Hi Jeff, On Mon, 04 May 2009, Jeff Sadowski wrote: > On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Gavin McCullagh <gavin.mccullagh@xxxxxx> wrote: > >> the whole idea of intercepting proxy (also called transparent) is sick. > > > > Would you care to substantiate that in a bit more detail? > > If your blocking content that would violate rights, maybe; if you are > doing it to speed things up or blocking sites that have no place in > the current facility I can not see how it can be claimed as sick. > I think blocking most porn from schools and work is right. Maybe even > blocking youtube from work because of how much time is waisted. I think this misses the issue. A web proxy is indeed a convenient way to apply these sorts of blocks. However, whether you force people to configure proxies in order to get web access or you do it transparently doesn't change the blocking. Currently we have a very short list of blocked sites based mostly on file sharing. Personally, I'd like to remove that as I don't consider it useful. In certain labs (ie where the students use our computers) at certain busy times of the year we occasionally block "time-waster" sites in order to free up those computers for students doing assignments. Those who use their own laptops on wifi don't experience that. Our students are adults. We don't generally block based on content. In Ireland (where we are), primary and secondary schools are all given a government-sponsored central broadband connection which is content filtered transparently. It's not squid, but it's the same principal. Personally, I don't really like the idea, but being pragmatic, I understand why they did it. Prior to filtering, a large number of teachers were dead set against giving web access to students (we had bought our own connection). Now that they have a comfort blanket of state-sponsored content filtering, they're fine with students using it. Sadly, sites like youtube are blocked due to unsuitable content, which is really a shame as there is lots of very useful content. We recently started using HAVP to block viruses/malware, but I think most people would agree that that's in the student's interest. Transparent proxying (as opposed to wpad) doesn't make any of this blocking easier, though I guess perhaps it makes it less apparent. However, it makes net access far more convenient (as against wpad) for the user. Gavin
