N2H2 Drops Plans to Sell Student Web-Browsing Information 62
ilsa writes "And so it turns out that members of the Slashdot community weren't the only folks bothered by Bess collecting and selling information. Rejoice Oh Protesting Students, and read this story. Bess will still filter the 'net in school (albeit badly from all accounts), but the company will no longer sell information about what sites you visit. The decision was billed as a "mutual agreement."" See also the FOIA request filed by EPIC for information about the DOD's involvement with N2H2. Here's our previous story on the subject.
A FOIA to the school district, success! (Score:1)
It is available at http://www.ispep.cx/files/ccsd/bess/
I encourage you to visit that website, because this post does not link to the actual references (which are VERY important)
--
BESS filter
at the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, NV.
Ben Efros (Ben@Efros.com)
2:30AM February 1, 2001. Last updated 2:57PM Feb 20, 2001.
What is BESS?
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics at CCSD
Should Artistic nudity be blocked?
My Efforts to Fix the Problem
CCSD Blocked Categories List
Advertisers get Privileges
Blocked Sites
What Parents need to know
Bypassing BESS
More Information
What is BESS?
The BESS filter at the Clark County School District is a software program (known as censorware) used to filter Internet usage for the entire district, limiting pornographic content, controversial subjects, information on drugs, and much more. Unfortunately the BESS filter blocks an incredible amount of educational and useful content also, including controversial subjects, information on drugs, and information on illegal acts, such as rape and how to defend yourself from it. The same goes for research on a number of other subjects.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Many parents feel that Internet filtering by programs such as BESS really does work effectively. But, by blocking information from reaching students by means of an automated filter may actually cause more harm than good. Teachers have forgotten their duty to supervise students while they use the Internet. Many students often try to "press the limits" of the filter and try to gain access to topics that are normally filtered, such as pornography. One student who attends a school district other than CCSD has told me that "students now go into the library and try to access pornographic sites seeing how many are not blocked. The librarians have relaxed a bit now and don't actively supervise students, since they believe the filter stops access to such sites. Today, more students access pornographic sites from school than before BESS was installed, just because they want to prove that they can. It is funny how before we had BESS, nobody ever dared to go to a pornographic site."
The same thing happens here in Clark County. Not only do students try to access pornographic and adult content knowing that it is against the "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP), but they also break that same AUP by accessing content such as jokes, online video games, online clothing stores, etc. One incident regarding the blocked category of Lingerie now comes to mind... A few weeks back I was in class with two girls who were looking at clothing that they liked, online. They did not know that they were accessing a site that BESS should have blocked, because it didn't do its job.
An incredible number of educational sites are blocked by BESS for a varierty of reasons. N2H2, the creators of BESS, has publicly stated "our staff of 100+ Human Web Reviewers personally examines every site we categorize." Yet, still students can access pornographic sites through BESS and are then denied access to very educational sites. This is no surprise considering that more than 100 pages are added to the Internet every second, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. A team of 500 people reviewing websites would have trouble keeping up, even if they worked 24-hour shifts just adding sites. But the Internet is constantly changing, pages are changed all the time. With well over 15 million web pages blocked by N2H2, a staff of one hundred employees, reviewing 300 pages a day, would take more than a year to make sure their blocked sites are blocked appropriately. Can they really be reviewing each and every page? They have hired a staff of one hundred people (many who work only part time) to do the jobs that even a team of 500 people would have trouble keeping up with.
N2H2's CEO, Peter Nickerson, testified before a United States house Subcommittee saying that N2H2 does not block a web site unless it was reviewed by staff. But you still must wonder how 100 employees can categorize so many millions of web pages while still being able to ensure accuracy. Answer: they don't. BESS has proven, time and time again that they do not approve each and every page. Peacefire member Bennett Haselton wrote a small report summarizing a quick test of BESS (and other filter's) accuracies. In his report, he mentions specific sites blocked by BESS (at the time, N2H2 has since done their "damage control" as predicted by Bennett).
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics in the Clark County School District:
Category Reason it should not be blocked
Weapons You cannot learn the advancements in weapon technologies over the past few thousand years without seeing diagrams of how weapons work. Weapons have been around for thousands of years, why would we only now stop the ability to learn about them?
Alcohol A student in Health class was assigned to write a paper on substances that can physically damage your body. This student cannot find out what the common alcohol-related causes of death are and from what type of drinks, because they are blocked by BESS.
Violence Are you telling me that I should not be allowed to see a person's death? Well, just last night I saw an Isreali soldier thrown out of a police station window and murdered by a mob on CBS. I've also seen a boy shot up in his own father's arms. Seeing those video clips on TV touched me, they helped me to feel sorrow and compassion. Is BESS trying to raise us students to be like machines without emotion? Sadly, you cannot form an opinion on the problems of violence without actually seeing it.
Chat What if a student wishes to discuss, in real-time, what is happening in foreign countries with the people living there? The ability to communicate with foreign students can be a very educational experience.
