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School
Board Uses Computer Filter
to
Block Student Access to Web Sites
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
The Board of Education has installed a filter
on its
computer system that blocks students in New York
City schools from gaining
access to any Web sites that
include categories like
news and sex education,
including those of major
news organizations, policy
groups and scientific and
medical organizations,
officials acknowledged yesterday.
Students, parents and teachers
at Benjamin Cardozo
High School in Queens, one
of the city's most
prestigious and competitive
schools, said Tuesday that
they had complained to the
New York Civil Liberties
Union, because the blocking
program made it almost
impossible for them to conduct
sophisticated research
projects on the Internet.
Jan Shakofsky, a humanities
teacher at Cardozo, said
her students discovered
the filter when they tried to
carry out an assignment
on "researching the pros and
cons of an issue." When
they tried to determine how
members of Congress had
been rated by the National
Rifle Association, they
received a message saying,
"Access Denied."
They were given the same
message when they tried to
call up sites about breast
cancer, anorexia and bulimia,
child labor, AIDS and organizations
that support
abortion -- but not those
that oppose it -- because they
contained censored words.
Even the last chapter of
John Steinbeck's "Grapes
of Wrath" was forbidden,
students said Tuesday, because
of a passage in which a
woman lets a starving man
suckle at her breast.
"I have to tell you, I'm
not a true civil libertarian," Ms.
Shakofsky said. "I'm the
mean person who asks them to
delete solitaire, Free Cell,
hearts and minesweeper
from their computers. I
don't think they should have
pornography. But I felt
they should be able to do
research."
Teachers said the censorship
was not unique to
Cardozo, but had plagued
schools throughout the city
that had recently expanded
their computer programs,
using a federal grant that
has allowed every school in
the city to be connected
to the Internet, mainly through
the Board of Education's
server at Metrotech in
Brooklyn. The same server,
officials said, is used by
many computers within the
Board of Education.
Rather than create its own
policy on student access,
teachers said, the board
purchased a commercial
filtering program, I-Gear,
and let it set the standards.
I-Gear, made by Urlabs, a
subsidiary of the Symantec
Corporation, is one of the
most popular filtering
programs, school officials
said, and is used by school
systems across the country
and in Canada. Officials at
Symantec of Cupertino, Calif.,
did not return messages
late yesterday.
Norman Siegel, executive
director of the civil liberties
group, faxed a letter to
Chancellor Rudy Crew
yesterday, complaining that
the board was engaging in
"broad censorship of Internet
access," by blocking
entire categories of Web
sites based on forbidden
words and phrases.
"The blocking program sweeps
far too broadly," Siegel
said in his letter. "It
significantly undermines teachers'
ability to conduct their
lessons and students' ability to
complete their classroom
assignments on the Internet."
The board has the right,
Siegel said in an interview, to
exercise judgment about
what information is available
to students, but he said
it made no sense to adopt "a
software company's one size
fits all standard,"
regardless of educational
considerations, for all
students from kindergarten
through high school.
Pam McDonnell, a spokeswoman
for Dr. Crew, said
the Board of Education is
drafting a policy on Internet
access, which will allow
schools to "tweak" the I-Gear
filter. The policy, she
said, will attempt to be sensitive
to the concerns of parents
and communities, and will be
tailored to the ages of
students.
Until now, many schools had
used their own servers,
and officials in those schools
or in the local districts
decided what information
to restrict.
Some school officials said
Tuesday that the Board of
Education had also made
it difficult for children to use
e-mail in class as a tool
to exchange notes about
homework, or to communicate
with experts for class
projects.
Accounts can be set up in
the names of teachers, but not
students, they said, and
must go through the Board of
Education. Teachers who
have tried to set up free
e-mail addresses for their
students, through Yahoo, for
example, have found those
services blocked, they said.
Teachers said that even
setting up a school Web site
can be difficult, because
parents must sign a release
form before schools can
display students' work.
Michael Sobotka, whose daughter,
Kathryn, is a junior
at Cardozo, said he objected
to any form of Internet
screening, because children
were being denied the
tools to investigate both
sides of an issue and think for
themselves. Mr. Sobotka,
an importer of dental
instruments, said school
officials were overreacting
when they perceived the
Internet as more dangerous
than traditional media,
like print or television.
"I think it is unconscionable
that our children are told
what they can or what they
cannot read or see," he said.
