Warning: this is a very long post (the page-down key may help!) but I do hope it’s useful to many who have the same questions or concerns as jbaldy22 ]
> Here is a paragraph from the booklet …
As I said “it barely if at all mentioned OTD rate, instead it goes on about the real risks to all of us.”. You quoted one paragraph which I read, but that is not the thrust of the asifa booklet if you read it with a bit of objectivity – it mainly talks about addiction and the harm viewing inappropriate material can cause.
You and I may find the language hyperbolic, but you can’t say their argument was about OTD rates, it you read the whole thing (and it does go on a bit, I only got to about 10000 words with only one reference to OTD before I gave up).
> Because no one is talking about it (the asifa booklet) I can’t bring it as a proof of how certain organizations have a nonsensical view in regards to the internet?
Sure you can, it will just be besides the point.
> I don’t know what kind of standards qa has at your office but in most normal companies you aren’t allowed to install anything extra on a clean system.
This is besides the point, and does demonstrate that you don’t know the filtering software industry. That’s no detriment on your behalf, as many experienced techies don’t know the variety of filters in this large field of technology.
Filtering software does not have to be installed on the machine. DNS-based software (which I mentioned twice) is installed on the network link (typically the WAN/ISP gateway router) and is transparent to all the computers within the network – and that’s just the simplest form of network filtering!
There are many other router-based filters that work with actual content examination.
Most large corporations already filter against inappropriate material to some degree (yes, even website development businesses or itnernet companies) because it protects them from legal problems caused when employees access these sites – and that’s in the secular world protecting themselves from being sued rather than caring deeply about their employee’s neshomas.
Even for those that don’t: you may not realise it, but almost every single professional office network is already filtered – just not necessarily against inappropriate material. Any modern enterprise router has some form content-aware (packet-sniffing) firewall and typically some sort of anti-bot and anti-malware filtering, often using a central registry or blacklist which prevents certain sites from accessing or being accessed, and often content-aware.
This largely the same technology that enterprise filters use too!
Use Google Chrome, and you’ve roughly got the same technology built into its browser, as yet it’s the most popular browser among geeks. Why? Because it protects you from bad sites (malware) and you trust the source (Google’s categorisation). Does it ruin the ‘net? No. Do software developers and office workers curse it? No. Why? Cause it works. So do enterprise-grade filters and soon they will every as effecitive and transparent as Google’s malware filter.
By the way, if you’re talking about software engineers, we normally need admin/root access to our own computers due to the range of software that coding requires.
> Having a filter defeats the whole purpose of running the tests.
Please explain what you mean by this?
In my business, having our software and sites work even with a filter means it is far more likely to work on unfiltered systems!
Also, if you’re building a website and it does get flagged as inappropiate that would be a real problem for you as many people have filters (Jews and Gentiles alike) and you’re excluding them as your customers.
> Talk to people who are in college and you will find out how frustrating it is for them to get by with a filter.
Why? Why are college students different than the general Jewish population?
> And yes there are a substantial amount of medical students and women who need to access womens health related sites which have things a filter will find objectionable.
Fine, as I said let them have a permissive filter, or no filter, but that’s an extreme case. On that, we can mostly agree. Now, back to 99.9% of the world …
> I have adblock on my computer which seems to do a pretty good job knocking off every popup and ad that I can throw at it.
Sorry, I’m not sure what that has to do with filtering?
Ad-blocks are quite dumb systems that typically work purely on the type of window that’s launched, not the content therein (as far as I know – I haven’t looked into it).
A good comparison is email-spam filtering software where the state of the art is excellent and we’re basically untroubled by spam when 10 years ago it almost made email unable. Filters are becoming this way with ever fewer false positives.
The arguments you make about software filters are years out of date.
> Also how do you propose to lock said filter in a way I can’t get around it in about 3 seconds?
You’re apparently a techie – and most people aren’t and can’t get around them quite so easily, especially if set up right but your question remains very valid in many situations.
I should point out that that an enterprise filter for a corporate network is actually quite hard to get around, even for a techie. Ever tried to break through a firewall? Not easy!
An even better question you should be asking is that even if you couldn’t get around it, you could just buy a new unfiltered system that your work/family don’t know about!
These are good questions, so thank you raising this valid point we can discuss:
The answer to both your and my question is that for both you have to take a positive step to get around it, and that moment of workaround will hopefully give you time for the “ruach shtus” (see sotah 3a) to pass or to “histakel besholoshoh devorim” (pirkei ovos).
The goal, as I understand it, is to ensure that the psak halochoh is clear that every Jew on the net must have a filter. Some filter, one that works but doesn’t allow you access to anything inappropiate – each on their own level (like hechsherim or meat kashrus) like you said but this applies to basically everyone in all situations, unlike what you originally said.
