Today, the Brennan Center for Justice released “Internet Filters: A Public Policy Report,” a detailed survey of tests and studies documenting how the widespread use of filters limits the free exchange of ideas necessary in a healthy democracy. The report shows that filters are an unreliable and inefficient means of preventing children from viewing material that their parents find offensive. Some filters censor political and other information, casting a net far wider than is necessary for any legitimate goal.

As a result of the “Children’s Internet Protection Act,” or “CIPA,” passed in 2000, filters are now required in most schools and libraries – for adults and minors alike. Yet because filters must, by necessity, search the web for potentially objectionable sites using “keyword” identification, they both “overblock” (censoring sites that are not objectionable) and “underblock” (failing to identify pornography or other material targeted by their various blocking categories).

“Internet Filters” updates and expands upon an earlier survey published by the Brennan Center’s Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP) in 2001. The new report describes the effects of CIPA and the deceptiveness of manufacturers’ claims to have improved the accuracy of filters with sophisticated “artificial intelligence” techniques. It then describes nearly 100 tests and studies up through 2006, with hundreds of examples of both deliberate and accidental overblocking.

For instance, one filtering program, SurfWatch, blocked the University of Kansas’s Archie R. Dykes Medical Library website upon detecting the word “dykes.” Cyber Patrol blocked a Knights of Columbus site and a site for aspiring dentists when set to block only “sexually explicit” materials. SmartFilter blocked the Declaration of Independence, Shakespeare’s complete plays, Moby Dick, and Marijuana: Facts for Teens, a brochure published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:58:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments