Amtrak Wi-Fi (WiFi) Availability

I'm curious: does the Sprint-based wi-fi that has been used on the Downeaster for the past few years have similar LGBT content restrictions / censoring as the new wi-fi that Amtrak is rolling out (and which will be replacing the Sprint wi-fi on the Downeaster, I assume)?

If so, it seems like this would raise not only a federal constitutional issue, but would also violate Maine's nondiscrimination laws.

The problem here is not that they are trying to single out the LGBT websites, its that right now the content filters for the system are extremely broad. They do not want passengers watching pornography or any other material of the like so I would assume the words gay and lesbian are in their systems block criteria. If you write your concerns and list specific LGBT websites that you think are being blocked wrongly to the amtrak connect people I am sure it can be worked out as time goes on to have a better content filtering system.

ApproachMedium wrote:The problem here is not that they are trying to single out the LGBT websites, its that right now the content filters for the system are extremely broad. They do not want passengers watching pornography or any other material of the like so I would assume the words gay and lesbian are in their systems block criteria.

Understood, but do they think that only gays and lesbians watch naughty videos? I mean, seriously? Are they also blocking the word "straight"? The vast majority of p0rn is straight, after all. What about violence and drugs? Do they block the word "black"? What other ridiculous narrow-minded tactics are they employing in their attempt to offer white male heterosexual Christian passengers a cleaner, less-offensive web-surfing experience?

Id imagine they are blocking straight porn too in all of its forms. The issue here is LGBT news and info websites etc are not showing up. There is no straight people news network thats defined as such that could be blocked by a content filter unintentionally. Again they are not just blocking this one thing there are many many other topics and a couple specific sites that, for the moment, are being blocked like youtube and netflix. Id imagine before they go and overload the connections and servers with all kinds of specific site and content filters they are trying to determine what the useage and performance handling capabilities are with this new system.

ApproachMedium wrote:Id imagine they are blocking straight porn too in all of its forms. The issue here is LGBT news and info websites etc are not showing up. There is no straight people news network thats defined as such that could be blocked by a content filter unintentionally. Again they are not just blocking this one thing there are many many other topics and a couple specific sites that, for the moment, are being blocked like youtube and netflix. Id imagine before they go and overload the connections and servers with all kinds of specific site and content filters they are trying to determine what the useage and performance handling capabilities are with this new system.

if they block "gay", do they block "asian" which is also a popular "subject" of the stuff theyre trying to block.

MEC407 wrote:Understood, but do they think that only gays and lesbians watch naughty videos? I mean, seriously? Are they also blocking the word "straight"? The vast majority of p0rn is straight, after all. What about violence and drugs? Do they block the word "black"? What other ridiculous narrow-minded tactics are they employing in their attempt to offer white male heterosexual Christian passengers a cleaner, less-offensive web-surfing experience?

The recent stories about blocking LGBT news sites appear to be derived from a story or blog from early in October during the soft roll-out phase that found some legitimate LGBT websites blocked. Without specific knowledge of what the filters are triggering on, this is all speculation. Amtrak has a feed back provision for people to contact them about blocked websites that they object to being blocked. Net filters are going to have these sort of problems because no filter is 100% intelligent or accurate.

A few years ago I recall reading posts from students and people at schools who were not able to access Sky & Telescope's website for astronomy information. Astronomy getting blocked? Surely that is a innocent activity. The determination was that there were pages and text on the S&T website referring to naked eye observing. They were discussing observing objects and constellations in the night time sky with your naked eye; no optical aid. The early generation filters were blocking Sky & Telescope's and many other astronomy websites because they used the word naked.

The political reality is that Amtrak has to put some filters in because if they don't, and someone pulls up a p*rn site while their laptop screen in full view of kids or less tolerant adults, Amtrak will be blamed for it. Yes, someone could easily put p*rn on their computer before getting on the train and watch inappropriate material in public view. But, if that person is using Amtrak WiFi to access the website in real-time, then Amtrak could be blamed by the more sensationalist press and politicians for allowing it. Stupid, yes, but what else is new?

afiggatt wrote:

MEC407 wrote:Understood, but do they think that only gays and lesbians watch naughty videos? I mean, seriously? Are they also blocking the word "straight"? The vast majority of p0rn is straight, after all. What about violence and drugs? Do they block the word "black"? What other ridiculous narrow-minded tactics are they employing in their attempt to offer white male heterosexual Christian passengers a cleaner, less-offensive web-surfing experience?

