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All Sourceforge.net Being Blocked by SmartFilter
An unnamed reader writes: "I just noticed that all sites. '*.sourceforge.net' are being blocked by all corporations using SmartFilter including mine. SmartFilter lists all of them as 'MP3' sites. Below is the error I get. How come they do not block Microsoft? I can download an MP3 player from there, too (Media Player does play MP3s)." Here's the error: "Access is restricted to the site (http://www.sourceforge.net/) you requested. Per the firm's Information Security & Privacy Policy, all Internet browsing is monitored and logged. Please contact the Information Security Center at ext 7114 for more information. SmartFilter Control List category MP3 Sites is restricted. " The aptly named SmartFilterWhere tool shows which sites are painted over by SmartFilter's broad brush; in this case, software development site (and Slashdot sister site) SourceForge is blocked by the latest SmartFilter versions -- 3.0, 3.0.1 and 3.1 -- but not version 2. You might also be interested in The Censorware Project's analysis of the efficacy of SmartFilter as applied to Utah schools and libraries, or Peacefire's explanation of how and how well SmartFilter works.
Haven't we all learned by now that free software is violation of intelectual proparty rights of proprietary companies? SF.net produces free software that will (if left un-checked) undermine the american economy, raise consumer prices for software and eliminate thousands of jobs. Not to mention helping the spread of terrorisim and threteing national security. They should be shut down and censored at all costs.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Dude, check it out! I just heard that this place called Sourceforge is like, totally blocked by our school's filters!
Man, we got to check this out. It must have some sweet porn or soemthing on it.
Yeah, we got to get there. All right, bypassing filtering software...oh, yeah. Here it is! Dude, we're in! Sweet porn, here we come!
Click that one - Jboss! Must be a dominatrix or something.
WTF - there's no porn here! It...it's just geek code stuff.
The filter tricked us. Dude, those filter guys are so sneaky.
Next thing you know, they'll be trying to get us to study or something.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
No, not at all. IT's a private company, and they aren't accusing them of anything illegal. I could make software and block every site with the word "the" in the URL. Or block all sites and give the reason as "This site has content which I want to block."
I recommend not jumping to sue every chance you get, there are too many lawsuits anyways.
The real solution is, of course, for companies to drop their contracts and un-installing the software.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Hit their search page,
h er eV301.cgi
http://www.securecomputing.com/cgi-bin/filter_w
and search for sourceforge.net. In the results, you can suggest a recomended they be removed from the list.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Babysitters? Why?
1) Make sure people are doing their jobs. You can tell this by looking at whether or not they produce what is required in the time they have to produce it.
2) You can make sure restrictions on computers are such that they can't install software and/or do what you don't want them to.
3) You can look over logs once in a while to find problem people.
Go here and enter the sourceforge URL. On the right, "Suggest a Change" and tell them that it should not be on their list. Make your voice heard!
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
His discussion of the legal risks of decrypting these blacklists is fascinating too, and (as he likes to say) "a topic in itself." He would like to open up the source to his SmartFilter-decryption tool but feels the legal risk is too high. How sad is that?
Here's Secure Computing's definition of the "extreme" category, and the examples they give ("Pixman's Vault of Porn Pix", "Bizarre & Maximum Perversion").
You can confirm Seth's findings using Secure Computing's own SmartFilterWhere.
It asks for your name and phone number; you have my permission to make some up. As of December 7, at 9:45 PM EST, that CGI operates with a Control List updated on December 5 and confirms all of Seth's results that I tried. By the time you read this, they may have quickly fixed all the errors he published, loaded in an up-to-the-minute Control List, and proudly announced that their software is now perfect.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
SmartFilter is accusing Sourceforge of doing something (trading MP3s) that Sourceforge is not doing. It doesn't matter whether trading MP3s is legal or not. SmartFilter is publishing false statements about Sourceforge in such a way as to damage Sourceforge's business interests. That is libel. Case closed.
