a proxy or url logger. Adult sites start appearing? Have "The Talk" with them. Sites about depression or suicide prevention? Sit down with them, and try to figure out what's going on. Would I necessary stiffle their access to such sites? All depends on the situation, but in general, probably not. Child rearing is an interactive process, and filters cannot be used to remove the interaction that parents must do to raise children effectively.

Second, filtering is not censoring; it is a slippery slope to it, and as Katz pointed out, the fact that only closed commercial solutions exist seems to legitize the fact that a non-publically controlled entity can decide what's right or wrong. But until mandatory filters are installed on every computer in the nation (not just those that children might access), it's not censoring. That said, either we must remove the mandatory filter law or change it such that local government has a large say whether to filter or not without the threat of losing thousands of dollars of funding, or require that any filtering program that is in use must have source code available as well as a list of sites and reasons for them being on that list, both which can be requested for at any time by the public. Here's where an open source software solution could work nicely.

Now, again, what gets me is that COPA says you cannot collect information (presumably identifiable) from children without the consent of the parent, yet we have the other part of the law that requires the use of filtering software, some which collects data AND makes money off it. If that's not a conflict of interest, I'd be very surprised. There's a case pending in a NE state where a parent wanted the log of sites visited by students at his local school, which he claimed under the Freedom of Information act his has rights to. The problem is that the school had the same log for staff and teachers as it used for students, and apparently there was sufficient identifying information in that log to say which teachers visited which sites. The court, last I heard, was trying to figure out if giving the unaltered logs would violate COPA and other privacy acts, or if even modifying the logs to strip out the identifications would be violating the FOI act. This situation should have never happened.

Finally, I still think that there is no reason for a grade school to have a fat pipeline to the rest of the internet; it is certainly possible to dilute the amount of data that comes downstream to the terminals that students use such that they have a cached but useful subset of the internet for those general computers, and possibly full access at one or two terminals in a library, where their actions CAN be watched by the librarian. You'd not have to worry about filtering or logging or anything like that, since the number of points where that can occur would be limited and be supervised.

Re:Several points

[mother_superius]

First, children do not have the same rights as adults. Even if we did have rights to privacy (we don't, it's only implied by 'illegal search and seizure'), that right would not be granted to children, or at least, it would be proxied through their parents or guardians.

I've always had a question about this. Since the 14th Amendment states (quoting my history book): 1. All persons born and naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State in which they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the priveleges or immunities of citizens of the United States; not shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws.
(Now I'm just summarizing the other sections)
2. Representatives are given in proportion to population of all people. If the number of males over 21 eligible to vote are denied suffrage, then the respresentation drops proportionally.
3. No one may be a Senator/ Representative/ Elector or any other civil or military office who having taken an oath to support the Constitution who have engaged in rebellion against the US, unless Congress removes the disability by a 2/3 vote.
4. The US recognizes the validity of US debts for services in suppressing rebellion. The US nor any State may pay a debt made while in rebellion.
5. Congress may enforce these provisions this by appropriate legislation

So, in the 1st Section, it says the rights of all citizens born in the US enjoy the rights of others. There is no amendment about the lack of some rights for those less than 16, 18, 21, or whatever. So, how can many of these rights be nonexistent for teenagers and children? Voting rights, military service rights, and the right to serve in government are the only ones that appear to be removed. I realize this is a bit OT, but I've always wondered...

What a Load

[Skip666Kent]

I had to 'ride' on this 'highly-rated' but otherwise utterly retarded comment because the few dissenting opinions I've seen posted have been moderated down as flamebait.

Funny. All the good doggies, jumping through 'anti-censorship' hoop.

I just can't, for the life of me, see the dread behind this 'issue'. If I ran a grade school, I'd skip on the 3rd-party 'nanny' software. I would simply block ALL internet access except for sites required or requested by teachers for student use. Kids can 'surf' at home. They can do research at the library. If they want to do extra at home, that's fine, but you lose me completely with all this infantile shouting about "kids must have absolute unfettered access to all WWW content all the time / anything less is laying the foundation for the Orwellian nightmare".

Infantile. I want what I want right now and you can't take it from me and I don't have to do what you say and if you try to make me I'm gonna tell my dad and he's gonna get a lawyer and make you let me do what I want 'cause it's a free country and I can do whatever I want.

It's SCHOOL you fscking retards! SCHOOL!

Good doggies. Keep jumping!

Re:What a Load

[SquadBoy]

I'm going to respond to this rather than burn a mod point. In any case the issue here is not that things are blocked but rather the *way* in which things are blocked. There are two big problems with the way they are going about it. First of all we do not know what is being blocked by this software. If they did what you suggested that would be fine. Everybody would know what was being blocked and why. Fine good at least you can then argue about it. This way nobody knows what is being blocked or why and this is a *bad* thing because it gives this corp control over what people see and hear give the control to the school I have no problem. The other and bigger problem is that this corp is tracking and using for their profit the habits of those who are using this without their knowledge or permission. This is a bad thing. Once again if we did what you propose that issue would go away. The issue here is not really whether some things should be filtered or not (at least for schools) but rather who should have control over the process and who (if anyone) should be allowed to make a profit off of selling information about our children. And in closing my sig does very much apply to you. :)

Re:What a Load

[nharmon]

Actually, what you propose is no more possible then the installation of filtering software. And to be honest, if my child were attending your school, you can trust he would be put into private school (I believe in public schools, but would not have my child attend one run by a control freak). You see, we tried the approach of blocking everything except "requested" websites at my job. The problem, is that there are TOO many websites, and you can't name all of them off the top of your head. You see, the whole message, the WHOLE POINT, is not that kids need some sort of magical protection from unsuitable content, they need knowledge and guidance so they can understand why something is inappropriate. We're not saying that children need unfettered access to the internet. We're simply saying that it is a parent's responsibility to teach morals. It is no more a teacher's right to tell a child which websites are appropriate, as it is for them to teach that multi-racial marriage is wrong. A teacher provides guidance that the parents are unable to (ie. showing them how to find the area of a cone, etc.). They're not babysitters (of course), and they're definetely not parental substitutes.

Re:What a Load

[Skip666Kent]

I wholly agree that it is the parent's responsibility to teach morals, ie, the 'knowledge and guidance so they can understand why something is inappropriate'. It is the school's job to supply teachers with the resources they need/want to impart lessons to the children who attend that school. If XYZ Filtering software rids a given teacher of a good portion of the distractions (and disruptions) available on the web, but still makes available desired content, then I see no problem whatsoever with that arrangement. If the software is filtering desired content, then the teacher will be the first to complain, and the system can be tailored to fit the teacher's wishes.

It is no more a teacher's right to tell a child which websites are appropriate, as it is for them to teach that multi-racial marriage is wrong

I disagree. It is a teacher's DUTY to tell a child EXACTLY which websites are appropriate for a given lesson. If I'm teaching a class in Earth Science and some kid is kicking back reading an issue of Penthouse, I'm going to rip the magazine out of his/her hands and send the kid to the Principal's office. If the kid is kicking back reading Scientific American, I'll take the magazine out of his/her hands and demand to see them after class, at which point I'll return the magazine, express genuine interest and appreciation for their interest in extra-curricular science, but ask that they persue it on their own time and not during class which is disrespectful.

