"I Would Strongly Advocate Full Disclosure"

Senator and GOP presidential frontrunner of the week John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave a little talk this afternoon practically in the Geek Compound's back yard. Billed by a local group as a town meeting on censorware, with handouts on "Internet porn filters" passed around beforehand, this roving reporter was dying to find out what would be said. Click for more...

"The internet is going to provide knowledge, information and freedom to people all over the world." - Sen. John McCain

The world-famous Geek Compound is located in Ottawa County, Michigan, not exactly known as a hotbed of controversy and intrigue. But for whatever reason, we are now one of the areas whose libraries are being targeted by would-be censors. Uncaring of a federal court decision declaring censorware in public libraries unconstitutional, the American Family Association and other "pro-family" groups have declared the area a battleground. A small library in a small nearby town has become the first in our fair state to install mandatory censorware on all its internet terminals. And now, the home of Slashdot itself, Holland, is being pressured to do the same at its public library.

Politics is of course a war of ideas, and in any war there is the inevitable arms race. Sen. McCain was possibly the first to bring the issue directly to the Congress, with his S.97 introduced a year ago. But Elizabeth Dole was the first to make the subject a campaign issue, as is illustrated by the pro-censorware pamphlet:

"...libraries should install computer software that blocks access to pornographic sites on the Internet...the measure also should apply to computers used by adults." - ABC NEWS, June 28, 1999

After Dole dropped out, the issue languished for a while until, in a campaign hard-pressed for issues of substance, it was revived. Steve Forbes is quoted:

"I proudly support AFA-Michigan and the citizens of Holland in seeking a reasonable, common sense standard to what children have the opportunity to view in a public library." - Dec. 20, 1999

And McCain's latest quote came while stumping in South Carolina:

"Every school and library should be required to buy filters...to keep out materials that are not suitable for children the same way in which the library board filters printed materials for the library." - Dec. 22, 1999

It's a no-lose issue for politicians. In the race to see who can come out more in favor of children, facts get left by the side of the road.

Here's the strange thing: this open forum meeting, which the AFA hoped would be about internet porn, ended up being about everything except internet porn. McCain spoke briefly, and only for a few minutes did he discuss blocking technology. In the lengthy question-and-answer period, there were only two questions about censorware. One of them was mine, and neither was in support of his position.

My question was about blocking software and openness. I stopped short of grabbing the mike and shouting "open-source the censors!" but that was the general idea.

One of the major concerns that free-speech advocates have about censorware is that its blacklists, or blocking lists, are hidden. The list of URLs and such that are actually blocked by their software is protected by copyright law and by encryption.

It's an end-run around the First Amendment. The government could never step into a library and censor information from the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry. Or GayDaze, a non-pornographic online soap opera about gay men and a lesbian. Or any of the thousands of unfairly blocked sites that have been uncovered.

The end-run is to allow an unaccountable third party to put these blocks in place - hidden - and then for the government to mandate their use.

I briefly set up this paradox for Sen. McCain and then asked: "Do you believe that software installed in public schools and libraries should be open to public scrutiny?"

I didn't set it up quite as well as I just have; I figured that since he was the sponsor of S.97, "a bill to require the installation and use by schools and libraries of a technology for filtering or blocking," he might quickly grasp my point. But he didn't appear to be familiar with the fact that the blacklists are encrypted, and answered a different question.

But when I rephrased the question, his answer was that he "would strongly advocate full disclosure."

If the Senator - or anyone else in a policymaking position - is reading this, I would follow that up by saying:

Great!

But the software we're talking about doesn't do this. There is only one commercial package on the market that has an open blacklist. It is not popular and is almost never given as a preferred option for libraries and schools. The software that the AFA wants to install in Holland's libraries has a carefully-encrypted blacklist.

It's only because of the (arguably illegal) efforts of muckrakers that we know anything at all about this software. The AFA, Filtering Facts, and other pro-censorware groups endorsed a product called X-Stop in August 1997. Family Friendly Libraries called it "technology that will block ALL porn sights and ONLY porn sights" [sic], and rejoiced that a technology had "achieved 100% success." But their encrypted blacklist was decrypted and exposed shortly thereafter. Unsurprisingly, the product did not live up to its marketing hyperbole. In October 1997, the endorsements shriveled and disappeared as quickly as they'd come.

