Mandated Mediocrity

I took some time over the last few days to sample what kind of political speech is censored by a typical filtering software package. The result is a report released jointly by EPIC (EPIC's copy) and Peacefire (Peacefire's copy). The software this time is N2H2 Bess, and if you're an American K-12 student, there's roughly a one-in-three chance you're forced to surf the net with its 'help.' It bans political speech ranging from campaign finance reform to the Second Amendment to Minnesota newspapers' election coverage.

My favorite block was the Traditional Values Coalition. Can I say "you reap what you sow" or would that just be rude?

In other news:

(an unrelated) Coalition To Promote Voluntary Net Filtering, Standards

"A new coalition of high-tech companies and industry groups is hoping to shift the focus of the national debate over Internet filtering by promoting the value of filtering software as an exclusively voluntary parental tool. ... the Committee on Internet Management and Safety will tout the value of filtering products while at the same time opposing legally mandated filtering."

Did they say "exclusively voluntary"? Good on 'em! Let's have a real debate about the value of this software, so that people can make up their own minds rather than having the government decide what's best for our schools and libraries. A level playing field would be a lot better than what we have now.

Comments

Bravo!

[NecroPuppy]

It can't block the porn, but it can keep those awful psychopathic, raving, criminal politicians away from the kids. Way to go!

First amendment

[gavinhall]

Posted by polar_bear:

I wonder if someone could make a case for this being a violation of First Amendment rights? If the filters specifically block political speech, the most protected of all varieties of speech, and they are mandated by the government then would that in fact be a violation of right to political speech? I'm not sure. They might be able to make a case for saying that they're letting you say what you want, but that no one has a right to LISTEN to your speech, you just have a right to say it. But, if the government is specifically blocking the content... Hmmm. I see an interesting legal case should anyone care to make it.

This may be on shaky ground in K-12, but if public libraries are being required to use the same software then that's restricting adults from the same content... could be a different story.

As I've mentioned in earlier Slashdot posts, the most simple and elegant solution I've been able to think of is to require porn sites or sites with adult content to have different TDLs like .xxx or maybe .N17 - then filtering programs become unnecessary - you just set browsers not to allow those sites...

How to Deal With Filtering Software

[Homebrewed]

They do this at my kid's school, first, I'll find out what software they're using. Then, in the privacy of my home network, I'll sit down with my 12-year-old and we'll figure out how to break it.

Re:How to Deal With Filtering Software

[Just Some Guy]

Why not? Should we be good sheep and go along with whatever the government wants us to do?

Not a chance. I would rather teach my daughter to base her decisions on independent thought than some arbitrary "It's for the children, Tipper!" standard. If some law conflicts with my (or my children's) rights, then I don't have a problem with practicing civil disobedience. That's how we Americans got what few liberties we still have left.

Re:How to Deal With Filtering Software

[Lord Ender]

When I was in high school they had BESS. They claim that it only blocks sites that have been reviewed by humans. However, they had freshmeat.net blocked! After bitching them out on email, they unblocked it. What is funny is that BESS blocks a big linux site, and ironically, BESS runs on linux!

But I got around it. I wrote a perl GGI script which I kept on a server bess didn't block and would fetch the URL I submit to it and print it to the screen. Since BESS works via blocking by DNS/IP, I easily got around it. It was sweet, I put password protection into the script and sold accounts to people in school for $5 each! Oh and I later found out about another program that works much like my besspass.cgi perl script, only it is more evolved. It is called GGIProxy. You can get it here.

Re:How to Deal With Filtering Software

[Teach]

...we'll figure out how to break it.

On a well-administered network, this shouldn't be possible.

I guess it's time for me to stick up for N2H2 (a.k.a. "Bess") again....

I'm a computer science teacher at a public high school. We have N2H2's filtering "software" installed and I must confess that I like it. In my computer lab, in addition to my C++ compiler, all the computers have internet access. My job is to teach my students computer science, and incidentally programming in C++. As a side effect, I can also be held legally responsible for their actions while under my care. Without filtering software I would spend so much time "monitoring" to make sure they abide by the conduct rules set up by our school board I'd never get any classwork done. N2H2's service frees me up to do my job.

