pointingout

@Avram in MD…your name is quite ironic as the director of TAG in Baltimore up until 2022 was this year sentenced to more than two decades in the Federal slammer for the most egregious child abuse and distribution of child abuse materials on the Internet committed over the course of 15 years. In the course of his responsibilities as TAG director, he undoubtedly had at least the opportunity to access hundreds of devices from people of all ages. TAG never publicly made a statement or provided widespread guidance to people on what to do given this fact—in some cases, there may not be awareness. If he was half the technical expert he claimed, this silence was despite a valid concern. TAG, TAG employees/volunteers who install filters, and the filter companies are put into extraordinary positions of trust where they have the opportunity (via the MDM solutions they install or via their access to the device during the installation process) to fully compromise a device and its data…

This isn’t discussed enough in the context of filtering and TAG’s response to that affair (basically a cover up) is why I will never have anything to do with them whatsoever. As someone who understands the risks of technology and does have filters installed himself, it is nevertheless quite difficult to justify putting basically unknown people into such a position of trust. Really, it is unclear to me if who deals with privileged information (i.e. attorneys) or various controlled information (i.e. proprietary) information is putting themselves in legal jeopardy by basically sticking a transparent HTTPS-breaking proxy, MDM solution, and rootkit entirely controlled by a third party on their device. At a minimum, it seems they would have to disclose that they do so to a client…