I am calling for a boycott of Michael Sims, America's number one enemy in the fight against anti-anti-censorware, until he gives me an apology for his rampant goatse'ing and usurping of the Censorware Project, my pride and joy.
Frankly, I'm shocked that I am not revered by all of Slashdot. My contributions to the world of anti-censorware research are comparable to the contributions of Jesus Christ to the field of religion. I won more awards from that project than Michael won in his whole damned life.
Do not underestimate me. I will be heard.
1. Go to the URL and enter "http://www.sourceforge.net" into the 'URL 1' field. Hit 'check URL'
2. The next page should say "http://www.sourceforge.net MP3" if it is still listed.
3. On the dropbox on the right, select 'remove from list' and hit 'send request'
I say we use the filters to throw alerts but not block anything. Log the alerts and check them out. If someone seems to have a problem then deal with them personally.
Coding Blog
Why are so many people suggesting that we help smartfilter by voting to remove sourceforge? This won't help discourage companies from using it.
Instead, vote to make NYTIMES.COM and CNN.COM a "Criminal Skills" site. When the bosses start finding that smartfilter is effecting THEIR browsing, maybe they'll think twice before interfering in YOUR browsing.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
My company uses SurfControl's web filter product. In my experience of trying to administer the thing, is that it *usually* gets the catagory right. Supposedly these filter makers are verifying their databases, of which you pay through the nose to subscribe to. I've found about a 3-5% error rate, meaning they've miscatagorized that many of the total catagorized sites and this usually draws some level of corrective action to change the blockage.
My hunch is that these guys (filter makers) wrote a search engine to do the catagorization and are just doing a dictionary score to wieght a page and make a decision on the results. So SourceForge probably scored high on the words "Download" and "MP3", or something like that, and since they both probably occur alot seeing as how there are alot of MP3 tools on that site for download it got catagorized as such. This doesn't make it right, but I'm willing to bet that no human said "hey let's block SourceForge because we don't like it and that'll piss everyone off".
Most likely, the admins using the big-brother-ware in question can override the catagory and/or create an exception rule to allow people through to mis-blocked sites. But that depends on corporate policy. My company adopted a "if it's something you use for work, we'll unblock it right away" policy that works pretty well and they've followed through on it too. However, there is a possibility that someone would place implicit trust in the filter and not want to change anything they block. This would be bad (IMHO) because, just like a search engine or anything else, it's not perfect and these things are subject to human error in the end. I can tell you it's cut down the amount of pr0n bandwidth being used on my network, which is really nice because my downloads take way less time now.
-s
Does SmartFilter gnu.org as a religious web site?
cpeterso
It is certainly on the list. The fact that your company doesn't choose to restrict that category or uses an older version of the software doesn't mean that it isn't on the list.
As an after thought, your company may have that category set to log. In which case you will likely get a visit from management wanting to discuss your mp3 habits during work hours.
- Make false statements of fact (or opinions that imply false statements of fact).
- Make those statements with negligence, recklessness, or with malice as to the truthfulness of the statements. Negligence does not apply to public figures.
- The statements must be published to a 3rd party.
- There must be damages. Damages are implied if criminal acts are stated.
I have detailed the requirements for libel (under Mass. law) in a motion for summary judgment.Fight Spammers!
I figured it should be listed under "Cult/Occult".
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I like these filtering products.. they are GREAT for telling you WHERE all of the good stuff is.. I love looking through the sites that they block.. they are always the best sites.. FREE pr0n ;)
WaReZ, they got it all!
We're sorry to hear that you are upset at a new feature built into our latest version of SmartFilter. We do, however, appreciate all feedback, and this has certainly been useful in locating a bug within our software.
It appears our QA department inadvertently made an error in the data files for SmartFilter. SourceForge is not, technically, banned as being an MP3 site, but is in a new category we added called 'Sites for Geeky Losers'. The pointer for this category has remained pointed at 'MP3 Sites' in our symbol table. We will be fixing this in our next release.