Keep in mind that schools voluntarily subscribe to N2H2's service. Also, though we have a public mandate to provide access to a good education for every child, that mandate does not include "allow the students to download/view whatever the hell they want using the fat internet pipe at school paid for with your hard-earned tax dollars." The internet is not "education". It is merely "raw information". Education is about teaching students how to think and how to filter that information.

Admittedly, part of an education is teaching students how to evaluate information sources themselves, but I don't think being unable to get to playboy.com is going to hamper our ability to do that.

Now, to get back to my original point, here's my understanding of how N2H2's filter works and why it won't be hacked by most twelve-year-olds. This is not your typical client-side dumb censorware.

In exchange for our monthly payment, N2H2 places a linux-based web proxy on our local network. All outbound traffic is funneled though that machine by setting the proxy value in Netscape to proxy through the "Bess" server. A packet filter at the switch discards any outbound traffic with a destination IP other than that of the Bess server, so just removing the proxy or changing it to some other address just gets your packets thrown away. If they're going to leave our network, they've got to go through Bess.

When Bess receives a connect request from a client (HTTP WGET, FTP, etc), it first checks the remote server address against a known-bad list (generated by human employees of N2H2 and updated nightly). If the remote host is on the black list, the connect request is discarded and a standard web page is returned with the message "Bess can't go there" and an option to mail N2H2 requesting the site be unblocked. A few trials indicate that many sites are blocked by IP address and not merely domain name, and those that are IP-blocked are still blocked if you convert the IP to decimal.

URLs which pass the domain screen are also parsed for keywords. For example, I get a reject message for any address containing the word 'fuck', even if no such page exists.

Finally, URLs which pass this screen are requested and the remote page is returned. However, the proxy can be configured to search for dirty words in returned pages and optionally throw away those that pass some frequency threshold or also optionally replace those words with XXXXs. At our high school, this is currently turned off.

Some sites are blocked at the root because of known inappropriate content (e.g. playboy.com). Others are blocked at the root because they allow free web pages and so 1) change too quickly to effectively police and 2) have very little of value anyway (e.g. geocities). Still others are blocked at the page level (e.g. not foo.com but foo.com/users/pr0nboy).

• http://ethanjones.homepage.com/ - Campaign Finance Reform is blocked at the root; all of *.homepage.com is disallowed.
• http://rosie.acmecity.com/bebe/129/index.html - The Second Amendment is blocked at the root; all of rosie.acmecity.com/* is disallowed.
• I don't know why the Minnesota newspaper or the Traditional Values Coaltion are blocked, but we could request a review of these sites or unblock them locally (more on this below).

In addition to the default blacklist, local administrators have the ability to add sites which they want to block even if N2H2 deems them appropriate, OR whitelist sites which they want to allow even though N2H2 blocks them by default.

Sure, it's possible to stick your own redirecting CGI script on your own unblocked web space, but since as a teacher I'm still paying some modicum of attention I'll figure out you're doing it by catching you in class or by reading through the server logs of requested pages and then add your "proxy" to our whitelist. And then send you down to the principal's office for violating our terms of service (which students and their parents must agree to to get any internet access at all).

All-in-all, it's a flexible system that allows each school to determine what level of filtering they want to allow. As I mentioned in another reply, ours is apparently not too restrictive (we are a high school, after all), as I can get to slashdot, freshmeat, kuro5hin, mp3.com, userfriendly, after-y2k and lots of other good stuff that sometimes expresses "fringe" opinions.

Getting Past the Censorware with Long Ip's

[Lostman]

I quote my sourceS: 2600 Magazine

Obtain the IP address of the server you are attempting to connect to (through networksolutions whois if you wish). Then, take the individual octets and convert them to their binary equivalent (make sure to pad them with leading zeros to get the full 8 digits). Next string the binary numbers together and convert that (I suggest scientific calculator) to base 10 (decimal). Then you can just take that number, and go to http://thatnumber.

