Media Release: School Communities Give Internet Filtering Law Failing Grade
Pics of San Francisco press conference below.
For Immediate Release: September 18, 2002
Contact:
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Will Doherty
-
Executive Director
Online Policy Group
doherty@onlinepolicy.org
School Communities Give Internet Filtering Law Failing Grade
Speak Out in San Francisco, New York, and Boston
San Francisco -
School administrators, along with students,
teachers, parents, and school librarians, in San Francisco,
New York, and Boston will speak out today 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."
"In one of the more massive giveaways to a private industry
in recent memory, CIPA requires the thousands of schools and
libraries that receive federal aid or e-rate discounts for
Internet connections to buy expensive filtering software,"
said FEPP Director Marjorie Heins. "It also turns over
educational decisions about what students should read and
learn to these private companies, which will not even reveal
their lists of blocked sites."
"Rather than protecting children, CIPA diminishes
educational opportunities for students nationwide by
blocking tens of thousands of web pages related directly to
the school curriculums developed after years of careful
consideration and approved by educators and local and state
school boards," said OPG Executive Director Will Doherty.
"Internet filtering in schools disproportionately impacts
those schools that most need federal funds and discounts,
while providing the fewest options for lower-income public
school students who cannot find alternative access at home
or at an unfiltered well-equipped local public library or
private school," explained Stephanie Elizondo Griest of the
Youth Free Expression Network. "CIPA deepens the digital
divide and must be repealed or overturned before it damages
a whole generation of American students."
EFF and OPG will announce preliminary 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.
Some schools in Eugene, OR, have decided to forego federal
funding and discounts in order to refuse Internet filtering
in their school district.
"Filtering is a technological solution to a social problem,"
said Les Moore, Director of Computing and Information
Science at Eugene School District 4J. "It's better to teach
responsible use and supervise, rather than giving parents a
false sense of security."
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.
Press conferences will take place at the following times and
locations:
------------------------------------------------------------
Boston area--
Time: 2:00pm - 3:30pm EDT 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 EDT 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
* Emma Rood, Sophomore, Simon's Rock College of Bard, and
plaintiff in ACLU lawsuit against CIPA library provisions
* Ann Beeson, Litigation Director, ACLU's Technology and
Liberty Program
* Marjorie Heins, Director, Free Expression Policy Project
* Statements from three high school teachers and a librarian
------------------------------------------------------------
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):
* Terry Lai, Parent and Librarian, Hoover Middle School, SF
* Dinah Shender, Student, Burlingame High School
* Anu Khosla, 7th Grade Student, Nueva School, Hillsboro, CA
* Ann Brick, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California
* Will Doherty, Executive Director, Online Policy Group,
and Media Relations Director, Electronic Frontier
Foundation
Statement from Debbie Abilock, Editor of Knowledge Quest, a journal
that reaches about 10,000 school librarians
------------------------------------------------------------
Press packets with a variety of informational materials will
be available at the press conferences.
This media release available at
http://www.onlinepolicy.org/media/schoolsfailcipa020918.shtml
Action alert for Congressional repeal of CIPA:
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=1851
Action alert for school boards:
http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Academic_edu/Censorware/net_blocking_alert/
Media advisory about upcoming Internet blocking research
results:
http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Academic_edu/Censorware/net_block_report/
Flash animation of students facing Internet blocking in
schools:
http://www.eff.org/schoolblocking/
AP article mentioning schools refusing Internet filtering
in Eugene, OR:
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2002/09/15/filters/index.html
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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