A Rebuttal To The IT Department Blocking Bing

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Word comes from Megan in Chicago, one of our most valued and assiduous correspondents, that this humble blog has been blocked by the IT police of her company. Megan writes:

I can tell you one thing that is going the wrong way. Bing's Blog page has been officially blocked at work with a code of "Social Networking"... Stanley baby - can you pull a few strings and help the numb nuts in IT understand that I need this site in my daily work life? How can I possibly put in a full 10 hours without a spoonful of delicious irony! I've explained that this is a very useful site which quite often covers business related topics. I've stated my case that while the site is not essential to doing my job, it does help me do my job better. They've claimed that they will review and let me know - *sigh*. I'll miss you sweetheart...

I'll miss you, too, Megan! It's all so unfair! A social network? Us? Could that be? Every day we have as serious a discussion of current business-related events as the facts warrant! Sure, a lot of the time we focus on the ridiculous and outrageous, but that's a direct effect of the times in which we live, right?

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Comments

[naugiedoggie]

A big problem for corp offices is that many office workers are internet beachcombers ... they pick up all kinds of trash and bring it home -- to the corp network -- while out surfing. Since I got my first "internets" account in 1994, the only times I have picked up a virus of any kind has been while plugged into a corporate network. And even with modern enterprise AV software, it can be extremely difficult to expunge one of these parasites, once loose in a network with hundreds or even thousands of computers.

Nonetheless, I'm on the side of more freedom rather than less. I think the impact on morale of being regarded as untrustworthy is greater than the relative IT benefits of surf restrictions. While I was in the cube farm, our corporate policy was simple: we hired you as adults, we expect you to act as adults. It seems to work.

Thanks.

mp

[rwt1138]

Actually, just to clarify, when I say private companies in that context I mean Verizon censoring SMS messages, AT&T censoring streaming content, and AT&T sniffing packets to ensure that they only contain "good" data. Company site filters are a perfectly legitimate business venture and do not fall into the category of censorship; anyone providing access to the net for free has a right to restrict how it is used.

I am actually hoping AT&T puts anti-piracy netscanning software in place to stop copyright violations, like they say they want to. The day I hear AT&T has assumed full ownership and responsibility for every packet that traverses their network, I'm shutting down my firewall and virus protection and hoping to be one of the first to sue when they let malicious packets infect my machine. I want to be an early lawsuit because it won't be long after that before they're bankrupt.

[shortgirl]

Right after I sue them for spying! I've saved proof that they let DoD track my movements. Weeeee!

[rwt1138]

I'm guessing I know where Megan works, as my company has an office there and I get the same error for the same wording.

If I guess correctly, it's the "blogs" in the URL that it's catching. So, don't take it personally. If you did want to help Megan out, Stanley, you could talk to your own IT department and have them change your URL to something less alarming, like stanleybing.essentialbusinessinformation.fortune.com. Short of that, Megan is out of luck.

As to the comment from Hopeless, assuming it is the same company, it's not really censorship so much as an effort to minimize time spent on time consuming sites with no business purpose (like most blogs would fall into), and violations of company policy. The policy was ostensibly rolled out as a protection, not a punishment, and while we were sacking people for inappropriate surfing left and right before the filters were in place, as far as I know nobody has gone down for web surfing since--suggesting maybe they were being straight with us, and that it more or less works. It can be a nuisance but is, frankly, within the company's right to restrict. It's not government intervention.
One other note on that, you won't ever have to worry about the government filtering web content here in America. As we have already seen, private companies are more than willing to pull the legwork on that one for them, precluding the need.

[jvarga]

Yeah somehow a business's IT department attempting to prevent productivity sinks or to protect themselves from lawsuits (somehow my female coworkers get offended when I leave my computer on "supersexybabes.com") with government censorship with the intent of suppressing ideas that they don't like.

[hopeless277]

And you didn't think that Google's and Microsoft's censorship of web content in China would eventually be imported to the good ol' USA? Silly boy. Right now in some obscure DC basement, web content is being filtered for 'our own good'. Aren't you proud to live in a country that cares SO much about you that is restricts what you are allowed to see and read? I know I am.