The Great Satan or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Message Board

The internet service provider for my school district, St. Johns, is MMNET based in Ithaca, Michigan. MMNET uses the SmartFilter filtering software to block out sites on its list of inappropriate websites. SmartFilter is sort of a digital Gestapo that does much more than just block porn and bomb building websites.

According to its website, SmartFilter allows management or a tech department to:

Quickly understand how your organization is using the web and then drill down to identify trends, isolate problems, document inappropriate web activity, and tailor your filter settings to effectively enforce your web-usage policies

I understand that there is a need in a school setting to block some material, but the monitoring “advantages” of SmartFilter is a little too Big Brother for me.

That being said, I have a couple of problems with sites or categories that the SmartFilter administrators at MMNET have chosen to block.

The first example is the “Risqué Business” section of the urban myth website Snopes (which according to several pronunciation websites is pronounced like “nope” :-). Why would MMNET not want students to know whether or not Coke and Aspirin is an effective spermicide? (it’s not) The website has good information from reliable sources. Why prevent students from accessing this information? I don’t get it.

The second big issue with SmartFilter, or rather MMNET who administers it, is the way it indiscriminately blocks message boards. If you are not familiar with the term, message boards are websites, or sections of websites, set up so people with common interests can ask questions, share stores, trade or sell goods, etcetera. They can be extremely helpful, especially if you have a very specific question or just want to learn more about an out of the ordinary subject.

Let’s say you are an auto shop teacher (like me) at a high school that uses MMNET as an ISP (like mine does) and you want to know what cheap tools at Harbor Freight will hold up daily use and abuse. You could check out the Garage Journal message board and search “The Harbor Freight PASS/FAIL Thread...” The problem is you can’t, because the entire website is blocked.

Maybe you are a theater teacher who is putting on a production of a play set in the mid 1940’s and you want the costumes to be as historically accurate as possible. Would the men’s hats have a three and a half inch brim or a one inch brim? You should check out The Fedora Lounge, a message board that specializes in period clothing. Unfortunately, you can’t because The Fedora Lounge is also blocked by MMNET. (If you were still wondering, three to three and a half inches would be correct for the mid 1940’s)

In addition to randomly blocked message boards MMNET uses SmartFilter to block Yahoo Answers. So if I Google “how do you bypass the security module on a 1997 Saturn SL1” and someone has asked the exact same question on Yahoo Answers and received an answer I can’t see it.

I understand that there are legitimate reasons to block websites. I would not want my students stumbling across the NAMBLA (an organization that encourages homosexual pedophilia) message board, but why block an entire board that focuses on 1980’s Pontiac Firebirds? The current system needs a complete overhaul; either a new way to identify inappropriate websites (multiple instances of questionable words for example) or the entire list of inaccessible websites needs to be reevaluated and revised.