Director of technology for the Shenendehowa Public Library in Clifton Park, New York.
kgs@bluehighways.com
Column for September 2000
In late July I hauled myself to Richmond, Virginia, in a rainstorm so heavy it was like driving through a huge car wash, to talk once again about the problems with Internet filters—this time before the Commission on the Child Online Protection Act. As I walked into a room with filtering companies, representatives from the ACLU and the People for the American Way, and sundry free-speech and filtering advocates, I had a powerful sense that we had all been here before, many times and many places.
The morning testimony was surreal. There, in a prim suit and spectacles, was former Enough Is Enough Vice President Donna Rice Hughes, leading the questioning. Filtering companies were asked if their products were effective, and in a room redolent with snake oil, they all said “Yes.” My favorite product was a filter that supposedly distinguishes porn images by deciphering “flesh tones,” which reminded me of that strange pink crayon labeled “flesh” in my childhood box of Crayolas. Forty years of library science research haven’t solved simple problems of information retrieval, and yet we are to believe that a $50 filter can distinguish illegal sexual content from an Olympic swim team!
My B.S. flag popped up at full mast when several filtering companies assured the commission that they felt “disclosure” was a high priority. “Disclosure” is jargon for a significant problem with filters: Nearly all of them hide the lists of blocked sites in encrypted databases inaccessible to anyone except the companies that maintain them. In other words, you don’t ever really know what a filter is blocking, which is why filters end up blocking Web sites for organizations such as the American Association of University Women, the Quakers, and the Wayne, New Jersey, television guide.
If Mattel—producer of CyberPatrol—really believes in disclosure, it has an odd way of showing it. Several months ago, Mattel rattled its sabers at two individuals who cracked the code for deciphering the hidden site lists for CyberPatrol, frightening the hackers to the point where they sold the code to Mattel and have remained forever mum (AL, May, p. 22–24). Then Mattel went after journalists who wrote about this incident, as well as suspected mirror Web sites that published the code, with a vigor and determination it has never directed at the many attempts to provide methods for circumventing its filters.
So much of what I heard that day was sound and fury signifying profit margin that my thoughts often drifted to contemplating the so-called studies of filtering. Most focus on the quantity of Internet “porn” and debate how effective filters are at blocking “porn.” All of these studies are weakened by the same premise: that there is an objective, generally-agreed-on body of content that everyone feels should be blocked by Internet content filters. What I learned in conducting the Internet Filtering Project three years ago is that you can’t even get 40 librarians to agree on the nature of “offensive.” Filters are simply mechanical tools wrapped around highly subjective and often idiosyncratic decisions. There is no scientific filter (although a librarian who shall remain nameless touted one to me at the COPA hearing) any more than there is a magic bullet to help anyone—even a court of law—consistently distinguish between legal and illegal speech.
Is it really surprising that the strongest proponents of filtering, and the loudest critics of ALA, are groups such as the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and Family Friendly Libraries—organizations that cut their library-censorship teeth on books and newspapers that didn’t match the very narrow values they promote? And can it surprise anyone that filters, as I wrote in an essay for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, show a strong bias against gay Web sites?
We all have political realities to deal with. Librarians may feel they have to provide some filtering in order to pass a bond or keep some rabidly conservative trustee at bay. The problem comes when we try to retrofit the reasoning behind these decisions to make ourselves more comfortable with the outcomes. For example, with filtering, I have heard librarians refer to giving patrons a “choice.” However, “choice” is a hugely misleading term to use with filtering, because filters themselves deny choice, hiding third-party decisions in encrypted databases. We pride ourselves on our ability to make people info-savvy; we owe it to those we serve to tell them what filters are and how they work—whether or not we use them in our libraries. We should not abuse the trust and goodwill that generations of Americans have invested in us.
It may well be that you don’t care about taking choice away from four-year-olds; I don’t either. But do you feel the same way about 14-year-olds or 40-year-olds? Do you feel any differently knowing that the Gates Library Foundation recently reported that in three states, between 23% and 31% of the library users they surveyed relied on libraries for their Internet access?
A decade from now, after the next-generation Internet has arrived, wireless is ubiquitous, and the world has evolved again several times over, maybe we will finally learn that we are facilitators, mediators, and educators; but we cannot and should not stand between the huge world of information and the people who seek it. In the meantime, let’s protect children—by protecting the Bill of Rights, so we know that they’ll grow up in a democratic society.