Sites Blocked By Smartfilter, Censored in Saudi Arabia 112
I found these blocked sites by starting with a combination of URL lists and ad hoc spidering, and running as many sites as possible through the Saudi filters to catch the ones that were blocked. Some of the sites were blocked for reasons that were easy to guess -- for example, http://www.bighornbasinsfw.org/, the home page of the Big Horn Basin, Wyoming chapter of Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife, was almost certainly blocked because of the slang term "nsfw" in their URL. http://www.AgainstPornography.org and http://www.SearchingForMySpermDonorFather.org were presumably blocked because of the presence of the words "porn" and "sperm".
On the other hand, there appears to be no rational reason why the Filipino American Women's Network, the Tuscon Jazz Institute, or the Sacramento Police Activities League would have been blocked by Smartfilter, even by accident. A partial list of the blocked sites that I found is in the blog post I wrote for Citizen Lab, an Internet censorship research center at the University of Toronto.
Articles about sites that are erroneously blocked by Internet censorship software, have a storied history. The first widely read piece was the article "Keys to the Kingdom" written by Brock Meeks and Declan McCullagh in 1996, calling out Cyber Patrol for blocking EnviroLink.org and the University of Newcastle Computer Science Department, and CYBERsitter for blocking the National Organization for Women. I made a minor name for myself and the Peacefire.org site in the late 1990's by writing more pages about sites blocked by other products, including some (like X-Stop and SurfWatch) which no longer exist, and others that are still around, including Smartfilter. I was also one of six people comprising the Censorware Project, a loosely organized group of volunteers that published a few more reports.
By the early 2000's, however, it became clear that anyone whose mind was likely to be changed by information about what kinds of sites were blocked by blocking software, would have changed their mind already (or would, if they came across the research that had already been done up to that point). So the further reports on Internet blocking software errors, by me and other people, slowed to a trickle. I wrote a report in January 2002 on the latest list of sites blocked by Cyber Patrol, a product that most people today have forgotten. In 2006 I worked with the ACLU of Washington to publish a report on sites erroneously blocked by FortiGuard, a program used on computers in some libraries in central Washington, as part of the ACLU's suit to challenge the constitutionality of the program's use on public library terminals. (The Washington State Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit on the grounds that, regardless of what sites were blocked on the computers, it didn't matter because an adult library patron could request for the filter to be turned off.) In 2007 I wrote an article for Slashdot titled "From Bess to Worse" listing some sites that were blocked by an Internet filtering program called Bess (which was later bought out by Smartfilter and discontinued).
Most people's awareness of this debate, if they had heard about it at all, was limited to the perception that "breast cancer sites" and sites about "chicken breast recipes" were sometimes filtered by Internet blocking programs. Or they heard that "Beaver College" actually had to change its name to avoid being censored by web filters. As I tried to explain in a FAQ (written, according to the Wayback Machine, in 1999, but which still broadly holds true today), these examples are true, but they miss the point. These examples make it sound as if blocking software companies are doing the best job they can under the circumstances, and that the errors are unavoidable due to limitations on machine intelligence. In reality, any software algorithm that blocks the American Board of Vocational Experts, the Hopewell United Methodist Church, and the Patriot Guard Riders of Mississippi, as "pornography" (as Smartfilter currently does), is probably not the best algorithm the company could have come up with -- but there's no incentive for them to try harder, because few people will ever look that deep.
And yet, people continue to remember the "breast cancer site" examples. This sounds to me like an example of the narrative fallacy -- people remember that breast cancer sites were blocked, because there's a tidy explanation. There is no tidy explanation for most other examples of blocked sites, so the meme never spreads very far. Conveniently for the blocking companies, the blocked-site errors which make the company look most sloppy (the Kennels at Simpson Creek Farms, the St. Francis Institute of Milwaukee, etc.) are precisely the ones that, due to the narrative fallacy, most people won't remember or hear about.