Regards,
Chuck "Jesus" Smythe
SmartFilter Corp. -- Banning the sites that we don't like.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I'm a practicing Baptist, and have some strong issues on some things. However, when my church was passing around a petition in support of mandating censorware on school computers, I spoke out against it. People looked at me like I had suddenly turned into a gorilla.
Honestly, when public schools are underfunded, and hardworking teachers are underpaid and under-rewarded, should schools really be spending money on software that has been proven time and again to be ineffective? I haven't got this program to test, but how much of google's cache do they block, I wonder? And the Usenet archives? Between those, I imagine you could get anything you wanted anyways. My experience with the censorware at work has been it even blocks Slashdot on some days, but never anything else. It blocks a few online game sites, like Sony's Station, but not much else. I don't sit at work and browse porn, but I've loaded pages before that had plenty of it (people really need to identify whats in the links they email me) and the censorware didnt stop it at all.
So I ask you: Censorware that arguably does as much harm as good? Or raises for teachers and administrative staff who could better nuture teens' growth away from questionable sites as it is? It doesn't take much for someone to walk thru a computer lab now and then, and anyone turning their monitor off quickly is rather obvious. Censorware is a leech-like entity, and rates only slightly above spam mailers in my opinion (only because they once had, deep down inside, an urge to do something good--or so I like to believe).
But taking an active role in childrens education about such things, and occassionally checking in on them while they're surfing are far better alternatives than spending money thats going to limit so much of the good with only a little of the bad.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
They should list riaa.org as an MP3 site-- has more to do with MP3s than Sourceforge.net ;)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The headline "All Sourceforge.net Being Blocked by SmartFilter" applies perfectly to your statement: if an individual company chooses to use SmartFilter to block certain categories, all of sourceforge.net will be blocked, thus "all Sourceforge.net is being blocked by SmartFilter".
Personally, I think it's an interesting story that's worth posting. Many companies use open source software for their own development - I work for one. We're using at least one Sourceforge project, in fact. OTOH, many other companies might really wish to restrict access to Sourceforge, for the usual perverse legalistic and fascistic reasons. If it's true that Sourceforge was added to the Smartfilter list for those kinds of reasons, I think that's worth discussing.
Your manager installs filtering software. You may think that he is an evil asshole who want to make a feeble attempt to censor and spy on you. Well, chances are you're wrong.
Companies have all sorts of liability that they have to worry about. Management installs filtering software to cover their asses in sexual harassment situations, or in this case, intellectual property rights.
That way when the RIAA comes banging on the doors of your company because the employees are downloading mp3s, they can innocently point to the filtering software then bring down the hammer of god on the people who circumvented the filtering software.
Really, it's nothing personal and has very little to do with you.
The middle mind speaks!
We use SmartFilter at work. In fact, I'm the primary babysitter and representive of the Spanish Inquisition where it is concerned.
Traditionally, I've been against filtering software, under the "if you treat people like children, they won't dissapoint you" philosophy. Unfortunately, in examining logs BEFORE we turned on the filtering, people were doing a great job of acting like children beforehand. Reporting on a days worth of logs on the 'sex' category generated a 150 page (small print) report, covering about 50 employees. These were NOT banner adds and spam mail. After the filter went on, it went to about 20 pages. After a well placed firing for an extreme example, it went down to about 3.
There are a few things you have to consider when dealing with filtering software.
1. The people categorizing URL's and sites are not much better than trained monkeys. Just because a site gets blocked isn't part of a conspiracy. Just a TMIF (trained monkey input failure) event. Usually they correct it within a week.
(Side note: My favorite mis-categorization was when a dog breeding site was classified as a pornography site)
2. Filters are unfortunately a necessary evil in this day and age, since companies (mostly larger ones) MUST show that they are activly preventing the development of a 'hostile environment' toward protected groups, such as women and minorities. Filters are an easy way of doing that.
3. Filters by themselves are useless. Its amazing the number of things that they don't catch, and methods of by-passing them are out there. You have to keep the logs, and actually look at them. Filters are only alerts, not real preventitive measures.