"Once you block one thing,
you are agreeing that in
essence, censorship is O.K.,
and I don't think it is."
Donna Lieberman, director
of the civil liberties union's
Reproductive Rights Project,
said that until about a
week ago, students could
see the Web sites for Right to
Life and Operation Rescue,
which oppose abortion, but
were denied access to Planned
Parenthood and the
Alan Guttmacher Institute,
which support abortion
rights. She said that all
sites dealing with abortion, pro
and con, had been blocked
after her office complained
to the Board of Education.
November 11 follow-up story:
School Officials Defend Web Site Filtering
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
As
more teachers came forward Wednesday with
new accounts of students doing research being
blocked from Internet access,
New York City school
officials Wednesday defended
their use of a computer
program that filters out
sites with references to
weapons and breasts, even
if the sites were about
medieval weapons and breast
cancer.
One teacher told how students
studying the Middle
Ages had been barred from
Web sites about medieval
weapons -- including the
American Museum of Natural
History and the Society
for Creative Anachronism --
even though they would help
students better understand
the curriculum.
"The Board of Education has
left me high and dry," said
Debra Sandella, a fifth-grade
teacher at the Manhattan
School for Children on the
Upper West Side of
Manhattan. "It's a technical
world, and if they can't get
access through technology,
these children will be at a
severe disadvantage."
Chad Vignola, counsel to
Chancellor Rudy Crew, said
accounts by teachers, students
and the New York Civil
Liberties Union about the
filtering software were
exaggerated, and denied
that the board was trying to
censor access to information.
But a day after the
complaints became public,
Vignola and other board
officials said they could
not confirm or deny that
specific Web sites -- including
those for Planned
Parenthood, CNN, The New
York Times and The Daily
News -- were not available
to schools.
Vignola said the board had
no immediate plans to
remove or modify the software,
which affects all
schools hooked up to the
central board's computer
system, on a systemwide
basis. But he said that over the
next 60 days, the board
would be training school staffs
to use the software and
modify it as they see fit.
At a hastily called news
conference at the board's
headquarters in Brooklyn,
Jackson Tung, the board's
director of technology,
gave out his office telephone
number -- (718) 935-4500
-- inviting schools to call
him if teachers or administrators
felt their educational
programs were being damaged
by the filtering. He said
his office would try to
help them in some way.
Later, a spokeswoman for
the chancellor, Pam
McDonnell, said "Ideally,
we're not going to want to do
it one by one, but if we
have to, we have to."
The problem began as the
Board of Education tried to
expand its Internet program,
using a $100 million
federal grant called Project
Connect. The grant has
provided a high-speed Internet
connection for all 1,100
city schools this year,
board officials said. Almost
every school is connected
through the board's central
server at the Metrotech
Center in Brooklyn.
The board installed a filtering
program, I-Gear,
produced by the Symantec
Corporation, on its server.
Board officials said Wednesday
that I-Gear was chosen
because it could be programmed
to make very fine
distinctions, for instance,
between "big breast and
chicken breast," and to
tailor its filter to individual
schools or even to individual
students as they logged
on.
Bernard I. May, senior product
manager of Symantec,
in Cupertino, Calif., said
it was up to customers to
make those finer judgments.
He said he could not
explain why entire Web sites,
like the Museum of
Natural History or Planned
Parenthood, might have
been banned by the Board
of Education. "We give them
every flexibility," he said.
"That's the beauty of the
system, and it's their choice
how to implement it."
Vignola said that in the
board's haste to provide Internet
access, it used ready-made
filtering categories
provided by Symantec. A
board employee selected five
broad categories of information
-- sex, nudity, hate,
racism and weapons -- out
of 23 provided by the
software program.
Teachers said the categories
were so broad that
students got a message saying
"access denied" when
they tried to gain access
to Web sites for the National
Rifle Association, sites
with references to John
Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath,"
and sites about breast
cancer, child labor, anorexia
and bulimia, and AIDS.
Jan Shakofsky, a humanities
teacher at Cardozo High
School in Queens, said students
working on a project
about diabetes among black
and Hispanic teenagers
could not get diabetes sites
because they mentioned
erectile dysfunction. At
one point, she said, the Special
Olympics was blocked out,
as was all news and all
weather. So were the Justice
Department crime
statistics.