FC: Another example of silly news organizations and dirty word filters

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

The RISKS to this approach to spam-filtering should be obvious. If a 
reporter wishes to subscribe to a mailing list but not have all the 
participants know he or she is there, that anonymity can be violated 
through a dumb dirty word filter that auto-responds. Perhaps we'll see 
anyone worried about a reporter from Tribune Media 
(http://www.tms.tribune.com/aboutus.html) lurking send foul language to a 
list and wait for the autoreplies to arrive. :)

Previous Politech message:

"Newspapers filter out 'bad words' from email to their reporters" 
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03129.html

-Declan

---

To: declan () well com
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 16:36:38 -0500
Subject: Defective SPAM filter, or corporate censorware weirdness?  Also, 
Tribune censorware defects
Message-ID: <20021106.163640.-127975531.6.terry.s () juno com>

I tried sending my brother a scan of my maternal family tree for 6
generations, found in our mother's files of deteriorating paper copies.
This came back:

<username>@kodak.com>:
192.232.121.249 failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 550 5.5.0 Mail refused - Banned word found in Subject
line

--- Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path: <terry.s () juno com>
To: <username>@kodak.com
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 13:55:07 -0500
Subject: Sxxxxxrg family tree, etc.

So, what's the banned word above?  Is it a defective SPAM filter, or a
super secret content based censorship list of banned ideas that
constitute hate speech and masked defamation of those thinking or
expressing the secret banned thoughts?


A month ago, I got some nastygrams from a mailserver at Tribune Media in
Chicago.  Apparently, they censor mail their reporters receive at local
owned newspapers around the country, via central corporate policies.

One of their reporters subscribed to a listserver run by a Virginia pagan
campground and religious retreat center (notably right between Pat
Robertson and Jerry Falwell's home bases), though he didn't post to
become visible as present.  He subscribed because of issues related to
Eure porta potty rental's owner deciding pagans shouldn't poop in his
pots, which the campground had been renting.  Eure also has government
and government contractor construction business in the area, for which
such a business policy would likely be illegal.

This led to a mix of serious ethical and legal discussion, with jokes and
even a song ("God Says") which received radio airplay on both coasts
after AP carried the story.  When some of the jokes included "shit" in
the subject line, Tribune's corporate censorware started sending bounce
messages to persons posting, who had no way of knowing why they'd receive
mail about messages sent by a list bot, not by them, to the silently
subscribed reporter.

I wrote Tribune management about how they were engaging in hate speech
contrary to their own posted online user agreements, depriving their
reporters of the ability to work professionally, and in effect SPAMming
third party list subscribers directly who at best could guess or ask a
list owner questions about what was going on.  The Tribune responded as
if they were clueless about how their mail could be unsolicited when sent
to posters to a list who'd never directly contacted one of their
employees, as well as being clueless about how religiously prejudiced and
intolerantly hateful their content based blacklist was among people who
outwardly reject christian concepts of "indecency".

Were I a Trib employee, I'd be concerned that such practices, beyond
being unethical and disrupting professional communications, amount to
criminal and civil religious discrimination, which in the guise of
protecting the tender sensitivities of some workers actively defame core
beliefs and values of others.


In both of these cases of large corporations, I'd bet the root problem is
predatory management attitudes and people without adequate clues making
corporate policy, which underlings are reluctant to effectively
challenge.



Terry 




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