Amtrak wi-fi posters

Head on up to Microsoft or Apple or Exxon and see how far you get inside as a member of the public. Try again?

Is this also unconstitutional, should those bars be stopped from offering any beer because they cannot offer all beers? I understand that you have the right to look up what you want on tinterweb, but as far as I know, this company isn't bound by any constitunal requirement to give you any internet access, can't you just accept the incredibly limited internet it does give you as a bit of a freebie?

Your beer analogy is the rambling of a retarded person and has no bearing on this conversation. No, it isn't over the top, no government agent should be filtering access to the internet. I would rather Amtrak didn't offer internet service at all than that they offer a filtered service.

More importantly, why was the service filtered in the first place? It isn't like they offered the service unfiltered, had a problem, and then put filters in place. No, just right off the bat they started discriminating against a minority segment of the population But thanks for the initial insult, I shall add it to my collection, filed under U for 'unwarranted'. I don't think it's discrimination, just a poorly constructed filter.

It's pretty clear that thinking isn't your strong suit. In a court case intention might matter in determining the punishment for a civil action but either way the discrimination still happened.

It doesn't matter if they were being malicious or just incompetent, either way it needs to be addressed. If you want to argue in colloquialisms, give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

Would you be so complacent if the filter was for the word "religion" or "jesus"? What would they have to filter before you thought it was inappropriate? The government should never be permitted to filter speech except where specific rules have been carved out by the Supreme Court and i don't even agree with all of those, but at least they are legal.

Butcherer79 profile , 26 Oct am. To be honest, they could filter all they want, if I find it intrusive to what I want to view, I won't use their free service. Also, their not filtering 'speech' their filtering viewing, the old fella Voltaire wasn't it? From Wiki: Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category.

It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be used as an expression of derogatory racial prejudice in the s from Thomas D.

Rice's performances as "Jim Crow". They are not treating gay people differently in this case, they're treating anyone who wants to view a site containing certain words which relate to gay relationships. Or are you too obtuse to realise that 'straight' people can and do look at sites containing these words oh the horror.

So no, it's not discriminatory. Anonymous Coward , 26 Oct am. While there are certainly straight people who look at gay related news, blocking a word like transgender would mean at least 20 gay news sties are not available. How do you not understand that you are discriminating against gay people when you block them from communicating? You are not blocking anyone from communicating, only from accessing the sites that this filter has blocked.

You can communicate through a vast array of mediums online skype, facebook, msn to name a few they are not blocking those. Oh, and I appreciate the lack of insults in your last two posts.

I can see now, those two are miles apart. Are you seriously arguing that beer options on a military base are equivalent to censorship and the violation of the bill of rights? I don't know why I post on here, you can't have a reasonable discussion when people need remedial classes in reading and civics. I'm merely putting the point accross that 'filtering' happens all over the place and that a free service that a company wants to give to it's customers should not be taken away merely because of a poorly constructed filter.

Also, I make my point without insulting intentionally at least. If it makes you feel you have a more valid point by throwing insults at another, then by all means carry on, however misguided your actions may be. Amtrak isn't a "company offering a free service to it's customers". Amtrak is a government agent blocking free speech.

I'll bring it back around to the original point. Would the post office be allowed to filter mail? Because they have the same relationship to the federal government as Amtrak, a government owned private corporation. Amtrack isn't filtering mail, if someone has sent you an email amtrack won't filter it.

And yes, they are offering this service for free which they don't have to and no, they are not blocking your right to speak out about it, they're blocking sites which have been filtered out by this badly constructed filter. PsychoCola , 25 Oct am.

You know as well as every other person here that containing every beer in the world in a physical space is a vastly different endeavor from not filtering websites.

It's not like they need to store every website on the internet on their own server. Agreed, I'm just making the point that 'filtering', in different forms, happens, and when it does it is not always deemed necessary to envoke arguments about the first amendment, it is just accepted. The filtering doesn't address this problem. Rule 34 and all that. I remember reading about the history of the bill of rights and how the anti-Federalists really wanted to make sure that you could say anything you want, as long as it didn't offend anyone.

That's the point of the 1st amendment, right? You'd be surprised how little they cared about the possibility of people being offended. This hysteria over the idea that we have to constantly guard against the possibility that someone somewhere might be offended by something is a curiously modern phenomenon. No, not even close. Another AC , 24 Oct am. The fact that it happens and it blocks perfect good legal speech just proves the point that filters are not that great, blacklists are not a good solution for companies and it is unacceptable for governments.

The best advice I can give them, take down the wifi service altogether. That way no one gets butt hurt and whines about it, and you aren't exposing yourself to liablity cases. The same way they sue google for pointing to porn? I don't think any lawsuit suing amtrak for providing wifi that allowed their kids to view porn would get very far. Why don't parents take responsibility for their bad parenting? That would be admitting that they're bad parents, and nobody wants to believe that they're a bad parent.

Heavens to Betsy! A child has seen a boob! Holy crap, this nation will fall apart! Richard profile , 24 Oct pm. If you give unlimited access someone's kid will eventually stumble upon porn and the parents will sue Amtrak. Actually, just as no filter will avoid false positives so no filter will avoid false negatives - so : If you give any access at all someone's kid will eventually stumble upon porn and the parents will sue Amtrak.

Tony profile , 24 Oct am. Jeffrey Nonken profile , 24 Oct am. I recall hearing that AOL used to censor the word "breast". It caused a bit of problem for women who wanted to discuss breast cancer issues.

Apparently "breast cancer" is obscene. Also apparently so is the nickname "Dick". If you want to discuss Richard Nixon, god forbid you mention his nickname. Or the actor whose last name is Van Dyke. Could be a double-whammy if AOL had decided that "dyke" was obscene too, as it obviously denotes lesbianism, which we all know is inherently obscene.

Like breast cancer and breastfeeding. The good news is that AOL is ancient history. But FB is doing their best to pick up the banner regarding photographs.

The Groove Tiger profile , 24 Oct pm. What about chicken breasts? I'll thank you to keep that filth in the privacy of your own refrigerator. The problem is that the blacklist for keywords needs to whitelist URLs or else cnn articles will get caught in the mix. I ran a retailers website that was blocked from the company I used to work at. The block was a filter run by a 3rd party.

Contacted the third party, they investigated and added a whitelist for the retailers website. I agree with Mike, filters, especially on Amtrak, need to be a bit more diligent in allowing sites to be accessed. As can be seen in the photo, all it takes is a wireless phone to circumvent. So what good is that? Why would Amtrak want to filter what someone can access on a wireless broadband connection?

I would expect porn and phishing sites to be blocked, but not the rest Where I work now, nothing is blocked.

I think they trust us a smidge more. I would expect porn and phishing sites to be blocked, but not the rest And how do you block porn and phishing sites, but not the rest? Atkray profile , 24 Oct pm. Don't worry the wild west days of the internet are over for all you pirate freetards.

Soon we won't need filters because order and safety will be established. The party is over. As long as Amtrack is not the government, they can do what they want - they are the ones paying for and providing the Internet Sure it may be "unpopular" or "unfortunate" that "gay stuff" is blocked, or even "porn" is blocked, but then go read it somewhere else, nobody is really stopping you here. Amtrak is owned by the government. Having a conversation is hard when you don't have any of the facts.

No comment, just wanted to make sure nobody missed that gem. Poor Mike. Now crying because he can't keep up on the latest gay news from Seattle while riding the Acela. That's not the point. You'd sorta expect this from China. Not from the so-called "Land of the Free. And may God have mercy on your soul if you're a Black Gay Muslim, as you're gonna be a terrorist Freetardian pirate!

I was in bed staring at the stars thinking, what the hell's happened to my roof And with that statement I think I've added as much to this topic as you just did. Looks like a slippery slope. Feels like a slippery slope. EeeeeeAwwww - shit! Blocking Gay and Lesbian sites can be viewed as discrimination and such opens them up to lawsuits. You can discriminate against people sexual orientation, lick blocking them from any type loans, housing or job opportunity's.

Actually - as a public service they are probably required to meet certain standards even if they are private. For all those posts saying it's Amtraks wifi they can filter what ever they want or don't like it Then is it still leagal? Jebediah , 24 Oct pm. The difference is you dont get to choose if youre a woman or African American. You DO choose if youre transgendered, or gay.

I'll go ahead and assume jebediah is a religious type. I really don't understand the problem here. From an admin perspective, we are expected to protect passing people from seeing something offensive on someone elses PC. It's a filter that's having a tough time distinguishing an article about a transgender person and someone browsing to Gaydarradio. With proxy servers, you should always err on the side of caution.

Get over this one, techdirt. Government agents are required to uphold the constitution. Amtrak, as a government owned corporation, has the same responsibility. How about we stop Latino people from riding on the train? After all, I would be really super extra offended if my child ever saw a Latino person, so why shouldn't Amtrak keep them off. They should err on the side of caution, probably most people don't want to ride with Latinos.

