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Symantec Says No To Pro-Gun Sites
cluge writes "A recent American Rifleman contained small column that said that Symantec's new Internet Security 2004 would block pro gun rights sites (i.e. NRA sites), while not blocking similar anti-gun rights web sites. Being the eternal skeptic, this claim was tested by downloading the trial version and running some tests against it. To my surprise I found the every NRA site was blocked and was in the category 'weapons.' This even included the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action. Some sites that were not blocked were notable anti-gun rights sites such as The Brady Campaign, and Good Bye Guns. The only anti-gun rights site that was blocked that I could find was Hand Gun Control's web site." Read on for more.
cluge continues: "My rather informal test still raises the spectre that a large corporate entity may be clandestinely trying to sway you or your child's political views by censoring content from one side of a political debate. This is indeed chilling, especially considering that such software is required to be used in libraries to protect children. Is this political slant common in censorware? Have slashdotters found similar glitches in other 'parental control' software?"
Slashdot has certainly covered censorware before, but reports like this are still valuable as the world evolves.
Linux.
Don't use Symantec Internet Security 2004. It's not a violation of anyone's rights unless it's mandated by the government.
If its set to block those sites out of the box, surely it can be made to unblock them or remove those sites from the 'weapons' category?
Personally I hope they prove such suspicions wrong.
Uh, just because the ACLU is anti-gun doesn't mean it doesn't support the free speech rights of pro-gun people. I mean, the ACLU supports neo-Nazis' free speech rights, but they're not Nazis.
Hmm. Because linux out of the box is a GREAT firewall. no shh bugs, no apache bugs, nothin. Straight SEKKURE!>?!?! man.
Oh and there are no linux virus's out there. hmmmm. Linux is not the answer to everything guys.
Yea, i know +5 Flaimbait for being honest and knockin zealots down a peg.
If you object to laws that prohibit certain types of objectionable content AND you object to programs that give parents controls, then YOU'RE the hypocrite. You can't have both.
This makes it unfortunate that they do fight a lot of fights I consider good and thus worth supporting. Only willful misreading could get such a meaning out of the 2nd Amendment. It is utterly incomprehensible that intelligent people could believe that a group of founders who had just successfully led an armed rebellion drawing heavily on the grassroots arms and knowledge of arms against an officially sanctioned armed State could have intended that only arms sanctioned by a new State and controlled by them be allowed.
I think the logic behind this (not that I think it should be applied here) essentially stems from the fact that nobody's ever walked into a school and massacred people with anti-gun rhetoric.
Actually, no-one's ever walked into a school and massacred people with pro-gun rhetoric, either.
-jerdenn
Symantec is, or course, a private company, and so may block whatever sites they wish. However, since this type of software is specifed in CIPA, there certainly could be issues there.
ACLU on CIPA
This isn't about emotions, yours or anyone else's. This isn't about gun control either. Other posts on this board are pointing to the NRA's activities as though they should matter. Should they? Maybe. I don't know for sure, I'd have to reason that out and it would take more time than I have to write this post.
However, when considering issues of this nature, people need to leave their emotions at the door and consider the basic tenet at work which is, as you stated, free speech.
Remember, free speech does *not* mean you can yell fire in a crowded theater. It does not mean you can threaten anyone's life, at least in the state of California, if it is reasonable to suppose that you may carry out the threat and you have the reasonable ability to do so.
I only point these things out because free speech does not guarantee all speech in all situations. It doesn't guarantee the right of certain organizations to be protected merely by virtue of their having been organized and created. Whatever the average American believes about free speech -- and I am, by the way, a pretty typical American, and durn proud uv it -- it doesn't mean you can say anything you want and, in fact, censorship is a daily, very legal reality in the lives of all Americans and has been for decades, whether they believe they've been able to shout from the rooftops whatever they please or not.