Free Mail By blocking access to email services, students are denied a means of communication with the rest of the world. How often do you see email blocked in business offices?
Gambling I cannot see why a computer program that emulates a slot machine is banned from my site... instead, I have to run down to the local 7-11 store and see the real-thing. Funny how the government does not ban minors from looking at slot machines in the physical world, yet it is banned in the virtual.
Profanity I was just watching PBS and heard the word "nigger." And I just read that book Grapes of Wrath and the guy said "These goddamned Okies are thieves." There are situations that profanity is used to document history and the mood of society, with all of its emotions, that people lived in at the time.
Message Boards Many message boards contain information about what problems or issues other people have faced and also responses and ideas of how to fix them. The learning benefits from message boards are incredible.
Tasteless / Gross If I am trying to learn the common ways ancient civilizations would sometimes "mutilate" their dead or learn how the ancient Egyptians would remove organs from a body before mummifying it, I cannot because BESS doesn't think my stomach can handle it. I think I can decide for myself and do not need someone else to tell me what I cannot learn about.
Murder / Suicide It is an issue many teens have thought about. Every year students in the Clark County school district commit suicide. We cannot just hide this issue by sweeping it under the carpet, students need to be able to learn about it.
School Cheating A student can learn about views which other students have on topics, such as their theories to why historical events happen. You can only gain such knowledge of what other people believe, by reading their works which may sometimes be term papers or essays
Hate / Discrimination You cannot teach students about the wrongs of discrimination without actually showing both sides. By teaching only one side of the story, students will not solidify their understanding of such issues. Discrimination and acts of hate are vital parts of history. If we cannot learn from society's mistakes in the past, how do we prevent them in the future?
Jokes Laughing is a proven way to relax a person. Relaxation at school is a proven way to learn. Learning is a proven way to get good grades. Getting good grades is a good way to secure a good job, impress parents, and satisfy the Dept. of Education.
Free Web Pages Free web hosts provide a place for information to be shared, freely, without cost to the author. There is an incredible amount of research and educational information on Geocities, Homestead, and many other free website hosts. What if an author cannot afford to buy "LearningMath.com" but still feels the information is important enough for others to read so [s]he posts it to Geocities? Is it right to deny students the ability to learn, just because the author cannot afford another way of getting their message out?
Illegal Sure, bomb making information is available on the Internet, but it isn't something that needs to be feared... instead parents should fear the idea that they have chemicals under their kitchen sinks that if consumed can kill a person and if mixed wrongly with other chemicals can kill a whole houseful of people by releasing deadly gasses. If we are to ban learning about explosives, then why don't we require that all kitchen cabinets contain locks on them to prevent unauthorized access to chemicals? Why don't we require people to be 18 years old to buy household cleaners at the local supermarket, too?
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
It has been agreed upon that blocking pornography and adult content is fine, but the question always comes up about artistic nudity. I will not try to persuade any readers of this article with my opinion... instead I would like you to form your own conclusion.
Artistic nudity is defined by N2H2, the creators of BESS, as "images of bare or visible genitalia, pubic hair, buttocks, female breasts, etc.
National Geographic routinely publishes photographs from different eras in human history and even hires photographers to seek out the way that certain people live throughout the world. Some natives in the rainforests do not wear clothing. Such photographs usually contain nudity and are then blocked. Time Magazine has also published photographs which contain female breasts and buttocks. (Although I cannot back this up, I bet that they have also published pictures containing visible genitalia and pubic hair. Email me if you know what issues contain such.) If I recall correctly, I have seen photographs of babies where their genitals are showing in magazines available at school. Open up an Encyclopedia Britannica and you will find an incredible amount of nudity while researching artwork from a few hundred years ago, nudity obviously isn't something new.
Why do schools often subscribe to such magazines? Probably because of the educational value contained within them. Why aren't such "dangerous" magazines banned from school, if nudity is so incredibly bad?
In my Pre-calculus / Trigonometry class we have a poster with a series of paintings on it. One of these paintings contains a man and woman, both fully naked!!! Funny how people in class never even pay attention to it, except as being a form of art. It isn't like us students stroll into class and just stare at the artwork all class period because it has nudity.
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
My efforts to fix the problem of filtering within the School District
After seeing that so much information valuable to my education has been blocked by BESS, I wanted to figure out how to fix the problem. I decided to start by sending the school district a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Freedom of Information Act entitles citizens of the United States to request government documents from any government agency. In this case, I requested three things from CCSD on November 10th, 2000 :
All documentation regarding the implementation of the Bess web proxy system provided to CCSD by N2H2.
All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter.
Documentation regarding the effectiveness of Bess at blocking Internet sites deemed inappropriate for minors and sites that have been mis-categorized by Bess.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
I waited one month for a response before writing another letter to check on the status of my request on December 10th, as CCSD had not replied or notified me of any delays in processing such a request. (Notification of a delay is required by the FOIA)
My follow-up letter requested the information below:
What is the status on my request? Why has CCSD not responded?
The Freedom of Information Act requires response within a twenty-day period. Why have I not been contacted by CCSD yet?
Who currently is assigned to handle my request? How may I contact that person?
Is the information I requested being destroyed in any way? This could mean data deletion, removal of tape archives, or the simple process of removing logs from the servers.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
CCSD finally responds!
A few days after the draft and mailing of my second letter, I received my first response from CCSD dated December 12th, 2000. As expected, CCSD did not work very hard to satisfy my request for information. Their their responses are below:
In response to my request for "All documentation regarding the implementation of the BESS web proxy system at CCSD by N2H2" they sent me a little marketing brochure [ front | back ] which N2H2 uses to try to sell it's service. Also they sent me a copy of the "Internet Filtering Procedures" [ page 2 | page 3 ] that provides a list of which categories are blocked by BESS. And finally, the third document they included with their mailing was a print-out of an email from Dan Wray (wray@ccsd.net) to Dr. Karlene R. Lee which was actually written by N2H2 and available online or on this website.
In response to my second question, "All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter," they asked for me to be more specific on which information from the access logs I am requesting.
In response to question three, about the effectiveness and mis-categorization of websites by BESS, it says that information on "blocking inappropriate Internet sites has been attached." The brochure and filtering categories documents satisfy the request. But, what about my question regarding sites that are mis-categorized? Well you could say that N2H2's "5 Step Review Process" never lets that happen, since they have over one hundred people working to review content and categorize it. So why do we still have so many sites being blocked that are educational!?
CCSD finally responds! (again)
I was sent via second letter, this time via certified mail, which was a response to my second letter (dated Dec 10th) around December 23rd (I can't remember the date). This response was certified to help legally cover CCSD's butt in case I chose to take legal action, because of their slow response times. They were really pushing the 20 day limit that the FOIA gives for an initial response time.
[ Click here to see the certified letter ]
In the meantime...
While I was preparing an updated FOIA request to gain access to the log files, I discovered that N2H2 has been selling those log files to companies for profit... while I can't even get my hands on them. On January 26, 2001 the Wall Street Journal broke this news [ mirror of article ] about N2H2. A discussion on Slashdot (which CCSD's BESS blocks access to) quickly erupted about the selling of such information and privacy concerns. One particular quote that hits on a few of the major points is shown below:
drDugan (jmd2120@eMail.com) wrote:
"I think this is pretty scary... just from the privacy implications alone. Lets summarize the situation:
The government requires kids to go to school.
Schools require kids to use the Internet.
Government requires special software in schools to monitor the actions of people there while online.
Sellers of the software can do whatever they want with the data, without any oversight.
The people being monitored (the school kids) have no say or recourse to affect the situation."
The bullet saying that the government requires filtering software in schools is referring to the "E-rate" program setup to give funding to help pay for Internet access in schools. Only schools under this program are required to filter.
After reading and taking part in the discussion myself, I decided to finalize writing my new FOIA request and get it into the mail as well as put this website up online.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
The idea that N2H2 is collecting information, about me, while I am at school without my consent and then turning around and selling it to third parties is quite disturbing. In addition to my privacy being violated, N2H2 is charging CCSD to use its filtering service. So N2H2 is getting paid to collect data which is then sold to marketers to make even more profit. And of course, they have a captive market since most schools want to be part of the "E-Rate" program funded by the government, which means they must have filtering of some kind installed. I wonder if CCSD knew that this information was being collected and then sold to third parties... after all they cite confidentiality as the reason which they cannot just provide me full access to the logs (see their response to my first FOIA request) yet they allow N2H2 to possess it.
CCSD offers 5 CDs for a total of $383.14
Update: Sunday Feb. 18, 2001
Last Friday I received a response to my previous letter requesting log files once again. In CCSD's response they say that "N2H2 does not collect information from CCSD." But then, later on in the letter they state that "N2H2 remotely operates and administers the proxy servers and maintains 13 days of logs." So if they do not collect information from CCSD, how then do they maintain 13 days of log files about CCSD users?
[ Click here to see the letter from CCSD ]
Later they quote Clark County School District's Regulation 1211 which says that I must pay CCSD for their time / resources they use to get the information to me. They say that it would take 8 hours to retrieve and burn 5 CDs. I must seriously question how stupid an employee must be if it takes 8 hours to burn 5 CDs. Their estimated cost of time is $47.58 per hour for a cost of $380. Their cost of CDs is $0.50 each, which is what I told them was the current retail cost. (If I had not stated previously that each CD should cost $0.50, I wonder if they would have charged me $1 per CD...)
My grand total for 8 hours of time and 5 CDs came out to: $383.14
In my first letter I stated that "I also request a waiver of all fees for this request." Followed by a paragraph stating the reasons why my request must be honored. Yet they still reply back to me, as if they have never read my original letter or the Freedom of Information Act. This Ms. Lee person writes letters with her signature stating that she is a doctor... if indeed she is a doctor, how can she be so stupid as to think that I do not know the process of retrieving information from her office. Is it that easy that a person with half a brain can be considered a doctor in today's society?
In response, I have written a letter to be mailed in this next week. With this letter I have included a money order for $2.50 to cover the cost of CDs and I have stated once again that I am exempt from paying for the time it takes to search and retrieve information. The Freedom of Information Act states that:
"Documents shall be furnished without any charge or at a charge reduced below the fees established under clause (ii) if disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester."
and
"Fees shall be limited to reasonable standard charges for document duplication when records are not sought for commercial use and the request is made by an educational or noncommercial scientific institution, whose purpose is scholarly or scientific research; or a representative of the news media."
I fall under both of the above sections and am therefore not required to pay for any expense CCSD encounters while retrieving the information I requested. Ohh, but what about CCSD Regulation 1211? Well, that doesn't apply for two reasons, which I stated in the letter:
Federal law overrides any local regulations
Section III of CCSD Regulation 1211 states: "No fee shall be charged for providing a copy of a public record if a specific law or regulation requires the copy to be provided without charge."
So how can they charge me that $380.64 for the cost of paying one CCSD employee to sit 8 hours at a CD burner to create only 5 CDs? They can't. Why would CCSD expect me to pay a cost so large? Simple answer: they didn't. They probably wanted to scare me away from actually making the request, again.
[ Click here to see the new FOIA letter to CCSD ]
CCSD Blocked Categories List
ADULT
PORN
ALCOHOL *
FREEMAIL *
GROSS *
MBB *
SCHOOLCHEAT *
WEAPONS *
PERSONALS
DISCRIM *
SEX
CHAT *
FREEPAGES * LANGUAGE *
NUDITY *
SUICIDE / MURDER *
AUCTION
SWIMSUIT
ILLEGAL *
VIOLENCE *
DRUGS *
GAMBLING *
LINGERIE
PERSONALINFO
TOBACCO *
JOKES *
* Listed above as a category which should not be filtered
Advertisers don't get filtered
BESS filter does an interesting thing that most filters do not. BESS adds a little search box and links to advertisers at the bottom of each page that is requested. These advertisements are certainly questionable considering that we the students are being forced to see them by the schools every time we have a project that requires Internet access from the school. So now the school district is forcing students to watch advertising on EVERY page they go to.
N2H2's business practices are questionable when they do not block access to the websites of sponsors and advertisers but when they do block access to similar sites. For example, I took the very first search result on google.com when searching for "penis" and compared it with the Encarta encyclopedia web page for "penis." Students must research the human body in an anatomy science course. Not surprisingly, both pages contain a diagram of the penis (or a link to it) and both describe the anatomy similarly. BESS blocks the non-advertiser's page (Anatomy of the Penis) which is quite educational, but the filter still allows you to access Encarta's page (Reproductive System). N2H2 is basically giving advertiser control over what students have access to and where they can find information by blocking sites and allowing their advertising instead.
What kind of advertising are they doing? BESS has banner advertisements for "Online Credit Reports." Funny how even with the "Personal Information" category being blocked by BESS, we can still go to their advertiser (Consumer Info) that "Collects personal information."
Blocked Sites
I will add new sites to this list after CCSD sends me a couple CDs of log files.
Textfiles.com - Contains text files collected from the 70s, 80s, and 90s which document the era of early computer networks and modem-based BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems)
@Stake - Security News Network - Reports news on computer security related events. This site does not promote crime in any way, instead it reports with a unique perspective on issues that matter to the online community, including privacy, online rights, security breeches, and more. @Stake is a professional company that conducts research on computer security and is definitely a safe site for school children even though it isn't very interesting. (Feb 5, 2001: This site may now be unblocked - N2H2 states that it never was blocked)
Devil Worship - An interesting read and definitely not harmful in anyway.
Teendate.de - A teen match-making site in German. Interestingly the English version of this site is not blocked.
Fire Damage - A very obvious educational site about four types of fire-related damage.
Virtual Prostitution Museum - Documents history of prostitution in the western United States. Does not advocate prostitution, instead it informs the reader of its history..
Classinfo - The site of a teacher at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas. Can't even access the page from at the school.
What Parents need to know
Often views as a parent regarding the Internet define what is good/bad and what is okay to access or not. But your child's views may differ from yours in many areas, including the idea of censorship itself. This is normal. As a parent, please remember that for a child to learn about the world around him/her, [s]he needs to be able to communicate with that world. Cutting off their best communications medium (the Internet) deprives the child of a potentially great education.
Freedom of expression, one of the basic rights of citizens here in the United States, is critical to the survival of this country. You may think it is okay to block websites that describe illegal acts, weapons, online chatting, etc, but there are more benefits to allowing your son/daughter to learn than to just deny access to information. When you prohibit online chatting and email, you are denying your child the right to communicate with others... it is as if you are forcing your child to go to school without being able to speak to others (or even the teacher). Online communications are quite similar to normal communications in a face to face meeting.