The recent stories about blocking LGBT news sites appear to be derived from a story or blog from early in October during the soft roll-out phase that found some legitimate LGBT websites blocked. Without specific knowledge of what the filters are triggering on, this is all speculation. Amtrak has a feed back provision for people to contact them about blocked websites that they object to being blocked. Net filters are going to have these sort of problems because no filter is 100% intelligent or accurate.

I have tried various web filters over the years and have found all of them to be unsatisfactory. My most recent attempt to apply a web filter was due to a teen boy who has been coming over lately, checking his facebook page and then wandering into less suitable sites. It is much easier to filter by words than by pictures. With the latest filter, the word "ad_lt" often blocked my own web use. Discussion boards and blogs were also often screened out if one of those posting used vulgar words beginning with F or A (fortunately not a problem on a well-moderated site like railroad.net). After trying to adjust the filter for a couple weeks, I gave up.

My solution is to stay in the same room with the teenager when he is surfing. I also check the history after he leaves, and when necessary, he gets his computer privileges suspended for a time. For Amtrak, that kind of supervision is not possible.

ApproachMedium wrote:The issue here is LGBT news and info websites etc are not showing up.

Exactly, and the LGBT movement has a lobby that people listen too. What was once commonly thought of as a deviant lifestyle has become more mainstream to the point of becoming protected - even by those who would oppose living such a lifestyle.

If registered sex offenders and NAMBLA were protesting the blocking of porn and their images they would not get as far. Society still (for the most part) think that they are sick and don't mind trampling any rights that they have. If enjoying porn was more mainstream and "out of the closet" (so to speak) it too would likely become a protected class. In some ways that is already happening with child porn being one of the few areas that remains strictly illegal - too upsetting for the majority of society.

I believe that the LGBT sites are being caught up because of the sexual content, not specifically homosexual but sexual. A straight site with the same abundance of similar imagery would likely also be blocked. Perhaps the filters can be adjusted to allow text and not images, or to filter specific language instead of blocking entire pages or sites but that sort of granularity takes time. It is much easier to judge a site by its cover.

Why can't Amtrak simply employ bandwidth limiting to prevent any controversy over filtering legit sites? "Want to download that 2GB Linux ISO? SURE! You'll be there 50 years, but SURE!" I thought the whole original point was to keep people from going to sites which would hog bandwidth from other users so why not simply limit how much data at one time a person can download rather than trying to search and block all large websites?
Why should Amtrak block people from watching porn anyways? Afraid of kids seeing it in public spaces? Well what about people in their sleeper compartments when WiFi comes to the sleepers? Are they going to start searching for porn magazines in carryon next?

MattW wrote:Why can't Amtrak simply employ bandwidth limiting to prevent any controversy over filtering legit sites? ...
Why should Amtrak block people from watching porn anyways? Afraid of kids seeing it in public spaces?

Do you think it is a coincidence that Amtrak raised the age for unaccompanied minors from 8 to 13 in the month before the rollout of wi-fi?

Its harder to put bandwidth throttles on a moving train that has no physical local machine to throttle each individual wifi connected device. Id imagine they can make some kind of solid state device to keep onboard but this costs money and requires maintenance.

To make the business case for filtering content, aside from bandwidth concerns: Amtrak's chief advantages are comfort and safety. Close to 2/3 of their passengers are women, many of them older women traveling alone who know how to complain. These women feel neither safe nor comfortable when sharing a carriage with a leering creep.

When can we expect this service on the Chicago corridor trains (Horizons)?

StLouSteve wrote:When can we expect this service on the Chicago corridor trains (Horizons)?

The FY12 business plan published early this year stated about the WiFi roll-out: "In FY12, the project will complete installation on other corridor and long distance fleets, based on priorities established by Amtrak and its State Partners." The more recent PRIIA Section 222 report from August provided an October date for the Amfleet I trains, November for the California corridor services, and Late 2011 for the AutoTrain lounge cars. WiFi to the rest of the fleet is now "reliant on future funding for this project". In the wake of the FY11 funding cuts, and the prospects for FY12 funding, Amtrak could be asking the mid-West states to contribute additional funding as part of the negotiations with the states for the corridor services.

The FY12 proposed budget for extending WiFi system wide was $13.5 million, so this is not a huge cost item. Not cheap, but not seriously expensive either.

If you can read this then the Wi-Fi on T79 works in the middle of North Carolina.

Quality is about the same as NEPRA and a bit better than the MTBA.