![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angledgeBefore reading the rest of this post, have you read Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About by Mil Millington? If not, follow the link, laugh your head off for a while, & then come back.
Done? OK.
When you got to the bottom of that page, you may have noticed this announcement: "Updates? No, not on this page anymore. It's just the Mailing List from now on." Since I am deeply amused by Mil's writings about his relationship with his girlfriend Margret, I subscribed to this list. Once every few weeks, Mil sends me (& thousands of other people) an email, which contains a link to a website with his latest musings.
Well of COURSE this link is blocked by the corporate filters on my work computer. In fact, it's blocked with this message:
"http://www.mil-millington.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ has been categorized as Pornography. It has been blocked as per the URS Electronic Communications Systems Policy. If you believe that this web site has been incorrectly categorized, contact your Local IT Coordinator."
I thought this was pretty hilarious, so I sent Mil an email telling him about it.
And he replied! I was astonished! After all, Mil is a genuine Internet celebrity: he has a column with The Guardian, & has published three books. He probably gets a ton of email. But he wrote back, saying:
"I realise that you may not want to, Angela, but I'd be intrigued if you did contact your Local IT Coordinator and ask them exactly *why* it has been categorised as pornography (sorry, 'Pornography'). Honestly, it's just the scientist in me. If a person has done it, that person is simply a liar and/or an idiot - fair enough; I mean, I wonder whether, if I, on a whim, put it about that *s/he* was a pornographer, s/he'd be fine about that rather than, say, boilingly litigious, but never mind about that. As I say, if it's an idiot human: fair enough. But I suspect that it's actually an automatic system. That flagrantly doesn't work. And, as I say, the scientist in me is keen to discover the details of this; in exactly the same way as, if I went to hospital with a knife in my leg and the x-ray apparatus reported back that my leg was fine but I had a spoon up my nose, I'd think it worth investigating whether they perhaps ought to throw the thing out.
"It's the principle. Never mind me, it's the *principle*. Is this recorded, for example? I there now a log somewhere that says Angela tried to access Internet Pornography? A log that exists entirely because of a lying idiot or a system that spectacularly fails to do the single thing it's supposed to.
"Maybe I'm just overly fastidious. But excuse me while I go out and start some civil unrest anyway, just in case."
Sadly, I had to write back to let Mil know that...
"The Dilbertesque twist in this plot is that I do not have access to a Local IT Coordinator. Ongoing budget cuts have eliminated nearly all administrative support staff at my office, including the HR Manager, Health & Safety Coordinator (did I mention I'm an environmental scientist who routinely works on polluted industrial sites?), & alas, the IT Coordinator.
"I will see if I can figure out who our Regional IT Coordinator is."
He replied:
"I simply cannot tell you how embarrassed I am not to have seen that coming. It's a comedy IQ failure on my part equivalent to confidently pausing on the way to an important job interview to carry a vast cream pie up a ladder."
BUT, since Mil does amuse me, I persisted in seeking out an IT Coordinator, Regional or otherwise. It took me several email exchanges (summarized):
angledge: [Regional_IT_Coordinator], last week I tried to check a website that belongs to a friend named Mil Millington...The URS internet filter blocked the site with the following message...He has asked me to inquire as to how and why his website has been categorized as pornography...Are you the correct person for me to contact about this? If not, who should I contact?
[Regional_IT_Coordinator]: Try sending to Notes_Helpdesk.
angledge: Notes_Helpdesk: Forwarded question regarding the corporate internet filter; please see below.One clarification: I am not asking for this site to be unblocked. It is not something I need for work. However, my friend is interested in how and why his website got blocked as pornography. I am asking solely on his behalf, because he curious why his site has been categorized in this fashion.
[Notes_Helpdesk]: There is a service that categorizes web sites. I can't explain the hows and whys, but there are frequent mistakes, which can be corrected without much trouble.
angledge: Can you tell me the name of the service?
