GNG News Guy
03-06-2008, 11:52 AM
http://i.dslr.net/urls/66/3566.gif (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Denver-Airport-Slammed-For-WiFi-Filters-92414)
The Denver airport is being criticized because their free Wi-Fi network prohibits surfers from browsing such dangerous websites as Boing Boing (http://www.boingboing.net/) and Vanity Fair (http://www.vanityfair.com/). The blockade was first discovered by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/13/david-byrne-i-was-bo.html). The airport is using the same filtering products used by governments who censor web-access. The filters aren't too bright (http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/27/boingboing-banned-in.html), and casts a pretty wide net in trying to filter Internet nudity:In fact, out of the 25,000+ Boing Boing posts classed as "nudity" by SmartFilter, more that 99.5 percent have no nudity at all. They're stories about Hurricane Katrina, kidnapped journalists in Iraq, book reviews, ukelele casemods, phonecam video of Bigfoot sightings (come to think of it, he doesn't wear clothes either), or pictures of astonishing Lego constructions.
Why is SmartFilter content to deliver a product with a 99.5 percent false-positive rate? Because it has promised its customers that it will stop their users from seeing nudity (fat chance -- it's a dead certainty that Smart Filter has failed to class innumerable sites containing nudity), and punishing 24,875 nudity-free posts to get at 125 that contain mild or "art" nudity is fine by them.
Airport officials tell the Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_8455504) this week that they "preferred to deal with infrequent blocking complaints rather than angry parents whose children walked by a screen showing pornography." Boing Boing (http://www.boingboing.net/censorroute.html) offers an entry tailored toward getting around such filters.
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Denver-Airport-Slammed-For-WiFi-Filters-92414)
The Denver airport is being criticized because their free Wi-Fi network prohibits surfers from browsing such dangerous websites as Boing Boing (http://www.boingboing.net/) and Vanity Fair (http://www.vanityfair.com/). The blockade was first discovered by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/13/david-byrne-i-was-bo.html). The airport is using the same filtering products used by governments who censor web-access. The filters aren't too bright (http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/27/boingboing-banned-in.html), and casts a pretty wide net in trying to filter Internet nudity:In fact, out of the 25,000+ Boing Boing posts classed as "nudity" by SmartFilter, more that 99.5 percent have no nudity at all. They're stories about Hurricane Katrina, kidnapped journalists in Iraq, book reviews, ukelele casemods, phonecam video of Bigfoot sightings (come to think of it, he doesn't wear clothes either), or pictures of astonishing Lego constructions.
Why is SmartFilter content to deliver a product with a 99.5 percent false-positive rate? Because it has promised its customers that it will stop their users from seeing nudity (fat chance -- it's a dead certainty that Smart Filter has failed to class innumerable sites containing nudity), and punishing 24,875 nudity-free posts to get at 125 that contain mild or "art" nudity is fine by them.
Airport officials tell the Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_8455504) this week that they "preferred to deal with infrequent blocking complaints rather than angry parents whose children walked by a screen showing pornography." Boing Boing (http://www.boingboing.net/censorroute.html) offers an entry tailored toward getting around such filters.
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Denver-Airport-Slammed-For-WiFi-Filters-92414)