The New York Times appears on my radar again today, this time in an article about a major search filter cutting out Boing Boing viewing for Haliburton employees. Apparently when Boing Boing contacted the filter they were told two things. For me, the least troubling of these was a claim of nudity.
According to the Times:
Cory Doctorow, a Boing Boing co-editor, contacted Secure Computing to inquire about the classification. In an e-mail message to Mr. Doctorow, a representative of the company pointed out that a post from early January about two books on the photographic history of adult magazines contained "pornographic" images. The representative also noted a separate image of "a woman nursing a cat."
But a look back reveals that the January entry made reference to two new books from the graphic design imprint Taschen. Yes, the books are about adult magazines, but they are history books. And as for the thumbnail-size image that appeared alongside the original post, well, if you have to squint, is it really smut?
So this article was banned because of nudity. Which, while annoying is at least somewhat culturally defendible.
The other reason was a little more scary:
"Access denied by SmartFilter content category," was the message a Halliburton engineer in Houston said he received last Wednesday when he tried to visit BoingBoing.net from his office computer. "The requested URL belongs to the following categories: Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies, Nudity."
Now, one thing Halliburton is supposed to be is a company that provides the US Government with a variety of direct services both foreign and domestic. Banning their staff from being able to use the web to see anything that could be labeled Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies effectively precludes viewing anything having to do with culture. This would seem to nearly guarantee that Halliburton employees would not be able to learn about the cultures with which they will be interacting on Government contracts.
That's pretty scary. Most companies now rely on up-to-the-minute information on a wide array of subjects. Innovation is advancing too rapidly, it seems to me, to tie your corporate feet together by actively prohibiting your staff access to needed information. And, yes, Boing Boing could be highly relevant. The point is, you just never really know.
Photo: Arturo D.
Tags: smut pornography new york times boing boing webfilter censorship business
Comments