One company, CYBERsitter, did manage to make a few blocking decisions in the 1990s that were egregious enough that their antics did make the news, and did finally raise some people's awareness that the controversy over private Internet filtering extended beyond "breast cancer sites". After TIME Magazine's website published an article (no longer online) that criticized CYBERsitter's blocking policies, CYBERsitter responded by blocking TIME Magazine's pathfinder.com domain. A few months earlier, CYBERsitter had blacklisted the monthly e-Zine "The Ethical Spectacle, after the Spectacle's founder, Jonathan Wallace, published an article criticizing CYBERsitter for blocking my own Peacefire.org website. And Peacefire.org had been blocked, in turn, because of a page I wrote (now very much out of date) listing some of the sites that CYBERsitter blocked, including the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and Mother Jones. (Nowadays, of course, nobody would be surprised that filtering companies block Peacefire.org, since the site publishes ample instructions on how to get around Internet blockers. But at the time, the site's first and only article was the list of sites blocked by CYBERsitter, which is why CYBERsitter received so much criticism for blocking the domain in retaliation.) CYBERsitter also threatened to have Meeks and McCullagh criminally prosecuted for writing "Keys to the Kingdom" and threatened to sue me over the page that I had made.)
The moral, it seems, is that if you want an example of a censored web site to stick in people's minds, it either has to be a forgivable error, or an insane vindictive dick move -- because in either of those cases, people will understand why it happened. The vast swaths of censored websites on the spectrum in between, the ones for which there is no rational explanation for the blocking, go ignored.
These days, though, American and Canadian "censorware" makers have also come under fire for selling censoring software to foreign governments which use them for country-wide censorship. Most of the criticism focuses, naturally, not on the kinds of sites that are accidentally blocked by the blocking software, but on the immorality of these companies enabling statewide foreign censorship in the first place. Netsweeper, Blue Coat, and McAfee have all made the claim that "Once we sell their product to them, we have no control over what they do with it" -- which, as I wrote previously in Slashdot, is nonsense, because for the product to be effective, it has to rely on updates to the blocked-site list, which are provided at regular intervals by the manufacturer. Cut off the updates, and the product will not work, at least not as well.
So the fact that McAfee has classified the Boy Scout Troop 87 of North Andover, the Pan-Iranist Party of Iran, and Reptile Conservation International as "Pornography" is (rightly) overshadowed by the fact that McAfee is selling to government censors in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the first place. However, as long as the filters are installed, these blocked sites are at least part of the problem for users in those countries, just as much as they are for students or cubicle workers in the U.S. whose network administrators happen to use Smartfilter. And, of course, I sampled only a miniscule fraction of the Web to find these examples of blocked sites, so the true number of stupid blocks affecting Saudi and UAE users is likely to be much larger. For each individual example, you might reasonably ask, "Is it really a big deal if Saudis are blocked from accessing Boy Scout Troop 87 of North Andover?" But it adds up.
Great..... (Score:4, Insightful)
.... We now have a new reason for John McAfee to post a YouTube video with scantily clad women.
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Besides him being stoned off his ass and unable to make sane decisions?
Re:Great..... (Score:5, Insightful)
What does that have to do with anything?
If some rich guy wants to go on the interwebs and say stupid things while flanked by scantily clad women, that's his right. You don't need to listen.
I'm far more worried about people making sure I can't see things because they find it offensive.
Because, I'm not concerned with what they are offended by, and I'm offended that they think it's their right to prevent me from seeing it.
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Because it could be seen as tantamount to a confession to previous crimes, possibly justifying extradition?
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A treaty only guarantees extradition under specific conditions. Countries can still voluntarily extradite on serious charges(like, say, murder).
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Or running a copyright infringing site. Apparently.
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Post 9/11 Denmark implemented a Terrorism Act in 2002 which included the ability to extradite Danish citizens from Denmark to the US for extremely serious offenses, terrorism in particular.