It's the same with web-content. You want to read Slashdot? Fine. Do it on your own time. Want to look at porn? Neo-Nazi propaganda? Pokemon chat sites? Have a ball, but not here. XYZ software will help reduce the likelihood of these disruptions? Cool. Hand it over.

Re:What a Load

[Skip666Kent]

Oh thank you for not burning a mod point! Please! Auuuugghh! Not that! I had no idea you were one of the Slashdot Elite with moderation capability. Ohh! What a close shave!

Hyuck. I've got mod points right now too. Like I give a toss.

who should have control over the process
Teachers, School Committee, PTA. Not pot-smoking college protest junkies and not Jon Katz.

who (if anyone) should be allowed to make a profit off of selling information about our children
No one. Let's go back and sue all the teachers who filled out the Buyer Feedback cards that came with their copy of Math Blaster too!

Re:What a Load

[10am-bedtime]

haha! you fear loss of respect! well, try giving it first to get it!
are you the kind of teacher that walks around w/ a ruler whacking kids
for daydreaming?

Re:What a Load

[IlGreven]

who should have control over the process
Teachers, School Committee, PTA. Not pot-smoking college protest junkies and not Jon Katz.

Good point. Problem is, none of the above are even close to having control. It's all in the hands of the government and a few choice corporations, and they're preying on school's attempts to "protect the children."

In a perfect world, benevolent corporations would give specific-site-blocking programs to schools for free, and work with the schools to block all that which is inappropriate and allow all that is appropriate. But it's not, so greedy corporations are selling general-site-blocking programs to schools for thousands of dollars each, leaving the schools with shoddy software that blocks legitimate breast-cancer reasearch and Holocaust sites while allowing clever programmers who use no filthy language to slip through the cracks. Then the corporations have the nerve to advertise on sites that their blockers approve of.

Re:What a Load

[crucini]

But I'd rather have kids subjected to the whitelist you propose than to the secret, unaccountable blacklists actually being used. The whitelist is an obvious, visible restraint like putting a stone wall around the schoolyard to keep the kids in and criminals out. The blacklist is sneaky, like planting chips in the kids' arms that give them a shock if they go into the bad part of town.
The biggest flaw of the blacklist is that it can be used to censor political opposition while giving the appearance of unfettered access. Your proposed plan, while much more restrictive, does not give the illusion of unfettered access and therefore preserves the clear distinction between internet access and limited, censored access.

By the way, it's really unfortunate that some moderators are moderating posts down because they disagree with them.

Today the DOD, tomorrow..?

[CoffeeNowDammit]

It's not the fact that just the DOD is looking for this information. It's the fact that A Government Agency (tm) is looking for it.

Think for a second: Who's next in line? The FBI? ATF? DEA? Hey, why not the CIA? (I know, we have laws on the books preventing CIA from domestic spying, but a law is only as good as its enforcement..)

You may find it shocking, but liberals are also wary of government power. One of the reasons why Boomers (i.e. yesterday's liberals) have a libertarian streak today is because they remember who J. Edgar Hoover was, and what he was copiously compiling in the FBI's basement. (Hint: Files on up to 2 million American citizens.)

Most conservatives recoil in horror at 1984. And they should. But they also need to be shocked by Brave New World as well. And that is where our nation is heading.

".sig, .sig a .sog, .sig out loud, .sig out .strog"

Watching over their shoulders 24/7

[scruffy]

Filtering software legitimizes censorship and invasion of privacy. Many parents buy filtering programs that permit them to re-trace the websites their children have visited. They aren't teaching kids morality but Orwellian intrusions of privacy, dignity, and, yes - morality itself.

Blocking sofware is an illusory technology. It permits the abdication of moral responsibility - especially that of teachers and parents - to supervise their children and provide moral direction.

So I am neither supposed to censor my children nor invade their privacy, yet I supposed to supervise my children and provide moral direction, presumably 24/7, I suppose. I'm sorry, but no parent can (or should) watch over their children's shoulders all the time. This is not an abdication of responsibility, but rather a decision of how much freedom one's children can handle. If the parents do not think the children can handle an unfiltered internet, then it seems to me that internet with censorware is better than no internet at all. Jon seems to have this idea that either freedom is unlimited or else the shackles are on.

Now I agree that current censorware does not censor very well, censoring many sites incorrectly. I think, however, that censorware can be greatly improved, and can give installers some flexibility over false negative and false positive ratios.

And the data gathering seems innocuous, as long as anonymity is carefully preserved. This is another setup; Jon complains about inaccurate censorware, and Jon also complains about gathering any data that could be used to improve the censorware. You can't have it both ways. Make your choice and stick with it, please.

Regarding CPIA, Who Gets too choose the filter?

[jageryager]

I wonder who gets to choose the filter software? Are the features of the filter specifically dictated? Is there some definition of what must be filtered? Does it ever all come down to someone's judgment or is it clearly defined?

Next I wonder who lobbied for CIPA? Did the software companies lobby? Must a school buy software from a big company?

Will schools/libraries have to *prove* they have installed filtering everyplace? Will there be inspections? How much is it going to cost to administer this law?

Could a bunch of slashdotters get together and build a filter that would comply with the law, while still allowing the the library or school to have more control over what gets filtered?

Wow

[segfault7375]

Jon didn't mention Columbine once.. I'm impressed :)

segfaulteq@home.com

I know exactly where this is going

[IamLarryboy]

Im sure you have all read the story about the boy here in canada who is in jail for writing a fictional account, for a class assignment, about him blowing up his school. So where do I think this is going? It is going towards if you even try to read about anything the government doesnt like, let alone write about anything the government doesnt like you'll be thrown in jail. The web is the greatest tool of free speech ever invented. The government is trying to make it the greatest tool of propaganda.

I will die for free speech. will you? the time may be soon!

Re:I know exactly where this is going

[IamLarryboy]

harsh words for an anonymous coward

Blocking software

[Nykon]

Looks like it will be up to developers wh still beleive in individuals' rights on the internet to continue to write utilities to bypass these filters ;)

Re:http://gpatse.cx

[vb.warrior]

this has to be the least clever link to 'that' site (sorry shite).

Can just see the /. story next week:

"Trolling causes brain damage"

lets face it theirs plenty of evidence.

