[LINK] Crikey: Two thirds of ACMA blacklist out of date

[rene]

On Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:42:28 +1100, Stilgherrian wrote:
[...]
>> One wonders what their definition of "child-related activity" is
>> and/or means.
>
> My notes say that refers to anything in the spectrum of child
> pornography or cild abuse material etc. I'll see if I can get further
> clarification, as my conversation was very close to deadline.
[...]
> I'm guessing there'd have to be some sort of automation involved, and
> maybe a site that has various randomly-deposited items can represent
> a large number of individual URLs. Again, I can enquire further.

Please do. You're aware of my extensive research into the matter of 
exaggerated, false and misleading statistics, and imo 'we' do not need any 
more floating around.

I am also personally concerned / interested in how this secret filter 
vendor decides what is contained in its alleged quarter of a million URLs 
(given my site contains the words "c p" and similar on a number of pages). 

Some years back, Smartfilter V3.01 was found to be blocking my entire site,  
libertus.net, under the under the category "Sex" aka porn.

When I contacted Smartfilter about this, a Smartfilter support staff member 
replied: "Sometimes mistakes happen with the categorizations of sites. The 
process is automated". 

However, at that time the Smartfilter web site stated: 
	"Secure Computing uses automated tools to continually search the Internet 
for new sites and pages that meet the content criteria for the 30 Control 
List categories. Candidate sites are then added to the Control List, after 
**being viewed and approved by our Control List technicians***." (emphasis 
added). 

Obviously, if my site had in fact been "viewed and approved" by a human 
before being added to the 'Control list', it would not have been 
categorised as "Sex". 

Smartfilter subsequently advised: "We will correct this error in the 
control list. Sorry for any inconvenience that this error has caused."

Not a whole lot of comfort given for all I know my site may have been 
categorised as porn for months or years before I found about it by, IIRC, 
someone emailing me and telling me.

Irene