Author: Simon Perry
IW Council Bans Flickr Access
Thursday, 4th September, 2008 at 11:55 am, Isle of Wight
Island-wide, Media, Photography
You know, there are some who take paranoia a little too far.
It appears that some in the IW Council computer security department are dabbling their toes in that particularly dangerous pool.
We’ve heard that _Everyone_ working at the IW Council has been banned from accessing photo-sharing site, Flickr.
This has hit some of those working at the council from being able to carry out their official work.
Seeing the bigger picture
If you’re not sure what Flickr is, it’s innocent photo sharing site that is now owned and run by Yahoo.
It’s the sort of site where people place photos of the trips to the Isle of Wight, or interesting things that they’ve seen around the Island like Ventnor.
The official reason for the ban? They wanted to bar social networks and their dangers. You What?
Just like the Chinese government
Banning Web sites like this, has worrying under and over-tones.
I was in Beijing last year and do you know what the Chinese government had done? Banned Flickr.
Innocent explanation?
There may be a totally innocent explanation to all of this of course.
We would in the normal course of writing an article, carry out research by contacting those involved, asking them for their side of the story, but as you may well know, Claire Robertson, head of the IW Council press office took it upon herself to bar VentnorBlog and all of its readers from finding out about all things council.
Did someone mention paranoia?
Image: xdjio
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Very amusing.
How long do you think it will be until they ban access to the dangers (unbiased opinions) of Ventnor Blog?
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The IW Council is not alone in banning access to Web 2.0 sites, alot of local authorities have banned access to flickr, MySpace, etc. They seem to be unable to cope with the idea of user generated content, maybe because it is beyond thier control.
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I work at County Hall. I think your story’s a rather negative interpretation of the facts. Like most big companies the council has a limited supply of bandwidth and we all pay for it – yes, all us Island taxpayers. It’s also damned slow on our network, especially about 0910 every morning when everyone’s logging in. So a couple of years back (this is not new) they limited access to high-bandwidth stuff, mostly web 2.0 things like Youtube and Flickr, but also stuff like bittorrent sites and just about any streaming video (except the BBC for some reason). It helped with the sluggish network. But nobody’s banned from using it for work – there’s an easy and more-or-less instant over-ride request that you can use (and I do use it when I need it for work). Low bandwidth but potentially much more controversial sites such as Wikipedia, Slashdot or Reddit are not filtered at all.
This is not like China. It is nothing to do with censorship, just saving us all money and time.
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Dear Simon. Absolute nonsense! Flickr is good, but not that good! They have not been banned. You are just trying to stir up trouble. Frank.
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even uk public libraries have now gone into the business of preventing public access to information.
my local library in southwark has a stringent set of filters with strange categories – e.g. the occult; hate speech; gambling etc.
here’s an article from last weekend’s financial times reporting birmingham council’s attitude :
——–
I am indebted to Paul Dale of the Birmingham Post for unearthing a five-page document listing websites that city council staff are banned from using at work.
Apart from the usual types – adult material, those with sexual content or nudity – it covers the following range: “Sites promoting witchcraft, satanism, occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism.
Sites that offer methods to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers.
Sites that revel and glorify in gore, human or animal suffering, scatological or other aberrant behaviours, perversities or debaucheries.
Salacious sites bereft of historical context, educational value or artistic merit created solely to debase, dehumanise or shock. Examples include necrophilia, cannibalism and amputee fetish sites.”
Staff are also barred from looking at anything likely to “promote, glorify, review or in any way advocate the use of tobacco or tobacco-related products including, but not limited to, cigarettes, pipes, cigars and chewing tobacco”.
The chief executive’s information security representative adds: “If you have any comments, concerns or a need for access to any of these types of websites within your service areas please let me know with details of the category you are referring to.”
the ft columnist comments :”Admirable thoroughness”.
http://cachef.ft.com/cms/s/0/2c9852ba-7444-11dd-bc91-0000779fd18c.html
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Here’s the overriding issue on this … the official IW Council reason given for why access was banned to Flickr was that it was for ‘Security reasons.’
@Drone – While I can understand that bittorent and video sites like YouTube take up a chunk of bandwidth – photos on Flickr aren’t in the same category.
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@Andrew: That would never happen – when we happened to report on a band playing Bestival with an obscenity in the title this is the quote we received from a member of the press office “Do you want to remove the offending material so we can continue to view our favourite blog?”
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