[Notes_Helpdesk]: I don't know the name its operated by the Corporate Internet Team.
angledge: Do you know who I can contact on the Corporate Internet Team to find out the name of the service?
[Notes_Helpdesk]: I can probably find out for you. Is there a reason that this needs to be known? We can unblock web sites with very little effort.
angledge: Like I said, I don't need the website unblocked. It is not work-related. But my friend Mil is concerned about how and why his website (which is his name, after all) has gotten categorized as pornography. He would like to know the name of the service that categorized it that way so he can get them to correct it in their records.
[Corporate Internet Team]: Its called the Netspective Web Filter. I don't know of a procedure to get the categorization changed on their side.
http://www.verso.com/products/netspective/index.asp
I forwarded this info along to Mil. He replied,
"I've contacted the Netspective people. My confident expectation is that they will, promptly and fully, ignore me. But, you never can tell; perhaps I'm just a silly old pessimist.
"A couple of points, however, as they're nicely Kafkaesque. Your IT bod said mistakes are frequent, but they're easy to fix. Imagine a TV show that frequently - wrongly - called people, say, thieves. Would that survive with a smiling click of the teeth all round? Or be sued into oblivion within two months? And this a paid service; the TV viewers have to *pay* to be warned that people who aren't thieves are thieves. Second part of the sentence, your IT bod said mistakes are easy to fix. Nothing against him/her - s/he probably assumes they are: perhaps s/he simply unblocks the page locally. But for *me* they aren't. The Netspective webpage certainly provides no 'You've got it wrong' facility; in fact, the only way to email them *at all* (this is what I had to do) was to fill in their form for people interested in buying their service.
"Now, I don't want you to imagine that I'm raging at the sky or obsessed by all this. I'm not at all. I've just eaten a piece of toast, and, after this email, will go on to do some work, perfectly calmly. But it is outrageous. Another Lister, as it happened, emailed me after you did. I don't know that Netspective/Verso has anything to do with this - my assumption, just on probability, is not - and it doesn't matter. I'm not bothered about any particular company, that's not the issue. Anyway, this Lister clicked on a link in one of my Mails, and this is what came up on her screen. "You have tried to access a page banned by company filters. You have been logged and reported." Lovely.
"This whole, yawningly flawed system works because:
1) The people sending mails/putting up webpages either don't know they are being blocked inaccurately, or, even if they do, there's precious little they can do about it.
2) The companies behind the blocking are making good money.
3) The companies using the filters are happy. It doesn't matter to them if the filters are inaccurate: so long as it promotes an atmosphere in which employees are scared to use the Net for anything they can't prove is strictly work-related, it's a winner.
4) The users just want to keep their heads down. If it flashes up that they've tried to access a page that 'contains offensive material' they are simply going to think, 'Eek! Hope I don't get into trouble,' not - Angela Ledgerwoods aside - march off the IT Department's office and demand, 'Says who?'
"It's fascinating, really. A technological system in which the technology itself is dismal: what runs and maintains it is actually the psychology on the humans involved."
It is fascinating. I guess I've been with URS long enough that I don't really fear getting fired for my internet use (this confidence may be displaced; I certainly do waste a lot of corporate time online). But Mil is correct - 99% of people will just surf off to some other site & hope they never get called out.
On a final note, if you read all the exchanges between me & URS corporate, you might have noticed that I called Mil my friend. Since I sent him all those exchanges, I included this note:
"By the way, to streamline the explanation process, I claimed you as a friend in the correspondence below. Don't fret - I'm not a deranged fan who, on the strength of a couple email exchanges, has created a complete relationship between us in my little head. You've got one crazy relationship going with Margret, that seems like plenty."
He was nice enough not to comment on it.
Done? OK.
When you got to the bottom of that page, you may have noticed this announcement: "Updates? No, not on this page anymore. It's just the Mailing List from now on." Since I am deeply amused by Mil's writings about his relationship with his girlfriend Margret, I subscribed to this list. Once every few weeks, Mil sends me (& thousands of other people) an email, which contains a link to a website with his latest musings.
