SurfWatch for employees (ugh)

Tue Jul 18 00:17:26 PDT 1995

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Consistent with the trend towards treating employees like children,
Webster Network Strategies has announced (but apparently has not
shipped) a product similar to SurfWatch but aimed at an employment
environment. The product is called "WebTrack" and supposedly supports
access lists of URLs, where access can be allowed to "all but these sites"
or "only to these sites". The product also can be configured to log all 
Web usage by users subjected to its reign of terror. :) WebTrack 
is priced at $7,500 with an annual subscription to its list of 
interesting (err, forbidden) sites priced at $1,500. The article in the
7/10/95 Infoworld doesn't list contact information for Webster
Network Strategies. 

What is it, two months between deployment of software designed to restrict
net access to one segment of the population perceived as especially
vulnerable and the subsequent application of that technology to other 
target groups? My bet is the next target group will be university 
students, followed by "affinity marketing" with various repressive
organizations (whose names I elide in the interests of greater
Cypherpunk harmony, pick your own and imagine them here.) 

Of course, the next step is to use restrictive licensing/distribution
terms (a la Netscape/Mozilla) and a nifty freeware/software package
available only from a site which also carries porn (or other forbidden
fruit) to make the customers/purveyors of this crap twist in the wind
a bit. Break the terms of the license and get the software somewhere
else? Avoid using the coolest new thing because you're hooked up via
we'll-think-for-you.net? Doh.

(Pedants need not point out that personal choice (and personal filtering)
are always appropriate, and indeed empowering. Neither WebTrack nor
NetSurf are marketed to help people subject themselves to a regime
of repression - they are intended and sold to allow the purchaser to
control what others (perceived as having fewer or no rights) will read
and view. ". . inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Matthew 25:45)