UNBlocked by Cyber Patrol

[Shirl Kennedy]

I guess my point -- which I believe I've expressed on this list before is
that...

...yes, the 67 sites in question were not a representative sample; and
...yes, 58 of the sites were unblocked "within 24 hours of notification;"
but

...this contitutes yet another example of how flawed the technology is.  Who
knows what-all is being blocked by Cyber Patrol and others of its ilk that
no one has stumbled across yet?  My concern is for the library patron
seeking information on a sensitive subject who finds certain sites blocked
on a public access Internet terminal and who is a) too technologically
unsophisticated to realize what is going on; or b) too shy/embarrassed to
bring the situation to the attention of a librarian.

Shirl K.



-----Original Message-----
From: Filtering Facts <David_Burt at filteringfacts.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 24, 1997 1:59 PM
Subject: UNBlocked by Cyber Patrol


>UNBlocked by Cyber Patrol
>
>Response to "Blacklisted by Cyber Patrol"
http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/isps.html
>
>Disclaimer:
>In his "Blacklisted" report, the primary author, Jamie McCarthy, makes
>repeated references to myself, and quotes e-mail messages from me and
>portions of my website.  Cyber Patrol is a product of Microsystems, Inc.
>David Burt and Filtering Facts do not work in any capacity for Microsystems
>and are not associated in any way with Microsystems.  Opinions expressed by
>me and Filtering Facts are mine alone and do not represent the views and
>practices of Microsystems.
>
>The authors of "Blacklisted" have produced a list of 67 URLs that are said
>to be inappropriate blocks by the filtering product Cyber Patrol.  Of these
>67 blocks 58 were unblocked within 24 hours of notification, including
>www.geocities.com/westhollywood, www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip, and
>www.tripod.com.
>
>The authors admit to producing their list of bad blocks by working from a
>decrypted "blacklist" from Cyber Patrol.  The authors claim they were only
>using a portion of the blacklist, yet refuse to produce the list, or to
even
>estimate how large a portion they were using, or to describe what
>methodology was used to review the list.  Therefore, the 67 blocks cannot
>represented as a statistical sample and can only be evaluated against Cyber
>Patrol's entire list of 57,000 blocked sites.  If all 67 blocks are
excepted
>at face value, that amounts to about .1% of the entire blacklist.
>
>Of the remaining 9 blocks,  4 are clearly  selling pornography:
>
>1) http://www.instantaccess.com    Click on "visit the sites" button.
>
>2) http://www.drjack.com    Advertises itself as "Dr Jack's Things is One
Of
>Northern California's Hottest BBS's Specializing in Asian and  other Adult
>Images - Over 40,000 files online! 13 gigabytes"
http://www.drjack.com/djthing/
>
>3) http://www.satisfaction.simplenet.com/    Appears to be a shut down porn
>site.
>
>4) http://phantom.datamg.com   Contains an "XXX network" at
>http://phantom.datamg.com/links.html
>
>The remaining 5 appear to be blocked in other categories.
>
>Because the number of sites presented is one tenth of one percent of the
>total, well within any reasonable persons margin of error, and the bad
>blocks were removed within 24 hours, Filtering Facts has no hesitations
>about continuing to recommend Cyber Patrol.
>
>Keep up the good work, and Merry Christmas!
>
>***************************************************************************
**
>David Burt, Filtering Facts, HTTP://WWW.FILTERINGFACTS.ORG
>David_Burt at filteringfacts.org
>