-Caveat Lector-
[If there is ANYTHING about the Internet that SHOULD OUTRAGE
YOU.... --MS]
Saturday, May 19 2:48 AM SGT
Civil Liberties Groups Oppose 'Stealth' Web Blocking
WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 2001 MAY 18 (NB)
By David McGuire, Newsbytes.
A clutch of civil liberties groups on Thursday publicly denounced
the practice by some Internet service providers (ISPs) of
surreptitiously blocking Internet users from viewing certain Web
sites.
Led by Peacefire.org - an online group that opposes mandatory
Internet
filtering - the public interest groups issued a joint statement
calling for two large ISPs to end their alleged "stealth"
blocking
activities. Among the groups that signed the statement were the
American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy
Information
Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"If people want to block themselves voluntarily, that's up to
them,
but hardly anybody who is downstream from these blocking ISPs
realize
that's what's going on," Peacefire.org Webmaster Bennett Haselton
said
today.
The joint statement accuses AboveNet and Teleglobe - two large
Internet
backbone providers - of walling off certain Web sites from
their downstream customers.
Since the two companies' downstream customers include a slew of
smaller
ISPs, most of the individual Internet users affected by the
so-called stealth blocking tactics are completely unaware that
their
access is restricted, Haselton said.
Haselton said he discovered the activities when he learned that
Peacefire.org was one of the sites being blocked by the two
companies.
To make matters worse, Haselton contends, users who are denied
access to
sites by the upstream ISPs are misled into believing that
the sites in question are having technical difficulties. Haselton
said
that users of the filtered ISPs would get "site not responding"
messages if they attempted to access blocked sites.
AboveNet has abandoned most of its blocking activities, but
Teleglobe
continues to filter out many sites, according to Peacefire.org.
Haselton said that most voluntary filtering products block
Peacefire.org,
because the site allows users to download software designed to
disable Internet filters.
But Haselton said Teleglobe and AboveNet appear not to have been
targeting
Peacefire.org directly with their filters. Rather, Haselton
said, the ISPs were apparent subscribers to the MAPS (mail abuse
prevention system) list of known spammers.
Since Peacefire.org's ISP is listed as a provider that hosts
spammers,
AboveNet and Teleglobe filtered all content hosted on the ISP,
Haselton said.
Neither AboveNet nor Teleglobe responded to requests for
interviews
on this story.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH,
TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer*
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them
To Friends
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