Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Goons in the IT department
Like everything else at Carey the internet is carefully controlled and monitored by his excelency the King. I'm not talking about the issue of pornography being blocked, in fact, I think it should be. However, I recently discovered that one of my favorite sites has been blocked by the new internet filter WebSense. The site landoverbaptist.org is a parody of that of other Baptist churches. Among other things it spoofs the members concerns that the roof is painted the wrong color it even offers startling commentary about how political churches have become. I urge you to make a trip to McCallisters so you can see the site, it's interesting. Just goes to show that everyone at this university, including the IT department, are goons working for a king who sees every problem as a nail. And we all thought the internet was about free expression of ideals - not at his campus.
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If you will notice, the new internet filter works on categories, not individual links handed down from Dr. King. Your sight has been filed by websense (not your friendly neighborhood IT dpt) as "tasteless." The example site websense gives for this category is sites pertaining to a unique interest (fetish) in a specific perversion (ie an obsession in pictures/manipulation of feces).
Now if you believe your site has been unjustly labeled or should not be prohibited you may contact the network administrator at jandrews@wmcarey.edu or ext. 741 and ask for it to be removed from the list of prohibited sites by special exception. Furthermore, remember the firewall being used is new and this is a testing phase. Over time the rules on the firewall can be further tweaked to reduce the number of false positives (blocked sites that shouldn't be). This is not necessarily a fun or enjoyable process, but as you noted is nonetheless necessary to block certain material both morally perverted or illicit in content.
Finally, it deserves mention that this new firewall was purchased in order to expand the available sites, not further restrict. It is also a more stable platform in order to reduce the network downtime.
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