So, should the NRA be censored? At first blush, I would say probably not, but to tell you the truth I really don't know for sure. I'm not big on the NRA, but I'm not particularly opposed to them either. What's important to remember is that this issue *should* be about free speech and not about gun control, people's feelings, or sticking it to whomever whatever respective group feels it should be stuck to.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
I'm personally on favor of gun controls myself but I'M EVEM MORE IN FAVOR of freedom of speech and expression.
Whether you are "pro-gun" or in favor of controls doesn't matter a whit. Hopefully we can ALL agree that, though we may not always agree on each other's ideas, we need to work together to defend our means of expressing them.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
And (heheheh) if Symantic custmers can't get information on gun safety, only non-Symantic customers will have gun safety.
Right. And that's why England (who has banned personal firearms ownership) has a crime rate higher than anywhere else in the Western World (including a murder rate higher than DC's and is STILL rising).
Banning firearms is pointless, even if you get all the guns off the street you're still going to have people killing eachother using whatever's handy. Going back to the England example, the parliment is now going to ban personal ownership of swords, due to the rising number of murders using those.
Taking away guns is just treating the symptoms, not the actual disease. It's just another way politicians can look like their actually solving the problem without having to do any work.
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.
.22 or .380.
I just had to comment after all the wackos did. You did an excellent job of rounding up all the libs with that comment. But they still don't get it. Some still think that if you outlaw guns, no one will have them, including bad guys. Ironically, its not that hard to make a home made weapon anyway, especially with lower power (but deadly enough) shells like
People seem to forget that the % of people who die in wars or crime is lower now, than it was before guns. Anyone having a doubt about how you can kill without a gun should go rent Joan of Arc. Quite vivid. If a mugger can't point a gun (loaded or not) then he IS more likely to just slit your throat anyway.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The NRA is a great source for firearm education and are supporters of making sure that everyone who owns firearms knows what they're doing with them.
If they're going to block the NRA under weapons, they had better also block the DNR and any hunting group or association.
What?
I have to agree. If it were a site discussing how to use a firearm to wreak havoc,shoot people on street corners or wage a guerilla war, that would be one thing. According to the headline they are blocking purely political web sites and that is unacceptable. This being slashdot, I know better than to take that at face value, so I'm creating a disk image of my hard drive right now so I can test it myself.
If this is true, I will be advocating a boycott of Symantec on my site. Slashdot it ain't, but it has a considerable number of readers and it's in Symantec's industry, security and privacy.
About your firewall, try Kerio or Sygate.
Only on
Huh? How is objecting to a law that unsuccessfully attempts to prohibit objectionable content while requiring tax payer money be spent to achive that end and objecting to a program that fails miserably at allowing parents to control said content (by design, in this case, unless you're an anti-gun parent who couldn't care less if pro-gun legislation sites get censored while anti-gun legislation sites somehow slip under the radar) make the poster a hypocrite?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This isn't about private handgun ownership, it's about a company deciding that you don't need to read articles and opinions they don't like.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
What do handguns have to do with this particular thread? The point is not *what* is being censored, but it's that non-obscene websites showing only one side of a political debate are being censored. One's views on gun control are irrelevant on this topic. I wouldn't want the NRA's site censored any more than a vehelment anti-gun site. (Okay, that's not true, but I don't like either.) The ends don't justify the means.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Only willful misreading could get such a meaning out of the 2nd Amendment.
the individual's right to keep and bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a 'well-regulated militia'
I'm not sure how deliberate your misreading needs to be. The only real problem is how you reconcile the first part of the sentence with the last, and I don't think the confusing word is well-regulated, or even arms. I think the word you'd have to interpret is "people". I think I'm fairly safe in saying that "the people" in the Constitution is often referring to the country as a whole, not individual citizens.
Consider Amendment V - No person or Amendment VI - the accused. Each time they didn't use a generic "people" because they were giving specific rights to specific people. However, notice Amendment X. Here there are clearly three general layers of government: Federal, States, and "The People".