4. Also, you have to take care that someone in your company won't use them for 'evil', like some middle manager on a witch hunt. You have to have good, fair policies in place covering Internet usage and trusted individuals with good ethics to see those policies are being followed.
In the last 18 months, my company has gone from having many gross violations of our Internet usage policies to very few violations. Most people can get to most the things they want to, and most, if not all of the 10K full time employees are pretty happy with the arrangement, or at least I haven't heard any complaints. For better or worse, the content filter and daily review of log reports is primarily responsible for that.
I then pointed out that this number was on the web page that had the explaination to why the site was being blocked and that it was posted on Slashdot. This corporate lackey kept up his charade and asked what Slashdot was. Seriously, what kind of fool does this person think I am? I said I wasn't going to put up with this type of corporate behavior and someone was going to set things right. He finally took my name and number down and said he'd get back to me. I hope that my actions will correct this situation.
Hmmm... some security personnel has just shown up at my cubicle wanting to talk to me. They no doubt want to congratulate me on my pro-active response to the situation.
Well, the /.ing is complete. We have knocked their entire site offline (not just the cgi server handling removal requests). I hope their software isn't dependent on being able to contact their site, otherwise they're going to have quite a problem. Hooray for the /. effect, it ought to get their attention.
.sig, what's that?
There's no sig like SIGSEG
Really. If an employee isn't performing, fire him. If he is, then net access and use doesn't matter so much, does it?
If there was no net, he'd jsut be on the phone or something anyway -- there were distractions in the workplace before the internet, after all.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
...but I do think this person absolutely has a point.
:-)
As the CTO of in international company, I see a lot of people around me who cannot spell. Some are VERY clever people, but indeed, some of them will probably never grow to become managers (let alone CEOs), simple becuase they cannot write (and that includes spelling).
Now this may not bother you - in which case, that is fine. But if you ever want to become the pointy-haired guy who earns US$150k instead of being the tech who "knows more" but earns $50k, things like spelling, as well as knowledge of geography, politics and current affairs are exactly the things that make a difference.
Being the pointy-haired guy means being able to put together a good presentation, being able to sit next to another CEO on the aiplane and talk intelligently about the state of the industry, and being able to address 100 people confidently.
The good news is: this stuff is learnable. If you can learn C++ or Java, you can certainly learn "English". Advice: this "English" language is as important as those other languages if you want a good resume.
Again, no value expressed here: it is perfectly OK to want to be the guy who makes less but works fewer hours and says what he thinks.
Mike
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
SmartFilter offers four possible results for each category when a user attempts to visit a site on the filter list:
- Permit. Access is allowed, but logged by user-IP, URL, and category (if any)
- Deny. Block access, return a HTML page explaining what was blocked, and why. Same logging.
- Delay.. Access is permitted, but page returns after a delay (default 30 seconds). Same logging.
- Coach.. Access is blocked, but permit the user to 'click through' to the actual page. Either way, log access.
With the 'Coach' option, nobody is actually blocked from accessing any web site. However, for each new access to any 'questionable' site (based on categories from the SmartFilter database), the user is presented with warning page, and the opportunity to choose to continue, with the knowledge that their actions are logged and may be reviewed.Here is the interesting one:
The default HTML pages that SmartFilter ships with are rather boring. I've made a few changes to the 'Coach' page HTML to make it very clear what is going on -- bright icons and background, big WARNING banner at the top, and the text of our official "Internet Access Policy" (just in case the user somehow missed it when they signed their employment paperwork).
I'm hoping that 'coaching' will cut down on web access abuse and wasted time, while still allowing people to get to sites that they really need to access for their job, without getting people fired.
And best of all, the warning page breaks the never-ending cycle launched by those damn porn-site popup ads!
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Unfortunately, it *seems* all too common to *me* that supervisors don't know jack about the people working under them.
/. right now?
You mean like neither of ours know we're cruising around on
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
If I was a parent I'd be thanking Zeus that they blocked that freak's site.
