All school boards out there that are employing Internet Filtering software out there listen closely. The thousands that you are spending on filtering software are going to be useless in a little while, for students with very little know how. I am predicting that the same technology that is going to allow unrestricted access to countries employing filters (like China and Yemen) will be used by your students to get around Websense and SmartFilter .
A trio at the University of Toronto is developing Psiphon software Psiphon at the Citizen Lab . This software allows anyone to create an untraceable protected proxy server on any computer. Web traffic moving along this proxy server uses an encrypted and secure route, similar to eCommerece web sites. This would mean that students could visit any web site they wish and the web traffic would be undetectable by the filtering software.
Proponents of internet filters will state that it is a good way to legally cover yourself, even if it is ineffectual, in order to show that you are protecting students in some way. This may be so, but the pervasive use of this technology might force school boards into rethinking this policy, and instead move towards ensuring that staff and students become well versed on information literacy in schools.
Let us Educate!
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Original post:School District Internet Filter Killer by at Google Blog Search: filtering software
Original post:School District Internet Filter Killer by at Google Blog Search: internet filter
I’m suprised when I hear that there are so many put faith in filtering. Thanks for the info about the U of T. I’ll be sure to reference that if we have the discussion here. Fortunately in my situation, our IT guys are very comfortable with leaving policy decisions to educators.
Quentin, couldn’t agree with you more. Trying to put a filter on the Internet is like trying to put a fence between the United States and Mexico. Ok, maybe that was a bad simile.
Anyway, schools should not think that using ineffectual filters protects them legally. If a parent asked a tech person (in court) if the filters worked, the tech person would have to say no, right? Wouldn’t that make the school liable, using ineffective filters, suggesting to parents that they actually are limiting access?
My thoughts here:
http://www.21apples.org/articles/2005/11/30/the-arms-race
and
http://www.21apples.org/articles/2006/01/14/in-your-facebook-com
Policy should definitely be in the hands of the school board. Students don’t need Psiphon to get around the filters, thaey can do it now with google:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/google-free-proxy.html
Besides doesn’t Psiphon require that you install a program first? I would hope labs in schools are locked down enough that students can’t install anything.
Next the only effective filtering is whitelisting. Teachers should have preselected websites for students to go to in order to learn and do homework assignments. And that is it. Beyond that you are flirting with disaster.
For example what is stopping students from wasting time on sites that talk about fashion, American idol or myspace. Some of these might be easy targets to put into a custom blacklist. But then you are stuck in an arms race constantly trying to blackout things you don’t want.
Whitelisting is the only conceivable way.
Christian
Psiphon doesn’t require any software on the “school” computer other than a browser capable of https connections. You do need a computer on the outside to be running the proxying software though. Solutions like this have been around for a long while in a variety of forms.
As a school network administrator I have a legal obligation to protect pupils from harmful/illegal content and a professional obligation to make sure that the school’s bandwidth isn’t being used up by “hilarious” videos of people being run over/fighting/wetting themselves etc..
If someone used psiphon here for any length of time we would pick up the usage because their external proxy (the home computer) would become a “top url” in Websense either by hits or bandwidth and that list is monitored by a human. We would then block their home PC and invite them in for a chat about the school’s Acceptable Use Policy.
We are trying to encourage learning and filtering is a good way of keeping the attention of the kids on their work/teacher rather than on wackyflashgames.com.
Sahmeepee what happens if a hundred or a few hundred students are using such software? Would you still be able to tell that this software was being used, especially if it didn’t leave a large footprint?
Hi
It’s a wonderful news for people like me who are living behind filters, I am an Iranian and we have used to use the anonymous browsers which were being closed themsleves one after another. I am sure mullahs are angry of this news and they are gonna start burning the Canada flag as well as the others…
God bless all who sacrifice for the freedom of others….
Why block students from going onto games on the internet? Most of them are into drugs and no one is stopping them. Yea block myspace, but ones like runescape, and cheatplanet? Why those? Most students sit here after they finish there work with nothing to do, and by the way the google proxy isn’t working to get around summerville high school internet blocks, trust me i tried…