FC: "Secret Censors," from the Boston Globe (3/13/97)

[Roger Clarke]

Has the Boston Globe got a reporter on link?  The imagery is highly
reminiscent of things I've heard here!  (It also has little echoes of
'Fahrenheit 451' ...).


>Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 10:57:06 -0800 (PST)
>From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
>To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu
>Subject: FC: "Secret Censors," from the Boston Globe (3/13/97)
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>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
>The Boston Globe
>SECRET CENSORS
>
>*By Wendy Kaminer*, ~03/13/97~
>
>Imagine this: The mayor of Boston hires a private corporation to
>remove all books from the public libraries that the corporation deems
>unsuitable for children. The mayor and many parents believe that the
>corporation will protect kids from hard-core pornography, and the
>corporation (let's call it Book Police) promises to keep all sexually
>explicit material off shelves.
>
>But executives at Book Police believe that even libraries shorn of
>pornography are dangerous places for children. Book Police makes a
>unilateral decision to censor a broad range of information and ideas,
>removing books about feminism, gun control and the Second Amendment,
>animal rights, environmentalism, homosexuality, as well as censorship
>and free speech.
>
>These offensive books are locked up in a secret place. Adults are not
>even told that such bad books exist, but those who do somehow learn of
>their existence may be granted access to the books if the city's chief
>information officer decides that they are needed for ``legitimate
>research.''
>
>This may seem like a farfetched scenario, but recently, it came
>true. The mayor summarily ordered blocking software installed on
>computers in the public libraries. Created by a private corporation,
>Cyber Patrol, the software will sweep as broadly through the Internet
>as my imaginary Book Police would sweep through the *library*
>shelves. It will deprive both children and adults of information about
>sex and gender roles as well as access to political debates - notably
>debates about free speech.
>
>The mayor's action has so far enjoyed considerable support, partly
>because it is not very well understood. News stories and editorials
>have described this as a reasonable effort to protect children from
>pornography without reporting on the scope of materials that will be
>censored by Cyber Patrol. Nor has it been made clear that employees at
>Cyber Patrol will be the people deciding which sites to block.
>
>Instead, we've been told that librarians or city officials may pick
>and choose among the 12 categories of material that Cyber Patrol
>blocks. If they want only to block pornography, not information about
>animal rights or feminism, they can choose to block only the sexually
>explicit category.
>
>That's true - but terribly misleading. The sexually explicit category
>will not just encompass ``pornography.'' It may well include feminist
>sites (which some consider pornographic anyway). The sexually explicit
>category is also likely to block discussions of free speech that refer
>to the censorship of pornography, discussions of sexual harassment
>cases or speech codes, as well as educational sites focusing on
>sexuality.
>
>The list of Internet sites blocked by Cyber Patrol is not easy to
>obtain; in fact, it's kept secret from city officials and librarians,
>as well as parents. My formation about the web sites targeted by Cyber
>Patrol was provided by Net journalist Declan McCullagh, who received
>it from some enterprising computer hackers. An encrypted ``CyberNOT''
>list of verboten sites is released every Monday; users download it
>without knowing what sites will be blocked, unless they manage to
>decode it, as McCullagh's sources did. (McCullagh and Brock Meeks
>published the CyberNOT list last summer.)
>
>Thus the mayor has given a private, profit-making corporation that
>power to prevent all of us who use the public libraries from gaining
>access to information of which the corporation disapproves - and he
>has given it the power to prevent us even from learning that the
>information exists.
>
>It's possible that Mayor Menino doesn't understand how Cyber Patrol
>works and how widely it sweeps. He may entertain a vague, sincere idea
>that blocking software will simply protect children from
>``pornography,'' however he may define it. Or he may have a sincere
>disregard for the rights of citizens to make their own decisions about
>what they and their children should read.
>
>Of course, many people are troubled by the broad range of sexually
>explicit and violent material on the Internet and worry about its
>effect on children.
>
>Suppose the great majority of adults in Boston could agree on a list
>of web sites that children should be prevented from seeing. That is a
>highly unlikely prospect, given deep differences of opinion about
>whether children should be given information about homosexuality,
>feminism, or guns, to name just a few divisive issues, but let's
>assume we could somehow reach consensus. The mayor's blocking programs
>on the market, like Cyber Patrol, simply would not allow us to block
>out only the material we've agreed to block. They don't give users the
>power to compile their lists of objectionable sites; the corporations
>compile the lists themselves.
>
>In the end, sexually explicit material is not nearly as harmful to
>children, or adults, as efforts to censor it. Whether they see it on
>the street, on computers in a *library* or a friend's home, or on TV,
>children will be exposed to sex. Most of us were, and most of us
>managed. When I was about 11 years old, I asked my father how he felt
>about my reading ``dirty'' books. He was amused by my question. ``If
>you're old enough to understand it, you're old enough to read it, he
>said. ``What you're not old enough to understand won't hurt you.''
>
>Wendy Kaminer is a fellow at the Radcliffe College Public Policy
>Institute.
>
>http://search.boston.com/globe/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=472157836+0+0+0&W
>AISaction=retrieve
>
>
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Roger Clarke              http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
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Visiting Fellow,   Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
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