Yesterday, TELUS announced that it was “taking a byte out of spam” with new technology being added to improve their email services.
TELUS is pleased to introduce this leading edge security technology, a second layer of spam and virus control that will screen out the most obvious problem e-mails before they make their way to customer in-boxes…
I’m all in favour of this kind of filtering by the carriers and ISPs. There is no question that the garbage that infests parts of the internet needs to be cleaned up.
The next stage is to implement network-based blocking of truly illegal content. Strange that ISPs have no trouble blocking the merely annoying, but when it comes to truly illegal content, like child exploitation and hate, they claim that there is nothing they can do.
It doesn’t seem to make sense that the ISP community is telling users that they should have PC-based blocking tools for illegal content, but ISPs boast about their network based anti-spam tools.
Leaving blocking to users is like airlines fixing their on-board food selection, but telling passengers to bring their own parachutes if they are concerned about safety.
This ties in somewhat with the legal case being fought in the US between Google and the Justice Department over access to certain search records.
That case started with the government wanting to study the effectiveness of filtering tools to screen sexually explicit content from children.
Filtering explicit (legal) images is one thing – blocking illegal content is another matter. I am interested in solutions targeting the digital loophole currently enjoyed by smugglers of illegal content.