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Sunday, November 19, 2000
By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Legislation pending in Congress would require most public schools and libraries to install software to block objectionable Internet sites or lose federal funding.
Led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., proponents of the Internet filtering effort say it is necessary to protect children using computers at schools and libraries against obscenity and pornography easily available on the Internet.
Under the pending bill, any school or library receiving federal technology funds would have install a barrier to inappropriate material. Most public schools and libraries have received some of the $4 billion doled out in the past two years as part of the federal "E-rate" program aimed at wiring all of America's schools to the Internet.
"It is entirely up to local communities and school boards to decide what technology to select and how that technology is used to screen out harmful materials so that our children's minds aren't polluted," McCain said recently.
But opponents of the provision, including the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that mandatory Internet filtering violates freedom of online speech, as well as the right of local communities to make their own decisions on how to deal with the issue.
Opponents contend mandatory filters won't solve the problem, either. Even the most popular filters sometimes fail to block adult material, while denying access to innocuous Internet sites, they point out. Some software filters also are politically programmed, blocking out feminist, gay and other liberal Web sites, they say.
The 18 members of the congressionally created Child Online Protection Act Commission in a report last month unanimously rejected mandatory Internet filtering. The commission recommended filtering as just one part of a combination approach that includes greater public education and tougher enforcement of obscenity laws.
"Their report points out that there are lots of different tools," said Claudette Tennant, assistant director of the American Library Association's Office of Government Relations.
"There is no component you can look at that, in isolation, is going to solve the problem. No one thing is perfect. That's really our main complaint with the approach Congress is taking. They are looking at this as a silver bullet. It's not."
More than 95 percent of the nation's libraries have established an "Internet use plan," which spells out procedures for ensuring that children aren't exposed to certain Internet sites. Procedures include monitoring computer workstations and parent education programs.
McCain's measure passed the Senate 95-to-3 and is now part of a massive, controversial spending bill for the federal departments of Labor and Health and Human Services.
That bill includes a provision by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., calling for community input into school and library Internet use plans. Although Santorum's original approach would have left it up to communities to decide whether they wanted to require Internet filters, he now supports McCain's provision for mandatory filtering. He still believes, however, that it should be up to communities to decide which materials to block.
"The senator still feels very strongly that there should be some community input on this issue. But he also feels that we need to take steps right away to protect our children on the Internet," said Melissa Sabatine, a spokeswoman for Santorum.
Congress has been struggling to reach agreement with the Clinton Administration on the overall legislation that contains the Internet filtering provision. It will be on the agenda when lawmakers return to work the first week of December.
It's not yet clear whether the Internet filtering requirement will be a "make or break" issue in negotiations over the Labor-HHS bill. The Clinton administration opposes mandatory filtering, but it's doubtful the president would veto the entire spending bill over the filtering provision.
Vice President Al Gore supports the administration position on filtering, while GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush favors mandatory Internet filters.
If the Labor-HHS bill is signed into law with the filtering provision intact, the ACLU has said it will file a lawsuit against it.
A recent survey indicated public support for Internet filtering. The survey by Digital Media Forum, a group established by the Ford Foundation, found 92 percent of those surveyed said schools should filter out Internet pornography on student computers; 79 percent said schools should filter out hate speech.
Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., the House sponsor of the Internet filtering provision, said lawmakers have provided money in the Labor-HHS bill to help schools and libraries pay for Internet filters. "When our tax money is used to provide Internet access, it must also protect our children from obscenity," Istook said.
Opponents contend there is no new funding in the measure and that lawmakers would use part of the relatively modest pots of federal money already earmarked for public libraries and technology programs in schools -- about $700 million annually -- to help pay for Internet filters.
Although parents can buy a filtering system like Net Nanny for about $50 so, it isn't clear just how much it would cost schools and libraries to purchase, install and maintain such products.
"There's a huge, huge range of costs," Tennant said. Fairfax County, Va. recently spent $1 million to install a filtering system in its schools. A library in a Michigan town of 7,000 people spent $25,000 in start-up costs when it contracted for an Internet filtering system. The state of West Virginia, which wants to put Internet filters on all public school computers, has received bids ranging from free (if the provider could place ads on the computers) to $200,000 for one school.
Tennant and other opponents of mandatory Internet filtering say there are a wide range of options to keep children safe in cyberspace. Perhaps the most important is parent education.
McCain agrees that parents "are the first line of defense." But he says parents need help because most children get on the Internet outside the home. "Parents, taxpayers, deserve to have a realistic faith that, when they entrust their children to our nation's schools and libraries, that this trust will not be betrayed," he said.
In a related matter, the ACLU recently won a federal appeals court ruling that allows three Web site operators to post a program listing Web sites blocked by one type of Internet filter, Cyber Patrol software.
Cyber Patrol officials had argued the posting violated the firms' copyright. ACLU attorneys contended the list was protected by the First Amendment.
"Now that Congress is poised to pass legislation mandating block software on school and library computers, it is crucial that parents and consumers be made aware of the many valuable sites that they will be missing as a result," said Chris Hansen, the lead ACLU attorney in the case.
One of the Web site operators, Bennett Haselton, in testimony earlier this year before the Child Online Protection Commission, noted that some filtering programs blocked parts of the commission's own Web site. Haselton is creator of the four-year-old Peacefire.org, an anti-filtering group that rates the effectiveness of Internet blocking software.