Funny thing

[MichalHauzer]

Did you know that CIPA means 'cunt' in polish? I just can't stop laughing... BTW I am the one of developers of polish web searching engine NEToskop and we have implemented filtering feature for the abused (or people having small children). So don't expect to find pages containing 'CIPA' with the option enabled! ;)))

Terrible message for children

[BenCaxton]

I don't understand how we are supposed to raise children to respect the ideas of the constitution and the rights of others if we raise them in an essentially fascist environment 180 days a year. Now I understand that children under 18 or 21 shouldn't have all the same rights as adults, and this is for their own protection. But we need to be careful what rights we limit in children. Not letting an 8 year old drive or buy a gun is common sense. But it seems that if we start censoring the ideas that they are exposed to during their most formative years, then that is all they will know. We are essentially stunting their ability for free and independant thought. These kids shouldn't be raised by some piece of software made by a company whose only motive is most likely profit. What they need is guidence in choosing what to do on the internet, because when they get to the real world, there isn't going to be anyone doing this choosing for them in any part of their life. My only worry is that having been raised this way they will want the government to start choosing etc... and we can all figure out where that will lead. Consider this situation: The government requires by law that children attend school up to 16 or 18 (whatever it is)... during their most formative years. They spend the better part of their day at these schools for at least 180+ days a year. While they are there, they are taught that they essentially have no rights, and that someone else should decide what information they can see. Basically what this seems to amount to is govenment forced (especially if you can't afford private school) indoctrination into a certain way of thinking. Seems like we're starting down a dangerous path...

Parents?

[killfixx]

Do parents nowadays do anything for their kids. I'm a father of two boys 1 in school already and I would much rather have the school ask me to fill out a ten page form explicitly detailing sites my kid is allowed and not allowed to access. I should have the power over what my kid sees and accesses not the school or the government. What the hell happened to parents? Did they all get lazy and worthless in the rearing of their own children? I've never seen such a blatant disregard for parents rights in my life. I have a home network and my 4 year old is already surfing. I have certain sites blocked for violent content and that's about it. Sex is natural. Look at the European countries. None of these hangups about sex and nudity. My son doesn't watch anything more violent than Rolie Polie Olie and that's the way it's gonna stay. But if he happens to see some kissing or sex on TV or in a movie I'mnot gonna freak out. Parents ultimately NEED to have the control placed in their hands. In previous generations parents had a say in everything that went into their childrens heads but today they let advertisers and the government deem what is appropriate on ALL levels. This is what will bring about Armegeddon. The obsolescence of parents.

Supervising Kids

[west]

Funny, now that I'm a parent, the options aren't as clear to me.

Thinking about when my kids are old enough to enjoy surfing (maybe 10), I can either

1. Watch my kids like a hawk while they surf, ready to intervene at any moment (Big Brother, here I come),
   
2. I can give them some (illusory?) privacy while relying on some incompetently built firewall, or
   
3. I can just let them access the net when they're 21 :-) and not likely to be traumatized(okay, my oldest is a sensitive type).
   

I'm really not certain whether option 1 is preferable. At age 10, I certainly preferred playing unsupervised in the backyard rather than outside under the watchful eye of adults. Somehow the chilling effect of parental stares interfered with our 10-year old gun battles (that would probably get the police called on us nowadays :-().

As for expectations of privacy... I've known almost as many who curse their parents for allowing allowing them the privacy to damage themselves as those who curse their parents for not allowing them the privacy that would enable them to do non-harmful things that their parents didn't like...

In other words, one size defintely doesn't fit all. Or to paraphrase, you can't win, you can't break even, and the spouse frowns if you try and get (even temporarily) out of the game :-).

At My School..

[Rosonowski]

I had to ask the system admin. to allow me to veiw freshmeat. The word 'meat' was used in the title, so I was unable to go to the site.

I was eventually able to get an admin password by snooping around the school's network, and could look at hardcore porn if I so felt, but mostly I just use it so that I can install programs. They make it so that only the admin can install programs, which can be fairly annoying.

I remember when they didn't have Acrobat.
That was hell, but anyways, one of the aac (academic acheivement center) aka (computer room) people asked me if there was anyway that I could get it on there.

I did end up putting it on, but they thought it was the admin.

Wait... what am I doing telling you all this?
Forget I ever said those things. Just forget them. (=

"I have not slept a wink"

I monitored High School surfing.

[philkerr]

Ok, I admit it..... I set-up monitoring in a large college in the UK.

Why?

Because the institution is obliged to monitor and prevent students, and staff, from accessing materials not suitable for viewing in a public building.

But the logs were never taken out of the server room, and no information was disclosed to anyone outide the network staff.

We had the ability to profile people's surfing habits, and ultimately their personal habits, we took our position of trust seriously and treated this knowlege with the respect it deserved.

The college was successful in prosecuting a member of staff for viewing kiddie porn, without being able to pinpoint users personally this would not of been possible.

How would you feel as a member of staff at a high school who knew that someone using your network was faciniated by the spate of shootings in US high schools, and also was searching for information on psycoactive drugs and bomb making?

Do I agree in censorware in general, the answer is no. Society should guide us what is acceptable and what is not. This, at worst, should be left to government not to companies whom not only profit from supplying 'Black Box' software but also profit from the data they collect from it's use.

But I do feel more comfortable that when used correctly it can be used to identify potential 'problems waiting to happen'.

Re:I monitored High School surfing.

[dtr21]

Problems "waiting to happen?" What about the right to innocence until proven guilty.

I agree with your point, I do not believe that a teacher should be viewing kiddie porn in school - that's just sick. But your argument does rest on a rather crucial and unproven point - that people who *view* this material are more lively to *act* according to the actions it portreys. This point has never been tested. By a similar argument, people who play Computer Games are more likely to commit mass shootings.

I know very well that my gut instinct would be to fire that teacher - Kiddie Porn is SO objectionable that it makes me sick. But once you start trying to prevent "potential troublemakers" then you're on a *REALLY* slippery slope. The kind of slope that leads directly to the "Orwellian Nightmare."

There *are* no easy answers here. Supposing that the teacher in question viewed this material at home. Would you then demand access to logs of home surfing in order to spot poential trouble. How about his video collection? Magazines? Books? Information about his sex life?

I don't know, I almost agree with your argument, but my paranoid streak kicks me *real hard* when I read the part about stopping "potential trouble" and I'm sure the same applies to a lot of the other paranoid slashdotters.

you don't find it strange?

[kootch]

as a taxpayer, that your tax money is still going to be spent, but now those filtering companies will be more profitable.

just because the companies are making lots of money off of the secondary use of their product doesn't mean that they'll sell their product any cheaper.

what we as taxpayers should say is that they companies have a choice in how they do business. they can either have taxpayer money purchase the product, or they can resell the information. But not both. As the taxpaying public, we shouldn't permit software that we are purchasing to be used for information gathering and reselling.

Hey, why can't I do this?

[junkmaster]

From the article:

N2H2 spokesman Allen Goldblatt counters that schools and parents have no reason to be concerned. "This is a real nonissue for us," he says. "This information is so anonymous and vague."

Geee! If this information so "anonymous and vague", why can't I come up with some "anonymous and vague" information and sell it?

Hmmmm.. lesseeee...
dd if=/dev/random of=anonymous_n_vague.info bs=1k count=1024
should do it. Anyone want to buy this info?