No body argues that "The People" of the United States should be allowed to own guns, but the amendment doesn't have to be contorted to say that INDIVIDUALS aren't necessarily uniformly given that right.
Never confuse volume with power.
If the founders simply meant that we should have unfettered access to weapons, everything before the comma is extraneous and misleading. The founders were not idiots, and Jefferson was not an incompetent writer. Every syllable is there for a purpose.
Uh, just because the ACLU is anti-gun doesn't mean it doesn't support the free speech rights of pro-gun people. I mean, the ACLU supports neo-Nazis' free speech rights, but they're not Nazis.
The ACLU is unlikely to see anything wrong with what Symantec is doing. How would forcing Symantec to be more "fair and balanced" support free speech in any conceivable way? Symantec is not the government, and isn't required to support any particular viewpoint. In a free society, you fight back against something like this by providing a competing alternative choice. However, consider that in today's America reading pro-gun sites in school could make your teachers nervous and/or get you suspended or expelled. It's easy to see why there's a lot of paranoia over this issue, and with people getting expelled for writing fictional stories about school shootings, I understand why Symantec chose to block these sites. I don't even think it neccessarily represents their political agenda, but rather the expectations of the user base for this kind of blocking software.
"folks should check out http://www.jpfo.org the guys who had the temerity to place the 1968 Gun Control Act next to a translation of pre-WW2 Nazi-era gun control laws, and let folks see the similarities for themselves. "
How delightfully manipulative of them. Just because the Nazis had some really nasty and horrible idiology doesn't mean that EVERYTHING they did was bad. They did not stop making regular decisions because it wasn't evil enough.
You could probably find some crazy group that agrees with your opponents in any argument and use the agreement against them, but that is just low.
What flavor of misreading is required to ignore the first thirteen words of the amendmant? Did Jefferson qualify his prose with "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State" because he was feeling particularly verbose? Did he worry that people wouldn't take him seriously if he didn't use some padding that shaped his meaning in no way?
If the founders simply meant that we should have unfettered access to weapons, everything before the comma is extraneous and misleading. The founders were not idiots, and Jefferson was not an incompetent writer. Every syllable is there for a purpose.
Not being a fan of guns I hate to point this out but the original poster is correct. What the second ammendment says is:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
This should be paraphrased as:
"We have to have a well-regulated militia in order to ensure the security of the free State. In order to have a free militia, the government cannot pass laws that infringe on the right of people to keep and bear arms."
There are two important parts to understanding this. First the writer(s) are stating that the right to keep and bear arms is a pre-existing right. The amendment doesn't grant the right, it recognizes that it already exists. Second, the reason for the pre-amble is that the writer(s) are explaining why it is necessary to explicitly re-state this right. Its almost like they are saying "look, I know this is a bit odd, but we really need to keep the right to bear arms because it is the only way to maintain a well-regulated militia, and we need that to maintain freedom".
Now, I personally disagree with the view being stated in the amendment - I don't think we need individuals bearing arms to keep freedom in the modern world. I am in favor of gun control. But I do believe the second ammendment states that the government cannot pass laws that infringe on the right to bear arms. Therefore I have to reluctantly accept that the second ammendment means what the NRA claims it means.
Sailing over the event horizon
Here's a page I found the other day, that had an interesting analogy in it: examine the sentence
If you believe, as you appear to, that the first bit in the 2nd Amendment implies certain restrictions on how to interpret the second part, then you should also believe that in the sentence above, people will only be allowed to read books if they are members of the well-schooled electorate. No, it's not misleading. It's just misleading you, into believing that Jefferson (no, Madison) intended that private firearm ownership be restricted to some sort of state-controlled militia. I notice that you in no way had any rebuttal to grandparent's point that Please respond -- preferably to the substantive issue, instead of with incorrect grammatical pedantry.You're suffering under the misconception that the constitution grants rights. It doesn't. What it does, is enjoin the government from infringing on our rights.
