INTERNET CENSORSHIP

SOFTWARE PROGRAMS

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Topics Covered in this essay:

Cyber Patrol ™

Microsystems Software, Inc. of Framingham, MA, produces the Cyber Patrol computer program. It can be installed on your home computer to limit access to Internet web sites which would be unsuitable for children. The program is used by: Acer, America Online, Ameritech, ANS, ASCII, ASG, AT&T (WorldNet Service), Aventail, Bell Atlantic, British Telecom, Check Point Software, Continental Cablevision, CompuServe, CTI, Graphix Zone, GTE, IBM, Prodigy, Raptor & Netegrity, Scholastic Network, Telecom New Zealand, and probably many other ISPs.

According to their home page:

"Sites to be blocked are selected by a team of parents and teachers hired by Microsystems to surf the Web using state-of-the-art technology to find sexually explicit, violent or hateful material."

They maintain a list of banned sites including those which promote drugs (alcohol, tobacco, other drugs), supply militant-terrorist information, information on sex, pornography, nudity or violence. They also prevent surfing of:

Because of this policy, Cyber Patrol blocks the American Family Association web site. That site is perceived by Cyber Patrol as promoting discrimination of gays and lesbians. On 1998-JUN-11, the AFA appealed to the CyberNOT Oversight Committee to have the block lifted. Their request was refused. The AFA complained that "Cyber Patrol is blocking AFA.net because we oppose the political and cultural agenda of the homosexual rights movement. The AFA has never condoned violence, persecution or harassment; nor do we advocate that homosexuals be denied the same rights of all citizens. However, we do oppose and expose efforts to equate race, ethnic origin and religion with the practice of same-sex sexual behaviors for purposes of special civil rights laws."

Cyber Patrol also blocks:

There is a widespread belief among many conservative Christians that some cults do harass and persecute persons who have left the group. Sometimes, these cults are believed to go as far as killing a person who tries to leave. This is sometimes alleged against Satanist grottos, Wiccan covens, and other groups. But this belief appear to be a hoax. We are aware of many mind control cults, and a few doomsday, destructive cults. Many new religious movements withdraw all emotional, spiritual, and social support from members who leave. But cults that actually punish persons who leave the group are extremely rare. And we have only heard of two groups that may have killed departing members. One was a splinter Mormon group that had been excommunicated from the Mormon organization. The other was a Roman Catholic splinter group in Uganda.

Many parents buy Cyber Patrol to regulate their children's access to the Internet. However, some cities are now mandating that this software be put on library and public school computers. This conflicts with the free speech guarantees in the US constitution.

Sites blocked By Cyber Patrol

Among the most famous attempts at censorship in this century were the book burnings by the German Nazi Party and the lists of forbidden books and movies prepared by the Roman Catholic Church. However, the Nazis and Vatican at least published lists of blacklisted books. Cyber Patrol does not publish a complete list of banned sites. However, if you want to check your favorite URLs, you can find out if they are banned by accessing their site, one at a time, at http://www.microsys.com/cybernot/default.htm

Our site was banned for a while. Cyber Patrol had felt that one of our 450 or so essays could be disturbing to children. It described ritual abuse testimony in a German court - testimony of events that probably never happened.

Nobody outside of Cyber Patrol has a full list of sites on the "CyberNOT" list. A partial list is being maintained at "PeaceFire", the Teen Net anti-censorship Alliance, at: http://www.Peacefire.org/  

CYBERsitter ™

This is a similar program, which is the property of Solid Oak Software ™. ₁ They claim to block only those sites which "focuses on topics such as adult or sexual issues, illegal activities, bigotry, racism, drugs, or pornography" are included in the list." ₂ However, their behavior appears to differ significantly from their claims. Allegedly, they:

Solid Oak Software Inc. does not make public its list of blocked sites. Webmasters have no way of knowing whether their sites have been banned

In addition to blocking sites that they have reviewed and dislike, Cybersitter has an additional feature: the user of the program can select the "occult / cult" option. When selected, any individual essay with the word(s) Pagan, Witch etc. in its URL will be totally blocked from view. This applies to all types of sites:

Also, in the text of any essay, these same words are blocked out; the rest of the text is unaffected.

They claim to have no ties to any religious organizations. However, one investigator claims to have evidence that they are linked to Focus on the Family, a very large and influential group within the Christian religious right. Their use of the terms "occult" and "cult" would seem to verify this.  Isaac Bonewits, a well known and respected Neopagan claims that CYBERsitter "actively discriminates against and blocks all access to websites that offend the Religious Right, as well as newsgroups, IRC, and other internet resources, without allowing parents or librarians to even see, let alone edit, their keyword filters."