Re:Hey, why can't I do this?

[cbh]

Why not ask Harris Polls, or Nielsen, or the Census or Health departments, or the Linux survey project, about the value of metrics that describe behavior or characteristics en masse?

anonymous && aggregate != random, dig?

My experiences with Bess.....

[KGraci]

I worked as a consultant at a school in upstate NY that used Bess for filtering. Wasn't too bad... yeah, you had the occasional kid being able to slip through to horror movie babes or other somesuch "risque" sites. All in all it did a fairly good job. One of the big reasons the Superintendant wanted the filtering there was outside e-mail. He, along with the parents, thought there was no reason why the kids should be able to have ANY outside contact when in school. Not that this stopped them. Bess didn't block all web checkable mail accts... This was addressed as a big problem. Really big. Yes, the incidences of "adolescents drawn into powerful or obsessive relationships." are "rare." It happend in this district a few years ago. A student died as a result of an "obsessive relationship" online, during school hours, in which there was contact, through use of school computers, via email, to set up a meeting, in which this student was killed. Pretty serious stuff. The above mentioned Superintendant, who was a Vice Principal at the time, who has his own kids in school,and the parents in the district, were scared shitless. And who's to blame them. And they've been trying to zip up the internet access ever since, with the help of Bess. Not doing too bad of a job either.

However...

Some of these kids are smart. really smart. they tunnel through home PC's with cable access. They run "viruses" A la backorifice to capture keystrokes of teachers who have accounts to get through bess. Among other things. Lots of other things. I was only there two months. I buttoned up alot of these things. Cleaned up the workstations. Secured the servers. Updated virus signatures. Put procedures in place for the full time staff. Did the best I could. But the whole damned thig is way under-funded for what they want to do with it. Just not enough money.

Well to make a long story short.... I am at work you know... it is and always will be a balancing act with: Money. Time. Paranoia. Staff. and the ever growing knowledge of some of these kids. Ther is no easy answer. But it is a damn shame that they're selling this info...

:-(

oops.. that's trademarked isn't it.... Ah well.

Regards,

KG - kgraci@NOSPAM.mindex.com

Time for us to put up or shut up

[ajs]

So, everyone's upset because bess is a no-win scenario for schools and it's competition is falling by the wayside.

Something tickles the back of my brain... large software that many are forced to use... sucks... manipulative marketing... Oh yeah, this is why we write open source software!

So, let's put up or shut up. Here's some specs, anyone up for implimentation and organization?

• Target audience is broken into three: users (kids) organizations (schools, libraries, parents, etc) and BSPs (blocking service providers). In many cases, organizations will be BSPs, or will band into small groups to form one (e.g. school districts)
  
• For the users, you provide several of the features for controling access in the OTHER direction (e.g. adblocker type features as well as some basic anonymity)
  
• For the organizations, you provide sweeping, but simple controls over level of control. For example, you can turn logging on or off; you can select the classes of content to block; you can select the sources of blocking recomendations (there's a business model in there, even for Bess).... It's also important for the organizations to be able to delegate certain functions to users at their option. If, for example, the organization wants to block commercial sites by default, but allow users to turn them on, that should be OK.
  
• For the BSPs, there's controls for who can use the service; what options are allowed and how much security is in place.
  
• It should be administered entirely through a Web browser.
  
• Users should be organized by class so that each class can have its own profile (e.g. "student under 13", "student over 13", "students in physiology class", "teachers", etc.). Profiles must be defined by the BSP or the organization, since no one-size-fits-all model will be complete.
  
• Log file reporting must be at least up to basic usage reports
  
• The system should be as platform neutral for organizations and users as possible
  
• There should be a feedback mechanism so that users can feed back to organizations, and organizations to BSPs on incorrect blockage (an appeal system).
  

I'd start coding this myself, but I'm working on another mostly-open-source project in my free time, which I think a lot of people will like, and which might even end up being as socially relevant if I do it right.

Bess at my high school!

[Kefabi]

When I was a senior in high school last year, we had Bess on all our computers (Bess, apparantly, is the name of a watch dog.) In my computer science class, we always screwed around on the web instead of doing our latest C++ assignment. The assignments were too easy anyway, but my friend would spend his class time trying to figure out what porno sites he could get to, that bess didn't block. he found quite a few, but he was a bit stupid, because he'd be watching porn with the CompSci teacher only a few feet away helping another kid with his assignment. If the teacher had just turned around, my friend would have been caught. The problem is, he surfed porn all class every single day. I think naked girls had just as much to do with his obsession as the fact that he was defeating Bess.

-Kef

Re:Bess at my high school!

[emperorpter]

Bess at my high school is considerably worse. We have it implemented on a multi-district level, and the machine with the software on it is about 50 mi away in a little town. so, all of our internet traffic is routed 50 miles to a dinky town, even though we are in the same town as a major university with mega bandwidth (a couple years ago, the schools had an agreement with the university to use their bandwidth). After the initial route, all data is ROUTED TO CALIFORNIA!!! this is across the continent. Ive done the traceroutes to confirm it from the NT boxes we have for CompSci(everything else is imackish). Needless to say, we get around 2.0kbps tops on good days, and on bad days, almost nothing happens. Compare this to last year, when I was streaming Digitally Imported 128kbps (16KBps) into the NT lab while working on whatever mundane CS project I was doing. At first, Bess was only set up as a proxy, which could be disabled, and then, those dimwits decided to route ALL data through the bess box, slowing the networks to a halt. And now, people can set up proxies on their cable modems at home, or find lists of em on the net, and TOTALLY CIRCUMVENT the censorship.. Total waste of bandwidth, and time.

*laugh*

[Buttercup]

"The nexus between moral posturing and greed in America"?!

That's fuckin' great.

Censorware == Marketware?

[Dan Crash]

I think the idea that children are being used as market research subjects against their will is far more troubling than the the notion of censorware itself.

The idea that companies like these are secretly eavesdropping on our children's minds in order to sell them things more effectively gives me a far deeper chill than the notion that little Jimmy can't see boobsrus.com.

Private corporations are invading the public school structure we built to educate our children and turning it into just another branch of market research or human resources. How long until we dispense with the pretense of education altogether, and simply assign Jimmy his place in the corporate empire at birth?

Evil.

Re:Censorware == Marketware?

[Chris Johnson]

We're not so far off as that. My brain-vise of the day (come on, let's have just another _quarter_ turn of the vise, I'm not screaming yet) has to do with banks.

Background- last year, I took out a bank loan, using my folks as a co-sign, for some recording equipment. Got that, everything was fine, did not miss a single payment, and was all pumped up about 'yay, I'm building a credit history! I can co-exist with capitalism, this isn't so hard!'

Having basically paid off this loan flawlessly I lay plans for an actual small business and set up to take out a matching loan- basically, just keep the payments going, no problem here, right? I have credit now for at least amounts equal to what I'm already doing flawlessly?

not!

