Lisa Neal
CI 405- B
11/2/09
Internet Safety at School
With the improvements in technology, more schools are allowing students to access the
internet to enhance learning. Due to the offensive content that circulates the internet, schools
have been blocking websites which are categorized as offensive. In trying to protect students,
schools have been violating the first amendment and denying students access to important
information on the internet. In this paper, I examine some internet safety laws, data, and
arguments to support the idea that schools should abolish the use of internet filters.
I will begin by examining the safety laws that protect children while using the internet.
The original internet safety law was introduced in 1998 with the creation of the Children’s
Online Protection Act (Pew Report). This law was created to restrict the access to websites
containing material seen as harmful to minors such as “any communication, picture, image,
graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene”
(Cybertelecom). This law limited commercial speech and would have only affected those
providers in the United States. This ultimately violated the “free speech” section of the first
amendment and was therefore never enacted (Cornell University). This is because website
owners are “forced to self-censor in the face of unclear rules…abiding by the most restrictive
community standard” while “the law requires the use of the ‘least restrictive means’ of
execution” (Pew Report).
Following this was the Children’s Internet Protection Act (2000) which was proposed by
Senator John McCain. Under this law, all schools and libraries that receive internet funding are
required to censor inappropriate and offensive content on the internet. The funding can be
discounted to the school or library only if they provide internet safety to the children. This
provides protection from obscene pictures, pornography, and other things that are harmful to
minors (FCC, 2009).
With the Children’s Internet Protection Act, children can safely search the internet at
school or at their library. N2H2 Bess, named most effective software by the U.S. Department of
Justice (EFF), and Surf Control are used to effectively protect children from harmful content.
These filtering software programs block websites through either inappropriate words in web
addresses or through reports from users (N2H2). These reports ultimately categorize websites to
identify them as inappropriate. Though N2H2 Bess is highly praised by the U.S. Department of
Justice, it still provides faulty censorship that frustrates many of its users.
Determining what websites are blocked is a major downfall with the Children’s Internet
Protection Act. For example, “blocking software blocks one or more web pages inappropriately,
either because the web pages are miscategorized or because the web pages, while correctly
categorized, do not merit blocking” (p.5, EFF). A third to half of these blocked websites are
actually related to state-mandated curriculums (p.6, EFF) which limits students’ access to
beneficial sites. Even when filters are set to the least restrictive settings, they “will block at a
minimum tens of thousands of web pages inappropriately” (p.5, EFF).
Furthermore, in research reported by EFF, the schools using the least restrictive settings
still blocked between 0.5-5.0 percent of state-mandated curriculum. On the most restrictive
settings, 70% of search results that were blocked consisted of state-mandated curriculum (p.6,
EFF) due to miscategorizing. One example of this involved SurfControl when it labeled an
English punctuation website as “Adult/Sexually Explicit” because it talked about a period.
Though it referred to the punctuation mark, it was miscategorized because it identified it as
menstruation (p. 30, EFF).
State boards want students to have easy access to websites that consist of state-mandated
curriculum topics, yet so many are being blocked by miscategorization from the software. Of all
blocked state-mandated websites, an outstanding number are inappropriately blocked. Only 1-3%
of these are actually blocked properly according to the CIPA criteria (p.6, EFF). “That means
that of the web pages related to state-mandated curriculums, filtering software products blocked
97-99% of the web pages using non-standard, discretionary, and potentially illegal criteria
beyond what is required by CIPA” (p.6, EFF). These restrictions to state-mandated curriculum
sites ultimately hurt students’ education experience by limiting access to beneficial sources and
“undoubtedly cause students unnecessary frustration and difficulty” (p.78, EFF).
Unfortunately, “schools cannot comply with laws because they do not and cannot set the
software to block only the categories required by the law” (EFF). Not only does this affect the
students’ ability to search for educational websites, but the teachers are affected as well. These
software programs “limit teacher access to up-to-date information which inhibit the educational
experience” (EFF). It is also believed that “teachers and students 17 and up should be exempt,
yet suffer the consequences and are denied access to sites directly related to state-mandated
curriculum” (EFF).
Although these laws are considered unconstitutional for violating the first amendment,
some advocates are still supporting the laws. Supporters are highly advocating these laws to
protect children from harmful things that they may be exposed to. As a supporter, Senator John
McCain believes that “as Internet use in our schools and libraries continues to grow, children's
potential exposure to harmful online content and to those who seek to sexually abuse children
will only increase” (tech law journal).
Former South Carolina Senator Ernest Hollings, another supporter, previously worked
with John McCain to gain support censorship. He feels it is necessary to “protect children from
the dark side of the internet” (tech law journal). Furthermore, he believes that “Children should
be protected from stumbling onto indecent material while using the web for legitimate research
purposes and this bill (CIPA) will go a long way in obtaining that goal” (tech law journal).
Although I believe that children should not be exposed harmful material, schools and
libraries should not continue to use internet filters as they incorrectly filter inappropriate
websites. I agree with Steve Dorman, a proponent of parental and teacher involvement, that
children’s use of the internet should be closely supervised and that “children should be taught
how to use the Internet to find the information they need and how to avoid useless and harmful
sites” (Olagunju). Not only should children learn how to use the internet to avoid useless and
harmful sites, but I believe that schools should educate students on internet safety in general.
Through supervision and education, schools would be able to protect students from inappropriate
content while not violating the first amendment.
Through the use of filtering software programs schools, libraries, and the government can
protect children from harmful and inappropriate content that circulates the internet. However,
these filtering software programs violate the first amendment of free speech by preventing
people from accessing websites. They consequently hinder students’ learning and prevent teacher
access to up-to-date resources that could be used in the classroom. Schools should therefore stop
using these filtering software programs, and instead educate students on internet safety and
supervise student activity. This would protect students from harmful content and would not
violate the first amendment.