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FC: Filtering software kowtows to anti-gay conservative groups?
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 10:35:33 -0400
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36621,00.html Filters Kowtowing to Hate? by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com) 3:00 a.m. May. 27, 2000 PDT Blocking software, long criticized for mislabeling innocuous websites as pornographic, now has a new problem: accusations of double standards. The most popular filtering programs allow their users to freely visit the websites of arch-conservative groups like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America, which feature strident denunciations of homosexuality. But when those identical fulminations against lesbians and gays were duplicated and placed on personal Web pages, Cyberpatrol, Surfwatch, and four other programs quickly added the addresses to their off-limits blacklists. As a test, anti-filtering activists at Peacefire copied anti-gay excerpts from conservative publications to four websites on Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, and TheGlobe. After the links were submitted to the companies, each of the four sites was blocked as "hate speech" or otherwise labeled as verboten. "I can see why it would be called be called hate speech," said George Jelatis, senior technical architect at Secure Computing, which sells Smartfilter to corporations. Referring to the second paragraph of Geocities' "Straight Talk on 'Gay Rights'", which is excerpted from a Concerned Women for America publication and says "the truth of the matter is that homosexuality is an immoral behavior that can be changed," Jelatis admitted that "there are people who would consider this (a) speech that would produce a hostile atmosphere in the workplace." But Jelatis couldn't explain why the original document at Concerned Women for America was readily available to Smartfilter users. "I'd have to go back and review the polices. But I think what you'd find that we do is that we don't necessarily take controversial sites where we get one request and make a very painful decision without discussing it. We look at is this coming in multiple times," Jelatis said. But the Geocities site was never publicized, and only one Peacefire member -- using a pseudonym -- complained to Secure Computing about it. The other conservative sites excerpted were the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and portions of speeches by radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger. One reason why some manufacturers of blocking software are hesitant to block powerful conservative groups is financial: They have similar goals and even, occasionally, marketing alliances. NetNanny, for instance, says it has a relationship with Focus on the Family. Conservative organizations have long lobbied to install the products in public schools and libraries. In one case in Loudoun County, Virginia, a federal judge ordered the public library to remove X-Stop, saying it banned innocuous materials. Another reason not to block is the strongly negative reaction from blockees: Nobody likes to be told their publications are "hate speech" and are therefore unsuitable for employees or minors to read. "Look, I'll say straight out that we do not promote hate. Anyone these days who speaks out against a homosexual lifestyle is said to be speaking with hate," says Wendy Wright, spokesperson for Concerned Women for America. "We're a Bible-based organization, based on the life and admonitions of Jesus Christ. Anybody that wants to visit our website will see that we do not promote hate," Wright said. When told that CWA materials reposted elsewhere were blocked, Wright said she could not respond until she "can look a little more into this." Bennett Haselton, the young founder of Peacefire, said that his experiment conducted over the last few months shows the companies are inconsistent, or even hypocritical. "If they don't block the original source site, that proves that they're applying their criteria inconsistently depending on whether the organization has lots of lawyers and fax machines and ability (to create) a high-profile backlash," Haselton said. "In a case where the blocking company does not block the original site, then we've exposed an inconsistency in their criteria that should get them thrown out of any public institution," he said. During interviews with blocking software companies, all made a similar point: When weighing whether something is acceptable or not, they consider the tenor of the site. That's not enough to satisfy Haselton, though, who says they're applying double standards. "They will block the home page of the Klan even though there are probably no objectionable quotes on the front. The David Duke home page doesn't have anything explicitly racist on the front page," said Haselton, who has spent the last three years as an anti-blocking software activist. Part of the problem in deciding what sites to block or not is that it's necessarily a subjective process, and the vast number of websites sprouting on the Internet every day makes it difficult for one company to sort them into reasonable categories. NetNanny representatives said that they would likely unblock the sites that their marketing coordinator, Amanda Geyer, had ruled in March and April to be off-limits. "Based on what those words were, it doesn't constitute something that's dangerous to kids. Amanda does not have that authority to make that decision. That was an error," said NetNanny Vice President Nika Herford. "A judgment call was made and I back up my employee for what we did. We need to make sure our process is a little more streamlined and a little more open," said Herford, who added that the open nature of the NetNanny list allows parents to review sites and delete entries. Geyer said, however, that her company's process is very precise, and noted that NetNanny's list of off-limits sites is available for parents to peruse. "We distinguish between opinion sites and hate sites. We really try to make sure it's very, very graphic, violent hate for us to declare it as violent content because we don't want to block anyone's opinion," Geyer said. "We don't block the National Rifle Association, the Christian Coalition, things like that. We don't consider that hate. We consider that opinion. We're very free-speech oriented," said Geyer. Why, then, does NetNanny consider the four excerpted sites to be inappropriate for minors? "The words are clearly words that we include in our list as adult words. If these words are on the site, it's our job to (deem) that 'adult,'" Geyer said. The site, quoting CWA, says: "The society has seen fit to withhold its blessing and special protection from other shared behaviors -- murder, theft and fraud, and sexual orientations like necrophilia, bestiality, and pedophilia. When people act out these behaviors, society reacts with revulsion and punishment." A spokesman for NetNanny later said he could not say if CWA's site would be added to the product's blacklist. Alexandra Salomon, director of content services for SurfWatch, said her company came across a similar problem with sites that excerpted Holocaust-related information for purposes of commentary. She said Surfwatch's approach is subjective by design, and a decision about whether or not to block a site depends on what the overarching theme is. "It comes to what is the overall message that's being communicated in the whole of the site," Salomon said. "We've tried to stay pretty tolerant in terms of organizations that exist in America, quite frankly because it's the whole marketplace of ideas. They're already so public on television and the Internet that blocking it on the Internet (doesn't do much)," she said. Phil Hill, a spokesman for Websense, which claims over 5 million corporate users, said he would have to investigate why Tripod.com is blocked but Focus on the Family is not. "I believe these two sites are categorized fairly correctly. The 'family' site does appear to be a very positive site with a religious theme," Websense officials said in an email. "The (Tripod) site's theme seems to be fairly negative about the lifestyle of homosexuality with strongly written quotes explaining the author's feelings. The hate/racism category fits here, however, after further review, we believe 'activist' is more appropriate." When asked to explain why Websense treats smaller sites differently from large sites -- even if the content is excerpted -- Hill did not reply. Filtering software is also notoriously buggy. Mattel, which sells Cyberpatrol, did not respond to a request for comment. But Cyberpatrol did determine that all four of the conservative-quotation sites were inappropriate for its users. Mattel also sued two programmers who released a utility that allows customers to view Cyberpatrol's secret blacklist of verboten sites. The program revealed that Cyberpatrol doesn't just block porn: Student organizations at Carnegie Mellon University and Usenet discussions such as alt.journalism, soc.feminism, and, inexplicably, fj.rec.food, also were restricted. Nicholas Morehead contributed to this report. #### -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- FC: Filtering software kowtows to anti-gay conservative groups? Declan McCullagh (May 27)