Filtered for Your Viewing Pleasure

By Maia Szalavitz, Village Voice. Posted August 27, 2001.

Strange things happen when you seek drug policy information using filters meant to protect kids from the evils of the Net. Try reaching the drug law reform think tank the Lindesmith Center using Cyber Patrol, the highest-rated online screening product --- which is now part of AOL's family filter and used by 9 million people. You can't connect. Try to hit drug czar Barry McCaffrey's site, which takes the opposite political perspective, and the site loads easily. Attempt to access the Lycaeum, which includes information on personal drug experiences and even methamphetamine manufacture, and you can access it without a problem.

A search for "marijuana" using Searchopolis, the free Web-based search meant to be safe for children, also produces surprising results. Searchopolis uses the same technology as Bess, the server-based filter that leads the market for educational and library filtering and was recently tested in the city's public schools. Though unfiltered searches find a predominance of marijuana law reform sites as well as government institutions and think tanks, on Searchopolis, the top 10 hits are government and anti-marijuana sites. Presuming student laziness while researching homework -- quite often a sound assumption -- you can figure that most NYC kids are safe from alternative perspectives online.

However, if you do click to the next page, you get "Slick Willie Brand" marijuana bags (a party gag? or perhaps the search engine likes Republican perspectives?) and then, finally, some reform sites. An advertisement for the stealth government site freevibe.com, which pretends to offer unbiased information but is actually a project of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, appears.

If they worked as advertised, these filters would be dangerous, with the ability to exclude some political perspectives while offering access to others. Though many people assume these blockers exclude only porn, they can also keep out information that "promotes" drug use, offers recipes for bombs or contains violence or even information on sex education. As the Cyber Patrol example indicates, the technology isn't quite there yet -- but it is clear that drug warriors, upset over the dominance of the reform perspective on the Net, are fighting back.

Used only by parents in their own homes, this software is simply a tool to screen out information inappropriate for kids. But there has been a great push to install it in schools and libraries; and while one bill to mandate it in these institutions recently failed in Congress, presidential candidate John McCain is pushing another. (Yet another bill, which passed the Senate and was introduced in the House, would impose criminal penalties on owners of Web sites that "directly or indirectly advertise" drug use.)

Filtering software is estimated to reach one-third of American households with Net access. Filter manufacturers have focused on schools and libraries and are currently aiming their marketing efforts at getting businesses to buy the software to "increase productivity" by limiting Net access. Schools have already begun to recognize the problems with these filters as students find that access to research material they need is blocked. New York City public schools currently use a program called I-gear, made by Symantec. Recently, students found that they could access Operation Rescue but not Planned Parenthood, and that drug-related sites, the National Rifle Association, and even a reference from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath were barred. The filter also blocked access to major news organizations and scientific and medical groups.

Other districts have had difficulties as well. Jonathan Wallace of Censorware.org, a collaborative that examines and fights blocking software, says his group was contacted by high school students in Ohio who were having difficulty researching teen drug use for a homework assignment because so many sites were blocked by Bess. While allowing searches for "marijuana," Bess is set not to search the word "heroin" or "cocaine," and bars pages that contain these words.

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