Erections Banned by Council

[vincevincevince]

A resident's e-mails objecting to a planning application were blocked by a computer system that tries to filter blue or risque language.
[news.bbc.co.uk...]

Comment:
In my opinion the council has got off lightly, especially considering the complainant is a lawyer. If this was a more important emailed objection then it could have ended in litigation. If the email had been requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act then the filtering software would be causing the council to break the law.

The council's statement blames it directly on the filtering software supplier. Great - that means that we (the IT community) are going to be made responsible for irresponsible use of our software.

[inbound]

No jokes about penetration of said erection on the third attempt I see...

[Essex_boy]

had a similar problem earlier in the year, solictitor was emailing me some court documents for my approval. Only they contained very strong language and guess what? It kept bouncing out I had to use a personal address to get.

Even the judge at the hearing (male) asked why such language was used.

Cambridge City library had a problem when people used their PCs to search for adult education, the term adult was banned.

Contextual checking of langauge is required but even that isnt going to be perfect.

What does surprise me is that the IT dept doesnt filter these emails to another account then manually check them, or even employ a whitelist system of domains.

[vincevincevince]

What does surprise me is that the IT dept doesnt filter these emails to another account then manually check them

Doesn't surprise me. No money for it.

[limbo]

Everything sent from s#*$!horpe county council get bounced into our quarentine list :)