[AusNOG] Public Internet Access Policies

[Skeeve Stevens]

Are we talking legally here? Perhaps not... but since when has that
mattered in the press?

My general advice to customers is that with free wifi (public areas), you
filter it... Paid wifi (hotels, etc), you leave it alone - unless there is
a specific reason.

I've built the public wifi internet access for a lot of organisations, but
some, especially councils are very susceptible to negative media coverage
should someone use their infrastructure to do bad things.  They don't want
to be seen as a facilitator for bomb making, hard core porn, violence, etc.

My recommendations for any free wifi is the McDonalds model...   The web is
all you get (http/https)... anything else is blocked.  Then you are limited
by time/volume over a certain period.  If you don't do this, your service
WILL be abused without any doubts.

I've sat there looking at the logs of the filtering servers at the
violations that pop up on public wifi... child porn, hate sites, gambling
and so on.

To make it clear - I don't care what anyone does on the web, and if people
are paying for it, do what you like within the law.

But if you are facilitating easy access, and don't want your
local/state/national media coming up with headlines like "10 year old looks
at porn via council free public wifi" or the many other possible
variations, then you best be deciding on your policy for what you filter,
and openly stating it in the T&C's... users have no rights when it is a
free service as there is no implied understanding of a product.


...Skeeve

*Skeeve Stevens - *eintellego Networks Pty Ltd
skeeve at eintellegonetworks.com ; www.eintellegonetworks.com

Phone: 1300 239 038; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve

facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ;  <http://twitter.com/networkceoau>
linkedin.com/in/skeeve

twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com


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On 10 October 2014 00:39, Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org> wrote:

>
> On 8 Oct, 2014, at 11:33 am, Skeeve Stevens <
> skeeve+ausnog at eintellegonetworks.com> wrote:
>
> > In my view, Filtering in this scenario is less about what the user can
> access, but more about the liability on the provider.
>
> There is no liability on the provider, you're a god-damned carriage
> service provider. That's supposed to mean something.
>
> If you're going to spin that line (especially when it's combined with
> product spruiking) then it's reasonable to expect that you'll be able to
> provide at least one example of an adverse judgement against a carriage
> service provider for content which might have been filtered being accessed
> unfiltered over a public access network.
>
> Whassamadda, you can't?  Dawww.
>
>   - mark
>
>
>
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