Censorship High

Our system is called InterGate, and it is a big black box sitting on a rack in the school district's communications office. Before any request for information can go onto the general Internet, it goes through InterGate. While inside InterGate, our Web browsing requests are individually logged by user name and computer address so that the school can keep track of every site each student visits. Next, the request is sent to a proxy server called Squid. A proxy server acts as a buffer between the Internet and a private network like our school's. Squid requests Web sites and serves them up to users inside a network. It's useful because its caching features make frequently visited Web sites load more quickly for local users in the school. Our version of Squid, however, is "enhanced" with a block list of objectionable sites. This list is distributed by the company that sells InterGate, and is updated automatically every night from a subscription service.

The block list is what we all hate. It is the bane of every student and teacher at Foothill High School. We curse it, we shout at it, we bang on our keyboards, but there is really nothing we can do about it. Whenever we click a site that is on the block list, a funny face appears on our screen along with a message informing us that the site we requested has been blocked because it contains objectionable material. There are those words again, "objectionable material." They're used to make parents feel safe, to make lawmakers feel secure, to make society feel good. But they have no real meaning.

Try making a list of a hundred randomly selected Web sites and see how many are blocked by filtering systems like Squid. The anti-censorship organization Peacefire does it all the time, and the results are predictable. Huge swaths of the Internet containing unobjectionable content are blocked because one page on that domain or host may have at one time contained one objectionable word or picture. At the same time, thousands of porn sites and hate sites and terrorism sites are left accessible.

This is inevitable; it is only a question of numbers. The idea that a handful of employees at InterGate have been able to read through millions upon millions of Web sites and determine what is "objectionable" is laughable. Content-filtering companies that claim all sites are reviewed by human beings are lying outright: It is simply impossible to review that many sites by hand, let alone keep the list up-to-date as sites change.

Without the thousands of human beings and millions of dollars required to filter even a substantial chunk of the Internet, filtering companies rely on spider programs. Spiders crawl the Web, searching pages for keywords like "sex" and "revolution." These programs are terribly inaccurate. I have found sites such as Stop Prisoner Rape blocked, in addition to sites promoting atheism and, of course, free-speech sites like Peacefire.

Even worse than these spider programs are the sites that are blocked when politics come into play. Filtering companies are more conservative than other organizations and often cater to right-wing groups. Not surprisingly, these companies will, consciously or not, block more liberal speech on the Internet than conservative speech. Thus Planned Parenthood is blocked, while the Christian Coalition is not. Some sites calling for the destruction of gays are allowed, while others that promote gay rights, like GLAAD, are disallowed. These are just a few examples of a huge trend toward repressing speech that is taking place in our schools.

The Constitution does not give minors the right to full constitutional and legal protection. However, children under 18 still have the same civil liberties as everyone else, liberties that no one -- not even the government -- should take away.

On May 30, I took a stand. I sent an e-mail to every single teacher and administrator in the TUSD, outlining a way to bypass the filtering system. Basically, I set up a second proxy system to direct Web requests. Students and teachers could send Web requests through my proxy server instead of the regular one, thus eluding the InterGate filters and gaining access to an uncensored Internet. I pointed out my reasons for these actions, quoting Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas: "Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."

I stated that in my position as a computer troubleshooter for the school I had received many complaints from teachers about the overbroad restrictions of the filter. I had been asked many times by individual teachers and students to provide a way to bypass the system. Stating that the most effective guard against the visiting of "inappropriate" Web sites is teacher supervision in the classroom, I revealed my method of bypassing the censorware software. I solicited feedback from teachers, promising that all communications would remain confidential. I asked for opinions both for and against my view, as I wished to encourage a dialogue in the school and community. Responses were immediate.

Next Page: "I think your actions are deplorable!"

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