Today, numerous blogs are carrying a story about Tomo Foote-Lennox, director of filtering data at Secure Computing. The company sells internet censorship tools used to block access to Boing Boing in several totalitarian countries, as well as inside the networks of many companies, government agencies and schools.

Mr. Foote-Lennox was quoted in a Monday NYT article about the BoingBoing/SmartFilter fiasco:

 In an e-mail message to Xeni Jardin, another of Boing Boing's chiefs, Tomo Foote-Lennox, a director of filtering data for Secure Computing, asked why the bloggers were starting a war. "We discussed several ways that you could organize your site so that I could protect the kids and you could distribute all the information you wanted," Mr. Foote-Lennox wrote.

Bloggers uncovered Usenet posts that appear to have been written by Foote-Lennox describing adventures in a sexual fetish scene called "Adult Babies" or ABs -- infantilists who sexualize dressing like and being treated as infants, sometimes of the opposite gender.

These posts have spurred a lot of commentary about Foote-Lennox. Much of the debate focuses on whether having allegedly participated in "diaper-lover" culture, as infant fetishists describe themselves, would disqualify someone from passing judgement over what online content children or adults are allowed to see.

We're skeptical of this here at Boing Boing. We believe the problem isn't that people allegedly into unusual sexual stuff have no business setting standards for others. The real problem: is anyone qualified to tell other adults -- entire nations at a time -- what they can and can't access online?

We believe there's nothing wrong with consenting adults doing what they enjoy with other consenting adults, and writing about it on USENET if they want. If there's any black pot to Foote-Lennox's alleged charcoal grey kettle, it's us. We're all about celebrating the weird, about wooing the muse of the odd. About being in touch with your inner outsider.

What is relevant about the alt.sex.diapers and alt.sex.bondage posts attributed to Foote-Lennox is this: If one of us went to observe one of these parties and blogged about the fact that this subculture exists, Smartfilter would block it. No big deal if you're inside a corporate cubicle in the USA, because you can always access blocked sites from home or elsewhere. But netizens in countries that use Secure Computing's censorware to filter traffic nationwide effectively lose their right to access this information, and anything else Secure Computing deems naughty.

Additionally, while Smartfilter "overblocks" non-pornographic sites like BoingBoing as "nudity sites" a quick check of their filtering engine reveals that some of the more popular "Adult Baby" fetish websites do not appear to be blocked as adult content: babyapparels.com, diaperproject.org, adultbabycamp.org, and ldfashions.com, for instance.  Some contain erotic fiction, some are indistinguishable from regular kid-ware stores. But they're not Toys-R-Us, they're fetishware sites for adults.

SmartFilter customers might find this alarming, because online AB fetish shops that sell adult-sized diapers and fetish accessories are often designed to look exactly the same as online shops that sell actual baby accessories for actual babies. It's hard to know the difference. That may be the point of the fetish, but parents and teachers of children might find the "underblocking" worrisome. Further proof of SmartFilter's lack of smarts.

To sum up: It's wonderful to live in a country where you have the freedom to do your own freaky thing. It's terrible to live in a country that limits your freedom to be freaky. And it's hypocritical to celebrate your own freakiness to the fullest while helping oppressive governments restrict others from celebrating their own freakiness.

If the USENET archive posts attributed to Foote-Lennox are legit (they could be an elaborate hoax, but so far, no denial has been issued), it would appear that like all of us at BoingBoing, he uses the Internet to connect with and enjoy the odd things in the world that interest him -- but works tirelessly to stop the rest of us from doing the same.

We support the right of consenting adults around the world to enjoy diverse lifestyles, and read all about them on the internet.

-- The BoingBoing Team

Related posts around the blogosphere:
SuicideGirls.com post from Sean Bonner: Link, Kathryn Cramer: Link, Violet Blue: Link, Cyrus Farivar: Link, Joi Ito: Link  

Previous BoingBoing posts:
- Xeni's NYT op-ed: Exporting Censorship
- BB banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. Response to net-censors: Get bent!
- PRI's "The World" on SmartFilter's BoingBoing "nudity" ban
- NY Times on SmartFilter's not-so-smart "nudity" block
- Saudi Arabia joins league of BoingBoing-deprived nations
- BoingBoing's guide to defeating Censorware
- More BB posts on SmartFilter

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:38:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments