Re: Content blocking - Singapore seems to manage??

[Technical Incursion Countermeasures <lists () ticm com>]

At 18:13 21/06/99 +0800, you wrote:
> At 10:59 PM 6/20/99 -0400, Marcus J. Ranum wrote:
> > > Have been looking at Singapore's SBA pages - and they don't report any
> > > trouble at all.  They say they've not charged ANYONE, cost hasn't risen,
> > > efficiency hasn't been lost, and business is booming.
> > > Is it naieve to believe this?

OK the first thing you need to know about Singapore in particular and Asian
countries in general is this - there very often is a big difference between
what they claim to do and actually what they really do.

The proxies work as well as could be expected - the filtering level they do
is very very basic - you can find the hard porn if you want its not hard
(but then again you can buy it on the street - so why bother downloading it).

On the other hand the filtering rules tend to work by key words so forget
getting to www.nude.com, but feel free to surf www.adultfriends.com... 

Busting anyone? in Singapore this very rarely occurs (except for the two
idiots who hacked one of the major tv networks here using the iis BOF
hole)... Even the pirates (there are whole stores in major shopping centres
sellin gpirate software) only get their product confiscated. Why? well
there simply are not very many police around is my theory...

Anyway the long and the short - Singapore's proxy works at a national level
because teh filtering is basic and the culture expects that if you want to
get it you can, but you shouldn't see it if you don't want to...

Cheers,

Bret

PS I'm effectively a Singaporean nowdays - so I figure I can say this with
some authority..
Technical Incursion Countermeasures 
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