I know many close-minded parents are going to disagree with me about allowing students access to information which may document how illegal acts are performed. N2H2 says that learning about computer hacking and security is illegal and should be filtered. Computer security sites that discuss how crackers (commonly known as hackers) penetrate computer systems ranging from the Department of Defense to your local credit union are blocked by filters such as BESS. You may think "Great! Now my kid cannot become an evil criminal!" but it isn't that simple. These sites often discuss how to prevent such malicious actions too. I am a computer programmer and for my job I need to know how to create programs that are safe for public use and impenetrable by malicious users when in production environments. I cannot explain how useful such sites are to the development of protections, whether it be from buffer overflows, race conditions, symbolic link issues, print string vulnerabilities, or a number of other common computer security issues. (Just for the record, I am paid as a working student well over seven times what minimum wage is doing what I do, so it isn't like I do not know what I am talking about on this issue.) The importance of sites that are classified as "illegal" is more valuable than you may believe to a person's education.
Parents must realize that depriving their children of their ability to determine for them self what is appropriate can endanger a child even more than exposing a child to pornographic material. If your child cannot learn to see the line between appropriate and inappropriate while growing up in your home with your supervision, what happens when he/she moves out into the "real world" and no longer has your supervision and strict regulation of his/her life? If you son/daughter does not realize the harmful effects of drugs on their body now, what will stop them from overdosing as soon as they are exposed to it in the "real world" ? My point is that you need to guide your children in being able to make decisions for themselves, but not "protect" them from finding out truthful information about drugs or other controversial topics.
The Justice Abraham Fortas of the US Supreme Court once stated that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Your son or daughter still possesses the rights to learn what is outside of the approved curriculum of schools. Please do not limit their education and ultimately hurt their ability to survive in the open job market after their graduation from high school. Do what is truly best for your son or daughter.
Many parents think that if an Internet filter is installed, then their child will be blocked from accessing content such as pornography. Well, most likely you cannot access www.playboy.com, but that doesn't mean all sites containing nudity and pornography are blocked. Finding nudity, hardcore photographs, or adult sex stories is not difficult even with the BESS filter active. Anyone seeking such content will be able to find it from within any school using the BESS filter.
Do not rely on a filter to protect your child. BESS is not your child's babysitter! You are your child's babysitter. You are there to shield, protect, and guide your offspring in an acceptable manner, not a [capitalist] company and certainly not a computer program. The government's job is not to make sure your child grows up and learns the way you want him/her to learn... that is your job. Supporting laws which give government more control over what information is accessible to your child is not the way to go, instead teaching morality and how to make righteous decisions is the best way.
[ OUT OF POST SPACE, visit the site!!! ]
Taking advantage of kids.. (Score:1)
Josh Hinman
Any way to get past Bess? - Maybe this will work. (Score:1)
Anyways, the technique is to scan all of RAM (not necessary to hit the swap file, unless your machine is REAL ram-deprived)(note: in Whine-Doze, this must be doone at the lowest level of access possible, as a "trusted" part of the OS - could be maybe a device driver? or maybe a DLL? Not sure) and look for the word, say, "SEXFARBLE". If your match is only on the first three letters but not the whole word, try replacing one of the letters with a "z". See if the machine runs, still - with a small word like "sex", it's possible that it will show up as an instruction, not data, so be prepared to have a BSOD
A way to avoid BSODs would be to look *near* the word sex, and use your eyes and brain to infer if that area looks like data, or code... it shouldn't be that hard to guess.
Anyways, once the letter has been changed, see if you can get to a biology web site whose only reason for blocking was that "naughty" word. If so, congrats, you've just defeated the program. If not, well, keep looking.
It may be that they keep the text in a plaintext file, but that's unlikely. It may also be, if they are that paranoid, that the "naughty word list" is stored encrypted in ram, in which case you'd need to violate the DMCA and hack the software.
Anyways, if you're serious about this, it may be worth a try.
Re:No it won't... BESS is not on the workstation (Score:1)
Methinks that, perhaps, the original comment may not have been entirely truthful? Could it be just a student who wants us to find a way around the censorware, so he can drool over naughty pics? That's sad, but I'd guess likely here.
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
you could bypass bess by opening the page in frontpage (with a right click) when the bess block ( ih8 that stupid retriver!) page is displayed
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
Here's the code if anyone wants to try it out...
Note that it requires the LWP module, which you can get from your friendly neighborhood CPAN archive (http://www.cpan.org)
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use LWP::UserAgent;
use CGI qw/:standard/;
$url = param('url');
print header();
if (defined($url)) {
if (substr ($url,0,7) eq "http://") {
$site = substr param('url'),7;
@spliturl = split (/(\/)/, $site);
$server = $spliturl[0];
} else {
@spliturl = split (/(\/)/, $url);
$server = $spliturl[0];
}
print "<base href=\"http://$server\/\">";
my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
my $request = new HTTP::Request 'GET', "$url";
$res = $ua->request($request);
print $res->content if $res->is_success;
} else {
print "<form method=GET action=\"$0\">\n";
print "Enter a URL: <input type=text name=url size=100>\n";
print "</body>\n</html>\n";
}
exit;
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
_ _ _
I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.