WalkThrough
www.2600.com
207.99.30.230
207 01100111
99 01100011
30 00011110
230 11100110

11001111011000110001111011100110(base 2)
equals 3479379686 (base 10)
http://3479379686 to get to 2600.com

Re:Getting Past the Censorware with Long Ip's

[rakslice]

Uh... Why are you going to binary?

If the address is A.B.C.D, just enter A * 256^3 + B * 256^2 + C * 256 + D

To make this a bit easier to do on a non-rpn calculator, it's the same thing as:

(((A * 256 + B) * 256 + C) * 256 + D)

Re:Getting Past the Censorware with Long Ip's

[Electric Angst]

The only problem with that method is that you can't follow links. Also, say Slashdot points to something interesting about freedom of speech, and you've never visited the domain before. It's problematic.
The best way to "beat the system" isn't to sneak around it, but to take it away. Even easily-circumvented censerware is still an obstical to freedom of speech.
--

Bess, NH2.

[kev-san]

I'm 15 years old and attend a public high school here in suburban Denver. We surf through the Bess proxy which has blocked articles from Wired [the infamous Courtney Love speech], Salon [these articles are "constantly changing" and often include "sexual content." In my opinion, we go out in the hallways and hear far worse.], and even /. [some quickies have been blocked]. Luckily, the sysadmin isn't the brightest guy. A few other /.ers at the school and I have edited netscape.cfg so we could change the proxy at will. Bess involves censorship of unpopular ideas and must be stopped immediately.

Re:New TLD Could Help

[MostlyHarmless]

Wouldn't work.

If I understand you right, you're saying that kids would only be able to use the .kids domain? So who would put their site there?

Not commentary sites. Not humor sites. Not science sites.
Nor anything else, for that matter. Who really would want a .kids domain? By saying .kids, you project the impression of being _only_ for kids. Therefore, the only sites that would exist on .kids would be kiddie portals. Of course, those sites wouldn't actually be able to link to anything...

In addition, this idea wouldn't cover the billions of pages already out on the web that are appropriate for all ages.
--

Well, what did you expect ?

[CaptainZapp]

As the net is more and more turning into a huge, sanitized cable TV operation, it's clear that such measures happen.

This seems to be especially aparrent in the US, where there's very little middle ground. A good example is the war on drugs which is so histerically fought because of the reefer madness (whatever that is).

Now, the problem of course is that the lowest common denominator has to be found, which indeed is pretty low. But of course kids have to be spared by discussions about female breasts, the responsible application of recreational drugs or opinions that are not quite politically correct.

Censorship stinks it's that easy. There is always somebody who decides what crosses the line and what not. More often then not those blokes have a very different opinion then me.

I'm reluctant to admit that censorship (or editorial filtering if you wish) is acceptable with a newspaper (while the publisher influencing the editor is most definitely not). But a newspaper is a private entity. I don't like what they print, I don't buy it.

The net is very different and nobody should have a right to decide what's good for me.

Not too long ago the same thing happened and was expressed in book burnings. It was a time when Europe (and a lot of the world) was shrouded in deep black. It was a bad time fueling the hateful, the fearful and the fanatics. I don't ever want to see history repeat itself in this context.

[stock rant #64]

[Speare]

I think this may be preaching to the choir here, but this is my take. I'd love to hear any other refinements of this brief rant aimed at those less familiar with the concepts.

[stock rant on the subject]

1. Computers cannot be offended: it's not the censorware computer program that is doing the filtering of offensive material.
2. If it's not the censorware, it's the proponents of the censorware, that chooses what to hide from you. What political slant or prejudices are you entrusting with the filter?
3. Government-mandated filtering via a commercial product means a private company becomes a government bureacracy: think of the complexity of ensuring several million, if not billions, of websites are blocked or allowed according to government-mandated standards.
4. If a government sets the standards for what to filter, then the government opens itself for lawsuits. Millions of lawsuits where website creators feels they are being censored unfairly.
5. [T]he Constitution of the United States
   Amendment I
   Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of sXXXch, or the right of the people peaceably to XXXemble, and to peXXXion the government for a redress of grievances.

[end of stock rant on the subject]

Bad assumptions go too far back?

