[Lias] Content filtering: how we do it.

[Paul Shirren]

John wrote:
> High school. They are "youth at risk," and we are a care school. If 
> there's truth in these stories,
> http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=social+networking+paedophiles
> and we were careless, we'd be shut down.
> 
> "Of the 8 million children in the UK with access to the internet, one in 
> 12 says they have gone on to meet someone whom they initially 
> encountered online. Police say more than 50,000 sexual predators are 
> thought to be online at any one time."

They surveyed 8 million children? Or they took a sample? How was the
survey conducted? Sources? Sorry this is hearsay.

Teenagers (apparently rarely younger children unlike offline) do get
into trouble online. They are curious about sex and relationships and
often don't realise the dangers. Punishing them and forcing them to seek
forbidden fruit out of sight maybe one of societies least responsible
reactions to new technology.

But to put it into perspective according to some statistics 95% of child
abuse is at the hands of family members with teachers and priests and
other professions well under 1%. Not much room left for Internet boogie
men is there? The truth of child abuse is far more terrifying and
sickening than the myths we tell ourselves.

If we are serious about your duty of care perhaps we should not let the
children go home? The sad truth is they are far safer playing on
Facebook than staying at their Uncles place.

At least we can monitor the Internet with logs or deep packet inspection
and chuck some people in jail before any kids get hurt. It is a hell of
a lot easier to gather evidence on predators if we have the trust of
children and get tipped off rather than set up an adversarial
relationship with them and find out too late.

If only it was as easy to deal with the far more likely real world
abuses by people we know and trust.

If there is a real danger of children being harmed aren't we just
pushing the problem out of the school and into the home? It doesn't seem
compatible with educating the whole child to me. But I am not a teacher
so perhaps I have unrealistic expectations.

Some quick google results.
http://libertus.net/censor/resources/statistics-laundering.html
http://www.hastac.org/node/806

> It's not my call, but I don't imagine the board would want to take the 
> chance.

No it is not up to us. And they don't listen to IT professionals or pay
us fairly or offer us a career path. So I try and keep my head down.

I am a fan of appropriate filtering. I love technology and open source.
I would still like to see your schools approach and learn from it and I
thank you for sharing it. Sorry for the ear bashing. Feeling strongly
about this topic at the moment.