Does Your Company Censor the Content for You?

JAZ asks: "A few days ago a friend of mine and I were discussing this story. He was trying to make a joke about some content in the article that might be considered 'inappropriate' (the bit concerning 22,000 files). I didn't get his joke because the interesting bits weren't there. With a little investigation, I determined that my company's proxy server was delivering a modified version. Is this a common practice? Has anyone else noticed something similar?"

"In this case, words were not just filtered out, but the text had been changed so that the document still made sense. I suspect that someone monitoring a log and suddenly saw a document show up a bunch of times with the offending text in it. Then they modified the cached copy (I was viewing it a day after it hit the Slashdot front page) to make the alarm go away.

I have mix feelings about this, on one hand, even though the text in this case was meant as a joke and the content wasn't very offensive, I was using company equipment. But on the other hand, this company is a government regulated entity which isn't above pressuring its employees to vote the way management thinks is best (whether it is or not is a question for history). So I guess I'm scared that the company could push an agenda though 'stealth channels'. I realize that the information I read online can't always be trusted, but there are many people who don't know that. It's probably important to note that, while there is a policy of acceptable computer use, there has never been a notice that they might change the content we see online.

What are the feelings and/or experience of the Slashdot crowd on this?"

Comments

I don't find it offensive

[Pan T. Hose]

Actually, no. Not at all. I don't force them to watch those sick pictures of disgustingly humiliated people. They like it. Therefore they are perverts. It is not my fault. This is a fact. If they don't want to be called perverts then why won't they stop being perverts in the first place?

Oh, and if someone likes strawberry ice cream with crushed Oreos on top and you find the taste disgusting, then I guess that would qualify them to be a pervert?

No, becaue of the lack of sick deviant nature of eating, as opposed to the very act of masturbating. (But it's a good strawman argument -- nice try.)

I'll take the liberty to answer your question with another, much more interesting question: Don't you think that browsing their friend's recently-poseted photos of their hiking trip during the time I pay them to work is a little bit unfair, to say the very least? They get what they are asking for if you ask me.

You pay them to eat lunch, too?

No, of course I don't.

As long as your acceptable use policy allows personal use during lunch hours (checking mail, etc.) or at other times,

Are you kidding? Do you really think that I allow them to do anything with our equipment which is not work related? Maybe I should also allow them to run DDoS attacks while we're at it?

then I'm still of the opinion that threatening someone and their employment and labeling them a "pervert" simply for viewing an image that is assumed to be pr0n simply because it isn't indexed on google is over the top, and may be grounds for legal action against you.

What may be a "c00l 1337 pr0n" for you might as well be illegal in the eyes of the judge. It was a ground for legal action against me, bacause I provided the techical tools (i.e. the TCP/IP network connected to the Internet) which allowed sick perverted deviants to watch pornography in our lab. Please read the rest of this thread.

Please... No one has ever told them it will be easy job. If they want to quit I have lots of other people waiting in the line. I'm not forcing anyone to work here, although I have to admit they will be lucky if they get even a web monkey job not violating the NDA they signed here. But they were not forced to sign it and that's what's important -- free will.

True, but I'm guessing nobody ever told them they'd be abused and threatened, either.

Nobody has ever needed to tell them how they were going to be treated because our employees are treated much better than before when they were on the test period for the first three months (at least those hired without my personal recommendation) when they were not paid and were constantly exploited by our full-time workers. Somehow they like our money. Do you think they are crying all the way to the bank? I don't think so.

I'm certainly NOT an advocate of socialism -- I believe that you need to put in a day's work for a day's pay.

Oh, please, for the love of god... You just lost a perfectly valid argument in the very second you introduced socialism to the discussion. You may compare anything to Hitler and Nazi Germany but the argument is completely lost.

But it works both ways -- you need to have some respect for your employees, too. Contrary to what you apparently believe, you don't OWN them. It's people with attitudes like yours, IMO, that drive a lot of people to what seems to be an ever-increasing socialist "you owe me" mentality against business owners/bosses, etc.

If (and I sa