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Do IT Pros Abuse Their Power?
An anonymous reader writes "I have noticed that many airports and hospitals I've visited have some kind of internet usage policy in place. Some use software similar to Websense, which effectively blocks sites based on blacklisting them by category. A commonly used blacklist prevents users from accessing 'forums or discussion boards,' yet I find that often these networks allow users to access sites like Fark, Slashdot, Digg and other message boards that appeal to the technical culture one might find in the IT world. In your experience, do IT administrators abuse their supervisory powers? Has there ever been a backlash from users or management for doing so?"
You must be new here. All members of /. are (or want to be) a BOFH!
Of course we do. Get over it.
...are Fark and Digg considered 'technical culture' sites. Seriously, this isn't 2001. Last time I checked, the Internet had sort of entered the mainstream and 'slacking off at work' isn't really considered exclusively IT.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Absolute power, is even more fun!</bofh>
Yes, we did have something like this happen where I work. Our IT group ended up blocking all social networking sites. Our marketing department raised a fit because they use Facebook for business purposes.
How many people here get around their workplace's blocking software by running an SSH tunnel to a proxy server on their home network?
Policy is made by management. I don't care if you watch gay furry porn for all the three hours you spend in the Office.
I do care about the security of the network - so if you plug your private Laptop into the Office LAN, you won't get any connection because your machine won't authenticate. But i'll know exactly that you did so. And i'll call you out for it.
In all the places i've worked, WebSense etc. only worked in the VLANs for the office workers. All IT networks (as did the Exec's networks) had unrestricted internet access (they still went through a malware filtering proxy, but not content filtering). This might be different in larger organizations.
In the place i work right now, we only have a malware filter. No content filtering at all. I think it's pointless. If someone does not do his job properly, fire him. If someone does his job properly, but uses 10 minutes a day for masturbating to gay furry porn, he's still more productive than someone who takes a 10 minute smoke break every 20 minutes.
IT professionals would never abuse the position of responsibility with which they are entrusted. They would never use their positions to retaliate against the unthinking, uncaring, ungrateful wretches that make their lives a living, seething hell each and every day those worthless pieces of crap continue to suck air.
In my experience most draconian restrictions are imposed by Management. The technical staff is simply more empowered to work around them or ignore them.
You work at a college and block certain "websites and services?" From the context I'm guessing it's more than simply blocking known phishing sites and the like...
If you are censoring the internet for the students of your college, then frankly I find that abhorrent. It's one thing for a company to filter the internet for their employees at work, but it's completely another to do it to students who-- besides being in an environment which should encourage exploration and allow for the making of mistakes-- may very likely live there and only have access to the internet through the school. As a college IT department, for all internets and purposes you're an ISP and with respect to student internet access you should be held to the same standards of openness and neutrality to which Comcast, Verizon and their likes are.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your satisfaction with your IT Department? 1 being extremely satisfied, 10 being extraordinarily satisfied.
Sig: I stole this sig.
And management gets fancy catered lunches, and warehouse gets free shipping, Marketing gets free swag, Sales gets to wine and dine people on the company credit card, etc so on and so forth
Good-bye