TSA Internally Blocking Websites With 'Controversial Opinions'

sterlingda writes "The Transportation Security Administration is blocking certain websites from the federal agency's computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a 'controversial opinion,' according to an internal email obtained by CBS News. The new rules came into force on July 1, and prevent TSA employees from accessing such content, though what is deemed 'controversial opinion' is not explained."

Comments

This isn't news

[Anonymous Coward]

The TSA can filter websites from their work computers, just like every other organization in the world with office drones of their own. The fact that they include "controversial" material (as well as gaming and chat sites) doesn't preclude the employees from going home and reading it on their own time on their own computers.

Re:This isn't news

[mangu]

It reminds me of once when my boss was giving instructions on which sites were appropriate to browse from work. A secretary remarked "all I browse are news sites", the boss answered "so you think you're being paid to read newspapers?"

However, the point is not that. If the TSA had an intent to regulate which sites are not appropriate for browsing at work they should include a lot more than "controversial material". OTOH, some "controversial material" shold be allowed, at least for some employees.

An agency that has "security" in its name should be on alert for security related issues, and those often generate controversy.

Re:This isn't news

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I work in Aviation Security. The reason this is bad is because it goes against expected industry behaviour, we're expected to always be actively involved in our own professional development ("I must continue to upgrade my knowledge and skills."; "I must increase my awareness of issues affecting the security profession and its relationship with the community.") . This cannot be done if differing opinions to the norm are blocked.

Re:This isn't news

[Zerth]

Any research or professional development can be done at home, when you aren't getting paid to do specific tasks.

Ouch, my company pays for research and education, because the company benefits from it. Of course, we don't have people jumping ship after training, either.

Re:This isn't news

[Altrag]

I think you're taking 'controversial' in the wrong context. I doubt that they mean "issues that generate debate" so much as "opinions and facts that we disagree with" (yes, I'm sure it includes facts -- these sort of bans always do). Typically 'controversial opinions' in the second context are generated from the first, and the idea is to just ban one side of the argument so that the readers (TSA employees in this case) will have affirmation of the accepted side and no affirmation of the opposing view. The idea is to steer them towards your way of thinking by simply removing all other thought (of course nothing is preventing any particular employee from thinking up their own opposing viewpoint, but if they try to present it to anyone else it would quickly be pushed under the category of 'controversial opinion' and be banned as well).

Must not have disloyalty

[betterunixthanunix]

We must not have any disloyalty in the TSA!

Re:Must not have disloyalty

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

That is their prerogative. Like any other workplace they do have the right to block access to whatever material they don't want their employees viewing. I'm in the process of setting up a new proxy for a small office, on it they've asked me to block a fairly large list of sites. I will grant you that the "controversial opinion" aspect has shades of big brother, but in all honesty I have to believe that was bureaucratic shorthand for sites that shouldn't be viewed on a work computer. If you want unfettered access to the internet, do it at home.

Uh. "In the work place"

[dmomo]

These people are being restricted from visiting certain websites from their job. These websites are not being stifled. This is something worthy of debate, sure.
But, this concerns me less than what was implied via the headline. Was it intentionally sensational? I know there's a character limit on headlines, but i refuse to believe that "employee access to" would be all that hard to fit.

The article...

[IANAAC]

lists things that any other corporation currently blocks, such as chat/messaging, pretty much any type of "entertainment" website.

Nothing really to see.

oh, please

[roman_mir]

what is deemed 'controversial opinion' is not explained.

- I'll tell you what it is.

It is ANYTHING at all that somehow differs from the official party (government+big business including military industrial complex) line.

Any of you are following the outcomes of Michael Hastings story about Afghanistan, the story name is The Runaway General and it features opinions of people like Gen. Stanley McChrystal? You know, just the biggest Afghanistan story in US in the past 10 years? The story that questions everything, all of the assumptions the public holds in US and other places about what is happening in Afghanistan? Even a bigger story on the role of military in US politics and who really is in charge?

