Politech: FC: Replies to SurfControl dubs libertarian site "hate speech"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Overblocking is not a new concept. Brock Meeks (now at MSNBC.com) and I 
wrote a piece together over six years ago on the topic, but new twists 
continue to pop up:
http://www.eff.org/Publications/Declan_McCullagh/cwd.keys.to.the.kingdom.0796.articl 
e
Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04014.html

-Declan

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Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 11:30:37 -0700
Subject: Re: FC: SurfControl dubs libertarian discussion site "hate speech"
From: Alan Cabal <a.cabal () ATT NET>
To: <declan () well com>, <politech () politechbot com>

on 9/23/02 11:43 PM, Declan McCullagh at declan () well com wrote:

> CYBERSPACE - September 19, 2002: LibertyForum
> (http://www.libertyforum.org), a libertarian web-based news and
> political discussion site, has been listed as a "hate speech" site
> shortly after its September 13, 2002 opening. This categorization
> comes courtesy of SurfControl (http://www.surfcontrol.com), which
> characterizes itself as "The World's Leading Web Filtering Software
> Company."

The same outfit has labeled www.whatreallyhappened.com as a "hate site."
Clearly criticism of Eric Scheinermann (aka "Ariel Sharon") or the Israeli
state constitutes "hate speech." Also check out this new
www.campus-watch.org site, a blacklist of critics of Israel in Academia.

This is getting very ugly. McCarthystein, anyone?

Regards,

Alan Cabal
www.nypress.com

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Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 12:18:54 -0400
From: "SIXIT Consulting" <no.spam () sixit com>
To: stephen.purdham () surfcontrol com
Cc: christina.frey () surfcontrol com, pressreleases () hq LP org,
   Helmut.Forren () ga lp org, Advocates () self-gov org, declan () well com
Subject: Fwd: FC: SurfControl dubs libertarian discussion site "hate
  speech"

[All parties are free to print/release this email.  However, please 
suppress my email address.]
Dear Mr. Purdham,

As the CEO of SurfControl, you have the right to respond to the following 
letter.
I visited the SurfControl booth at Networld + Interop in Atlanta on Sept. 
10th of this year and was impressed with your product.  When I asked the 
rep who controlled the content of the filtering he replied that the client 
had sole control, much like a firewall.  I pressed on and asked if 
SurfControl had any influence on the filtering.  He again stressed that the 
client had sole control over the filtering.  I was surprised when I read 
the following letter.  I did go to 
<http://mtas.surfcontrol.com/mtas/MTAS.asp> and test www.libertyforum.org 
and it did come back as "Hate Speech".  Do you care to comment on the 
letter and my results?
Sincerely,
Robert Reese~
SIXIT Consulting
63 Red Top Cir.
Emerson GA 30137

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