(Ok, ok, not the medical students)
It’s like hilchos yichud. Who says you need a shomer? And if you do have e.g. 3 men at night who says I still can’t commit an aveirah?
The answer is that the rabbonim know the risks and define the safeguards. No-one’s stopping you bypassing it but at least you know you are outside what’s permissible just by not having a filter.
As soon as you bypass the filter, you are unfiltered. Unshomered. Not kosher.
I beleive in year’s to come, not having a filter will be like not having a hechsher on a butcher. There’s nothing to say it’s not 100% glatt and you can trust everyone involved but everyone will react in shock if you buy there and won’t eat at your house. It’s just as seemingly illogical (The butcher can bypass a mashgiach! What’s the point!) but just as effective if you understand human psyche as well as gedolim do, and as deeply as the Torah (that demanded rabbonim make syogim – protections) does.
Arguments such as your’s meant that we blindly entered the first 15 year’s of the ‘net without any safeguards and awful risks that went unchecked. Just because filters aren’t perfect doesn’t mean they are useless and shouldn’t be used by everyone (on some level).
> For adults the best you can really do is make sure you don’t come across the stuff if you aren’t interested.
I really don’t understand this attitude. You seem to know the internet. How likely is it that with the amount of surfing you probably do each day that you’ll be able to ensure you never stumble across something terrible? If you haven’t yet, I’m afraid it’s almost inevitable.
As to: “if you aren’t interested”, we know “ein aputropus larayos”. Enough said on a forum that’s read by young readers.
> What kind of person or situation are you proposing that a filter will protect from (again we are referring to adults here) assuming that the person has at least a minimal amount of proficiency.
> Trust me I have helped plenty of friends struggling with filters they do block things they need all of the time
Well then, they haven’t been set up correctly, or they don’t understand why it’s been blocked. Some apparently innocent and popular internet tools are but a millisecond away from the most terrible soul-destroying content imaginable.
I’m afraid I can’t give examples as this itself may be a michshal and this is a public forum, but if the mods allow (mods? you can contact me personally and I’ll elaborate.
> and they are also for the most part ridiculously easy to circumvent.
Not if they’ve been set up correctly. There are “filters” and then there are filters!
> I know plenty of developers and not a single one with a filter despite the fact that these people are highly educated about the technology out there and the dangers of the internet and they all feel the same way I do.
Anecdotes are not statistics. And again, you really need to get out more because the world Jewish of Jewish software professionals is replete with pros who have very strong filters.
And again, your you’re statistic of 1, I counter with mine. I am a software engineer and business owner, and I can use a filter without issue because it’s been set up right.
I repeat, the most experienced software engineer or technologist in the world can still know next to nothing about filters. The world of technology is vast and a seasoned Java expert, for instance, can know nothing about DMA disk caches, or FPGA chips, or filters even if they think they know all the technology out there!
> In regards to monitoring systems … I have no interest in someone being able to reconstruct my ideas and actions from a browsing history – that could completely kill my business and I am sure that it would do the same to many others.
First of all, as I said, monitoring systems are tricky to get right – far trickier than filters and in businesses often will interfere. I suggested that for the extreme case, like a medical student who cannot have a filter, they may be the only protection of some sort that works.
Just to clarify as there seems to be some confusion on your part: effective monitoring systems don’t record your every keystroke, nor do they let anyone expect one specific third party access the logs or get alerts, and the monitoree would chose the monitor. They also don’t log anything – know one can be bothered to monitor everything you; good monitoring software only flags concerns and ignores the rest.
If you were in need of a monitoring system, could you not find one person that you trust enough to monitor you? In fact, even worse, is everyone you know unethical enough to steal your business if they could reconstruct your ideas?
By the way, if you’re in the software world then you should know that if a third party could re-implement your business idea from scratch just by seeing your idea, and despite you having a head start, then your business plan needs a rewrite.
> Besides for the fact that again since I like many developers out there make a lot of use of virtual machines would make one completely useless.
No, not if you have enterprise network filtering (ISP-based, router-based or both).
Anyway, virtual machine’s use the host connection so it’s often at the mercy of the same filter as the host. Almost all of your arguments are against software-based filters like K9 which are simply not a good match for many business environments anyway and most likely the sort of filter that your acquaintances had such trouble with.
> You basically are asserting that since filters work for you they should work for everyone. To me that doesn’t seem like a very valid assertion.
You basically are asserting that since filters don’t work for those you know, they don’t work for anyone. To me that doesn’t seem like a very valid assertion.
But to answer your problem: no, I have helped many, many people set up proper filters – far more than you have heard grumble about them I’ll bet. And they come back to me if it all doesn’t work well first time, so I know precisely about how well they work.