The Second amendment says that, because of the need for the militia, the government will not infringe on our pre-existing right to keep and bear arms. It does not grant the right to self-defense, it acknowledges the right and states one reason for not infringing it.
Here's an exercise for you: go and read the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme court decided that blacks weren't citizens. Among the statements in the decision, was the horrified speculation that if blacks were citizens, they'd have to be allowed to bear arms!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Regulated" means orderly and disciplined, or well-trained. A militia is, by definition, a group of civilians with military training but /not/ under the direct authority of the government.
/individual/ right to bear arms. If it had been intended to curtail this right, then it would have been worded as such, as with the other amendments which have restricted our individual rights (eg. Prohibition.)
/government/ and its armies have a right to bear arms!
Updated to modern language: "A strong and vigilant citizenry being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The norm at the time being unlicensed ownership and use of firearms, it would be absurd to consider the amendment to be anything but a statement of the
Every other article of the Bill of Rights guarantees an individual freedom. Why would the second amendment be an exception? Indeed, if it were to be interpreted as you say, then isn't it patently obvious and ridiculously superfluous? Of course the
We're dealing with words over two hundred years old. If their meaning is not clear enough after updating to the modern vernacular, one need only consult the context: there would have been no American revolution had there not been a skilled armed citizenry to carry it out.
#19845
I think I'm fairly safe in saying that "the people" in the Constitution is often referring to the country as a whole, not individual citizens.
Consider Amendment V - No person or Amendment VI - the accused. Each time they didn't use a generic "people" because they were giving specific rights to specific people. However, notice Amendment X. Here there are clearly three general layers of government: Federal, States, and "The People".
No body argues that "The People" of the United States should be allowed to own guns, but the amendment doesn't have to be contorted to say that INDIVIDUALS aren't necessarily uniformly given that right.
"The people" referenced in the 2nd amendment are the same "the people" mentioned in the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 10th amendments. Your interpretation above (that the words "person," and "accused" "gave" specific rights to specific people (btw, the constitution does NOT "give" rights, it GUARANTEES them!)) would suggest that the right to assembly is not, in fact, an individual right, but a collective right.
Imagine being told that "the people" had the right to assemble, but that individual persons (in fact, all of those who make up "the people") were not allowed to attend a political rally.
BTW, the below is my sig and not part of this comment.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Listen - this is what happens when we ask someone else to make decisions for us.
If you are a parent, you have 3 choices:
1) Sit down with your child and explain what sites are acceptabe and which are not. Then either monitor their activity or trust them.
2) Assign the responsibilty of deciding which sites are acceptable by purchasing and using filtering software. Just remember that you are not going to agree 100% with the decisions made by any of these software makers as to which content is appropriate and which is not.
3) allow unfiltered, unmonitored access to the internet.
Just my 2 cents
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
Parental Controls are tailored to what parents want - never forget that. The knee-jerk response is that of the parents, and Symantec's research simply picked up on it. Whether something is good or bad for children isn't the issue - what parent's don't want their kids seeing is what counts (whether they're basing it on knee-jerk assumptions or not).
GL
Sites aren't anti-NRA, they're anti-gun.
I could tell you that guns kill people and animals, and that's what they're designed for. Killing people is bad, so guns must be bad, right? Perhaps 20,000 people in any given year die to "gun violence," and if we got rid of guns, then there couldn't be anymore gun violence. I could also insert various statements that might sound true, but with a little investigation (that I'm not going to do for you), you'd find out that they were actually lies.
I could also tell you that in any given year, around four billion bullets are fired in the United States. So, 0.0005% of all bullets fired in the United States kill someone. Lots of criminals use guns to do violence, but overall the number of gun owners who manage to not rob/kill someone grossly outnumber the criminals. Millions of home invasions each year are probably prevented by the homeowner having and knowing how to use a gun (note how there's no way to measure this, but you'll still see statistics about dogs "being just as effective as preventing home invasions" as guns).
