Commuter rail: Best on-time performance in years, but WiFi is getting a bit censorious

By adamg on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 9:10pm

The MBTA reports 90% or better on-time performance for commuter-rail trains over the past four months - the best performance in three years.

Meanwhile, power users of the WiFi service on commuter trains are beginning to report filtering software on the access points is blocking their access to some sites.

Adam Rosi-Kessel reported yesterday he was blocked from a Talking Points Memo video site, but also his own blog admin console, which doesn't have any bandwidth-sucking video.

Today, Cara Lisa Powers tweeted she could not get through to Huffington Post. Andy Hannon tweeted he was blocked from Twitter.

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Comments

Yep

By DVDWow on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 9:34pm.

Twitter is definitely blocked.

The program is called "Surf on the Safe Side":

Both PG and U block out all major catagories of inappropriate content (see below) but U also blocks out unmonitored Chatrooms and online messaging services, which are also used by paedophiles to contact children and adolescents.
U also blocks out public web space like Yahoo Clubs and Geocities as these are used for the same purposes, as well as promoting pornography (SOS members can notify us of acceptable content and we review and unblock those pages).

pAEdophiles?

By eeka on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 11:54pm.

They don't need to worry about blocking those on the ~~MBTA~~MBCR. Those are only in England!

When you're stuck on the train in the early morning, before the majority of your favorite websites have started to update, there are only so many sites you can look to for entertainment as your train approaches the station late once again. I was surprised this morning to find that textsfromlastnight.com, fmylife.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, barstoolsports.com, blabbermouth.com (hard rock news website), and a few blogs that I randomly read (which have no NSFW content) were all blocked. When you've read the news on Drudge, Fox, and CNN, and the sports blogs and websites haven't updated, what else are you supposed to look at?

Makes sense now

By johnmcboston on Fri, 07/03/2009 - 11:08pm.

They want to stop all those twitter reports about later trains. :)

Who would've guessed...

By neilv on Fri, 07/03/2009 - 6:22am.

...that the MBTA will find some way to screw up a potentially good thing.

(Not only is this censoring always dumb in practice, but the companies that do it are always getting caught blocking sites for political/ideological reasons.)

Internet connectivity will be regarded as basic civic infrastructure, and then MBTA, as public transit, is in civil-liberties hot water.

I've yet to find a site-blocker that even does what they intend

By eeka on Fri, 07/03/2009 - 11:51am.

I used to go to Panera with my laptop to do paperwork, treatment planning, etc. Their filter blocks anything with "human sexuality" content. So I couldn't access journal articles about puberty or any websites about development of gender identity. Just to have a stronger case when I e-mailed them, I made sure that I was able to pull up plenty of explicitly sexual sites, which I did very easily. I e-mailed them with an explanation of how I'm a clinician and was trying to work on some treatment plans and conference presentations there, and couldn't get to professional sites about puberty or gender identity (and provided links to the sites), but was easily able to get to sites selling sex toys, videos of various sex acts, etc. (and I provided links to those).

They wrote back and told me they reserve the right to block anything they want. Well no shit, but they're making it a pain-in-the-ass place to try and get work done, while not actually making it so people in the cafe aren't likely to see graphic sexual images on the next person's laptop screen. I wrote and told them this and told them which businesses I'd be going to instead to do my work. I got another e-mail (surprisingly not a form letter!) telling me that they're obligated to protect children from being able to see pornography that other patrons might be watching.

First of all, there's no law holding them liable, unless a staffer actually sees someone watching porn and neglects to ask them to stop, second of all, YOU CAN STILL WATCH PORN ON THE DAMN THING, and third of all, we know from the clinical literature that the best deterrent for socially inappropriate behavior is for an actual human to tell the person, hey, I don't appreciate you watching that here where everyone can see it.

http://1smootshort.blogspot.com

flic.kr was blocked the

By David Hall on Fri, 07/03/2009 - 4:01pm.

flic.kr was blocked the other week when I was riding.

For the longest time, the

By anon on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 8:14am.

For the longest time, the APs used default credentials, so you could have had your way.

Any comment from MBCR?

p.s.
Adam, use your iPhone!