[techtalk] Sick of surf and porn addicts

[James Sutherland]

On Sat, 26 May 2001, Penguina wrote:

> Why not write a script to put each users' web access cache list
> (from the squid cache) up on an intranet web site--viewable by
> their line supervisor--you know, the one who approved the account
> in the first place.

Liese said in her e-mail she couldn't do that: it would be an unlawful
violation of the employees' privacy. I wouldn't expect my employer to post
transcripts of my 'phone calls on the intranet - so why should the content
of my TCP sessions be any different?

Frankly, if my employer pulled a stunt like that, I'd take the first
alternative job to come along, and make sure none of my friends considered
working there until they change their attitude.

> Then leave it up to them to figure out what to do.
>
> In one place I can remember, the problem went almost all the way
> to the top.  In another place, it DID go all the way to the top.

Liese wasn't explicit about which she regarded as a problem, but she did
complain about the volume of e-mail due to "viruses, jokes and other
shit", so I suspect the problem she's attacking is the VOLUME of traffic,
not the content. At which point, filtering would be difficult, so some
sort of QOS traffic management makes more sense.

> And they can run their own bloody servers as a result.

Any other employer providing Net access to staff is likely to have the
same problems - unless it's an ISP, in which case they can probably afford
the bandwidth :-)


James.