THAT is a 'controversial opinion', though it is not really an opinion, it is a story based on a bunch of facts. A story, which is written by a rare breed of journalist in USA of today - a real journalist, not a bullshit stenographer. Do you understand why the good general provided all of that information to a reporter? It's NOT because he is not media-savvy, after all in 2003 McChrystal was was selected to deliver nationally televised Pentagon briefings about military operations in Iraq, he IS media savvy.

One thing he learned about media is that when the military says: JUMP, the media JUMPS.

He was totally caught off-guard by an actual reporter, a journalist, who is really doing his job - watching the fuckers and reporting to the public - THAT is their job, not the propaganda bullshit that is fed to the public through the media by politicians, huge businesses and military day to day.

Almost all reporting outlets criticized Haysting for doing what they should have been doing - their fucking job.

So now we see this, TSA is blocking 'controversial opinions'. The President will have his bill and law and methods that will allow him to cut off pieces of the Internet. I fully expect /. to be blocked by TSA there, not that they would read this site anyway.

Land of the FREE, didn't you know? Now Freer than ever.

Re:oh, please

[roman_mir]

Forgot to mention, I think the Runaway General is probably THE STORY of the Century, because as a side-effect it has brought up to light the positions that the reporting outfits, the 'journalists' are taking at this point in history.

Look at this piece of shit: Roy Exum. Quote from the garbage he wrote there:

All of the old reporters knew that the unwritten code was one of confidentiality and, back then, those who broke it a time or two didn't ever last very long. Instead of the fun nights after practice, they wound up as some proof readers somewhere who never could figure out why suddenly they were going home to watch Ozzie and Harriett. ...
People who break the code hardly ever last and while Michael Hastings has a marvelous ability with words, his Waterloo will come when he finally realizes of all the hurdles he's faced, when a writer breaks the code the nib on his pen usually doesn't last much longer.

- this piece of shit, vomit inducing, diarrhea spewing fucker believe he is a journalist, a reporter.

Geraldo Rivera - the brown nosing dunce says about Hasting:

putting a rat in an eagle's nest,

- does anybody believe this is a journalist, a reporter who understands what his responsibilities are?

etc.etc.

Do not believe the official news channels, they are simply mouth pieces of those in power, they LIE, they LIE for living, they LIE for access, they do no reporting of truth, the stories the 'report' on are given to them by those in power for various political purposes, mostly as propaganda or 'damage control' pieces. These people are NOT doing any actual journalism and reporting, they do NOT question anything that those in power feed them.

Those are NOT controversial opinions and will not be blocked by the TSA.

Re:oh, please

[roman_mir]

You are so full of stinking shit. Hasting's piece is not about the McChrystal problem, it is much bigger than that, it is about the power struggle between military command and the politicians, or in fact what power struggle? The PR machine of the military is almost the same size as the State Department (something like 26thousand people vs 32thousand).

It is not about the General and in fact who gives a fuck if McChrystal kisses ass at all? It is about the fact that McChrystal himself does not believe Afghanistan is winnable, that military command does not believe it, that politicians should know it, that military expects the civilian politicians to jump to their words just as much as the current media does today, and they do, ffs. McChrystal did the SAME fucking thing when he leaked the story on needing more troops in Afghanistan, or more importantly, he wanted to force the hand of the President and he SUCCEEDED and he got his troops.

McChrystal should have been fired right THEN and THERE for getting into politics, for trying and in fact for setting policy rather than doing what he is told by the Chief.

Why am I speaking to you? I am not speaking to you, I am writing this for the rest of /. but your comment is bullshit.

Sounds like they're instituting "WebSense".

[khasim]

We use it where I work and it has those same categories.

The annoying thing is that it blocks on-line betting sites as "gaming" in the same category as "zero punctuation".

Maybe it's not

[bugs2squash]

to stop the TSA officers watching, but to prevent TSA officers from posting anything "controversial". An unguarded post in a racially charged forum would be damaging.

Re:Maybe it's not

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That is usually part of the rationale for the inclusion of categories like "controversial" and "hate/violence" in institutional filterware. If somebody discovers posts from an employee, timestamped during working hours, somewhere legal-but-unsavory you have just entered the world of extremely embarrassing bad PR. This is true in corporate, and probably goes double(or more) for the TSA.

