By Lars Kongshem
FEBRUARY 1999 -- As this column predicted in November,
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has resurrected his efforts to force
Internet filters on schools that receive E-Rate funds. Last
year's School Internet Filtering Act went nowhere, but McCain's
at it again this year with the cleverly titled Children's
Internet Protection Act. If passed, the law would require
schools to install censorware on every computer with Internet
access, regardless of grade level, as a condition for receiving
E-Rate funding. This unfunded mandate represents federal arm-twisting
at its worst. Throwing a bone to advocates of local control, the
bill allows schools to decide which filtering product to use and
what to screen out -- but that's a bit like being allowed to pick
the color of your straightjacket. School technology coordinators
and systems administrators have better things to do than install,
configure, and maintain expensive new software packages district-wide
just to satisfy Washington's paranoid whims. The bottom
line: Decisions on whether to filter Internet access should be
left to individual school districts and the school boards that
govern them. Politicians should stay out of it.
There's more from the destructive legislation department:
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) introduced a bill this month that
seeks to destroy the E-Rate program. With a name like the E-Rate
Termination Act, at least we don't have to wonder about his
intentions. But there's good news on the E-Rate front, too: Telco
giants BellSouth and SBC Communications are backing out of
a lawsuit challenging the E-Rate. (BellSouth has ditched the lawsuit
completely, while SBC has withdrawn from a major portion.) Although
GTE is sticking with the suit, the withdrawals are a sign that
the widespread public support for the E-Rate counts for
something.
As expected, the Child Online Protection Act was struck down
by a federal judge this month. Signed into law late last year,
COPA was a follow-up to the Communications Decency Act, which
got the thumbs-down from the Supreme Court in 1997. COPA would
have required web site operators to prevent children from gaining
access to material deemed "harmful to minors," but Judge Lowell
A. Reed Jr. ruled that the law violated the First Amendment
because the available mechanisms for age verification -- such
as requiring credit card numbers -- would have a chilling effect
on the free-speech rights of adults. Besides, possession of a
credit card number is fairly flimsy evidence of adulthood.
Again, the issue of inappropriate content on the Internet is one
that should be dealt with at the local level by schools and parents,
who can choose to set and enforce rules for Internet use or install
their own filters as they see fit.
Speaking of filters, a youth-run free-speech organization called
Peacefire is distributing
a program that disables Cyber
Patrol, the popular censorware package manufactured by The
Learning Company's subsidiary Microsystems Software. Peacefire's
cracking program works by extracting Cyber Patrol's administrative
password, which can then be used to turn off the filter. The moral:
Don't count on filters to do your supervision for you.
Technology can't solve our problems for us -- and neither can
politicians.
Lars Kongshem is an associate editor and the webmaster of Electronic School and American School Board Journal.
Got a comment about Socket? Post it online!
Socket archive: November
1998
| 