[dmccarty]

Somewhere along the line, someone assumed that having Internet access in public libraries and public schools was a good thing. Why? I can't think of very many good reasons to give a K-12 school unmitigated access to the Internet.

So far, the Internet has turned out to be:

• Commercial marketing material
• Everything you wanted to know and more about the PC industry
• Up-to-the-second news; email
• Lots of profitibility-or-bust e-commerce sites
• Innumerable personal interest pages
• Acadamia and research
• General entertainment
• Adult content

Of the above items, the only two that I think would be useful for a grade- or high-school student would be the news and academic research. And how is accessing this information via the Internet better than picking up the newspaper or research journal?

I agree that filtering software shouldn't be installed at schools and libraries. What libraries and shools need isn't a filter, it's a brick wall. Dissalow all Internet access except for what public schools and libraries are supposed to be used for: academic and intellectual amaterial. All commercial, personal and adult content should be forbidden.

--

Re:Details?

[jafac]

it's worse than "doesn't work".

You think the IT labor shortage is rough now?
We're raising a whole generation of technical cripples.

How?

I spoke to my son, and several other members of his class, ages range from 12-13yrs. They all have nice computer in the lab, and decent internet connections, and N2H2 filtering software. Every single one of these kids said that the internet was a useless waste of time, there was nothing on it worth seeing or reading that wasn't filtered. There were a few lame "educational" and commercial sites, and that was it.

In other words, kids aren't using computers, (except to learn Word and Excel). They aren't interested in the internet, only a few, and I'm guessing those are the ones who have access at home to unfiltered connections, who may or may not be looking at goatse.cx, but at least have the wide world of news and information at their disposal through the web.

Basically, all these billions we're spending to wire the schools and libraries is a big waste of money and time.

A cgi converter for the lazy:

[Anne Marie]

xdata.org/ip.html. Just type in the domain name, and off you go. The output for slashdot.org, for example, is:

Decimal
8/8/8/8-bit. http://64.28.67.48
8/8/16-bit.. http://64.28.17200
8/24-bit.... http://64.1852208
32-bit...... http://1075594032

Octal
8/8/8/8-bit. http://0100.034.0103.060
8/8/16-bit.. http://0100.034.041460
8/24-bit.... http://0100.07041460
32-bit...... http://010007041460

Best way to beat Censorware

[doublem]

Most radical ways to demonstrate your point about censorware

1. Go to Library. Use a black marker to "protect" everyone else from printed content that would be blocked by censorware the library uses
2. Do the same at school
3. In public places (Classroom of teacher who advocates censorware, floor of the house or Senate) use a loud air horn to "protect" everyone from anything that censorware would block. This means Dick Army never gets to speak. Ever.

There are a number of really good ways to beat censorware.

1. Lawsuits. Sue the people trying to keep your child from seeing dangerous things like the Writings of Rush Limbaugh
2. any trick found on 2600.com
3. Bootable BEOS CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
4. Bootable BSD CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
5. Bootable Linux CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
6. Bootable QNX CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
7. I'd say Do your web surfing from home but that is not an option for students who cannot afford a computer at home.

This is all an annoyance for people who have a home computer with an Internet connection, but a real disaster for people who do not.

I cannot believe this

[jayfoo2]

sorry about the re-post, I formatted poorly, bad me.

I just read this on N2H2's site. I cannot believe that they actually say this publically.

"Own the Education Desktop Own the education desktop by reaching teens and tweens where they learn the most--the classroom.

N2H2 is the leader in filtering Internet content for schools all across the United States. In doing so, we reach over 13.5 million* students who view 4 billion online pages a year. And our sponsorship and advertising opportunities let you be a part of every Web page they explore.

Through our various properties, including Searchopolis.com, the N2H2 ResourceBar and the filtered search and homework resource channels of StarWarsKids.com, we deliver you unprecedented penetration, exposure and public relations opportunities in the difficult-to-tap education space. And because we deliver the largest online audience of tweens and teens in an educational environment, we know what students are doing online.