Re:I don't see the problem here (Score:1)
the ISP to sell the same information that N2H2
is? It is quite common for large ISP's to
sell browsing statistics.
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
Problem is that I had to use some social engineering with the network administrator to disable the security on a computer --- damnedable fortress program. I'm a programmer, dammit, not a h4x0r.
Dare I? (Score:1)
Bess, the N2H2 dog: "ALL YOUR INFORMATION BROWSING ARE BELONG TO US!"
Man, what a way to start my day. I'll have nightmares tonight.
Bess == Bad Thing (Score:1)
Moderators? (Score:1)
Wrong link. (Score:1)
Here, I'll post the correct one:
http://www.peacefire.org/error-rates/ [peacefire.org]
kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
Any relation with R2D2? (Score:1)
BS! "N2H2 executives had no official position ..." (Score:1)
That is BULL SHIT! N2H2's CEO, Peter Nickerson, testified before Congress recommending that legislation be passed to require filtering in public schools.
Peacefire's Bennet Haselton wrote a great report about BESS (which links to the testimony) here: http://www.peacefire.org/amnesty-intercepted/ [peacefire.org].
I host this (Score:1)
It is definately worth a read, especially the idea of being able to bypass BESS by GOING straight through it with tunnelling.
x-empt
Re:N2H2 filter violates GPL (Score:1)
I do not believe it is squid, unless it has been heavily modified.
I should be getting raw accesslogs from an N2H2 server (5 CDs of them) and they will be posted online (hopefully). If the logs look very close to squid, then we might just need to go fishing
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
Do a search on akamaitech.
Copy the URL of the first search result and change the last part to your website that you want to visit.
viola, you've bypassed Bess!
Reminder: Include the trailing slash on domain-only sites.
Re:Bess is not *nearly* as dumb as that... (Score:1)
I think that there is a structural or political incentive for local administrators to overfilter in either the licensing or administration of Bess. I don't know what it is, and I don't care enough to find it, but I have an MBA/Systems Analysis gut feeling that its there.
Really? I'll tell my teacher friends. They will be so much happier when they hear that it was a real live human at N2H2 that decided the sites they picked out at home to use in class really weren't appropriate educational sites. After all, I am sure that a trained website catagorizer at N2H2 is much more able than a biology teacher to determine if a website is educational and appropriate.Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
The point is, without the password to get through Bess (which teachers should be given), it's pretty difficult. I guess you could try to hack the Bess server, but try at your own risk.
The other disadvantages of a filtering proxy is that lots of services get blocked, but that's another story.
Re:Bess (Score:1)
Re:DOD??? (Score:1)
~lupa, always suspicious of the DOD
Kids protection (Score:1)
Could there be a way to customize the stop words ? I mean, I agree with the fact that protecting children from unwanted subjects is good. However, I strongly disagree with the dictatorship of those companies/states/people that choose words in the same old range of topics like sex. If some parents have other values than the majority of people, they should be free to ban the topics they want. I've already said that in the past but I don't think sex is a bad thing if you compare it to war stuff.
For your perusal: A joke (Score:1)
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Re:DOD??? (Score:1)
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
DOD??? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Not just students (Score:1)
Bottom line, N2H2 decided that it was not their core business (it was a distraction). Bet that they were "asked to resign...".
gus
This isn't neccessarily good... (Score:1)
A little experiment... (Score:1)
Slashdot.org: denied
google.com: denied
disney.com: denied
n2h2.com: denied
I think I'm doing something wrong...
Privacy advocacy victory subject cold?? (Score:1)
So the slashdotters don't bother much with privacy Victories/Cheers, huh? CT, you seeing the formula to hot discussions, here?
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:1)
While the override feature is nice, it can get very tedious and suddenly you end up with a ton of holes punched through your filter. Plus it only allows up to an hours worth of viewing before you have to re-enter your password again (correct me if that part is wrong, I just remember we couldn't put in more than 59 minutes...that might have been semantics on our part). Are not all pages under the Bess filter still personally screened by actually people as they claimed to us that they were? Sounds like a) the pages are not eye screened anymore, b) they are but the people doing it are not placing them in the correct categories anymore, c) the school server admin turned on 'block all categories'.
I would suggest your friend go to the school server admin and work with him/her to fix the category blocking.
And finally, I think IP addressing allows circumvention...but I can't remember trying this on Bess. You will basically need to do a dnslookup on the domain name to get the IP address of the website. Then just try going to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and see if that works. Also, I think if you convert it to octal (cant remember, it was posted here earlier) form it should work (looks something like http://485720959295). If someone knows that formula, please post it.
Not your normal Ac.
Re:Not out of the woods yet ... (Score:1)
found another way to make money ?????