Turns out (nice of them to never once think of this or mention it) that you have to have a car for collateral- or equal amounts of money in a savings account. Now, I don't drive. I bike, and I walk. By choice. I don't think cars are a good thing- and I am too prone to be thinking about guitar effect box wiring diagrams when I ought to be watching the road and cannot control my brain and dumb it down to the point where I feel it is safe and justifiable for me to drive. Plus, cars are an expense not an asset- a big expense.

So as of today (and I do plan to sleep on it, and expect to feel less betrayed tomorrow) my capacities don't count for squat. I'm not talking to them about floating a big loan against earnings- even though I _could_ put together detailed cash flow statements and a complete business plan- and I'm not talking about even increasing the amount- it's actually about 4% less than what I effortlessly paid off the last time!

But to be a citizen of the corporate empire, you've got to _live_ your role. Living with no car and no cable TV and putting every penny you have TO WORK for you in materials and needed resources, being frugal and planning well and knowing your costs and expenditures- that doesn't even matter anymore! It is _meaningless_ compared to: do you have a car, so you can sign over the title because we no longer even _pay_ _attention_ to what _you_ are like, you are nothing but your role and your role is 'slacker consumer loser' and because you guys are all alike and screw up your finances, we will just blithely give you money at X% interest and repo your car if you mess up. So where's your car, serf? You need to be maintaining a car. No, stocks or bonds or owning land won't do- it has to be a car or have Mommy cosign it...

*SIGH* you know, I think the primary reason I'm 'processing' this kind of rage is because I did my part. I went along with the system, planned sensibly, fully lived up to my part of the deal and I really, honestly, thought that you could build a relationship with your bank, that you made a credit history and showed them that you were a responsible dude. If doing this means nothing, why the _fuck_ even try, is my question? I feel completely duped. I may as well have been totally irresponsible for all the difference it made.

I think that is the true dark side of the corporate empire- just as there are no individuals _within_ it (just the legal entity) there are no individuals _outside_ it either- there is nothing but classes of consumer, serfs, there is nothing personal about it at all and there's absolutely no point in even bothering to be anything, to strive or be loyal or be responsible, because you could be Mother Teresa combined with Thomas Edison combined with Linus Torvalds and at no point will you ever deal with a person who's evaluating your merits and worth- it will never be other than 'do you have a car?' *check* 'have you ever declared bankruptcy?' *check* and so on...

And that's your corporate empire in a nutshell- you DON'T EXIST. You're a role. The crazy irony of this is that it's the utter antithesis of the whole triumph-of-the-individual Randite thing, and yet those are the people who support corporate rule. Open your freaking eyes! Not until individual brilliance is _percieved_ by the corporate entity will that point of view make even a bit of sense.

"So, Mr. Rourke, you say you have a breathtakingly innovative architectural design, and in addition you are giving us extremely detailed information on the costs and cash flow of your building proposal. *promptly ignores all that* Please fill in subsection R, and be advised that you need to change the design because all our applicants construct building arches _this_ way..."

Welcome to the corporate empire. You don't exist. You are a classification- a _broad_ classification.

BESS is Best.

[V'alien]

Actually that's what their motto is (or used to be). I used to administer and maintain a BESS server for a private university. Tell you what, it does work pretty good, but if john doe wants to go to a 'bad site' he can do it pretty easily with just a few minutes to spare. Of all the 'filtering' solutions out there, N2H2 probably has the best one. It is very customizable and the admins of it can remove, add, and change categories, sites, etc. Got a site that's blocked? Send in a request and it'll probably be unblocked (within reason). It's a product designed for schools where more and more are going online and yet there aren't enough adult supervisors to help monitor what kids go to. This is a preventive tool, not a catch-all. I'm a firm believer that at home parents need to watch what their kids surf. But if i were a parent with my kids in school on unfiltered, unmonitored access i'd be worried. There is just way too much garbage on the 'net nowadays. Too many people addicted to porn and it's destroying their lives, their families, their careers, etc. Something needs to be done. I'm an advocate of free speech but having obscene pornography available for all to see and get to with 2 clicks and 30 seconds is just too much. I've tested and used many filtering solutions and none of them are 100% perfect, many have holes. They weren't designed to be the total babysitter for surfers but as a tool to help prevent the temptation to abuse the 'net. People clamor about privacy, etc but you know what with the net, it's all relative. Go to google and type your full name in. You'd be surprised to see how many pages come up with information you posted years ago. Anyways, that's my view and 2 bucks worth. :) ~V

Evils of the internet

[func]

Hey, just wanted to point out that I learned how to make my first homebrew firecracker from a library book. It wasn't until years later that I found out how dangerous that particular recipe was - from rec.pyrotechnics.

FOIA requests

[Eric Green]

FOIA requests would not allow you to get personal data about children (that would violate the Privacy Act, which superceds the FOIA for personal data). However, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has already put in an FOIA request asking for all memos, directives, etc. involving the purchase and its purpose. To quote EPIC's FOIA request:

"We request copies of all records concerning the Department of Defense's (DoD) communication with N2H2, Inc. or Roper Starch Worldwide, the products 'Bess,' 'Class Clicks,' and the 'Roper Youth Report,' and any similar activities pursued by DoD. This request includes, but is not limited to: minutes of meetings with N2H2 and Roper Starch representatives and others, notes, correspondence, submissions, reports, memoranda, electronic mail, and staff calendars and appointment books."

-E

bess is used at my high school

[localmooer]

It is very annoying. It does not block opera; however, the opera site is blocked. Somehow my copy that i downloaded before got deleted and i have no way of getting it onto the compputer now :( Also, slashdot is blocked!!!! *Isn't this a NEWS site?* I don't see how this is an entertainment site...

Censors and censorship

[Eric Green]

In the aftermath of Columbine, I went looking for bomb sites on the Internet. I also went looking for news articles about other school shooting incidents in the United States. Does that mean I meant to blow up a school? No. It means that I was curious about the allegations that the Internet had something to do with all the violence, and decided to see for myself rather than rely upon some talking head on TV to feed me some pre-digested pap.

It is sad that people like you would have expelled me from school for satisfying my curiousity about the real facts. But it doesn't surprise me. There have long been hypocrits more interested in condemning others than in living an upright and helping life, and long ago I learned that such people migrate to positions of power, since such positions allow them to impose their own particular warped believes upon others.

-E

Bess is easy to get by though

[Com2Kid]

Bess is hidiusly easy to bypass, and while I cannot post a list of all the varius methods for getting by her (there are ALOT, trust me on this one:) for fear of a company employee (or just a moraly rightious asshole) closing up the loopholes, suffice to say that three students (myself included) managed to get past her, and the revamped NT securety that the school had installed for that semester, by the end of the period.

Actualy, we bypassed it before the end of the period, and we where bringing up bomb recipes just to show the teachers (who where getting a laugh out of it too) just how pitiful there new NT security is.

