Websense Or Nonsense?

Today, while on holiday, I went into work (and I wasn't the only person to do this) to see a presentation on some censor software that the university seems keen to deploy.

The official phrase is “internet filtering” software but the (valid) point was made that this is a process that really just censors access to material on the Internet.

This is all rather depressing and yet another sign of the increasing “corporatisation” of what was once a fine university. There was something that can only be described as a confrontation between the academic staff present and the technical team who will be responsible for implementing this project. But (crucially) it was noted that the technical people present at the meeting were really just poor sods who’d got the short straw of implementing something that was bound to be contentious. I sat “bound” to be contentious but maybe it wasn’t to the university managers involved in the decision to initiate this project – and if it wasn’t obvious to them this is in some ways more worrying/damning.