Media Release: School Communities Give Internet Filtering Law Failing Grade
For Immediate Release: September 16, 2002
Contact:
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Will Doherty
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Executive Director
Online Policy Group
doherty@onlinepolicy.org
School Communities Give Internet Filtering Law Failing Grade
Research Reports Thousands of Sites Incorrectly Blocked
San Francisco -
School administrators, along with students,
teachers, parents, and school librarians, in San Francisco,
New York, and Boston will speak out on September 18 against
federal mandates for Internet blocking or filtering software
in public schools.
The Online Policy Group (OPG), Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), and Youth
Free Expression Network (YFEN), a project of the Free
Expression Policy Project (FEPP), are sponsoring the press
conferences along with local school community members.
School communities nationwide are urging repeal of the
Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) which requires
public schools and libraries receiving certain federal
funds or discounts to install a "technology protection
measure" to block Internet access to materials that are
"harmful to minors."
A federal district court has already struck down a similar
portion of the CIPA law that required libraries to install
filters because the court found that filtering products
unsuccessfully blocked access to materials that are harmful
to minors while abridging the free speech of library
patrons by overblocking constitutionally protected
materials. The government has appealed the library
decision to the Supreme Court. The schools portion of
the CIPA law remains in force.
OPG and EFF will announce results of a study demonstrating
thousands of sites inappropriately blocked by two of the
most widely used Internet filters based on topic searches
of state-mandated school curriculums from three states.
ACLU and EFF will unveil action alerts directed at
Congressional repeal of CIPA and at local school boards
administering Internet blocking in schools.
Press conferences will take place at the following times and
locations:
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Boston area--
Time: 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST on September 18, 2002
Location: Bartos Auditorium, MIT Media Lab, 20 Ames Street,
Cambridge, MA 02139
Organizer: Dr. Rob Reilly
Email: reilly@media.mit.edu
Phone: +1 617 253-0369 (office) or +1 413 329-1878 (cell)
Speakers (not final):
* Dr. Rob Reilly, Visiting Scientist, MIT Media Lab
* Ms. Jeanne Schultz, President, Massachusetts Elementary
School Principal's Association
* Ms. Nancy Murray, Director, Bill of Rights Education
Project, ACLU of Massachusetts
* Mr. Seth Finkelstein, Consultant (EFF Pioneer Award
winner)
* Ms. Kathy Massimiano, Computer Education Teacher, Richmond
(Mass.) Public School System
Directions to Press Conference:
via the 'T': take Red line to MIT/Kendall station, which is
Main Street; walk north on Main Street (away from Boston);
at the first corner (at the traffic light) is Ames Street is
on the left; the MIT Media Lab is on the left (it's a bright
white building); enter the building and go downstairs to
Bartos Auditorium.
------------------------------------------------------------
New York--
Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm EST on September 18, 2002
Location: Harlem Live, 301 W. 125th Street, Third Floor, New
York, NY
Organizer: Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Email: sgriest@ncac.org
Phone: +1 212 807-6222 x17 (office), +1 650 784-5389 (cell),
+1 212 222-4681 (Harlem Live during the conference only)
Speakers (not final):
* Danya Steele, Editor, Harlem Live
* Eve Bertin, Editor, Laguardia High School student newspaper
* Ann Beeson, Litigation Director, ACLU's Technology and
Liberty Program
* Marjorie Heins, Director, Free Expression Policy Project
* Statements from two high school teachers
------------------------------------------------------------
San Francisco--
Time: 12:00 Noon to 1:00 PM PST on September 18, 2002
Location: Mission High School, 3750 18th St. (sidewalk in
front of building, between Church St. and Dolores St.), San
Francisco, CA
Organizer: Will Doherty
Email: doherty@onlinepolicy.org or wild@eff.org
Phone: +1 415 436-9333 x111 (office) or +1 415 794-6064
(cell)
Speakers (not final, affiliations may be for id purposes
only):
* Parent and school librarian
* Technology teacher
* Private school teacher
* Students and possibly parents from local schools
* Ann Brick, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California
* Will Doherty, Executive Director, Online Policy Group,
and Media Relations Director, Electronic Frontier
Foundation
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Press packets with a variety of informational materials will
be available at the press conferences. A more comprehensive
media release will be published early on the day of the
press conferences.
This media release available at
http://www.onlinepolicy.org/media/schoolsfailcipa020916.shtml
About OPG:
The Online Policy Group (OPG) is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to online policy research, outreach, and action on
issues such as access, privacy, and digital defamation. The
organization fulfills its motto of "one Internet with equal
access to all" through projects such as donation-based email
list hosting, web hosting, domain registrations, and now
colocation services. OPG focuses on Internet participants'
civil liberties and human rights, like access, privacy,
safety, and serving schools, libraries, disabled, elderly,
youth, women, and sexual, gender, and ethnic minorities.
Find out more at
http://www.onlinepolicy.org
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