Well of COURSE this link is blocked by the corporate filters on my work computer. In fact, it's blocked with this message:
"http://www.mil-millington.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ has been categorized as Pornography. It has been blocked as per the URS Electronic Communications Systems Policy. If you believe that this web site has been incorrectly categorized, contact your Local IT Coordinator."
I thought this was pretty hilarious, so I sent Mil an email telling him about it.
And he replied! I was astonished! After all, Mil is a genuine Internet celebrity: he has a column with The Guardian, & has published three books. He probably gets a ton of email. But he wrote back, saying:
"I realise that you may not want to, Angela, but I'd be intrigued if you did contact your Local IT Coordinator and ask them exactly *why* it has been categorised as pornography (sorry, 'Pornography'). Honestly, it's just the scientist in me. If a person has done it, that person is simply a liar and/or an idiot - fair enough; I mean, I wonder whether, if I, on a whim, put it about that *s/he* was a pornographer, s/he'd be fine about that rather than, say, boilingly litigious, but never mind about that. As I say, if it's an idiot human: fair enough. But I suspect that it's actually an automatic system. That flagrantly doesn't work. And, as I say, the scientist in me is keen to discover the details of this; in exactly the same way as, if I went to hospital with a knife in my leg and the x-ray apparatus reported back that my leg was fine but I had a spoon up my nose, I'd think it worth investigating whether they perhaps ought to throw the thing out.
"It's the principle. Never mind me, it's the *principle*. Is this recorded, for example? I there now a log somewhere that says Angela tried to access Internet Pornography? A log that exists entirely because of a lying idiot or a system that spectacularly fails to do the single thing it's supposed to.
"Maybe I'm just overly fastidious. But excuse me while I go out and start some civil unrest anyway, just in case."
Sadly, I had to write back to let Mil know that...
"The Dilbertesque twist in this plot is that I do not have access to a Local IT Coordinator. Ongoing budget cuts have eliminated nearly all administrative support staff at my office, including the HR Manager, Health & Safety Coordinator (did I mention I'm an environmental scientist who routinely works on polluted industrial sites?), & alas, the IT Coordinator.
"I will see if I can figure out who our Regional IT Coordinator is."
He replied:
"I simply cannot tell you how embarrassed I am not to have seen that coming. It's a comedy IQ failure on my part equivalent to confidently pausing on the way to an important job interview to carry a vast cream pie up a ladder."
BUT, since Mil does amuse me, I persisted in seeking out an IT Coordinator, Regional or otherwise. It took me several email exchanges (summarized):
angledge: [Regional_IT_Coordinator], last week I tried to check a website that belongs to a friend named Mil Millington...The URS internet filter blocked the site with the following message...He has asked me to inquire as to how and why his website has been categorized as pornography...Are you the correct person for me to contact about this? If not, who should I contact?[Regional_IT_Coordinator]: Try sending to Notes_Helpdesk.
angledge: Notes_Helpdesk: Forwarded question regarding the corporate internet filter; please see below.One clarification: I am not asking for this site to be unblocked. It is not something I need for work. However, my friend is interested in how and why his website got blocked as pornography. I am asking solely on his behalf, because he curious why his site has been categorized in this fashion.[Notes_Helpdesk]: There is a service that categorizes web sites. I can't explain the hows and whys, but there are frequent mistakes, which can be corrected without much trouble.
angledge: Can you tell me the name of the service?[Notes_Helpdesk]: I don't know the name its operated by the Corporate Internet Team.
angledge: Do you know who I can contact on the Corporate Internet Team to find out the name of the service?[Notes_Helpdesk]: I can probably find out for you. Is there a reason that this needs to be known? We can unblock web sites with very little effort.
angledge: Like I said, I don't need the website unblocked. It is not work-related. But my friend Mil is concerned about how and why his website (which is his name, after all) has gotten categorized as pornography. He would like to know the name of the service that categorized it that way so he can get them to correct it in their records. [Corporate Internet Team]: Its called the Netspective Web Filter. I don't know of a procedure to get the categorization changed on their side.
http://www.verso.com/products/netspective/index.asp
I forwarded this info along to Mil. He replied,
"I've contacted the Netspective people. My confident expectation is that they will, promptly and fully, ignore me. But, you never can tell; perhaps I'm just a silly old pessimist.