I can tell you half of any story, and if it's also impossible for you to check the facts for yourself, you have no other information to go on than what I've given you. You might understand that what you're hearing might not be true, but I can isolate your children and feed them an anti-gun story and win the war in the long run.
You seem to have missed what most people miss when dealing with the ACLU's stance on issues.
The ACLU doesn't look at most issues in a case by case basis. They realize that the best way to protect your constitutional rights isn't through the congress or through the executive, but through the court system. Consequently the ACLU isn't looking at issues case by case for what they agree with, they are looking for cases that will make very strong precidents for the future issues they agree with.
Now then, when the Govt required libraries to block access to porn sites in the interest of "protecting our children" the ACLU steped in and helped fight it. Today libraries must be able to remove those blocks at a moments notice should someone have a desire to view those sites who is not a minor.
This is based on previous precidents reguarding obsenity and indecency.
The Symantec system (potentialy) represents a MUCH STRONGER precident beacuse it does not hit those obsenity laws at all. Noone has made an effort to declare handguns or firearms indecent or obscene in their community and consequently this sort of thing provides the ACLU with a great case to overturn laws requireing such a system.
The ACLU will fight this if given the chance, not because of what Symentec is blocking, but because Symentec is blocking ANYTHING.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Sites that are "anti-gun" oriented generally do NOT have much to do with actual guns and their usage (except for statistics regarding fatalities, crime rates), ergo they are not different sides of a coin in the sense that's relevant to censoring the content.
I just get the feeling that people are way too lazy to even try to see rationale between different handling. I doubt Symantec is trying to censor discussion regarding "gun rights" and gun control laws, but rather blocking access to sites that have lots of gun (not gun LAW) content.
Above is just general idea, however, and it is likely that actual distinction between political sites, and gun hobbyist/nut sites is done as inefficiently as distinction between porn sites and sites with non-sexual nudity. But it shouldn't be THAT hard to see why blocking could divide sites, even without company commenting on gun legislation itself.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
If you really are pro gun-control you should be able to educate your children as to why you believe what you believe and respond to their questions. If your kid reads a pro gun site and has questions about the 2nd amendment that is the perfect opportunity for you to explain your views.
If you really are pro gun-rights you should be able to educate your children as to why you believe what you believe and respond to their questions. If your kid reads a pro gun control site and has questions about the 2nd amendment that is the perfect opportunity for you to explain your views.
The availibility of information (or misinformation) and viewpoints on the web is supposed to make us think about and challenge our beliefs. If you don't want your children to challenge your beliefs and think for themselves what kind of parents are you?
Stuart Eichert
If it was a library that had everything, i.e., something similar to the Library of Congress, then stocking Playboys would be appropriate. Though, of course, it still would not be appropriate to place them right beside the children's books.
But given that libraries cannot generally carry every book, they must make decisions as to what would carry more social value. Thus the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc. ar all going to be purchased before Playboys or Penthouses. It's not that Playboys don't belong, it's that they have less value than other alternatives.
Providing access to the Internet is providing access to a wealth of information. Librarians don't have to make a conscious choice for every site. Including all sites is just as easy as including any. It actually takes more effort to filter than simply allow everything, and so the reasons why Playboys are not in libraries is disanalogous to Internet filtering.
What would be more analagous is if a library bought an extremely large encyclopedia, and actively ripped out pages containing offensive content. Most encyclopedias, of course, don't have anything as objectionable as what you can find on the Internet, but the principle is still the same.
Try a bit hard to follow the logic. Many parents think violence, and content glorifying violence -- including not only violent video games and movies, but also content like weapon advocacy, hobbyist sites-- is bad for their children; something they'd rather they not read/see. Plus obviously information regarding weaponry can be viewed as risky and harmful ("finding sites on Internet that describe how to build bombs") in general.
Um, have you actually BEEN to the NRA's website? You're confusing a political organization with a sales & review website. There's approximately two guns I could see on the main page just now, both of which are part of the NRA ILA seal drawing.
