Websense at work. Our wonderful new filter at work is now fully installed. And let me tell you it is a view of a future that is scary. The Websense filter now used by the public school which employs me is a tool of absolute control that in the name of security and conformity serves only to restrict independent thinking and research. I felt it was overly protective when even Scienceblogs was considered a blocked website. Some brief research pulled up this article in the
HeraldTribune.
"Nathan Robinson, 16, was pulling together the horoscopes for the student newspaper when he ran into an eye-opening problem: The school's Web filter blocked him from getting any information on astrology because it fell under the state's filter for cults and nonmainstream religions."
That's right. There is a filter called cults and
nonmainstream religions. I guess the "mainstream" religions have so much more evidence for the validity of their claims. Bunk is bunk- regardless of popularity. How is this not discriminatory?
"We have access to sites on Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but not a lot of the smaller religions, or the various cults and things," said Robinson, who is a member of the Pine View Progressive Club. "We find that the filter picks on some of these nontraditional religions are arbitrary."
...
"Our goal is really simple," Robinson said. "We just want to see nontraditional religions removed as a category."
This is ridiculous. No one should be afraid of information. Children being exposed to different or non-traditional information should be viewed as an opportunity to learn, teach, and think critically. It should open up dialog between parents and children-teachers and students. It should not be something feared. I suppose it could possibly undo some carefully constructed brainwashing.
I read on Wikipedia that this software is also used by countries like Iran and China for their censorship protocols. *Skeptic's Qualification- Wikipedia does not necessarily indicate reliable.
I tried to do more research, but sites like the
OpenNet Initiative which tracks and researches censorship on the internet were blocked. Websense Filter Category-
Advocacy Groups.
censorship
