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?"
When you consider how labor intensive it would be to come up with a sensible rendition of the article with "bad stuff" omitted - how do you propose it could be done.
Programatically? Has anyone heard of a proxy/filter doing this? I haven't.
I work at an extremely repressive Financial Services company that does extremely thorough and restrictive web filtering -- websites are white-listed, and are white-listed on a per-individual/group basis, so the vast majority of the people in the company can't even go to, say, Google.
:)
We don't do content filtering/alteration, though, though I'm guessing our proxy can do it. If you can get to the site, you'll see what's on it. Period. Well, assuming what's on it is available on port 80/443
that you must work at such a place :(
When the current government of ghana was elected, the new govt won every district where the TV and radio had been deregulated, and the old one won every one where they were state controlled.
The power of media is very real, and very scary.
Bottom line: if the company informs you of this, even if it's on page 356, Appendix B of the employee handbook or way down at the bottom of the Rules of Use, then you can't complain about this.
Now if they didn't inform you, that's bad. But before asking Slashdot, I'd ask your sysadmin. Or your BOFH. Or your PHB. Of course, that would involve admitting that you read /. at work, which may or may not be a problem at your company. You may find out it was some overzealous PFY in the systems group who was afraid that the PHB might see "lesbian" on an employee's computer and tomorrow there might be a FOX News story "Employees at Company Foo use corporate networks to access porn." Sure, that's a little far-out, but PHBs are primarily concerned about covering their asses.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Yes... I'm not really sure it matters "how I feel" about this idea of content editing, because what's more important is where the law stands on it.
As far as I can tell, it's probably still under the umbrella of "legality" for a corporation to censor incoming email content, since they can argue they own the network and the systems, and add the assertion that "your email at work is not private".
I've always felt that email should have the assumption of being private, since it's just the electronic equivalent of postal mail, which IS private and protected by law as such.
At the very least, it's used daily by people in a manner much like a casual phone conversation, which also is considered private and protected by law as such.
The "catch", of course, is that it requires resources on the part of the recipient to provide the service. In the "real world", the cost of delivering a piece of mail is beared solely by the sender. The destination has to do no more than provide a physical address and a place for the mailman to toss the mail.
I'm still not convinced that the existance of expense and a need for resources on the part of the receiver automatically negates people's expectation of privacy in the medium, though. Unfortunately, the courts (and apparently, the majority of people running mail servers) disagree with me.
So ultimately, I'd say - if you want to keep email between 2 people secure, use encryption like PGP. Otherwise, anything can happen between points A and B - and there's precious little you'll be able to do about it.
but I'd like to praise my employer for having a very clear, upfront, and open Internet and E-mail use policy.
Chain letters = fired
P2P apps = fired
Harassment = fired
Using Internet resources to maintain your own business is also against the rules, but it is very clear that it does allow casual web browsing, news, industry things, even personal websites so long as your duties at work are not interferred with. Coming previously from Big Blue, I found this to be an amazing change.
At my old company it used to piss me off that I would always receive "emails from the filter", that said an email could not be delivered or was not received because of offensive language, when it turns out there was no offensive language. Just a crappy filter. That was rectified by using PGP encryption ;)
;)
:p
I'm glad at the company I'm at now, I was able to justify my own DSL connection for lab use
As for the PGP, the company I'm at now, encourages the use of PGP for email
It is becoming more and more common to see this sort of filters. The reasons, in my view, are a bit complex, though kind of obvious.
You have companies that are hypersensitive about any sort of lawsuit involving "sexual harasment" or anything resembling it. Since the court cases have been siding on the side of people who are far too sensitive for their own good, there is some cause for it.
Another part of the equasion are control freaks who worry about what people do at work. They want everything filtered to only allow "work related" things. They want to produce and produce and produce with no thought to anything else in your life while you are there. (These are also the same people who tend to take long lunches and have all sorts of porn on their computers.)
Yet another set are the moral control freaks who think that they need to prevent anyone from seeing anything "naughty". (These tend to be rarer, but I have seen places where this has happened.)
All in all, it just creates contempt and dissatisfaction for the company by the employees. Adults do not like being treated like children, for the most part. People who get treated like this are more likely to bail when the opertunity presents itself. Of course, since MBAs are taught to try and turn all of their employees into interchangable parts, they don't quite get a clue how bad it hurts them in the long run. (Or the short run, for that matter.)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
This is what anonymizer.com (and others) are for. You can view any web site in complete stealth, since the data is SSL encrypted and the URLs are scrambled. Unless your company blocks anonymizer.com entirely there's no way for them to stop you from viewing whatever you want in complete uncensored privacy.
SSH client, X11Forwarding yes, Mozilla, and (if required) Cygwin Xwin. There is no way of stopping you without completely shutting you off from the Internet (at least that I can see).
If my company censored my incoming messages, websites, or email I would do a few things.
First I would stop any "above and beyond" performance. I would do my job as it was expected of me but I surely wouldn't work weekend or late hours anymore. The office is a 2 way street. I supply my abilities and do the work, they pay me. Thats the usual way it goes. But I also am willing to go above and beyond without complaining because I'm given the leeway in my internet and personal time while at work. If that went away so would the extra stuff. I give them more, they should give me more as well.
Then I would start looking for a new job. Its easier to find a job when you have one.
Didn't Dialectizicer get sued and temporaroly removed for this sort of thing?
Once you edit content, you as the ISP lose your "no liability" status as to what gets sent and received by your system. That's why some colleges got sued by the RIAA when they tried to slow (but not stop) file sharing.
You were using company property and company bandwith for personal use, discussing a slashdot story. In some companys they would have flogged you, in others fired you.
I know I am taking it far, but the real truth here is that you really don't have a lot to say about how a company uses it's equipment and if you don't like it your options are limited, put up with it or leave.
It may not seem right but perhaps that is because we feel freedom should extend into our jobs but the reality of it is that we sell some of our freedom when we accept a paycheck. We all know this and have to somehow accept it and live with it.
This is a simple issue of Corporate Rights.
1. It is their computer.
2. It is their network.
3. It is their monitor, it is their hard drive.
4. They paid for it, they can do what they want with it.
5. You are their whor^H^H^H^Hemployee.
6. They paid for you, they can do what they want with you.
Simply put, your rights as an employee are subservient to their rights as an employer in terms of the information you access in their emplyoy. Yes; you have rights over theirs when it comes to discrimination issues (age, gender, race, creed) but, in terms of information, censorship is entirely their right.
7. You have the right to leave at any time without notice and without fear of reprisal.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.