I agree, but in reverse. When you're filtering in a setting like this, you should err on the side of caution by only filtering out things which are clearly and obviously unacceptable content. This means some things get by the filter unintentionally, but that's less harmful than things getting unintentionally blocked.

In other words, blacklists, not keyword searches. Jesse Townley profile , 24 Oct pm. It's also a county government in Maryland too. That's what led to this newstory. Look, Amtrak is a government agency a la the Post Office that's run as a "private" business. It's still public. So is the county government. Did you notice that the example they gave are NEWS stories?

That's preventing access to the press, as well. Amtrak is offering wifi as an incentive to buy tickets and ride their lousy trains. Government funding or not, they don't have to offer it. Keyword filtering is poor-man's filtering.

Real web filters cost a lot of money to operate. Amtrak is poor and I'm sure they are trying to just keep unpleasant situations at a minimum- like some guy jerkin' it to youporn in the seat across from you on your ride from Philly to Washington. Cause there are no other laws by which to protect you from 'some guy jerkin' it'. Cloksin profile , 24 Oct pm. Its funny that this post would be made today.

Earlier today, when I first got to work, I tried to click in the crystal box on the link for the post about Nintendo. Because where I work they are so overly opposed to social networking sites twitter is blocked, as well as facebook. But because the people in charge of setting up the filters have no idea what their doing Mike's article about Nintendo was blocked because the word Twitter was in the title. I did a simple test and it turns out that here at my work if you type the word twitter into google and hit the search button, all the results are filtered as well.

I'd pull it up on the computers between class and some of the club meetings after school, and most of the game was fine, but I couldn't go to the page where you make cocktails. Not because of alcohol-related content, though Foolish question, I know. There's only one thing worse than censorship: Working within the system. Woe is us. Wi-fi is an optional service in no degree necessary for the trains as such, so it's pure gravy: enjoy having SOME rather than none.

Being a public space and a frill, even though Amtrak IS gov't, I've no objection to their filtering, far as Mike says it goes he's so often wrong that I must hedge. Not a slippery slope, it's a dam against a certain flood of indecency. With the lapse of politesse in public, it's more likely that I'd be annoyed by surfers than by not being able to get the latest news on "teh gay" or even them there less-beans. See trolls this is the high bar here. Its posts like this that can really get people exercised [sic].

Blue, I love your special brand of crazy, its like watching a monkey caught in a hand trap. Nathalie , 24 Oct pm. I think all websites should be filtered for government workers.

We pay them to work, not surf the web. The Devil's Coachman profile , 25 Oct pm. There isn't enough money printed in the entire world to get creatures such as that to think. By the way, I think the biblical name Jebediah originated from someone who was found to be fellating donkeys and then stoned to death as a result. Looks like they missed one. Until the next assassination or something along those lines, when people like you will be clamoring for the reasons why the Secret Service didn't know anything about the assassin--"He had his own website where he ranted about his plans, for god's sake!

I think if they also searched "breasts" it would also be blocked. I know from first hand experience filters are a nightmare because unless you have a person who knows how to set them up properly and handle requests they are a nightmare to manage. Second there might be an arguement towards children going on, just a thought because there are those that will play the "think of the children angle.

Cherry picking one term doesn't prove anything. I had a friend who worked in government and he couldn't go to Firing Squad because of the word firing. I know for a fact that filters don't single out one group and one group only in 9 out of 10 cases in public. I'm not even going to go down the they have the legal right route. But I bet you are going to find they are filtering more then just those words pointed out in the article.

To view our latest e-Edition click the image on the left. The Daily Journal in your inbox. There was an error processing your request. Breaking News If it breaks, we'll send it to you. Join this email list to be kept abreast of breaking news. Sign up today! Daily Headlines Wake up to our carefully curated list of headlines with the Daily Journal's daily newsletter.

Sign up now! Sign up. Manage your lists. Submit An Event. If you have an event you'd like to list on the site, submit it now! Go to form. Today's events. Latest Classified Ads.

Christmas Tree Candle lights. Large Dog Crate. Now hiring Cooks. Carlmont Gardens Now Hiring. Market Data by TradingView. Amphlett Blvd. Amtrak offers a more comfortable and convenient travel experience with free Wi-Fi on most trains, plenty of leg room and no middle seat. With our state and commuter partners, we move people, the economy and the nation forward, carrying more than 30 million Amtrak customers for each of the past eight years. Amtrak operates more than trains daily in North America, connecting more than destinations in 46 states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian provinces, and reaches additional destinations via connecting bus routes.

Book travel, check train status, access your eTicket and more through the Amtrak app. Learn more at Amtrak.