Marilyn is no more extreme than Alice Cooper or Lou Reed or freakin' David Bowie. Sure, he looks pretty crazy, but no crazier than the dude that works in the local video store (and he's spent a lot more on his wardrobe). I'm no fan of his music, but reading interviews with him he is hardly "freakish" or "extreme"; he votes Republican; his views are not that far out of the mainstream, and after his music was blamed for Columbine he wrote one of the most intelligent responses to the tragedy that I came across in the media that spring (including on slashdot; my apologies JonKatz). The only reason he's so controversial is that he's intentionally giving the finger to the religious right, which is most likely his family background. So he takes a lot of his symbolism from Christianity and performs in a manner that is provocative and mocking. Of course it pisses those people off, it's meant to, but it's hardly a threat to your children unless you want to keep them closed-minded. (It's definitely not a threat to your children if you believe in Zeus, as the parent post implies!)
You got to admire how clever he is too (though admittedly he's picking on an easy target); in response to many of the criticisms of his treatment of Christianity he promised in this interview to "balance my songs with a wholesome Bible reading" so fans can "examine the virtues of wonderful 'Christian' stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide, and child sacrifice. Now that seems like 'entertainment' to me."
So they've delegated that task to a retarded electronic babysitter.
Suck it up and be a good drone or update your resume and start looking for a better place to work.
A competent professional doesn't need to have his/her time and efficiency wasted by this kind of crap. Competent management doesn't hire people who need electronic babysitters.
Tech Public Policy stuff
They're in the business of filtering smart, after all.
The shareholder is always right.
A good programmer is not necessarily a good manager. Unfortunately, when the average company promotes someone, they take the best programmer to manage the department.
My solution to this problem: make pay independent of position. A good programmer should get paid more than an average manager.
While doing research at my new job, I ran across the TinyCobol project on Source Forge. When I tried to click on the link (tinycobol.sourceforge.net), I got a filtering error back too. Category: Sex.
I don't even want to know.
Thanks for the URL. As I was voting, I notice sf.net isn't blocked. OSS Developers can use sf.net in place of sourceforge while we all vote.
The possibility of obsession is also no excuse to deny access to information. People can be obsessed with many things, including the currently dominant superstition.
Actually, access to information is, most likely, the best antidote against obsession. For instance, do you think the 9/11 terrorists would be so willing to suicide if they had ready access to alternative ideas and theories about religion and the afterlife? Limited access to information is the best recipe to fanatism I know.
By blocking access to SF on this basis, these guys have opened themselves up to a massive restraint-of-trade lawsuit from the multitude of people who depend upon the existence of ubiquitous access to SF for various aspects of their livelihood.
It appears that nobody has been blocking your access to crack, however.
The day someone needs "Gnome 2.0" to function (and works at a place that would block it) is the day I start killing puppies.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Why is it that "occult" is considered a category that merits censorship? Would people not be outraged if they had a category like "Episcopelean" or "Jewish" and censored stuff in that category? "
They seem to rate them by the amount of political power that the factions can mobilize (both for and against). There is no other justification that appears to match the criteria in a (reasonably) predictable way.
You can justify this on commercial grounds as well as on grounds of prejudice. What's really unfair is that you can't find out what the criteria are. I wouldn't really mind if the KKK put out some blocking software, but I'd sure want to know before I accidentally gave them some money. (Well, actually I'd want the purchasers to know, but that wouldn't include me. I'd rather choose for myself. [Might be worth buying as a source of sites to check out though, if you could read the filter files.])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't care what justifications you create. They don't excuse the actions. This isn't murder, this isn't grand theft corporation. But it's on the next tier down.
Censorship that is justifiable must be able to say and prove what it is censoring. Reasonable and trusted people must be able to check, and if you want to limit the number of people who are allowed to check you had better have an excruciatingly good reason. (Weaponizing anthrax comes to mind.)
Um, in order to be censorship, this must significantly hamper the ability of the users involved to access information/speech, yes?
They can look up anything they please at *home*.
How is the work filtering policy censoring what they have access to?
The company presumably has terms of service along the lines of "the company's computers are to be used for work-related purposes only". Where's the problem?