I am often called away to gain access to information for another teacher who is restricted by Bess, many people don't realize this, but BESS restricts the teachers too. Microsoft used to provide my schools Internet service and offered a much less restrictive censor, that we where actualy allowed to bypass if we wanted too! MS had given the librarian the PW to bypass the proxy, something that the local School District refuses to give out. MS's proxy also allowed for the Libarian to add and remove sites from the blocked list, useful if a student was doing a report on a contreversial topic. Once again, Bess doesn't allow that.

On the plus side, everybody in my school is now against net censorship, so I guess Bess is good for something, namely, getting people to go against her!

Of course the data that Bess is collecting is compleatly useless, since she only (suposedly) allows access to educational material, there is really no use for that that advetisers could have. Sheesh, if it isn't sex drugs or violence (all things Bess blocks) what good is it to the marketing suits?

Bess and tracking individual users

[nstenz]

Bess is set up as a simple proxy server, so the only way to track anything in a school-type environment where computers just have blocks of private IP's is to track by IP address. That would narrow it down by computer, but the same user probably isn't going to use the same computer all of the time. Plus, if DHCP is being used, there goes even that much, unless they're doing something stupid like querying the machine for its MAC address. I don't see the point though.

N2H2 is still a bunch of bastards though. I had to put up with their crappy filtering software for 2 years. It blocked useful information, yet let me look up plans on how to make bombs... yeah, I really needed to be 'filtered'.

Re:Ex-N2H2 employee

[elmegil]

An Anonymous Coward (wonder why anonymous?) wrote:

The fact is that Bess actually works remarkably well. The article states "This is the same dreary, censorious software that can't distinguish between porn sites and poetry passages, not to mention intelligently discriminate between breast-cancer education pages and breast-ogling sites." I don't know what software the article is referring to, but Bess certainly can tell the difference. It's driven by the catagorization of sites by LIVE HUMAN BEINGS, who certainly can tell the difference. (What a heinous job, by the way.) Furthermore, it is the schools and other customers, NOT Bess or N2H2, who choose which categories to filter out. As far as the freedom/censorship issue -- Saying school children should have unrestricted access to the internet is like saying every elementary school in America should have a subscription to Penthouse. Please. FYI: N2H2 is a huge Linux / Perl company. These are your friends!

Bah. Friends like that I can do without. Until I hear of an objective study that shows how well it works, the assertions of someone who can't even bother to name themself don't carry much weight. As far as the "subscription to Penthouse" analogy goes, pound sand. Children should not be allowed unsupervised access to the internet, but arbitrarily filtering URLs when typically such filters are only about 50% effective is ridiculous. It leads parents to believe that their children are being monitored in whatever way they want, when in fact they have access to the neighbor's Penthouse subscription. Whoopty difference that makes. Either you teach the children what's right and trust them to make good choices (and watch for the inevitable giggling etc that indicates trouble), or you don't put them on the internet, period.

Follow the money

[Tau Zero]

But until mandatory filters are installed on every computer in the nation (not just those that children might access), it's not censoring. That said, either we must remove the mandatory filter law or change it such that local government has a large say whether to filter or not without the threat of losing thousands of dollars of funding...

There is a simple solution to this. Abolish the E-rate, aka the Gore Tax. When there is no more money attached to this, school districts will not feel compelled to dance to Washington's tune over these silly issues. They're much more likely to spend money on those things which are actually important, which may not be computers and networks.
--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard

Users with access - find flaws!

[macsox]

It seems that a solid way of combatting this and other filtering software is to locate and expose flaws in the filtering. I think we should encourage every kid that goes through Bess to strive to find porn, etc., on the system, and then aggregate it for dispersal to the media. The only effective way to beat it through people's heads that this technology doesn't do what it says is to show them.

Re:Users with access - find flaws!

[Com2Kid]

As I posted above, thats exactly what is happening. Bess is ridiculasly easy to get past. Nobody wants to release the information on how it's done though since bugs may actualy get patched. That is what happened with the last Proxy, people reported the bugs and they where fixed, oops!

Bess's more ridiculous policy

[Death of Rats]

I had a website up to do with a movie myself and some friends were making as an english assignment. Naturally, we wanted to be able to access it from school. Unfortunately, I found out that Bess blocks all free hosting programs (this one was on Free2Surf) by default. I thought this was stupid. Although, in Bess's defence, they were very prompt to allow access to the site when I send them a Review Request through their online form.

--

From someone involved in market research...

[Bahumat]

I work in market research, so unlike many here who are all looking over their shoulder, I know precisely how much info a database like that will contain.

1. It is useless for the purposes of back-tracking anyone. The information is aggregate, which simply means it's a list, usually divided by date, saying: In this month X number of viewings of this website, next month Y number, etc. etc.

2. The reason companies would pay that much for the information is simple; they have a marketing budget, and information like that is very useful for deciding where the best places to advertise are. The cost of the data is offset by the fact that they know they'll be reaching much more target demographic.

Frankly, I find it hilarious that so many people think they're worth noticing individually. Companies don't give a shit, they have better things to do with their time and money... To them, you're all just numbers.

Sad but true. Deal.

Bahumat,
market researcher

Cook yourself

[PHAEDRU5]

This morning as I was dressing I caught a blurb on TV about a young man who'd draped steaks on himself and then thrown himself on a large grill, in imitation of some character on MTV. He ended up cooking himself as well as his steaks.

The kid's father was interviewed, and he gave a tearful, distressing interview. Following this, U.S. Senator Joseph Liebermann was also interviewed, and he pontificated about what he was going to do to them MTV bastards (words mine, all mine). (He'll be lucky, MTV's probably already done a deal with "Hillary!")

This was followed in turn by a T.V. critic going on and on about what crap MTV has become (if you don't believe me, get this: one of the MTV episodes he described was one where a Porta-John was upended on a willing participant).

Why am I recounting all this?

Well, lost in the hubbub was the notion that the kid who fried himself did so willingly and stupidly. A definite Darwin Award candidate.

Also lost was the notion that the only way to stop people doing these things is to tie them up in straitjackets and lock them in padded rooms. If you're going to be free, you have to be free to make mistakes as well as achieve greatness.

CIPA and COPA are clear indications that we're in the age of mediocracy. Even now I can hear the gaolers approaching, straitjacket and keys in hand. (Hi Joe! Hi "Hillary!" Sorry about the mentions.)

Let's try to clarify the separate issues

[cbh]

A few points, written by someone who HAS seen aggregate traffic data from a number of sources, including the data in question:

• Content filtering and the collection of web traffic data are orthogonal; their relationship is based on the fact that most content filtering mechanisms rely on proxy servers, which log requests.
• Arguing against the sale of aggregate traffic data by pointing out the flaws in content filtering techniques doesn't make sense.
• There are many, many more users subject to traffic logging who are not subject to content filtering.
• Traffic data in aggregate is not terribly threatening to privacy: we're talking about data in the form URL, hit count like this: dir.yahoo.com/Sports 102134 Note that search path (GET request name-value pairs) are stripped off. And also please note, Mr. Katz, that this "vague" information is more valuable than "Little Timmy in Tacoma looked at used Camaros at Yahoo last Thursday."
• As an aside, as far as I know N2H2 is the only content filtering company that relies on humans, not keywords, to decide which sites to block. For this reason, sites about, say, breast cancer, are not blocked. This is certainly a "less evil" approach, and my understanding is that it was taken on ethical grounds by N2H2.
• It's very difficult to analyze web traffic; most sites either lie or remain mute about it; Content distributors don't publicize their traffic either. Dismissing any mechanism that yields such information, as long as it doesn't impose on privacy rights, is silly. Marketing and advertising aside, as software professionals, don't we want to understand what users do, or should we prefer to think of the web and its usage as an amorphous cloud with "lots of users and lots of stuff"?

