Filters, Monitoring Software Get
Favorable Focus at Presidential Debate
A question during the October 17 U.S. presidential-candidate debate about the country’s moral climate elicited responses favorable to filtering and monitoring technology from Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice-president Al Gore respectively.
“We can have filters on Internets where public money is spent,” replied Bush, reiterating remarks he made during two October 5 campaign appearances that seem to back a Republican-sponsored amendment to the Labor–Health and Human Services–Education appropriations bill that mandates filters for all schools and public libraries receiving federal funds. “I don’t support censorship,” Bush added, but “I do believe that we ought to talk plainly to the . . . people who produce this stuff, and explain the consequences.”
Gore did not advocate filtering, joking that concerned parents might “have to ask your kids how to put [filters] on there.” He spoke favorably of blocking software on home computers, enabling parents “to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately.” Avowing “respect” for the First Amendment, Gore nonetheless pledged to “do something to help raise your kids without that garbage,” referring to the FTC’s castigation of the entertainment industry for market-testing R-rated films to minors.
Posted October 23, 2000.
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