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Does Your Company Censor the Content for You?

Posted by Cliff on from the a-stealth-filter dept.

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?"

5 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. Sad but true by Gzip+Christ · · Score: 5, Funny
    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?
    Yes. Ever since we've been under new management, the company proxy server has gotten progressively more restrictive in what it rewrites. It is really starting to smurf me off. The other day I needed to send an email to a customer about how to smurf a smurf and it rewrote every occurrence of smurf! I shudder to think what it might smurf up next.


    ---------
    The real Gzip Christ is user number smurf

  2. More than likely... by Cranx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Three things by Otter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...
  4. An exercise in probability by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  5. Happens Where I Work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Same thing happened to me. The company put in a new proxy filter and now I AM VERY HAPPY HERE. So, I went to one of the system administrators and told him THAT HE'S DOING A GREAT JOB. Just the other day a friend sent me WORK RELATED MATERIAL. If this keeps up I'll just have to THANK MY BOSS FOR THE PRIVELEGE OF WORKING FOR THIS FINE COMPANY AND ASK IF I CAN WORK FOR FREE.