It has only been used once: To extradite a woman charged with being an accomplice to drug smuggling; she was dating a guy that smuggled drugs into Florida by boat. She was in the boat with him on several occasions, and yet there's no indication that she knew about the smuggling before he was arrested. An offense like this
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Doesn't it depend entirely on what he actually says???
If he dances around naked with a baby Jesus butt-plug and Elton John sunglasses shouting "Censorship is bad" and wearing a beer-bong hat and peeing on a kitten -- in what way can that be "tantamount to a confession to previous crimes"???
You seem to suggest that anything he did on the interwebs would fall into that category.
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Agreed - we should have a layer of censoring which protects us from their intolerance :P
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"I do not. I believe people, including myself, are foolish enough without alcohol” “I am not using mind altering substances. I have not used any mind altering substances since 1983. I do not even drink. I am aggressively opposed to drugs and alcohol. I do drink coffee, and recently took up smoking"
http://www.whoismcafee.com/fre... [whoismcafee.com]
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Separation of Church and State ? (Score:1)
I think McAfee might have gone too far.
The concept of "Separation of Church and State" works (somewhat) in the United States of America because USA does not forbid people to do stuffs based on some flimsy criteria (like female aren't allowed to drive, for example)
Why only a buddhist temple and a christian church are classified as "pornography"? Why not the Islamic mosques getting the same classification?
Of is McAfee trying to tell us that he has converted into Islam ?
Internet filters are a joke ... (Score:2)
They're always going to have way too many incorrect matches to be effective, and miss way too many things as well.
A bunch of years ago the filter at my company (Blue Goat, Goat Mountain, Blue Mountain, something like that) flagged a frigging Yoga site as pornography/inappropriate.
My impression of these is the people who maintain these are incompetent, clueless, and occasionally injecting some of their own biases into it.
In other words, they're terrible, useless, and ineffective ... pretty much like we've be
Re:Internet filters are a joke ... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming that anyone cares about the false positives. No company gives a shit when their developers can't get at information on a library they're using because it's on "forums." They'd much rather have people who can't do their jobs as well than face the risk of anyone "slacking off" on company time.
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I've actually had reference sites blocked by a filter because they were classified as 'hacking' sites.
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Not at our company. After some of the sales force got caught looking at porn on the job, the VP of sales was livid. She fired those involved and demanded web filters be installed.
Well one time we were doing support, and had to hit Dell's site, looking for drivers. The page said "Drivers for Dell Dimension D-XXX," where XXX could be any 3 digit number. Well the filter saw the "xxx" and assumed it was a porn site, and we were blocked. The filters went down that day.
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Congratulations in living in a world of sanity.
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Back in 2000 (when anyone still used AOL) a lot of us were appalled that with the child filter on AOL would allow access to the Republican party site, the NRA, the big booze manufacturers, the American Nazi Party, all the US military web sites, and a bunch of other far-right web sites, but blocked access to the Democratic party site, Al Gore's web site, MADD, NOAA(?), and pretty much every left-leaning news site. A lot of us cared about the false positives then, and access through the child filter went up
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Back in 2000 (when anyone still used AOL) a lot of us were appalled that with the child filter on AOL would allow access to the Republican party site, the NRA, the big booze manufacturers, the American Nazi Party, all the US military web sites, and a bunch of other far-right web sites, but blocked access to the Democratic party site, Al Gore's web site, MADD, NOAA(?), and pretty much every left-leaning news site. A lot of us cared about the false positives then, and access through the child filter went up and down depending on the volume of complaints until the election was over.
NOAA -- Blocked due to climate change propaganda.
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I'm not sure you understand what "propaganda" means.
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I can see how that could sound confusing. I meant that to mean that the propaganda wing of the republican party would want to block organizations that are doing real research like NOAA.
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We should have blocked MADD decades ago. They're so off base now that their founder is their harshest critic. They're a temperance union.
