Re: Access to Porn sites?

[David Opitz <dopitz () LOYOLA EDU>]

Hi,

Like others, we don’t block web access to anything unless it is known to be malicious, due to Academic Freedom.

There are other options available to you other than blocking things, such as auditing and policies.  If one employee 
saw that another employee was watching porn at his/her desk, I would hope that would be reported to HR as a probable 
violation of the employee conduct policy.  That has the advantage of passing off the decision to HR of “what is porn 
and what is not”.  Auditing would let you trace back to who is responsible if someone were downloading something 
illegal – and if it not illegal or malicious, should you be blocking it?

How do you determine what is “bad” content that needs to be blocked?  Other categories that Palo Alto has include: 
abused-drugs, alcohol-and-tobacco, extremism, hacking, malware, nudity, phishing, weapons, and more.  Which do you 
block?  It was a while ago, but I’ve tested the Palo Alto filters just to see how they worked, and to me they seemed 
very broad, and blocked websites that simply provide information about those topics.  Blocking access to the “gambling” 
category blocked access to some of the best poker strategy websites out there.  I found a good network security webpage 
that was classified by Palo Alto as “hacking” (or possibly “malware”).  I think blocking “weapons” including blocking 
the NRA website.  Regardless of anyone’s political thoughts on any of these topics (please, don’t let this become a 
political discussion), some of these are topics that I want students and employees to be knowledgeable about so they 
can make good decisions.

Peace,
Dave Opitz
Loyola University Maryland


From: The EDUCAUSE Security Community Group Listserv <SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU> On Behalf Of David Eilken
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2019 1:36 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Access to Porn sites?

Thanks all for responses on this. Regarding the larger topic of Academic Freedom, which doesn't make the Internet open 
and fully accessible.  We all (users of technology) have to block things - lots of things. As technology professionals, 
we all know this. It is simply not practical or ethical to have a fully open computing environment.  Boundaries are a 
necessity; besides your ISP would shut you down at some point.

I like Randy at VA Tech's thoughts that were focused on the technical controls. Regardless of the content, there are 
things that are known bad. We all should be blocking bad things. However we determine what is bad (different vendors 
have different kinds/ quality of intelligence), there will always be false-positives. We still have to draw lines in 
the sand and those lines will never be perfect.

Sometimes faculty and other non-technical people may get this confused. We all already block/ filter bad things, some 
porn/gambling sites will cross that line and should be filtered. If you can't draw your lines as clear as some, with 
the intelligence sources as Randy noted, it comes down to your level of risk tolerance. The risks with porn surfing 
specifically change daily but generally, we know it to be bad. I personally believe you should block it and provide 
exceptions where needed. That is a prudent and practical approach, as the risks are real and significant, and the 
actual permitted use cases for access to it are few.

Dave E


On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 8:57 AM Valdis Klētnieks <valdis.kletnieks () vt edu<mailto:valdis.kletnieks () vt edu>> wrote:
On Thu, 15 Aug 2019 07:13:39 -0700, Babak Oskouian said:

> Another concern is 18 U.S. Code  2258A.  As you know 18 U.S. Code  2258A
> explicitly requires all Internet providers to report any and all digital
> viewing, downloading and possession of child pornography to the National
> Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Very stiff penalties ($150,000
> first incidence, and $300,000 second incidence) are imposed on any provider
> for failure to report.  Do you think (or has your legal counsel explicitly
> assured you) that your institute is exempt form this law?

This is well into very tricky legal territory indeed, because it's a field
where writing the laws to avoid unintended consequences is very difficult.
18 USC 2258A only requires reporting child pornography that you're aware of.
If you don't know about it, you don't have to report it.  This means that the ISP
is better off not searching user datastreams for it, especially in combination
with...

Meanwhile, at the state level, possession of child pornography is usually a
'strict liability' offense, meaning there's no mens rea (state of mind)
component to it. This means that if a user accidentally downloads some CP
because it was labeled "Pirated Copy Of This Year's Top Movie.mp4", they have
an *extremely high* DIS-incentive to report it, because they now have child
pornography on their computer.  And since consideration of intent is
prohibited, that means that the fact you had no intent doesn't matter - you
downloaded it, you have it (or had it) on your computer and that alone is
sufficient to make you guilty of possession yourself.

Who is going to report accidentally discovered child pornography when you
have to take it on faith that the police and district attorney are going to believe
that it's accidental? (See other post regarding porn sites that don't do their
due diligence regarding 18 USC 2257 record keeping....)

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