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DII vs ARRSE

another_walt

Swinger
It has come to our attention that the phased introduction of DII includes a sub rosa campaign to prevent access to this site from some/most MoD terminals. As certain ARRSers have already alluded, this campaign may have the blessing of 'the grown ups' who are using the delamination process to identify the 'ARRSEr in the Workplace' for subsequent re-education without coffee.

Although this is a statement of the blindingly obvious, be very careful about accessing ARRSE from work - even though it seems likely that the gate is closed, 'they' will still monitor the attempt.

In the event that the powers-that-be identify me, I state for the record that I was made to do it, m'lud.
 
Good idea Bad Co, will it need funding if so how much?

Would be a shame to see the regulars vanish from the boards during working hours, and if redirected its one up the brown eye for the heirarchy which has to be a bonus :D
 
It's already started. Acid Tin has been warned off by his head honcho.

Do we know of any others?

New URLs.........good idea. I'll even put my hand in my pocket if you do........I'll not take bugger all out like.
 
How childish - most of us go home for lunchbreaks don't we? So, are they going to delaminate us from home too?

I refer to the Human Rights Act, and in particular the right to free speech and self expression. Oh, by the way, I know some pretty punchy lawyers too!
 
We believe that there may be a number of technical solutions to this problem if it does come to pass. We would be grateful though if anyone knows how a block would be implemented (url, IP, content?) and any details of timescale. Meantime we are in consultation with our hosts to come up with a variety of alternative solutions!
 
You simply cannot block access to a website from what I've read so far. The nature of the internet is that data can be routed via all sorts of places, it's IP changed etc.

It's not point to point comms, so without blocking all external internet access it is, well if not impossible, very very very difficult to stop access. I believe that plenty of governments have tried it with no success.

Oh, and URL, IP both useless. Answer - proxy server, dynamic IPs blah.

Page content could be worked around. Adult filter type software on machines, unless they really did go OTT and block on the basis of swearwords commonly used on this site. The word ARRSE could be changed throughout the site easily enough.

I stake my reputation on it, which I admit is not a very big bet :)
 
Interesting, and not just for the technical aspects.

Ultimately any organisation such as MoD has the right to control use of its equipment by its employees. Such control should be in accordance with some consistent and declared policy - not merely a covert attempt to block IPs. This is particularly so for a public organisation such as MoD.

It is hard to see any genuine objection to ARRSE use other than the question of "wasting time while supposed to be working". The same can apply to any other bona fide website, and the problem (if there is one) should only be dealt with under an over-arching policy.

It would be foolish indeed to attempt to single out ARRSE, which is after all related to the military profession, and continue to allow access to (say) the Labour Party and the Sun websites.

If such an attempt is really being made, I suspect the main effect will be to attract more attention to this fine website, and more mentions both in Parliament and the media.
 
I agree with all of that. Given that we're fine upstanding fellows, the most effective way would be to get CDS to give us a ring and say "please don't fight a URL / IP ban", while making an overt policy that "staff may not make use of service facilities to access sites of a (insert however you want to phrase it) nature upon pain of a good spanking". A combination of those two things would be extremely effective.

As you said though, I can't actually see anything wrong with allowing people to use this site. I'm sure there are a near infinite number of far less beneficial ways of spending time than talking shop, debating current affairs, browsing the military news etc on ARRSE - for example reading soldier / the officer / fhm / the sun / general web surfing etc etc etc. I admit that spending a bit of time enjoying the odd thread in the NAAFI Bar may not be exactly battle-winning, but overall I think this site is very positive. Have a look back at the poll from ages ago about being proud to be in the British Army - we're hardly a group of disgruntled revolutionaries. If soldiers stopped complaining there's be something very wrong, and if you can't trust your staff to get on with their work beacuse of media of whatever form then things are really bad.

Preaching to the converted? Of course. But in the same way that telling people not to use sites like this is probably the most effective measure against us, us making the point that there's nothing wrong with it, in fact it's positive, would probably be the best counter-measure. If we could make that point reach the right ears of course. Maybe we should dig through all the obviously good stuff that's come out of this site (such as your election efforts Hackle) and plaster it all over the front page with "Anti ARRSE? Read This" wriiten next to it.
 
I suspect that Hackle's summary is correct. Certainly with our new DII installation, before being provided with IGS, the user has to read and sign about 8 pages of rules concerning use of the system. The system is monitored by the system administrators who report anyone using it for non-work purposes - looking at subversive sites such as Ebay, for example - it's not just ARRSE. They do seem particularly zealous, however, possibly because the system is new and shiny.
 
Bad CO said:
We would be grateful though if anyone knows how a block would be implemented (url, IP, content?) and any details of timescale.

I believe that the current system uses a combination of URL and content filtering. This means that entire sites can be blocked and sites/pages containing certain words i.e. 'porn'. The latter part of the solution deals with the problem of dynamic content/pages on an otherwise inoffensive site.

If I find out more, I'll let you know.
 
If MoD were serious about encouraging (good) morale in the services, they would produce a new Personnel Strategy Guideline (PSG 29 - ARRSE Participation a Prerequisite for Promotion), and the IT guys would reconfigure their filters to ALLOW web access based on keywords such as "hoop". "chav", "Walt", and "electoral registration".
 

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