The product was the same. Only our knowledge about it had changed.

McCain calls for "community standards" to be applied to each public library. But no censorware offers checkboxes for "rural Kansas" vs. "New York City" blocking. They are all one-size-fits-all. And because we can't look under the hood, nobody has any idea what size that is.

If we're going to use third parties to censor our public libraries, let's make sure they let us see what they're doing.

That's what I would have said to the Senator if I'd had a microphone of my own.

Finally, I have to say that I was impressed by the student in the balcony, a high-school student at my guess, who - after listening to the standard recap of Columbine and the standard attack on the media for giving the murderers Doom and the internet - stood up to state his case. He said that he looked at how the Columbine murderers were being described by the media and by McCain, and the description sounded a lot like himself. He played violent video games and spent time on the internet and he wasn't afraid to say so. That took guts.

McCain's plan for kids like this is twofold: first, to fund a study of "very intelligent people" to determine once and for all whether there is a link between media violence and real violence. And second, to protect parents' rights: "your parents need to know what you're doing on the internet," he told the high-school student, so that they could all sit down as a family and discuss whether it was appropriate.

I hope that kid knows about Peacefire.

Tonight, there will be a meeting on censorware at the Holland library which we hope will include both sides of this issue. Watch for a report tomorrow.

[An unfinished version of this story was accidentally posted Monday evening, and several Slashdot reader comments were lost. I apologize for the mistake. -Jamie]

Comments

"required to buy" blah blah

[jabber]

There I'd draw the line. Being required to buy something is wrong. (Don't ask me about car insurance being mandatory, but not available from the State)

If government money is used to fund the service (like a library) then the government can set up guidelines that control policy. Of course this assumes that we (the voting public) control the government... (Heh. See above insurance knee-jerk.)

But 'computers used by adults' smells of Liz Dole sitting in my living room. Next thing we'll be required to do is wearing arm badges with our ethnic symbols on them.

What needs to be made clear to the people who think that they are in charge is that they are wrong. The sovereign entity in the United States is the Individual, not the State. Keep yer laws off my body, and keep yer policies out of my home.

Kids arn't sentient

[dbarclay10]

Okay, okay, flamebait topic. But that's besides the point.

"It's for their own good - niggers wouldn't know what to do if they didn't have someone telling them what to do."

"Why do women need to vote? They'd only want more dresses and better soap."

Let's re-phrase these a wee bit:

"It's for their own good - children don't know what's pornography is wrong unless someone tells them."

"Why should kids have a say? All they'd want is more candy and less homework."

Get the idea? Children today are treated as second-class citizens. Oh, sorry, wait, they arn't even treated like citizens. So what are they? Property, for the most part(at least in the eyes of the law). Look closely at the precedents: blacks, women, jews, and all the others. All were thought to be inferior, and as soon as they were given the chance, they proved everyone wrong(well, those that accept proof, anyways). You often hear about "that very mature child" and the fourteen year old that people think is twenty.

Let's look at the "very mature child" first. All the mature children I met are mature because they were given the chance. Mainly, that chance was adversity. They were given the chance to speak their minds, to take action.

Let's look at the second case: someone who, for some reason, is thought to be older. That would be me. When I was 15, I was getting into bars ID-free, while my 19 year old friends were getting checked. I was given the chance to behave like a 19 year old, and I did. It had nothing to do with ME, just the way people saw me. They expected me to control my drinking(which I did - for the most part). I have too many examples to write here, but trust me, they are there.

To everyone who wants to "protect" our children: there is a line that has been crossed. It was crossed when censorware became a library tool. We are no longer protecting are children - we are oppressing them. It won't be long now ...

Dave

Re:Kids arn't sentient

[Anonymous Coward]

"Get the idea? Children today are treated as second-class citizens."

Here's a newsflash -- children _ARE_ second class citizens, in a very real and biological sense. They are wired completely differently from adults. Children are wired to learn, absorb, and grow, part of which involves hormones that prioritize emotional reactions out of scale, and center the child's mind on himself. This is on purpose, by nature.

