I appologize to the group for my vagueness. Yes we do have a legal policy
concerning these matters.....by "stuff" I meant attachments, url's, etc. We
will need to allow students to use this only to do research, recieve valid
attachments(ie...research pictures, zip files containing valid material,
etc) We do not have the staff to police the proper use of this though, and
any porn links, dirty pictures, etc....will not be tolerated. Please
concider this a technical question, and not an ethical/legal one.
Again, thanks...
Barry Smoke
Network Administrator
Bryant Public Schools
-----Original Message-----
From: Len Budney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, February 06, 2000 6:57 PM
Subject: Re: school filtering of student e-mail
>"Barry Smoke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I work for Bryant Public Schools, Bryant AR...
>>
>> 1. how do we filter [email] content, and what do we filter?(is there
>> a program....are there rules for words, catch phrases, content, url's,
>> attachments...)
>
>It's not clear what you're after here. Are you worried about incoming
>mail (e.g., spam)? Or outgoing mail (e.g. mail abuse by students)?
>
>If you're worried about spam, you should (at bare minimum) set up
>rblsmtpd, and use the Realtime Blackhole List <http://maps.vix.com/rbl/>.
>You might also want to subscribe to the Open Relay Blocking System
><http://www.orbs.org/>.
>
>If you're worried about abuse _by students_, then the most important
>measure is to be highly responsive to messages to abuse@ reporting
>misbehavior. Actually interfering with student mail may have legal
>implications, especially 1st amendment and 4th amendment issues.
>
>For example, any filter which watches for pornographic text will
>probably flag some fraction of emails between a boyfriend and a girlfriend
>within the same school. Acting on those emails may raise legal problems
>(censorship); failing to act may also raise legal problems (contributing
>to the delinquency of a minor).
>
>The bottom line: before interfering with outgoing email, you should
>probably check with a lawyer (which I am not). This appears to be a
>legal issue, not a techinical one. Hastily implementing a technical
>solution would be ill-advised.
>
>Len.
>
>PS Consider my remarks retracted if the school system has already
>formulated a legal policy here. It doesn't sound like it, though, or
>your question would not have been so vague. In particular, ``the bad
>stuff'' needs to be defined before it can be filtered, and ``bad''
>here must necessarily be defined by law and policy.
>
>--
>In 1995 Matt and I presented a cipher called MacGuffin at FSE 2 (an
>algorithms workshop). It was broken even before we presented it, by the
>hosts of the conference. This is the way the science works.
> -- Bruce Schneier
>
