[TriLUG] Linuxisfor------- [CONTENT WARNING]

[Dan Monjar]

On Sun, Sep 01, 2002 at 02:11:06AM -0400, William Ward wrote:
> Ben,
> 
> Your statements ring true.  Our IT management has been threatened by 
> employees who received offensive mail despite our content filtering 
> system.  They claim we have a responsibility to provide a workplace 
> free of harassment and hostility, but do not acknowledge the technical 
> limitations.  We attempt to provide offense-free mail and Web access, 
> but we're beat up when we over-filter and under-filter, and maintaining 
> the medium is expensive (many man hours spent constantly tuning the 
> system and fishing our false-positives) and generally unsuccessful.
> 
> In essence, providing e-mail and Web access to end users may cost the 
> company more money than the productivity such access provides.
> 

My policy has always been "I am IS, not a cop".  While the organization
needs a CYA policy in place it is a management problem, not an IS
one.  Providing "offense-free mail and Web access" is a lost cause. Not
so much because of the seedy nature of the Internet but because of the
many and various views of what offensive is.  I would be offended if you
scrubbed a J.Lo. picture someone sent me.  The Supreme Court drop-kicked
the decision back to the locals... I don't think IS can do any better.

A couple of other IS maxims:

Don't look for a technological solution to what is essentially a management
problem.

We only fix data we screwed up.

--
Dan Monjar <email: dmonjar at bellsouth.net>