Declan McCullagy of of Netly News commented: "The 'smut blockers' grab power by playing to porn, then they wield it to advance a right-wing, conservative agenda. Family values activists would never have been able to pass a law that blocks as many sites as CyberSitter does. Besides censoring alt.censorship, it also blocks dozens of ISPs and university sites such as well.com, zoom.com, anon.penet.fi, best.com, webpower.com, ftp.std.com, cts.com, gwis2.seas.gwu.edu, hss.cmu.edu, c2.org, echonyc.com and accounting.com. Now, sadly, some libraries are using it. Solid Oak claims 900,000 registered users." ₃

Bess Filtering Services:

BESS Filtering Services are largely aimed at protecting school children by preventing their access to undesirable sites. They state that over 3 million school children are protected, and that in an average school district which has 50,000 site requests per day, that Bess blocks about 2 requests per minute. Their filters reside on N2H2 servers. Their systems are attractive to school administrators, because there is no local software to update and maintain. They also provide filtered and unfiltered Internet service to most of western Washington state. Their software is also sold to libraries, businesses, and Internet service providers.

Bess uses "a team of dedicated professionals that reviews each site" individually. The type of objectionable material that they block includes:

We have been contacted by a high school student in Ohio who reports that "Bess who is in league with the Christian Coalition and the Center for Family Values, deemed it necessary to block" our essay on the Wiccan religion. We have no independent verification of these assertions at this time.

We asked Bess for confirmation, the reason why our essay is blocked, and a list of other of our essays which have been also blocked. We received a response two days later. They removed the block on our Wiccan essay. They scanned their data base and found that they had also blocked our essay on Satanic Ritual Abuse. We suspect that they blocked the latter essay on the basis of its title. The text of the essay explains that "SRA" is a hoax. One source indicates that 18% of Bess' revenue comes from banner ads that they feature in place of blocked sites. When a young person at a school or library attempts to access a blocked site, they are exposed to a commercial advertisement.

Cleannet™

This is a Canadian site operated by International Internet Alliance ™, 60 Baker Street, Guelph, Ontario N1H 4G1 Canada. They claim that they filter "pornography and other offensive material." They bill themselves as "The world's fastest technology brings you an Internet service that you can enjoy without the worry of offensive material entering your home or office."

Unfortunately, they do not specify on their Web site what criteria they use to decide that a site is pornographic or offensive. Some of their sales personnel have stated that they do not have human reviewers, but rely upon computer programs to look for key, offensive words. Thus, a site which recommends abstinence from illegal drugs might be banned because they use the words "drugs" or "cocaine."

They use rather primitive blocking software. Apparently it is only capable of blocking at the site level. So, if any one of our 1,918 essays and menus were to be deemed offensive, our entire site would be blocked.

Our entire site was in fact banned, as of 1998-FEB. We found this out by accident while visiting Cleannet's booth at a computer show in Toronto ON. We sent several Emails requesting that our site be removed from their banned list, or at least that it be reviewed by a human. After two weeks of waiting, no meaningful replies were received. Immediately after we sent an Email to a Guelph newspaper suggesting that they feature an article on this company, Netclean responded. They unblocked our site.

Like other Internet censorship companies, they do not inform Webmasters of their decision to ban a site. They do not offer any on-line service whereby a Webmaster can determine if their site has been blocked.

We have been informed that this company ceased operations on 1998-JUN-25.

McAfee Office:

This package contains a Guard Dog program which filters dangerous, pornographic, criminal and other Internet web sites. It contains a data base of words which it uses to compare against the text and Meta tags of web sites. It prevents viewing of web sites containing any of the following words: athame, Atlantis, book of shadows, Druid, magick, Neo-pagan, New Age, occult, pagan, pentagram, Wicca, etc. It appears to discriminate heavily against Neopagan web sites.

American Family Filter (AFF):

This company offers a Family Filter Service ₄ which "offers a clean, objectionable free environment for your home." It prevents access to those web sites that AFF considers objectionable. ₅ These include sites that discuss or display:

And sites that include:

According to their filtering criteria, they do not appear to ban sites that target groups of people based on their sexual orientation in a "hateful or derogatory manner." Their filtering does not seem to be particularly effective. After signing up for a free trial, we found that the service did not block our site's essays on same-sex marriage, and the Goth culture. However, they did block our essay on religious responses to masturbation, even though it is image-free and consists mainly of quotations from conservative Christian sources. We have asked them to remove the blockage.

Related essay on this web site:

References:

1. The Pagan Awareness League has a list of Neopagan sites blocked by Cybersitter at: http://members.aol.com/Palweb/cybsit.htm
2. The Witches.Com web site had an essay "BLOCKED!!! It's Not Personal . . .It's Pagan!!!" at: http://www.thewitches.com/censor/blocked.htm It described the Cybersitter situation in depth. Unfortunately, it seems to have moved or been taken offline.
3. Declan McCullaugh, "The Cybersitter diaper change," at: http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/
4. American Family Filter's home page is at:  http://www.afafilter.com
5. "Filtering criteria," American Family Filter, at: http://www.afafilter.com/

Copyright  © 1998 to 2004 incl. by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2004-JUL-24
Author: B.A. Robinson