Re:Why? (Score:1)
How can Bess sound serious? (Score:1)
Re:DOD??? (Score:2)
Re:What's wrong with selling data? (Score:2)
Exactly - why aren't you Americans protesting?It's different over here in Europe, where we have much stricter privacy laws. I am constantly amazed by the way Americans give up all of their privacy to corporate interests.
------------------
Re:Bess (Score:2)
_ _ _
I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.
What's wrong with selling data? (Score:2)
Yet let a company try to sell your data in the digital world, and people start up a big hue and cry.
These "clueless" companies try to apply the rules of the real world to the information superhighway, and get burned. Real world business practices aren't the rules of the road--yet. But as the web grows more mainstream, EPIC, the EFF, and the like could grow irrelevant. And people will have just as low expectations for privacy when they click on a link as when they shop at Foley's.
You know what? It is a matter of time before companies know everything about your behavior online. Marketing is the most important part of getting your product sold, and this is too big an opportunity for businesses to ignore. Unless we have the government step in with strong laws to protect our privacy. It's unfortunate that a concern for privacy goes hand in hand with libertarianism.
Re:This is scary..... (Score:2)
I wonder who else might influence the lists.
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:2)
See my report
SmartFilter's Greatest Evils - censorware and privacy/anonymity [sethf.com]
Sig: My Latest Censorware Essay:
What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [spectacle.org]
N2H2 (Bess) filtering facts... (Score:2)
-
Bess does not filter by keyword, except
for search engine queries and results.
They filter by site URL.
-
For the "el-cheapo" service offered
to schools, there are only a few
combinations of categories available.
I've posted a recent copy of their list at:
http://pillars.net/~bobv/N2H2/categories.html
[pillars.net]
-
Bess catches a lot of flak for inaccurate
filtering becase people assume that if a
site is blocked, it's because Bess thinks
it is porn. Porn is only one of the
42 available categories. Another is
"Free Pages", which is on the
default blocking list for schools.
Reason for that is free webhosting
sites change so frequently that they
can't hope to keep up with them all,
so you get the option of just blocking
them in their entirety.
-
Since Bess is a proxy service, your
local network administrator should be
able to allow exceptions to the filter.
If you use Squid, the relevant keyword
is "AlwaysDirect".
(No, I don't work for them; just a happy customer)I believe in Santa, too. (Score:2)
Yeah, well federal law also prohibits the reading and interception of personal correspondences through the postal system, and yet doing so with my email (boring though it may be) is fine. If they feel like it, lets face it... they'll do it.
Anyone foolish enough to believe that the government of their nation would not willingly and happily sell you out for it's own purposes... well, if you're that foolish I have some really peachy real estate in Florida to sell you.
If you told anyone at the DOD or in politics that selling information about kids or selling their own grandparents into slavery would further their careers, you'd hear two sonic booms. One from Granny and Grampy being wheeled to the auction block, and the other from some lackey pulling data on what sites Junior looked at in school that day.
Bess' performance depends on its configuration. (Score:2)
Is Bess blocking something you think is stupid? Your best bet is to blame the Bess administrator, not the software itself. Bess is comprised of a wide variety of filter lists (more than 40), spanning a huge number of topics. Many of those topics are innocuous in some environments, but are included because certain types of organizations might want to block them (for example, a corporation might reasonably want to block internal access to resume boards, but it would be genuinely ridiculous for a library to do so). It's certainly possible that a Bess administrator will enable blocking lists that are far, far too strict for the purposes of the filter. Bess really wasn't designed for an environment where -all- categories were enabled, but I could see some inexperienced admin selecting all of the block lists.
Also, people often get the wrong idea why a site is blocked by Bess. Let's say, for example, that I wanted to access a home page containing nothing but the text of the Bill of Rights on Geocities, and it was blocked! Clearly a ploy by those fascist bastards at N2H2 to dismantle the very foundations of our country, right? Nope. Turns out that the Bess admin at the site happened to turn on the filter list of "free web site companies," so all sites at Geocities was blocked. Why would they do such a thing? Because porn can be posted at Geocities (and then taken off by GeoCities admins) covertly and quickly, before the N2H2 staff would have time to review the page and add its individual URL to the list.
Bess is in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. Nobody's found a filtering technique that doesn't take some of the wheat along with the chaff. As such, admins could be overly restrictive, doing a great job of blocking out porn -- but blocking some legit stuff along with it. Or, they could be sensitive to their free-speech lovin' users' concerns and try to be less restrictive -- and then get sued by a rich lawyer whose kid decided to try typing in some random URLs on Angelfire.
So, don't blame it all on Bess. It gets a lot of bashing, but it's a more flexible filter than any other content filtering product out there. If you've got a beef with it, don't yell at N2H2, yell at your local admin. They can do more about it than you might think.
Assuming they have a brain, of course.
Eschatfische.
Re:I don't see the problem here (Score:2)
The people who participate in Nielson research sign a contract and are compensated. Nielson has the permission of the parents to collect information on the children.
