Jerry Pournelle discovers his site is banned in a filter the military is using.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view419.html#banned

 He wonders why and asks the questions. I briefly answer them here  We've been producing filters since mid 1995 which is about as soon as it could have been done.

Gerry asks: Why would anyone allow them to dictate who is allowed access to whom ?

The answer is of course they don't dictate anything. They provide a product which is on the market in competition with 40 to 50 other products offering a similar service. The end user is the one responsible for the choices of filtering or not filtering, filtering huge or filtering small, filtering based on a transparent or secret list, white listing or blacklisting, email log forwards, . There are many choices “out there “ it is the user (client) that makes the choice based on reasons probably know only to themselves. This product is used by those that want to control the access to information of others. In this case it is the military making choices on behalf of their members. It is not much different than letting Rush Limbaugh but not Airamericaradio.com. They are the client and they have their reasons.

The only exception to this that I know of i s “porn addicts “ who want to control their own behavior”.

Gerry asks: Are these outfits owned by private individuals ? Corporate Stockholders? "Western Enterprises" (a one-time front name for a CIA overseas corporation)? A religious group?

The bigger ones like Secure Computing are owned by Corporate Stockholders. The smaller ones like IF-2K -The Internet filter and Cybersitter are private companies. I don't know of a “Western Enterprises “ owning a filter but I do know that they have consulted with us and probably others about major filtering thrust. I also suspect one (at least one) of the loud voices in the anti filtering crowd is funded by that sort of thing.

Gerry asks:There are many religious groups overtly and covertly involved in the f8iltering business. Rough guess would be more than 50 percent but the bottom line seems to be money.

This certainly needs discussion but there is a problem with these discussions. North American society is very polarized and there are very few people who will come to the table in any spirit of adding to and gleaming information. Instead they come to the table to promote their agenda. This agenda invariably consists of gating and/or distorting facts to support their beliefs and leaving out or denying information that does not support their beliefs. You seldom hear “Thanks for the input- I've changed my mind”. It is too politically “hot”.

Gerry asks: Do they ban all sites that accept Google ads?

I do not know of any filter that bans anything because it has google adds. I can't see any reason why any one would.

And who decides whether or not to follow the advice of this group?

As stated ...if the end user does not supply his own list he defaults the responsibility to the software design. The one thing I cannot understand is why doesn't the end user insist upon the lists being nontransparent. Especially libraries and schools....but they don't. ....Go figure

You can contact me on this issue if you care to at

turner@internetfilter.com