A new report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows what we've been saying about Internet filters all along: these filters not only don't block all of the potentially objectionable content online, they also block content with keywords that could appear in an objectionable context but also block it in a medical or scientific context as well.

For example, information about sexually transmitted diseases, breast or testicular cancer, the potential hazards of circumcision, and other information which even now is considered fine for prime time television commercials is often blocked by filtering software.

The study found that with the most forgiving settings- to only block pornography- that still 1.4% of legitimate health information was blocked, and 87% of porn was caught by the filter (meaning that 13% of porn, or something like 50,000 sites were not caught by the filtering.

When the filtering was cranked up a few notches, 91% of porn sites were blocked (leaving somewhere around 30,000 unblocked sites) but 24% of health sites were blocked. Note that while only 4% more adult-content sites got the axe, nearly 23% more health and science sites were made inaccessible.

The report found that while at the weakest settings the results might be acceptable, many schools crank up the settings to the maximum, blocking searches for information about "jock itch" and "oral sex techniques" alike. Not surprisingly, the filters performed poorly when searching around for safer-sex information- 9% of those sites were blocked even at the least restrictive level. That figure changes to 50% at the highest levels of filtering.

David Burt, a spokesman for N2H2, makers of filtering software commonly used in schools, had his own spin on the study, saying "This shows us that filters do work." I guess it depends on how you define "work". If by "work" you mean "work some of the time while falsely blocking a large number of sites", then I guess they do "work". Note that N2H2 blocks morons.org, categorizing us as follows: "Tasteless/Gross, Jokes, Profanity, Message/Bulletin Boards, Sex"

---Nick

vote FOR this article vote AGAINST this article flag as spam/abuse
Log in if you are spatula for more options. 
Find similar articles