That is why you see commercials for sugary breakfast cereal during Saturday morning cartoons, and commercials for phone sex in the middle of the night on USA. There is nothing wrong with this type of advertising. It does not infringe upon your rights in any way.
So, you're telling me that you wouldn't know that kids watch Saturday morning cartoons and adults watch TV in the middle of the night unless a pollster told so? Did you remember to screw your head on this morning?
Second, the schools involved are providing computers and bandwidth connected to the internet free of charge.
Wow, three for three, what happened to being rational? Where do you live that you don't pay taxes?
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:2)
The first and most obvious way to get past bess is to simply tell the broweser not to use a proxy server. Since the school in question uses deepfreeze it was a simple matter of going to tools, internet options, and the connections tab. Click lan settings. Then uncheck use a proxy server.
Through basic reserch I figured out that bess simply has a list of web sites it wont let you go to. There are ALOT of websites this list doesnt include that can be used as gateways to other sites. EX: Use www.MSN.com to get to www.hotmail.com. and it works fine.
On another intresting note it seems that bess appends its information panel to any page containing a pearl script, can anyone confirm this?
Jainith
Re:Kids protection (Score:2)
This is scary..... (Score:2)
That one Simpson's episode where they started using the school as a big focus group was supposed to be funny and point out that doing such things was a *bad* idea. It would seem some people in the government think this is normal and as long as many other people are doing it so should they. Anybody have good links to home school resources?
Re:I don't see the problem here (Score:2)
Re:I don't see the problem here (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:2)
offtopic: no hugging allowed (Score:2)
Well since this is such a slow /. article, and because it may give you the false glimmer of hope that this world isn't quite as screwed up as you thought, here's something I read today:
School Cracks Down on 'Hugging Epidemic' [foxnews.com]
Discuss amongst yourselves..
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:2)
My school blocks http://www.safeweb.com, but not https://www.safeweb.com, so I can still use the site with a secure connection.
Re:I don't see the problem here (Score:2)
Having been an admin at a small ISP which offered a separate Bess service to customers, I can say the above may not always be the case. The data collected through the filters is completely traceable right back to the users account on the ISP. Granted, *initially*, they were probably stripping off that information so that the marketeers had no tracing ability. But what if, down the road, the DOD was concerned why it was getting so many hits on certain website...it wouldn't take much to get the information it needed.
On a side note here, if i remember right, Bess always claimed to have 200+ people who personally reveiwed pages in order to distinguish between pr0n sex sites and biology-sex sites. Then these pages are placed into similar sounding categories. Therefore, the admin has typically around 3-4 dozen categories that sites fall into and can block or allow any combination of these categories. Above someone mentioned about not being able to reach biology related sites. I wonder if their admin is lazy and is using the default 'block all categories' setup. We didn't have these problems at our ISP since we paid attention to the categories and set the proper status on them. Also, at the specific site, you can allow certain sites to go through that may otherwise be blocked by a category.
Students do not own the connection, nor do they support it in any way, therefore, students should not be able to make decisions regarding the management of the school's internet connection.
Ok, so as more and more assignments require accessing information over the Internet, the students become tied to using Internet access to acheive this information. What of the students whose families are unable to provide Internet connections or decent computing power at home? The students only recourse is to access the information through the schools computers (or a library...but they are under the same filtering scheme most likely) and thus become subject to the targeted advertising. The schools are providing a free service, yes, but they are requiring their use more and more...so the students should have a say in how things are managed. If the only reason the Internet access was in school was to provide entertainment surfing during non-class-time, then your point might have a bit of worth.
Not your normal AC
Re:I don't see the problem here (Score:2)
of the objections.
They are selling (making a profit)
information about someone. If someone
makes a profit off of information collected
for me, I want a cut. Example: if i volunteer
for a research study, I get cold hard cash.
And, actually, if they are paying for it with
government (which represents all of us, at least
in theory) money, then we have every right to
have a say in the use of information. And,
personally, I object to the rampant commercialism
in America. And I certainly object when data
concerning me is used by a corporation to
further their profile's.
The schools are not providing something free of
charge, they are charging the goverment who, last
time I checked, are takeing about a third of
my paycheck.
-CrackElf
Re:Any way to get past Bess? (Score:3)
Not out of the woods yet ... (Score:4)
Schools need money.
The software can keep stats of site usage.
Company was selling data.
People got angry. Company stopped selling data
School still needs money.
Company goes back to selling data, school gets a cut of the gross sale.
School district doesn't raise taxes because of new revenue and silently ignores the loss of privacy.
Bess (Score:4)
Here is [rosinstrument.com] a list of some (all?) servers they use. Just set your browser to use one of them like a proxy server (since they are).
Funny thing, when useing Bess, that page is blocked!
_ _ _
I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.
Any way to get past Bess? (Score:4)
My friend, a high school biology teacher, has asked me to try and do this. Bess blocks any sites that it thinks refer sex. This includes good material on anatomy, cellular division and genetics. It pretty much renders the internet useless for biology teachers.
My Personal Experience with Bess (Score:5)