The Supremes today heard arguments regarding CIPA, the latest attempt by Congress to mandate Internet content filtering at libraries and schools.
Congress tried to get around two previous judicial rejections by simply saying that libraries were only required to use the filtering if they accepted federal funds to buy PCs and Net access in the first place. Given that libraries almost never have enough money, the pressure to accept is almost impossible to resist.
But given that Internet filters still, frankly, suck at blocking just porn, using filters is highly problematic. On the radio this a.m., one of the reps of a filtering software company was bragging about how their product coiuld catch 90% of the adults sites (meaning one out of ten sites get through) and “only” 1% of sites blocked is a legitimate site.
Making things worse, the filtering companies refuse to reveal what material they block, using what criteria. On the one hand, that makes sense, since adult sites would love to reverse-engineer how to avoid detection. On the other hand, it means that legitimate sites have no way of knowing why they might be blocked.
Sure, maybe the library can set up rules to let an adult come and ask a librarian to override blockage on a given site. That’s fine, as long as the adult in question doesn’t mind letting the librarian know that she’s looking up material about breast cancer, or he’s researching material about homosexuality, or …
Would you want to have to ask the librarian permission to read all the books you’ve ever read? Would you like to let anyone know about what you want to look up on the Internet?
What’s most irksome about the Bush Adminstration’s case is that they’re presenting CIPA as empowering the libraries. Say what?
Ted Olson, the Justice Department’s solicitor general, told the justices on Wednesday that librarians “are simply declining to put on their computer systems the kind of content they have chosen not to put on their bookshelves…The First Amendment does not require libraries to sponsor the viewing of pornography.”
That’s true. But libraries aren’t getting a choice here, are they? It’s not that Congress is offering them filtering software, it’s mandating it. If libraries want to pursue a different route to keeping kids from downloading skin pics (like, say, requiring kids to use Internet stations in view of librarians), they don’t have that choice.
(And I’ll note, parenthetically, that while I never visited a public library that stocked pornography per se, I certainly, ah, found books in my youth with rather, um, racy scenes that quite appealed to my adolescent prurience, both fiction and non-.)
Justice David Souter suggested that CIPA was different, because it turns over decisions about which Web sites to block to software companies that view their blocklists, or lists of off-limit sites, as trade secrets. “The companies that do prepare them (blocklists) will not even disclose what they are blocking,” Souter said. “When libraries have historically made these decisions, they have known what they’re blocking.”
“Libraries have known that they don’t stock pornography,” Olson countered.
Puh-leaze.
How about all libraries must have 21″ or larger monitors that face the main desk?
That would be fine for kids (IMO, and possibly legally), but there would be privacy concerns for adults.
Should there be an expectation of privacy in a public place? Many of your 4th amendment rights (where privacy rights are inferred) stop once you leave your home. That being said, I don’t believe there should be any logging of URLs or filtering. While the state may have a right to invade our privacy at this juncture, it should limit itself nonetheless.
There has been a general expectation of privacy regarding libraries, though that’s currently under assault via the USA PATRIOT act.
The other complicating factor is that libraries are often the only access to the Internet for poor or indigent people. There’s a sense that if Joe Richdude can look up whatever he wants in the privacy of his McMansion, then Peter Pauper should have the same right.
There’s also some question about implied privacy in previous rulings on other Internet-filtering bills. The rulings in those cases indicated that they were unconstitutional because they blocked from adults material that they were Constitutionally allowed to see. If one could reasonably argue that having your browser screen displaying your interest in, say, impotence, or rape counselling, would prevent you from looking at that material, it might be disallowed.
A bit of a side note on the subject of filtering…
When I worked for the Government, starting in about ’96 the dim watts in the DOE decided to add filtering to the Intra/Internet system. One small problem with this was that a great many things used in engineering have “suspect” names. One of which, which caused the Engineer/purchaser person to be hauled up to the Operations Security heads office for viewing porn while at work.
The OPSEC head want to know what the Engineer was looking at and why he had a fixation for a 4″ nipple. The OPSEC guy was unwilling to understand that this was a piece of transition conduit. A plant Catalog, along with a sample of the offending “4” nipple” had to be brought to his office before letting the Engineer go.
This same OPSEC guy later had problems with equipment called “Monkey Nuts”, “Dykes” and “Peckerheads”.
I hate Filtering Software…
When we first installed it in our e-mail network, it took a few days of tracking down why certain budget files were being blocked, then about half an hour of explanation to the messaging folks that spreadsheet columns representing a cumulative total often used the abbreviation “cum” in their headings, and that filtering them was inappropriate …
While we are on the topic of expectation of privacy. If what Dave’s said is true, then Carnivore should be unconsitutional. The means upon which privacy is violated does not limit its protection. If easily viewing a library screen is unconstitutional so is tapping an Internet connection without a warrant. In fact, it is more explicitly unconstitutional in that it picks up directly on the unlawful search and seisure language of the Constitution rather than merely an inference from it like the so-called right to privacy.
Under USA-PATRIOT the constitution no longer applies.
The USA-Patriot Act has a long tradition going back to the Alien and Sedition Act of the Adams Administration.