You block porn because it's a timesucker, because it has some cool malware, and because if that creepy guy in sales is masturbating audibly you are probably going to get a pile of harassment lawsuits.

You block personals/dating/facebook/myspace/etc. because they are massive timesuckers(and for a broader demographic than porn) and can inject an extra dose of ghastly interpersonal drama if you aren't lucky.

Gambling, again, timesucker/malware.

Can you imagine the hell that some bumbling middle-manager would be made to pay if some TSA flunky turned out to be posting on stormfront.org or revolutionmuslim.com during working hours? It would be an utter no-win. Porn, at least, is treated as a basically apolitical symptom of waste and incompetence. Having to say, with a straight face, that the "racial realists" on staff definitely aren't contributing to an even more hostile flying atmosphere for anybody darker than hitler; or attempting to claim that that yours must be the friendly and apolitical islam enthusiasts would be difficult and probably career-limiting. Given the size, and low standards, of the TSA, it is pretty much 100% that there is at least one of each(though probably skewed a bit toward the "shallow end of the white supremacist gene pool, which is why I'm dressed as a rentacop and harassing people about carry-on liquids" side). I'm wholly unsurprised that TSA management doesn't want anything politically embarrassing to happen during work hours.

Video in second link

[AnonymousClown]

Did anyone watch the video attached to the second link?

I can attest to some of the attitudes by the TSA. I got the dreaded 'SSSS' on my boarding pass once and I had to fly - if I were a terrorist, i would have just walked out, but I guess that never occurred to the TSA or I'm goddamned brilliant and the President should make me the head of the HMS. Anyway, TSA agent orders me into this clear plastic 3 sided booth. What I was in there for I don't know. Now, said booth acts like a big ear. Meaning, every noise in the airport was amplified by that damn thing so I had a hard time hearing and I'm freaking out as to why I'm in this booth. Said TSA agent says something to me and I don't move and make a gesture that I can't hear. She then throws a huge hissy fit and starts screaming at me.

Second thing. In the video, the TSA says that "only" 110,000 people complained about the backscatter x-ray out of the millions that fly. I immediately thought of Catbert in the Dilbert cartoons.

I'm sure any complaints were either ignored and other people are just too scared to complain for fear of retribution from the TSA.

The TSA says there isn't any of that sort of thing, but their credibility isn't all that great..

By the sound of it...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The TSA just implemented some off-the-shelf web filtering proxy product, presumably to try to claw back some productivity from their ill-trained, ill-motivated, and generally unimpressive staff.

That list of bland, boilerplate categories just screams "generic-filterware". I'm not 100% positive which; but it sounds a lot like websense.

Don't get me wrong, the TSA is a boil on the ass of the body politic; but the fact that their cube drones are now being subjected to the same online annoyances as cube drones in thousands of other corporate, educational, and government setups strikes me as a matter of absolutely no relevance to my rights(except in that, if the TSA employees are forced to do less porn surfing, they might get some work done, and their work would probably damage my rights somehow).

Re:Violates point of 1st Amendment

[bsDaemon]

No one is preventing people from speaking as they please and publishing their opinions. They're blocking their employees from wasting time at work reading bullshit websites. As TSA employees are Government employees, and are therefor working on your dime, don't you at least want to get your money's worth out of them? Sure, it would probably be better if we didn't have them on the payroll anyway and just did away with the department as it's mostly political eyewash designed to make people feel safer rather than be safer, but that's another story all together. But hey, it's more fun to shout about fascist nazi communist censors, isn't it?

Re:Uh. "In the work place"

[colonelquesadilla]

But I bet "work" is where TSA agents access the web the most, if not exclusively.

What basis do you have for assuming that TSA agents don't have internet at home or smart phones? That seems like an absolutely bizarre assumption.

Re:Uh. "In the work place"

[Vellmont]

This is something worthy of debate, sure.
But, this concerns me less than what was implied via the headline.

Huh? What's implied by the headline "TSA Internally Blocking Websites With 'Controversial Opinions'"? Looking through the discussion, it seems you're essentially manufacturing this confusion, since nobody is actually confused by the headline.