I'm not in favor of content filtering, but let's try to deal with these issues separately: Web Filtering, Web Proxying, Web Metrics. Blurring these issues makes for easy griping but difficult solutions.

Re:Why doesn't the open source comunity make a fil

[djocyko]

open source community write something for windows?!?! no way! I thought they were all crazy drugies that use that norweigen operating system...wow!

Slashdot? Not with Bess

[MajroMax]

Maybe DoD wants to know how many people are visiting /., reading JK's article, and trying to order a copy of Voices in the Hellmouth ;) I highly doubt that the DoD would be looking for successfully visited sites. Advertising wouldn't have much to do with National Defense. Of course, maybe they're in cahoots with the NSA in looking for brainwashing ad services. Who knows.

Although this is just a throwaway comment, it's completely invalid. I happen to go to (for the next 4 mos.) a high school that's recently installed the N2H2 software, much to the chagrin of prettty much any and all teachers that want to use the Internet in classrooms.

Slashdot is blocked.

Yes, I said Slashdot is blocked. It's even (probably) appropriately categorized (they don't actually show which category blocks the site)- Bess, in its default (block all) configuration, blocks sites that allow posting of semi-permanent or permanent comments.

Thankfully, they don't block either www.irtc.org, the Internet Raytracing Competition, or www.lp.org, the Libertarian Party website [vital in a government class].

Filters == Ethical Inertia

[DogChasingCars]

I AM a Fundamentalist Christian. I AM NOT a Hatemonger (Christianity, properly observed, leaves no room for hate: rather, it's Jesus first and everything else as it is appropriate--Galatians 5:1,13,14).

I DO NOT believe in filtering software. It is the responsibility of PARENTS to monitor their children's entertainments. MONITOR, I said, not surreptitiously log or track, and not abdicate parental responsibility to an inert mechanism which the parents can neither understand nor control, because TRUST and ACCOUNTABILITY are cornerstones of the parent/child relationship. If there is a bogey-man on the Web, on the TV, or on the CD, then the parents have the duty to be INVOLVED ENOUGH in their children's lives to confront the offensive influence, and even *gasp* COMMUNICATE their moral convictions in an age-appropriate manner. That being said, my wife and I watch TV and movies with our children, play video games with them, and surf the Web with them, as well as the more conventional family activity stuff.

I had several peers who grew up in no-alcohol Baptist homes with the simple mantra of "I forbid it" only to run off to college and be some of the wildest partying, hardest drinking folks on campus. Many of you know people who fit that description as well. Autocracy and arbitrary barriers are only as effective as the despot's arms are long. Children can learn to appreciate their parent's morals and convictions only if those beliefs are shared in a sincere and loving family setting. Even then, embracing those moral convictions are ultimately a free-will decision on the part of the children.

kuro5hin has this to say in last week's article "Breeding Licenses" :

"The basic premise of these failings of the American parents is not that the average American is not 'good parenting' material, but that they do not spend enough time with their children. They would rather have restrictive laws governing what their children watch on TV and at the theatres, rating systems on video games, and software to help keep their children from downloading naughty things from the internet."

Although parental involvement is not the crux of this article, the same involvement issues relate to teachers, and by extension, librarians. Part of the responbility of being the classroom authority is being the proctor of classroom materials and equipment.

Is there a need for censorship on the Web? That is an open question which cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" for, while I have been the primary source of computer and Internet knowledge for my children and assume the same is true for most /.ers, there are many parents who are not as techno-savvy as the typical /. technophile, or even computer literate at all. They need and deserve help, and I feel that the best way to implement that help is through server-side age verification for pr0n sites. That way, people who wish to access such sites get to, and people who prefer not to access them aren't missing anything, but reliance on filters which are fallible at best and disastrously inept at worst is like trying to keep burglars out of one's house with a chair wedged under the front doorknob.

See there? I said all that without damning anybody for choosing to ogle pr0n or engage in any other "sinful" behavior. That falls under the topic of "ordering one's life" and that's another conversation altogether.

Just block outgoing bess traffic

[ilsie]

If kids don't want N2H2 selling their info, they can just install zonealarm (freeware) and configure it to block all outgoing packets from Bess. Uninformed/ignorant parents/teachers would probably see it and not even think twice- just the name "zonealarm" sounds like it's protecting their computers/children's morality.

Bess is not very clever

[dalesun]

I work for a large computing company which uses N2H2's Bess for filtering employee web access. Bess exhibits all the flaws typical of filtering products. Ridiculous sites are blocked and not blocked. For example until recently salon.com was blocked but salon.com/news or salon.com/sex was fine. Now all of salon.com is blocked. The entire corbis.com site is blocked (they have images of things like renaissance paintings that sometimes include nudity). The first site I found blocked was The Elvis Index, which is a just a long list of words with each word's popularity ranked relative to the word Elvis (although this includes four letter words it does not fit the N2H2 criteria that are used for blocking). Meanwhile, I can click links (in stories on Slashdot for example) that lead to pages which are not blocked although they contain content that is much more questionable than anything found on the blocked sites mentioned above. I don't want to visit pages with obscene content at work, and might even prefer a warning first or even a block to having them pop up at my desk, but filtering just doesn't work. In short, my experience using Bess is sometimes inconvenient and frustrating, and I can not determine any real benefit that it provides to me or my employer. The most likely reason it is being used is just to cover someone's ass.

Not to mention

[belbo42]

The fact that this lovely proxy filters /. At least that's what I was experiencing the last couple of weeks. Asking the admin at my school didn't help a lot since BESS doesn't tell you why it blocks a certain site. CHeck out this link at http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/BESS/. What really sucks is the fact that it won't let you go to any sites like www.geocites.com where people can get free webspace. That filters a big part of the WWW right from the beginning. Freemail sites are blocked too. However it doesn't filter SSL secured Webpages. I tried to use a site like www.anonymizer.com to surf but it's blocked too.

You are missing the underlying point

[Stalcair]

it is NOT about (at least not to me) keeping kids from accessing pr0n and such... it is about abusing a filtering system, examples follow. First, many of the filtering systems incorrectly block legitimate research material (I'll get to your comment on that in a second). This can be anything from science sites mentioning mating habits of the frog, to Psychological sites giving advice on how to handle depression and prevent suicide. Second, the issue of information being tracked and then sold/traded about kids seems to me, to be violating the very "protection" that the software is there for.

