"Barry Smoke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I work for Bryant Public Schools, Bryant AR...
>
> 1. how do we filter [email] content, and what do we filter?(is there
> a program....are there rules for words, catch phrases, content, url's,
> attachments...)
It's not clear what you're after here. Are you worried about incoming
mail (e.g., spam)? Or outgoing mail (e.g. mail abuse by students)?
If you're worried about spam, you should (at bare minimum) set up
rblsmtpd, and use the Realtime Blackhole List <http://maps.vix.com/rbl/>.
You might also want to subscribe to the Open Relay Blocking System
<http://www.orbs.org/>.
If you're worried about abuse _by students_, then the most important
measure is to be highly responsive to messages to abuse@ reporting
misbehavior. Actually interfering with student mail may have legal
implications, especially 1st amendment and 4th amendment issues.
For example, any filter which watches for pornographic text will
probably flag some fraction of emails between a boyfriend and a girlfriend
within the same school. Acting on those emails may raise legal problems
(censorship); failing to act may also raise legal problems (contributing
to the delinquency of a minor).
The bottom line: before interfering with outgoing email, you should
probably check with a lawyer (which I am not). This appears to be a
legal issue, not a techinical one. Hastily implementing a technical
solution would be ill-advised.
Len.
PS Consider my remarks retracted if the school system has already
formulated a legal policy here. It doesn't sound like it, though, or
your question would not have been so vague. In particular, ``the bad
stuff'' needs to be defined before it can be filtered, and ``bad''
here must necessarily be defined by law and policy.
--
In 1995 Matt and I presented a cipher called MacGuffin at FSE 2 (an
algorithms workshop). It was broken even before we presented it, by the
hosts of the conference. This is the way the science works.
-- Bruce Schneier
