RE: Content blocking - Singapore seems to manage??

["Desai, Ashish" <Ashish.Desai () fmr com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marcus J. Ranum [SMTP:mjr () nfr net]
> Sent: Sunday, June 20, 1999 10:59 PM
> To:   Di Phelan; firewall-wizards () nfr net
> Subject:      Re: Content blocking - Singapore seems to manage?? 
        ..snip.. 

> One of the problems with content blocking is handling violations.
> I suspect the easiest way to handle them is never to see them in
> the first place. ;) As I said in my previous message, a lot of
> companies have _existing_ policies that would cover online
> "objectionable material" -- they ask for technologies to block
> it at the firewall yet, at the _same_ time, they have firewall
> logs that show without reasonable doubt who the offenders are
> already. Why not just deal with them directly? Oh, no, that would
> cause too much conflict...   In fairness it's because it puts
> the network manager in a position of having to do H.R.'s job,
> which is kind of ridiculous. But then the whole idea of preventing
> communication over a communication channel is kind of ridiculous.
        ..snip.. 

        Content blocking + proxy logs is needed to cover a company legal
liability.
        We had instances where we blocked porn sites (using some blocking
service company)
        and we still had employees trying repeatedly to  go visit those
sites. Turns out look at
        the proxy log we found they were visiting other sites that were not
block and were spending 
        quite a lot of time there (whole day!). Investigating further we
find they had some really nasty
        stuff on the local machines. Needless to say some of them got fired
and one was handled over to
        the US District Attorney (child porn). 
        The moral of the story is the company needs to have 
        blocking in place, saying that they did their part to have ?reduce?
a hostile work
        environment and then occasionally visit the proxy logs and do
something about it. 

        Ashish