The following is a CBS News report:
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency’s computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a “controversial opinion,” according to an internal email obtained by CBS News.
The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon.
It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed “inappropriate for government access.”
The categories include:
• Chat/Messaging
• Controversial opinion
• Criminal activity
• Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content
• Gaming
The email does not specify how the TSA will determine if a website expresses a “controversial opinion.”
There is also no explanation as to why controversial opinions are being blocked, although the email stated that some of the restricted websites violate the Employee Responsibilities and Conduct policy.
The TSA did not return calls seeking comment by publication time.
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10 Responses
“. . . inappropriate for government access . . .” Chochmah ba’goyim, ta’amin. Let’s all learn a lesson from them. U’benei milachim – mamleches kohanim v’goy kadosh – lo kol she’chain!
Controversial opinion could be anything which doesn’t agree with everyone out there. In english, EVERYTHING is controversial one way or another.
An unbridled attack on our First Amendment Rights.
What about YWN?
Next thing, they’ll probably insist that employees work while on company time!!!!!!
Your Sister,
I’m not sure where in the First Amendment it says government employees have the absolute right to read other people’s opinions while working, so for the moment, I’m going to consider this at most a rather heavily bridled attack on First Amendment Rights.
Your Sister – Your comments more than once revealed a fundemental misunderstanding of constitutional freedoms – uless you want to sound like some “frier” holding forth on shelo asoni isha, you might consider taking an undergraduate or high school course in constitutional law.
My government employer, a State law enforcement agency, allows one limited time during breaks to use the Internet for personal purposes. It bans all access to a number of sites because of bandwidth issues (such as chat, persnal blogs and youtube), hate sites (except for work related investigations and research) and shmutz. These are perfectly legitimate “strings” attached to the use of an employer’s system.
A generalized restriction, if accompanied by internal procedures, protocols and checks & balances, to ensure that it is used approptiately, is desirable because one cannot deliniate now all the issues that will come up in the future. In June of 2001, for example, it would have been hard to forsee that Islamic based websites might pose a broad problem. Even now, banning all Islamic sites would be constitutionally suspect as overbroad . . . so you need to have some sort of general category . . . and then the public needs to monitor how it is used.
“An unbridled attack on our First Amendment Rights.”
Employers can ban anything they want on their equipment. They can even demand their employees WORK while in the office on company time, are you going to complain they are bringing back slavery?
#5- an employee, even of the government, does have the “right” to use their employer-issued computer using their employer provided internet access to do anything other than the employer’s work. Officially it is basically “goofing off on the job”.
Every time a Government employee logs on to a Government computer, there is a pop up screen that notifies him or her that use of the computer implies consent to monitoring, any information on the computer can be used as evidence in a court of law, and use of the computer is subject to the restrictions imposed by the Government.
As owner of the computer system, it is the Government’s right – as is any employer’s right – to restrict and monitor its use.
Personal computers are not subject to this restriction, and should be used (or not) for these restricted sites.
Your Sister, perhaps you did not read the article carefully. The TSA is not restricting any employee’s private internet access. That would indeed be unconstitutional. Rather, the TSA is restricting which websites employees can access using government resources. And these restrictions are looser than those imposed by many private employers.