Adults are wired differently -- they don't learn easily, their emotions are numbed from years of toil, and they have simply seen FAR more of the world than children. All this allows them to digest new information in a healthier, rounded context, at the cost of creativity and passion.

This is why we prefer art by the young and governance by the old. I don't WANT healthy, normal, selfish, sex-obsessed teenage boys running the world, and neither do you.

Happily, biology is well aware of this, and this is why parents are in charge of children -- to provide perspective and guidance children simply cannot provide for themselves.

Now this debate infuriatingly and routinely argues both sides against itself. Yes, adults are responsible for their own children. Yes, this INCLUDES regulating access to information the the adult simply KNOWS BETTER how to keep in context. Porn in and of itself is not going to hurt anyone -- it's the anti-woman philosophy of much of it, the obsessive behavior that can result from unregulated access that is unhealthy. If you accept that parental responsibility is a given, then you either accept their right to employ 'censorware' (lovely, prejoritive word, that. second only to 'pro-life' and gaining fast), or you accept their right to DENY ONLINE ACCESS PERIOD.

Now, as a parent, wouldn't you rather allow your child to learn how the modern world is going to work? ALL of the world, not just the parts most attractive to adolescents?


"We are no longer protecting are children - we are oppressing them. It won't be long now ... "

Until...what? Parents send their kids off to slaughter? They wipe their minds clean? Serve them with cocktails? PARENTS LOVE THEIR KIDS. They have a DUTY to them. This attitude is no less frustrating to me now than it was to my parents when I espoused the same laughably self-important histrionics when I was a teenager.

Life's wonderful irony is we all get to deal with the immature crap we gave our parents. Nature does that on purpose too, the bitch.

Jeff McCoskey -- Cookie Coward, not Anonymous Coward

Re:Kids arn't sentient

[Trepidity]

This is why we prefer art by the young and governance by the old. I don't WANT healthy, normal, selfish, sex-obsessed teenage boys running the world, and neither do you.

So instead we have unhealthy, abnormal, selfish, sex-obsessed old men running the world. Great.

Now this debate infuriatingly and routinely argues both sides against itself. Yes, adults are responsible for their own children. Yes, this INCLUDES regulating access to information the the adult simply KNOWS BETTER how to keep in context. Porn in and of itself is not going to hurt anyone -- it's the anti-woman philosophy of much of it, the obsessive behavior that can result from unregulated access that is unhealthy. If you accept that parental responsibility is a given, then you either accept their right to employ 'censorware' (lovely, prejoritive word, that. second only to 'pro-life' and gaining fast), or you accept their right to DENY ONLINE ACCESS PERIOD.

Well, first of all, I would not accept that it's a parent's right to deny online access to their children, for any reason. If it's a choice between no internet or a smut-filled internet with no filters, I'll take the smut-filled internet without the filters. Just as a parent has no right to tell their children they can't read, a parent has no right to tell their children they can't access the internet.

As for censorware, this depends on what degree of control you think parents should have over their children's access to information. I personally don't think a fundamentalist Baptist parent has the right to tell their children they're not allowed to read about evolution, or that a communist parent has the right to tell their children they're not allowed to read George Orwell. Sure, some general guidelines (especially before the age of 12 or so) are needed, but idealogical molding ("brainwashing") is not acceptable. Unfortunately, censorware, despite its purportedly good intentions, seems to be used more as a tool of idealogical molding than as a tool of genuine good parenting. A parent that uses software filters to block infidels.org, aclu.org, alt.atheism, now.org, and a host of other such sites trying to prevent his or her child from viewing information that may contradict the parent's idealogy. This is certainly not "protecting" the child, and is, in my opinion, bad parenting.

Some thoughts

[jd]

The Solution To Internet prawn and blocking s/w.

It'd be great if volunteer organisations could compile net-available databases of what they perceived as inadvisable sites, for whatever reasons.

Users could then have smart cards, for accessing public terminals, programmed with THEIR choice of which databases to use as filters.