The fact remains that this is political favoritism on the part of a corporation. Part of the problem with this that they do NOT state this as such. I plan on teaching my children to shoot starting around age 4, and my wife agrees enthusiastically. Being able to visit the NRA website allows kids to participate in NRA youth programs there, which all emphasize saftey around firearms.
The NRA is a political organization. The only advantage to blocking it is purely political. Even a cursory glance at the site will tell you that.
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
"Yay! I can stop viruses and render all my games useless! All that, and I still get the privledge of installing patches regularly. Sign me up!"
Heh. Sarcasm aside, NG's got a point. Switching OS's to solve one problem will eventually lead to new problems opening up. I know lot of you would marry Linux given the choice, but the dude wants a simple solution to the particular problem, not a solution that'll be painful for him. If you tell him to switch so he can avoid viruses, then EVERY little problem Linux has will turn into reasons not to use it. As NG pointed out, your games stop working. (Well that's not really true, you can get a lot of Windows games working in Linux, but without trying it first hand I'm not sure how far I'd trust it.) If Linux doesn't have an app (or he can't find it) and he can't do something he could once do in Windows, he's going to turn around and say "why'd I even switch in the first place? All I wanted was an f'in virus scanner!"
Long story short, don't shout Linux every time a Windows user wants to fix a problem. Unless things go just right, you risk making them a Windows user forever. That's what happened to me. Everybody shouted at me about how great Linux is, didn't take me long to go back to Windows 2000. (I do plan on trying again in a year or so.)
Well, if the ACLU does not fight this then it would confirm suspicions that they care more about pushing a left-wing agenda than defending the rights of all Americans
Or they may simply disagree with your interpretation as to what the rights of Americans are! *SHOCK*
I very much doubt the people in charge of the ACLU sit in a boardroom going:
ACLU 1: Haha! Now we may destroy the rights of the common man in pursuit of the international communist conspiracy!
ACLU 2: I agree! It's a good thing we don't need to think about actual interpretations of anything and only need to determine what a left wing stereotype would do!
ACLU 1: Yes, the world certainly would be difficult if there were more than two political positions!
You, and a lot of other people apparently, seem to be missing the point. We don't care if they block anti-gun sites also. I don't want them to, and the poster probably doesn't either. What we're outraged about is that sites solely dedicated to promoting true information and political discussion about legal gun use (hunting, target shooting, self-defense, etc), and promoting the defense of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution (yes, we still have one), are lumped together with sites that may tell you how to build a bomb or homemade gun and may promote the uses of such for nefarious, illegal purposes. This is what is unacceptable to us. They are censoring only one side of a political discussion.
When it comes right down to it, the NRA and similar websites talk about the same things that that anti-gun sites talk about, i.e., guns and gun rights (gasp!). Thus if they (Symantec) followed their own insanity properly they would also lump anti-gun sites into the "weapons" category. So in the end, this really is a case of blatant anti-gun bias. The filter creators want your children to see anti-gun information even when you've told the filter you want to block "weapons" sites. They've made the political decision for you that it's OK to show your children "weapons" sites as long as they are anti-gun sites.
All I know is, Symantec products are crap, they're implementing activation features, and now this shite. It's the straw that broke this camel's back. I'll never buy or recommend another Symantec product.
Other people have made recommendations for alternatives, but here's mine anyway to help increase the signal-to-noise ratio:
Firewall: Kerio Personal Firewall
Anti-virus: AVG
(Both free for personal use.)
As a parent, I also want add that it is a lot easier to protect my daughter from guns, porn, drugs and whaever other devil that they are likely to conjure up than it is from a system that becomes more and more like a police state.
Why arn't people discussing how to protect thrir kids from that?
They may disagree with the content of the web sites, but they should defend the rights of those with whom they disagree to have their say--especially when this sort of stupid blocking software is mandated by the government for use in schools and libraries.