The Case Against Internet Filters
Zach Martin | Staff Writer

This question has been asked since the Internet's large scale inception into schools about four years ago. Recently, however, a law has been enacted giving federal funding to schools and public libraries to connect them to the Internet if they first agree to place "filters" on the computers to bar harmful content. These filters scan for certain words, or in some cases image types, and if those words appear, they block the site from being viewed. I infer that, in most cases, this is appropriate but in some, genuine educational material can be blocked out because it contains one of these "hot" words.

The Internet has been described as "the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed," and while it is a valuable communication, education, and entertainment tool, it has also become a humungous soapbox for some, and a source of pornography to others. With these elements out there to be had by people of all ages, it isn't a wonder that the government decided to tack on this filter stipulation to its new funding bill. All public libraries are being forced to filter their Internet connections as well, a move that has civil rights groups up in arms. While the bills allow the many different schools and libraries to choose their own filters, the vast majority of filters currently available the market are faulty at best, blocking undesirable elements as well as some perfectly legitmate ones, such as medical information pages, classical texts such as Jane Eyre, and even webpages mentioning certain inocuous names, like that of House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX). Adults are forced to deal with the same amount of censorship and same regulations children still in grade school are subjected to by the filters, and college students are having their research severely limited by filters that block out "hot words" that may be used in a different context in what they are looking for.

I infer that the filters will be a definite help in public school systems that have too many children to enable teachers and aides to observe what they are surfing onto at any given time, but in public libraries where adults, who are definitely covered by the First Amendment right of free speech, and state colleges where the student's research and educational needs of the Internet may go beyond what a filtration program deems "acceptable." This, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, is where the bill falls short. The ACLU, along with several other like organizations is planning to protest the bill soon, citing unfair censorship and the lack of a really good filtration method as their case against it. This lack of good, infallible filters doesn't seem to slow the biased supporters of the bill who state that, in the words of Ian Hopper, "any protection is better than nothing at all."

Thanks to Dr. Yufeng Liang, better than nothing may not be the only option, soon, because he has developed a new filtration program based on "fuzzy logic" that searches pages for certain tip-off phrases, and weighs content through an algorithm to determine the context of the words used on the webpages. Some may argue that words aren't the only harm to be found, as some pages may be pictures only--Dr. Liang's new program also scans images on the page for a certain combination of pixel colors that match to skin tones of any type. It is also customizable, allowing users to place in some extra protection and block some pages that aren't sex-related such as hate groups.

As more and better systems of filtration are devised, it seems like a more plausible answer to policing the Internet, while not completely obstructing American's right to free speech. To contrast, filtering the computers used in public school labs and libraries is more appropriate than to police the content in public libraries, because it is made very clear that students in the public school systems constitutional rights are null and void upon entering the building to better aid teachers in keeping the peace. In conclusion, I believe the filters should only be used on a few computers in public libraries, or a less strict version should be developed to serve a more adult audience. Along those same lines, I feel that there shouldnąt be filters placed on college library computers, except at the jurisdiction of the librarian or college.