911 and 77 (21)
Here is an extract from my new censorship testing file. I'll be adding to it, testing the censorship program to find out what text triggers it - I'm getting closer, it's something I said about christianity, I guess I offended someone, a christian most likely, by some words I wrote. Anyway here's the progress so far...
Entry 21st May 2007:
An hour or so after the 'cleared' status the censorship machine went back into action. What I suspect happens is that at some point the program that does the censoring, at the hosting ISP, parses the content and 'reads' it looking for forbidden text and if it finds such text then the page is not sent to the requesting browser (you the viewer; you are not allowed to see that page!), that program probably dumps a report or log but while it is doing that, it briefly abandons it's primary routine (parsing and censoring text). Checking again this morning (as well as several times later on yesterday) there is no doubt that at least two files are censored. Today I am making changes to my web site structure so that instead of valid links being denied, and worse, you will at least be informed of what is happening. The ISP I use has not given me any warning or any message or information whatsoever about any of this and instead of returning visitors to my home page it diverts them to it's home page, a practice I do not consider to be fair. Also when that happens it is not possible to return to the preceding page easily - because attempting to go back one page takes you back to the forbidden page so you end up in a loop - so you have to press backspace twice in quick succession and how many people are familiar with that? I don't know but I don't consider it to be businesslike nor do I think it is fair play either.
So I am making a few changes to minimize the disruption. Oh, and the very worst thing I have done to deserve this? I wrote challenging comments about christianity, that's all, in other words I have probably caused offence to some anonymous christian somewhere and they have been able to exert that kind of influence and power whilst it is kep a complete secret from me - I only found out by accident. Are you happy about that? You shouldn't be you know, it's an unacceptable situation, I don't mean for me but for basic principle and actually for safety. Upfront censorship is one deplorable thing, but behind the scenes, hidden and secret, moreover done on behalf of some non-government system? That is really of major concern or ought to be.
Entry 20th May 2007:
At some point something was 'cleared' at my ISP. The files that were affected, not available, but there just as much as any other file suddenly became available once again. There is no doubt that the situation was as I described. The content of the files concerned makes me certain that censorship of an automated kind was operating or something that resembled it very very closely so as to make that a reasonable conclusion.)
The censored file that is here will be included, paragraph by paragraph, in an attempt to establish what the automated censoring program is zeroing in on.
But first of all. At this point I know that at least one web page, one file, of mine here on this web site - more specifically it is on the server of the ISP that hosts my pages, my web site and blog, is being censored by that ISP.
I have performed enough tests to be sure of that. Also I have discovered that although it may be acting on the file name it is definitely able to scan the content and I know this because the first thing I did was to copy the content into another file with a different name and immediately it was censored. Thus far I know that much is happening. In order to pin it down more exactly, to find out what in the content is triggering the automated censor, I will add that content here, paragraph by paragraph, and we will see at what point the censor activates.
You can read more about the censorship of this site by seeing what's currently in the censorship category to the right.
By Paul E. Coughlin
Monday 21st May 2007
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