US military censorware's barbed wire funnies
A reader who works for the US military wrote in to tell us that he can no longer get Boing Boing at work -- this is the screen that shows up when he tries. LOVE the barbed wire motif! I'm pretty sure that this is SmartFilter, our old arch-nemeses. Fun fact: SmartFilter also provides the national censorship software for
the latest
latest episodes
Yes, that's SmartFilter. You can tell because of the message "Your request was denied because of its content categorization".
Must be a recent change. I did work for the Army a couple of years ago and they were using Websense. Probably why BoingBoing is suddenly blocked.
SmartFilter: "We make the web a safer place for [content removed for your safety]."
Don't think that's correct that Secure sells to Syria -- that's not what the ONI reports. http://opennet.net/research/profiles/syria
Also, category should now be "incidential nudity" http://filteringfacts.org/2007/11/27/smartfilter-reclassifies-boing-boing-as-%e2%80%9cincidental-nudity%e2%80%9d/
I work at a military facility and I have never had a problem with boingboing being blocked. The military does not have a uniform supplier for censorware so depending upon your branch and installation you will encounter different products and different levels of enforcement. Often enforcement is simply a crude method of bandwidth control (e.g. MySpace being blocked).
Personally, I use Google reader to consolidate RSS feeds (since we can't install software on government furnished equipment). It lets you see the sites you want, without resorting to anonymous proxies (the use of which could really raise questions about your activity).
I also think it is worth noting that the military, at my installation, maintains a completely separate network for patients to conduct personal business that is completely unfiltered (with its’ own dedicated bandwidth).
BoingBoing is also blocked at the Denver International airport.
The bases in the desert block everything - every blog, every personal homepage, every photo-sharing site, every social networking site, every video-sharing site, all online forums, all chat rooms, all IMs, and anything with questionable content. It has been very frustrating for us to communicate and/or share pictures/video/family news with my husband while he's gone.
When he was there last time, I updated our Flickr with new pictures of the baby and our week's activities so he could see the kids every week but this time around, we have had to resort to sending pictures one-by-one in email. It stinks.
David, that different blacklisting would only be for places running that particular version - it doesn't apply to the installed base of blacklists.