This would meet the right-wing's objection of not wanting minors to access "age-inappropriate" material, whilst meeting medically SOUND reasons for wanting to screen out stuff (eg: epileptics from sites containing violently-flashing images), whilst ALSO meeting the anti-censorship's objections of not wanting outside agencies dictating who sees what.

By having a person choose who's (if any) filters they use, nobody is being censored. If you don't agree with one organisation's views, pick another.

At the same time, you avoid the perils of hijacked web pages, deliberately mis-spelled URLs, hijacked guest-books, inappropriate banner adverts, banner adverts linking to something other than what they say, cracked web-sites linking or redirecting to inappropriate material, etc, etc.

"So," you say, "the risks of those are very low, and the cost of what you're suggesting is high."

Rubbish! Volunteer organisations are just that. Volunteer. They cost nothing to anybody. Filtering software would take an afternoon to modify to use this type of scheme, and would cost the companies involved a pittance. Everyone and their pet goldfish has their pockets -stuffed- with more cards than a poker deck, so it's not like we're suffering from a mass shortage of places to store preferences.

"It's too complicated!" Uhhhh - you don't have any trouble using cards at the gas pumps, the supermarkets, the electronically-locked doors to your place of work, ATMs, PCMCIA devices, automated subway stations, et al. Why would this be any more complicated?

Truth is, nobody wants an answer to the argument. If they did, we'd already be using either the scheme above or something functionally similar. It's easy, it's cheap, it allows people to control what THEY see, it answers every single issue that either side in the Prawn debate has raised, PLUS genuine medical issues that nobody has even bothered thinking about, all in one very simple to implement package, with no one group controlling anything.

(Also, there's too much money to be made in those dubiously-located websites and ethically-questionable banner ads for any of the pro-prawn brigade to even dream of looking for a mutually-acceptable possibility. Besides, it does their case good if they can make the other side look like a bunch of rabid extremists. Actually hammering out something that would be -welcome- to the other side would damage their street cred and their macho egos.)

Re:Very level headed

[dattaway]

A week ago, I was at the farm taking a break watching the 6oclock news with the folks. You know, grandparents who aren't on the internet. So, I'm not afraid talking about them here. Anyhow, we were commenting on all the violence reported on the news, terrorisiom, shootings, police beatings, etc. Grandma started preaching, "if we put God back in schools, got rid of this atheism crap, censored the sex and violence from the int-r-net, the world would be a peaceful place." After that, I knew she would be hard to reach.

That's someone who is fair game for the politicians. If we don't vote, we can count on our communications being censored, many common activities being illegal, and being taught science as the way the bible would teach it. Read a chemistry book on your own time in that kind of world, and they would just know you were planning to make bomb making chemicals or drugs.

Republicans don't have a monopoly on censorship...

[elio]

Tipper Gore's 'leadership' in the PMRC (Parental Music Resource Center?) led to warning labels on music, which enabled legislation in Washington (state) to disallow selling of 'inappropriate' music to minors (overturned by the courts, thank goodness). (A good friend of mine refused to vote for Clinton's first term because of Tipper's involvement with the ticket)

It takes a lot of guts for a politician to take a pro-civil liberties stand on issues that are framed to 'protect our children'.



-
protect our children from exposure to rape, incest, genocide, murder - outlaw the bible.
-

Onward Censorship Soldiers

[_Sprocket_]

This is a very level and concise view of the issues involved with mandatiry censorware, but I fear you are preaching to the converted. The people who really count in this are the politicians desperate for a soapbox and the tabloid newspapers looking for an emotive headline.

I agree. However, I feel it might be worth mentioning a few points.

First, fear seems to one of the most effective tools in politics. The trouble is, it can backfire. Get your constituents fearfull and the campaign gets a boost. But if they are critical of your fearmongering, the campaign takes a hit.

The key is to give politicians the stick for using the net as a fear tactic.

This is where jamie's speach to the converted comes in. Its great to register your complaint to politicians and in open forumns where one may find supporters. However, an argument based on emotion and the message "you guys suck" won't reach the ears of our intended audience. Well thought out pieces such as this provides the arguments, and the thought process, we as a community should focus on.

We want to make internet censorship too dangerous to touch. Let politicians find other subjects to use as a cheap boost for their campaign.