They always were. The concept of turning innocent people into criminals because they have been caught not being drunk, but had some level of ethanol in their bloodstream serves no other purpose than to intimidate normal people.
In the meantime the real drunks who are a problem are driving around completely shitfaced, without licenses, and occasionally kill other people, just like they did before. We have several every year, and dragging every person who drives and blows a .08 out of their car and shooting
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Furthermore, deaths by drunk drivers have decreased quite significantly since MADD started.
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Post hoc. Anyway, I think there is correlation there due to a change in attitudes wrought by MADD, but that doesn't mean MADD gets a perpetual pass for all their activities.
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Re:Internet filters are a joke ... Canon = Weapon (Score:2)
Yup, an internet filter once blocked me when I was trying to find a manual for a Canon check scanner. The banned category was "weapons!" Smart filters aren't.
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A bunch of years ago the filter at my company (Blue Goat, Goat Mountain, Blue Mountain, something like that) flagged a frigging Yoga site as pornography/inappropriate.
I have two domains of my personal name, each with a place holder "Under Contruction" home page. My company blocks one as "Pornography/Inapropriate" and the other one as "Gambling". I've owned each for more than a decade and they've always been blank.
So I think they make up these ratings.
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They're using some kind of shitty statistical classifier, probably programmed by people who don't know what they're doing. Porn sites were probably the majority of sites which used your placeholder at some point, etc.
The thing with blockers like this is that there isn't really a whole lot of market pressure to make them good. The peons being blocked generally don't have a say, and the management doesn't really give a shit about over-blocking them either. Also, as a distant second, it's not a sexy enough fie
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You have obviously not heard of Lululemon.
This sort of software ought to be abolished (Score:3)
Better allow an occasional exposure of children to pornography — which, obviously, happens anyway — than arm oppressors world-wide with means to block people in this manner.
No, I don't think, making such programs should be banned. But we, Americans, ought to stop buying it for our homes and libraries...
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I think you're reaching. It's not like this kind of software is hard to make. A simple relational database storing classifications, a bit of code to do DNS lookups to make sure people don't just enter IP addresses, and a means of entering the data, and an IP filter packet inspection at any juncture on the way to servers. You could knock out a simple version in a week or two.
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And then spend the next 10 years accurately classifying the rest of the internet.
Jason.
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Yes, but, if you run a country you can do that pretty easily. Just make [local government owned ISP] forward you every DNS request, have some low-paid overzealous "moral assesor" check it out if it hasn't been yet, and ban away.
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1 person to categorize each domain's content? The parent post was indicating the ludicracy of exactly this.
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I... never said 1? Come on, you're (hypothetically) run Saudi fucking Arabia, they censor every book that comes through their borders too. They have many people on hand who fit this job title pretty well.
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As sibling post said...
KSA has this little army of sorts known loosely as the "morality police" (forgot their real name, too lazy to hunt it down). They have lackeys on nearly every street corner or so of nearly every village. These chumps spend their time busily looking for someone who forgets to stop and show respect during the 5x-daily prayers, lets a curse-word slip, wears a Chador with the hemline a bit too high, looks a little too long at a girl, etc.
I'm pretty sure the king could spare a couple thous
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And then spend the next 10 years inaccurately classifying the rest of the internet.
FTFY.
Harry Tuttle, why hast thou forsaken us? (Score:2)
inaccurately classifying The Internet
sheeeeeeit I could do that job in half the time and for half as much.
We've got this smart boy, Sam Lowry, down in information retrieval that could do it tout suite -- if he could bother to stop watching American westerns on department time.
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The problem is that people who have a strong desire to censor the internet have no idea how it works, and aren't willing to acknowledge that just because they don't want to see it the rest of us are willing to be censored.
You don't want to see smut, or have your children seem smut -- fine, that's your choice and up to you to enforce it and pay for it.
