More on terrorism and NY school censorware

The banning of sites concerned with terrorism, as "crime", in New York schools, highlights another frequent problem with censorware:

You don't know what's in a "category"!

In the censorware here, the I-Gear categories state:

Crime

Sites providing instructions on performing criminal activities or acquiring illegal items including defeating security, disabling, or otherwise interfering with computer systems (hacking or cracking); unauthorized use of telephone or communications equipment to place free calls or charge another's account for calls (phreaking); deactivating copy protection or registration schemes of software or hardware systems (pirating and wares); construction and/or usage of munitions such as pipe bombs, letter bombs, and land mines; and lock picking, spying, or general subterfuge and defeating of security measures.

Well, that's what they say ... but there's no little asterisk for "and anything that has the word terrorist or terrorism or anarchist etc, too many times ..."

By Seth Finkelstein | posted in censorware | on September 07, 2002 11:34 PM (Infothought permalink)

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)