Now as for your comment about 'what is required, etc.' I have to ask how do you define that? In a perfect setup, anytime a student or teacher was doing research of any school related type, and then went to the school IT person and requested it be unblocked... and then it WAS in a timely manner, this would work. (sorry for the run on, but I am tired) As for the comment about researching at the library, that seems to clash with the idea of learning at schools. Schools have libraries, therefor it seems to follow that research is conducted there. And short of setting up two different networks or firewalls/filtering there is really no way to get around using school access to research. Last (and tying it all in) is this. When these are public schools, it means that kids are going to schools already payed for through taxes (and taxes of those who will never use said schools). Just like you have taxes that feed the library system, these funds from taxes are supposed to be there for the purpose of education of our children. So, I believe that school is the number one place a kid should go to in order to research. Also, since the filtering rules apply to libraries the same way as schools in most communities it creates a gulf of information for the kids. If my kids research at home, then I should pay less taxes. If they attend private school or are home schooled (Obviously not in grammer or spelling) then I should pay no school taxes at all. Now a private school is another matter, since there is a choice for the parents and students whether or not to attend that school.

So to me, it is really an issue of efficiency more than rights or liberties. Of course, if you look at our rights and liberties closely, you find that the protections all seem to follow the reasoning for efficiency as well. Hmmph, maybe its just a coincidence.

Personal Bess Experiences

[bludwulf]

I live up the street from the founder of N2H2.. My sister and his youngest daughter are best friends. I've seen the actual 'Bess' dog with my own eyes. All the schools around here use Bess. It's a trend that kinda scares me.. The tech people are kind of whacked out, they just set IE/NS to go through a proxy which you can easily disable. I here it's not the case in the Renton school district however. Back to my point though.. The only thing Bess would be good for is preventing random porn ads from filling up the screen and embarassing you in front of your class.. I disable the proxy on all the computers I use and I've never had the problem though. One thing that *REALLY* annoys me about Bess is that our 'district level tech' enabled search engine results blocking.. If I search for 'glass blowing' it will come up saying the page is blocked because it has the word 'blow' in it. IS THAT NOT OVERKILL? Other related searches that will come up blocked:

- 'magna cum laude' 'cum hoc ergo proctor hoc'
- 'blown glass' 'blow glass' 'blowing glass'
- 'sextant' 'sexual harassment'

The option to block based on simple URLs is also turned on, so I can't get to essex.ac.uk (sex in the url) .. The website of a university. Bess boasts that they review all the sites they block.. But they sure as hell don't tell you about the insidious options which enable blocking based on simple words.

-Beau Gunderson

Your wrong.

[thefatz]

I work for the Jefferson County Public School system in Louisville Kentucky, 26th largest in the US. We have 3 bess systems, and there is ways to allow administrators to put in "white sites" that will stop filter blocks.

We have kinda grown disgruntle with bess, poor performace even with 3 dns round robin systems, it still takes sometimes upto 5 seconds for it to tell me playboy.com is banned. Now it uses squid proxy with some custom hacks, which I guess they would have to release being under GPL, but it seems they have done nothing but a basic config of squid. No intercache communications or speed hacks. Among other things they wont update there squid so Outlook Webmail on Exchange server useing dasv doesnt work, due to a new http method of search. Yet it only requires two files to edit in the source, and one line added to each. We are possibilly forced to end our marrige with bess, as they are killing a half million project for student email for over 100,000 students. We maybe forced to move our cache cluster infront of the bess proxy's with the correct and patched squid, something I do not look foward to.

Bess Proxy....bad doggie.

Flawed logic

[maverick97008]

Nor, in fact, should anyone buy the notion that filtering software protects children. It doesn't. Statistically kids are in no danger on the Net. Their greatest source of harm comes from physical abuse from family members and people they know,

This is an invalid argument.

Physical assualt is not the only form of danger to children. The reasons for filtering are not limited to fear they will meet someone that will exploit them.

Harm and the desire to protect

[Boiotos]

Nor, in fact, should anyone buy the notion that filtering software protects children. It doesn't. Statistically kids are in no danger on the Net. Their greatest source of harm comes from physical abuse from family members and people they know, according to U.S. Justice Department statistical abstracts on violence and the FBI Uniform Crime Report, and firearms and other accidents. Congress seems in no rush to block any of those dangers.

This, I'm afraid, is preaching to the web's choir, and fallacious. The fact that a society does nothing about a putative 'greater harm' by no means mitigates the lesser one, and, most importantly, it is cold comfort to the parents who are keen on web screening for their children.

Until advocates of a fully open web recognize something sensible in the wishes of parents and teachers to limit the access of the children under their care to the full spectrum of human opinion and practice, it will be they, not their opponents, who 'just don't get it'. That is, until those advocates are called to the computer by a five year old daughter who has mis-typed her way into an animated gif of oral sex.

The question then becomes, how do we develop responsible and open parental filtering tools -- obviously, ones that do not exploit our children as data mines --, and how do we, as parents and children, appropriately negotiate their use. This is a more difficult topic and one more worthy of Mr. Katz's skill as a writer.

Re:Harm and the desire to protect

[Hikahi]

If people out there are letting their 5 year old daughters surf the web unattended, they are criminally negligent, and more dangerous to their children than people who advocate the banning of wildly non-specific protection programs.

All this about a really slow proxy server

[drmemnoch]

When it comes down to it, Bess is a really really really slow proxy server. I used to work as an admin for a schoold district and that dead dog was more of a problem than I cared to deal with. We ended up shipping it back after a year of them promising to make it faster. We went with some invisible solution called x-block or x-stop or something like that. Now that was a cool technology... it sniffed traffic so i didn't have to route traffic through it. I always meant to hack it to see what they did... never got the chance... left the job to move onward and upward... ahh well...

_____________________
Those who can do....
Those who can't get a certification from Microsoft

Interesting thought

[trevry]

Will the mis-spelling of public as pubic above mean that this site gets filtered. Ohhhhh.

Server-based solutions to content filtering

[cyways]

Some years back a few people kicked around the idea of establishing an Internet standard for content monitoring that relied on filtering servers around the Net. Conforming Web browsers would include the ability to subscribe to one or more of these servers to determine which URLs to block. People could then choose servers from organizations whose filtering policies mirrored their belief systems. So if I'd like to block my child's access to sites that depict naked women in bondage, I might subscribe to a server hosted by something like Planned Parenthood, knowing that they wouldn't block access to information on breast cancer research just because it includes the word "breast".

There are some obvious problems with this approach, of course. How would people find out which servers are available? Would browser makers be pressured into making certain, presumably stringent, servers the default? How could parents keep their kids from overriding the browser's defaults? Etc. Yet, given how well this approach fits with the fundamentally decentralized structure of the Internet, I'm surprised the idea didn't go further. Perhaps those of you suggesting an open-source filter might think about developing for this alternative instead.