But making it so the rest of
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The problem is that people who have a strong desire to censor the internet have no idea how it works, and aren't willing to acknowledge that just because they don't want to see it the rest of us are willing to be censored.
...and for once, I find myself grateful for incompetence. Here's hoping it remains that way until we can remove such intent from the world.
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...and for once, I find myself grateful for incompetence. Here's hoping it remains that way until we can remove such intent from the world.
The desire to censor and to control the sexuality of others', is innate. Augustus Caesar was such a prude. We cannot wipe the intent from the world, but we can marginalize the wingnuts with a philosophy of do no harm.
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Your choice to not see things doesn't trump my right to see what I find acceptable.
It does if I'm the government and Allah has given the Most Holy and Sacred Duty of ensuring the Purity and Righteousness of the people.
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Your choice to not see things doesn't trump my right to see what I find acceptable.
It does if I'm the government and Allah has given the Most Holy and Sacred Duty of ensuring the Purity and Righteousness of the people.
Or if I own the computers and network you are using to look.
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the US govt owns the internet. the only way to use it is to assume it's a military installation and you have guest access. Are you saying that the US GOVT should decide what's acceptable? how would this apply to other countries? It's irrelevant to me because I don't acknowledge any entity that claims ownership over me.
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The impulse appears to be this: People who's stated values conflict with their what they actually wanted to do attempt control their universe so that they will never come in contact with the chance to do whatever it is they say is bad.
For example, a standard right-wing argument against any kind of sexual permissiveness is that it will lead to either pedophilia or beastiality (or both). As Bill Maher argued recently, what they're really saying is that the only reason they don't bang kids or animals is that t
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And Britons should think twice before letting the Government mandate it for every single person in the country.
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We did. The government ignored us. What are we going to do about it? None of the major parties have came out in open opposition to the filter, they just support it to varying degrees, and Cameron is using the sneaky political trick of using threats of a law to force 'voluntary' filtering so there isn't even going to be a real debate in parliament.
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You mean it's not just those Craazy Mooslims that want to censor the internet? Oh well, guess that would have interfered with the storyline...
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I sympathize with your comment about libraries, though the libraries that I have seen only use filtering software on workstations for children.
I disagree with your comment about homes. If you desire freedom, that includes the right of people to filter their own internet connection. That is even true if it is a parent who wishes to filter content that their children may see. (Parents bear a great deal of responsibility when it comes to raising children and will face many of the consequences when things go
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"Better allow an occasional exposure of children to pornography"
It's not safe to say that these days. People have lost their jobs for saying things like that.
Sigh... (Score:2)
Isn't it wonderful that Western companies get to profit from the abuses of liberties in other countries. Well, as long as shareholders make money, heck why not allow companies to harvest human flesh in third world countries. After all, money is the only thing that matters.
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This is hardly a new phenomenon: The prominent US corporations (such as IBM and Coca-Cola) who traded with the Germans in the late 1930's and early 1940's should give you an idea of where corporate America's loyalties truly lie.
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Pornographic:
"obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, especially those having little or no artistic merit."
Obscene:
"1. offensive to morality or decency; indecent; depraved: obscene language."
I suppose I could see some government official in some Islamic country incorrectly defining a website promoting Western religion as 'pornographic', based on the above.
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Hint: Islam (which is what the folks in KSA practice) doesn't read The Bible as you may know it.
They do have supplementary books to the Q'uran, such as the Tawrat (a radically copy of the Hebrew Torah), and the Injil (a highly abbreviated and bastardized version of the New Testament Gospels) - but they're not required reading, and are usually only used by Islamic scholars or the more liberal Muslims.
So no, don't expect to see, say, Song of Solomon in their scriptures.
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Have you read the bible? Lots of fucking, gang-bangs, rape, etc. It makes 50 shades of grey seem tame. And, hey, it convinced my girlfriend to give anal sex a try. (she likes it more than I do, for the record).
Which? The Bible or 50 shades?
