Slashdot Mirror
Does Your Company Censor the Content for You?
"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?"
Well at my school, they use NT servers which has many security holes, so instead of patching those, they install little brother software, and merely observe the pages, I find it quite comical tripod pages are listed as sex/porn on it.
More than likely, the article had changed between the time your friend saw it and you saw it. One or both of your proxies are probably caching different versions of the web page, and now when you both go to that site, you both see two different versions of the web page.
It's highly unlikely your company has someone sitting around reading every web page requested through your proxy and quickly censoring it before allowing it to get to you.
LESBIAN can you read this? SEX
1) No one posting so far is familiar with such filter, which seems plasusible to me. Blocking on content is routine. Dynamically rewriting content and making it sound correct would be an ambitious doctoral project in CS, not a routine piece of network control software.
2) "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'." Honestly, if your concern is that democracy is being subverted by your employer's policies of mind control you may want to just work elsewhere.
3) No, whatever filters you have aren't there to surreptitiously insert pro-Arianna Huffington messages in Something Awful. They're there because if you and your friend discuss the NumLock article and say "lesbian porn" loud enough for a coworker to hear, she can sue the company for sexual harassment over the creation of a hostile workplace environment, and take money out of everyone else's pockets.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Choose the least likely two options out of the following:
A) A person at the poster's company edits incoming web pages to sanitize them.
B) A program is able to remove offensive language while leaving a result that makes sense.
C) Two versions of the article were posted on the original website at various times, and due to caching the poster and his friend are seeing different versions.
D) The poster is in error about or inventing what they saw on the page.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Yes snail mail is private, to both businesses and private individuals. Now think about the anaology, I do not expect anyone to open my mail at home, but the office is different, When you recieve snail mail at your office, and you leave/quit/get fired/retire/etc and mail arrives at the company addressed to you, you can be sure your sucessor will open that mail, especially if it appears to pertain to company business. Say you recieve an important contract that you have been working on for the company, a secretary may likely open it. No granted their may be the rare incidence where you have something personal sent to you office, but aside from an occasional signature required package, why would you do that?
So to compare, many businesses do open and read snail mail addressed to another person in the company. There is even a word for them, Gatekeepers. It is chapter 1 materical in a business communication class to know that people other than the person you address a letter to are going to read that letter.
I think the real issue is that any snail mail that arrives at a business is property of the business, and that any email that arrives at a business mail server could be considered the same.
Of course if you want to get your personally mail at work, then you could use one of those fabulous web based services, but then that goes back to the issue of surfing/emailing on company time.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
Oh my. I can just imagine an unsuspecting, slightly computer shy employee, using their lunch-break to look up on Google, well, let's say "voyager space probe", and suddenly being bombarded with 100 pop up windows saying "We're watching you, you sick pervert!"
I mean, basically I think this idea is fair enough, but the message is a little confrontational...
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James G
Really now. You guys are supposed to be the cream of the crop when it comes to technical stories. Some schmuck sends a submission with a highly outrageous claim and you post it for discussion like it's a legit concern?
I bet if I sent mail to Wired News asking the same question this guy asked, if someone was to write back, they would probably inform me of the fact that the pages was modified, then cached.
In these days of companies losing money, laying off workers, etc there's no IT department I've seen who has the funds to hire an army of people to dynamically change content for their employees.
You'd also think, if there was software that was intended to do wide scale dynamic changes web content the moderators of one of the biggest geek sites on the planet would know about it.
Be wise.. !
There should be a law against middlemen altering content without notifying the reader of such content. Anytime this is done to a page, the page should contain a big and bold sentence warning the user that the contents have been altered from the publisher's source, or other obvious notations like "[expletive deleted]".
It's the company's network and computer, so they should be free to BLOCK any content they want, but they shouldn't be able to use that power to mislead the reader into believing the publisher was saying something that they didn't. It's fine if they want to ban me from using their phone to make personal calls; but if they allow me to make personal calls they mustn't secretly use voice processing hardware to alter the words I hear or speak.
It is a violation of free speech because it *secretly* robs the content publishers of opportunities to deliver their intended message. If they block a web site or inform the user that the content has been altered, the user still knows they can go elsewhere and access the unmodified content. But when it is altered secretly, the user is misled into believing the content had certain information, without the knowledge that they need to go elsewhere to see the real infromation.
I can smell a lawsuit from the content publishers brewing.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
As much as I agree that the workplace generally isn't the time and place for pr0n (unless that's your work, of course) -- don't you think that someone might find your repeated use of "sick perverts" offensive? (I mean, if you want to get into the "my ears/eyes are too fragile to hear/see that" nonsense).
Don't you think that making a threat against an employee might be a bit over the top just because they wanted to browse their friend's recently-poseted photos of their hiking trip, on a site that might actually not let their pictures be indexed or just hasn't been crawled recently?
Oh, and you must have a WONDERFUL work environment, wherever you are, with the constant threats of lawsuits against employees, throwing the word "pervert" around all the time, as well as generally inspiring work effort with the fear of a lawsuit. Can you send me an application?
And, for what it's worth, the only thing that I noticed in the article in question was a text phrase of two words, each by themselves perfectly legitimate in daily conversion.
So what? The author is made nervous by the company's creepy abuse of its power; the author's remedies include leaving or, if said creepy abuse of power is in violation of contract or state or Federal law, suing. That doesn't make the abuse of power any less creepy.
Speaking of creepy: I find it profoundly creepy that people tend to respond to "thing X is unethical/obnoxious/gross and I don't like it" with "no, thing X is not actually against the law". It lends all too much credence to the idea that nerds are sociopaths.
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?
'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? As long as your acceptable use policy allows personal use during lunch hours (checking mail, etc.) or at other times, 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.
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. 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. 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.
Somehow I highly doubt you'd get the required security clearance.
BTDT -- TS/SCI, and at at time when they actually CARED about it. These days clearances are given away like promotional items at a trade show, IMO.
Do you have a resume published on the web somewhere? I could see what I can do. (Especially if hiring you is good for me, if you follow my drift.)
You obviously have a problem recognizing sarcasm. And yes, I do have my resume published, but not for people who want to take advantage of me.