In the classroom, 1800 different sites comprise 80% of the page views, making it virtually impossible for a company to launch an effective online advertising campaign during the school day--except with N2H2. To learn more about what students are doing online, and what this means to your brand, download a free copy of the N2H2 1st Quarter Learnings Report White Paper.

Experience the success that N2H2 has delivered to leading companies such as Nickelodeon, Microsoft, Chevron Cars, Family Education Network, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and more. We invite you to navigate through our site, view our Online Media Kit, and contact us to receive more detailed information on how your brand can own the education desktop."

Can a company actually be classified as evil?

Re:I cannot believe this

[alecto]

In a public school? In a country with compulsory education? That's paid for by citizens with tax dollars? Darn right it's evil.

Chistendom and Satanism, both out??

[human bean]

One wonders if these filtering systems are programmed to pick up more than just porn? What about subjects like Satanism and devil worship? Or Tantric Yoga? Or Wiccan? Or Paganism?

Think for a moment about the kind of people who dream up and program the content lists for these filters, and those who add to these list by request. What do you think?

I propose a simple test. Use the filtering system to look up the subject "Babtist" or maybe "Catholic". Then use same system to look up "Satanism" or "Witchcraft". Check returned entries to see if they are merely references or actual data.

Has anybody actually done this? One would think, with the separation of church and state being such a big deal and all, that a school would be under the onus to make sure that ALL references to differing religion were treated equally. If replies came back in a stilted manner, perhaps the best solution would be to set the filtering software to exclude all references to religion and religious materials, regardless of type.

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

No WAY

[Chris Johnson]

You're out of line here, because you're overlooking one of the most important end results of the Internet- it is now possible for little children in school to make PERSONAL contact with other little children in other countries in other parts of the world. Your other points (no commercial, no pr0n) are good but to block personal contact is a serious mistake.

For tyranny to be backed by the people, the people have to believe that the ones tyrannized are subhuman or 'don't count' in some way. The history of war is full of situations where entire countries felt automatically superior to everyone else. Making personal contact with people in other countries neatly undercuts that- in fact on the Net you can't be sure who's from where, as an awful lot of people all over the world can and do speak English (it's like Star Trek syndrome, and just as convenient).

For many, many years, schools have done cute little things like assign 'pen-pals' overseas, or send foreign exchange students: the first is rather disconnected, the second too exotic to seem like an everyday thing. So one word: "IRC". Suddenly it becomes possible for schoolchildren to not just communicate but shirk, misbehave, bicker etc. with schoolchildren across the world, just like they were in the same room. And this may seem like a pointless bad thing- but back up a second, wasn't the goal of such exercises to _break_ _down_ the distance and help establish more of the sense of an interdependent global village, where you can _know_ someone overseas in a more immediate and direct way than sending postal mail? This is a very significant development, that should be encouraged not stifled.

Regarding pr0n, I see no reason not to stifle that unless the students are in Sex Ed *g* there, they'd better get full and accurate information! And regarding saturation advertising of a legally captive audience of impressionable age (what's next, _subliminal_ saturation captive advertising? No, wait, _viral_ subliminal saturation captive advertising!), I quite agree that this should be outright forbidden. Advertising is all very well, but it becomes a torment if you don't feel you can walk away- if you are LEGALLY FORCED to remain, we are no longer talking about advertising, we're talking about brainwashing- and that is completely unacceptable- and of course that is exactly what N2H2 is hyping for all they are worth.

I would not consider it wildly excessive to have "conspiring to engage in mass compulsory commercial brainwashing of children" punishable by death. I think _all_ those terms would have to be there for it to be that severe a crime- for instance if you drop 'mass' we're talking a case of weird child abuse, if you drop 'compulsory' the child is allowed to walk away, if you drop 'commercial' you could apply that to many sorts of religious and moral education with some plausibility. But the full extent, 'mass compulsory commercial brainwashing of children'- how can this not rate at least a hell of a prison sentence? Why is this not a felony? It should at _least_ be a felony crime, rendering the criminal permanently unable to vote as a citizen.

Don't tell me the only thing that will work is vigilante justice- we have a government for a _reason_. Let's make forcible commercial brainwashing of children in schools a crime.