(And, if the Bible, chapter & verse?)
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Chapter and verse - quick, I am in a hurry.
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Ezekiel 23. Verse 20 gets the most attention, but read the whole thing to get the whole sex-and-violence story. Caution: Involves sexual mutilation.
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Thanks, but not working. Back door still inaccessible.
Obligatory (Score:2)
This post must be made by a geek in his mum's basement, whose only travel out of the USA was a trip to Winnipeg to meet a girl he met on ICQ.
Even John thinks its shit. (Score:2)
McAffee products such as antivirus and especially smartfilter, is and pretty much always has been useless.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/john-... [ibtimes.co.uk]
All the evidence seems to suggest that Smartfilter's classification ratings are controlled by someone with a determined but very fucked-up agenda.
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McAffee products such as antivirus and especially smartfilter, is and pretty much always has been useless.
Worse than useless - default installs of McAffee products on box-store computer has long been held to be malware by many in the IT community, present company included.
"If you believe this site should not be blocked.." (Score:2)
Nothing? Good things? Bad things? Very bad things?
.
keyword women (Score:2)
National Organization for Women and Filipino American Women's Network probably got blocked for having the word Women. Because we all know there are no women in Saudi Arabia (outside the house).
UAE and Saudi slavery (Score:1)
many middle eastern countries import a lot of workers form the Philippines and India. They take their passports once they arrive, pop them in a housing facility and bus them to work and back. They never make enough to get ahead of the debt they incurred for this wonderful opportunity, and cannot leave without their passport- which they will not get back until their debt is paid.
communication to places like Amnesty International or women's help groups is prevented to help keep the slaves from revolting.
http: [cnn.com]
A mistake, even if there's irony (Score:2)
On the other hand I could use this opportunity to show an example of how internet censorship could easily be abused:
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You don't even need the hacking step. Say you've got a site that threatens to grow in popularity and upset the status quo. In this scenario, you are the one in power of the nation's web filter and thus have incentive to keep the status quo in place. You block the site for being "obscene" or some other generic term. A portion of the population will complain, of course, but most will just ignore it as it doesn't directly impact them at that moment. Then you just wait for the movement to splinter into new
I already know the thoughts (Score:1)
Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts
um.. I already know. Filters are a terrible terrible idea for adults that get worse the larger the scale you try to apply them to. A porn filter for kids is one thing. Something like this happens as a responsible parent you whitelist it and move on. But for a COUNTRY? There's no way it was ever going to work. The entire history of web filters is told in story after story of false positives.
Not just McAfee software... (Score:2)
We have checkpoint monitoring/filtering software here at work, and a lot of those sites are being blocked as 'Sex' as well. Not every one of them but enough of them. Even the screenshot site is blocked, possibly because it has the name of the original site in the link URL.
Very interesting, is there a common database being referenced here?
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I just checked the first 7 examples and none are blocked at work for me - and they do block a lot of stuff.
On the other hand, a lot of times I search for the text of an error message and some of the most hopeful looking links are blocked as "gaming".
I wonder how many actually "clicked here" (Score:1)
If you believe the requested page should not be blocked please click here
... click ...
Who is it?
The Saudi Secret Police.
I wonder how many actually "clicked here" (Score:1)
If you believe the requested page should not be blocked please click here
... click ... ... knock kock ...
Who is it?
The Saudi Secret Police.
I can read this now. (Score:2)
I tried to read it at work earlier, but our filter blocked the article.
You can mod that funny if you want, but it's true.
Is it bad that... (Score:1)
... I got as far as "Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton", remembered the absolutely inane and laughably incorrect drivel he wrote regarding the protections of the Fifth Amendment, and clicked "Close Tab"?
(Yes, I know, I'm back posting. I only came back to post that and ask that we be warned next time there's a Haselton post so we know it should be skipped.)
Where are the lawsuits (Score:1)
Well, SmartFilter IS on to something (Score:2)