Dr. Dobb's Journal September 2003
I was pleased to see a tech-related editorial in my local newspaper. I was less pleased that it defended the recent Supreme Court decision on library filters. Briefly, the Supreme Court of the United States (hereafter SCOTUS) affirmed the authority of the Federal Government to tie Federal funding for libraries to the installation of content filters on library computers.
It is unfortunate that our local paper didn't reflect a little on the policy of our local library. That policy restricts children to an online sandbox, leaves adult-accessible computers uncensored, and has librarians ask patrons to knock it off when they misuse the equipment by, say, viewing images of—well, acts now legal in all 50 States, thanks to SCOTUS. Unlike the Federally mandated filters, this straightforward nontech policy (1) actually protects kids from inappropriate content; (2) leaves adults free to act like responsible adults; (3) deals with the problem when adults don't act that way; and (4) lets librarians do their job rather than handing it to software that admittedly fails to do its job.
This plan is in every way superior to the Federal law (the Children's Internet Protection Act). But for following this sensible plan, the library gets penalized.
Or it would if it were counting on Federal funds, which it isn't. The library wisely avoids the Federal bait, the attached strings, and the hooks at the ends of the strings.
Why am I so down on filters? Well, let's look at the legal definition of a filter. Want to see it again? Neither the Federal law nor the SCOTUS decision articulates what a filter is in sufficient detail that anyone can determine what they are giving up in using a filter.
I suspect that neither the authors of the law nor the Justices know exactly what filters do—e.g., how high both their false positives and their false negatives are—and I suspect that they haven't thought much about what nasty things filters could be made to do, either.
Although I don't impugn any evil motives to any filter companies, the combination of secrecy and government mandate is the kind of situation that attracts those whose motives are not good.
The secrecy is understandable, from a simply commercial angle. The algorithms or heuristics or blacklists that filter companies use are all they have to sell; they want to protect what they view as trade secrets. Besides, if these methods became public, they could be thwarted by the people the filter companies are trying to filter.
But even if filter companies have the finest motives, is it proper for the government to hand over to private companies the ability to control what you can read, and to let them make these decisions in private? If this government-mandated censorship is a good idea, which I question, shouldn't the government know what is being censored? Should control over our freedom to read be privatized?
And we can't assume that filtering companies will always be driven by the highest of motives. What is there to stop a filtering company from deciding that, say, Ralph Nader's views are inappropriate? That guy caused enough trouble in 2000; let's just filter him out of America's consciousness until the 2004 election.
It's a scenario that we have to take seriously. Let's play it out: Before too long, someone would get suspicious, and some statistics would be collected, and a circumstantial, statistical case would get built. A legal challenge would be mounted, and the matter would end up in court. Finally, a decision would be rendered, possibly against the filtering company. But in the meantime, months would have gone by and the intended damage would have been done.
I don't think that such political filtering is going on, but the point is that it could be, that (sadly) the political will to engage in such behavior exists, and that the SCOTUS decision opens the door to it. The court is creating an incentive, a market for such abuse.
SCOTUS says that such concerns are overblown and that the law is not onerous, because (adult) patrons can just ask that the filter be turned off. In other words, you can opt out of censorship.
Well—you can, yes. But what of those who don't understand that they can request this? Or are too shy or embarrassed? Or who don't realize that the filter is blocking the information they need?
I think SCOTUS needs to reread the 9th and 10th Amendments. Here's the executive summary:
In America, freedom is the default setting.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mike@swaine.com