"A couple of points, however, as they're nicely Kafkaesque. Your IT bod said mistakes are frequent, but they're easy to fix. Imagine a TV show that frequently - wrongly - called people, say, thieves. Would that survive with a smiling click of the teeth all round? Or be sued into oblivion within two months? And this a paid service; the TV viewers have to *pay* to be warned that people who aren't thieves are thieves. Second part of the sentence, your IT bod said mistakes are easy to fix. Nothing against him/her - s/he probably assumes they are: perhaps s/he simply unblocks the page locally. But for *me* they aren't. The Netspective webpage certainly provides no 'You've got it wrong' facility; in fact, the only way to email them *at all* (this is what I had to do) was to fill in their form for people interested in buying their service.
"Now, I don't want you to imagine that I'm raging at the sky or obsessed by all this. I'm not at all. I've just eaten a piece of toast, and, after this email, will go on to do some work, perfectly calmly. But it is outrageous. Another Lister, as it happened, emailed me after you did. I don't know that Netspective/Verso has anything to do with this - my assumption, just on probability, is not - and it doesn't matter. I'm not bothered about any particular company, that's not the issue. Anyway, this Lister clicked on a link in one of my Mails, and this is what came up on her screen. "You have tried to access a page banned by company filters. You have been logged and reported." Lovely.
"This whole, yawningly flawed system works because:
1) The people sending mails/putting up webpages either don't know they are being blocked inaccurately, or, even if they do, there's precious little they can do about it.
2) The companies behind the blocking are making good money.
3) The companies using the filters are happy. It doesn't matter to them if the filters are inaccurate: so long as it promotes an atmosphere in which employees are scared to use the Net for anything they can't prove is strictly work-related, it's a winner.
4) The users just want to keep their heads down. If it flashes up that they've tried to access a page that 'contains offensive material' they are simply going to think, 'Eek! Hope I don't get into trouble,' not - Angela Ledgerwoods aside - march off the IT Department's office and demand, 'Says who?'
"It's fascinating, really. A technological system in which the technology itself is dismal: what runs and maintains it is actually the psychology on the humans involved."
It is fascinating. I guess I've been with URS long enough that I don't really fear getting fired for my internet use (this confidence may be displaced; I certainly do waste a lot of corporate time online). But Mil is correct - 99% of people will just surf off to some other site & hope they never get called out.
On a final note, if you read all the exchanges between me & URS corporate, you might have noticed that I called Mil my friend. Since I sent him all those exchanges, I included this note:
"By the way, to streamline the explanation process, I claimed you as a friend in the correspondence below. Don't fret - I'm not a deranged fan who, on the strength of a couple email exchanges, has created a complete relationship between us in my little head. You've got one crazy relationship going with Margret, that seems like plenty."
He was nice enough not to comment on it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 04:36 pm (UTC)LOLZ
Date: 2008-04-03 12:08 am (UTC)Friday - shit happened
Saturday - some more shit
Sat night - shit after dusk
Sunday - relaxing shit
So, I was just making fun of people to amuse myself. Though the waitress *did* quit her job and join a Buddhist temple.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 03:47 pm (UTC)This is, truly, the longest post you've ever made. Most impressive.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 04:54 pm (UTC)Peter Parker: Spider-Man wasn't trying to attack the city, he was trying to save it. That's slander.
J. Jonah Jameson: It is not. I resent that. Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 12:09 am (UTC)Yay puns :D
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 07:20 am (UTC)You rock!