Internet Filters Block Many Useful Sites, Study Finds

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Internet Filters Block Many Useful Sites, Study Finds

December 11, 2002
By JOHN SCHWARTZ 




 

Teenagers who look to the Internet for health information
as part of their "wired generation" birthright are blocked
from many useful sites by antipornography filters that
federal law requires in school and library computers, a new
study has found. 

The filtering programs tend to block references to sex and
sex-related terms, like "safe sex," "condoms," "abortion,"
"jock itch," "gay" and "lesbian." Although the software can
be adjusted to allow access to most health-related Web
sites, many schools and libraries ratchet up the software's
barriers to highest settings, the report said.

"A little bit of filtering is O.K., but more isn't
necessarily better," said Vicky Rideout, vice president of
the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which produced the
report, to be published today in The Journal of the
American Medical Association. "If they are set too high,
they can be a serious obstacle to health information."

The researchers found that filters set at the least
restrictive level blocked an average of 1.4 percent of
health sites; at the most restrictive level, filters
blocked nearly 25 percent of health sites. The amount of
pornography blocked, however, was fairly consistent: 87
percent at the least restrictive level, 91 percent at the
most restrictive. 

The programs blocked a much higher percentage of health
sites devoted to safe-sex topics: 9 percent at the least
restrictive level and 50 percent at the most restrictive.
The blocked pages at high levels included The Journal of
the American Medical Association's site for women's health
and a page with online information from the Food and Drug
Administration about clinical trials.

To the researchers, the results mean that a school or
library that uses a less restrictive setting for Internet
filters can lose very little of the protective effect of
the filters, while minimizing the tendency of filters to
block harmless and even valuable sites.

The report is the first major study of the effectiveness of
filters to appear in a peer-reviewed scientific journal,
and the first to look at the effectiveness of filters at
various settings. Most previous studies have been produced
by organizations with a strong point of view either
favoring or opposing filters. The Kaiser Foundation is a
nonprofit health research group. David Burt, an
antipornography advocate who is a spokesman for the
filtering company N2H2, said he was pleased with the
report, which he called "very thoughtful and well designed
- they recognized it matters a lot how you configure a
filter and set it up."

But opponents of filtering requirements said the study
showed the technology's clumsiness.

"Filters are just fine for parents to use at home," said
Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual
Freedom at the American Library Association. "They are not
appropriate for institutions that might be the only place
where kids can get this information."

"The importance of the First Amendment," Ms. Krug said, "is
that it provides us with the ability to govern ourselves,
because it guarantees that you have the right to access
information. The filters undercut that ability."

Nancy Willard, an Oregon educator who has written student
guides that emphasize personal responsibility in Internet
surfing, called filtering a kind of censorship that, if
performed by the schools directly, would be
unconstitutional. 

"These filtering companies are protecting all information
about what they are blocking as confidential trade
secrets," Ms. Willard said. "This is nothing more than
stealth censorship."

The study was conducted for the foundation by University of
Michigan researchers, who tested six leading Internet
filtering programs. The researchers searched for
information on 24 health topics, including breast cancer
and birth control, and also for pornographic terms. They
performed the tests at each of three settings. At the least
restrictive setting, only pornography is supposed to be
blocked; an intermediate setting also bars sites with
nudity and other controversial material like illicit drugs.
The most restrictive setting possible for each product may
block sites in dozens of other categories.

The researchers then called 20 school districts and library
systems around the United States to ask how they set their
filters. Of the school systems, which teach a half million
students over all, only one set its filters at the least
restrictive level. 

The issue of library filtering is making its way through
the federal courts. Last month the Supreme Court agreed to
hear a Bush administration defense of the Children's
Internet Protection Act, the federal law requiring schools
and libraries to use filters on computers used by children
or to lose technology money. A special panel of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in
Philadelphia, struck down part of the law that applied to
libraries as unconstitutional. Chief Judge Edward R. Becker
wrote that filters were a "blunt instrument" for protecting
children. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/technology/11FILT.html?ex=1040607430&ei=1&;
en=45f2c7a58e98a361



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