As the web has grown from an academic experiment to a mass media, parents, politicians, and demagogues have looked for ways of controlling the information that it contains. What’s behind these attempts at control?
Some people believe that explicit information on the web about sex and sexuality, drugs, and similar themes is inappropriate for younger people.
Some politicians believe that writings advocating hate crimes should be banned.
Some leaders believe that information about free elections and democratic political systems may be destabilizing to their regimes.
Some special interest groups have sought to limit or eliminate discussion of religion, ethnic concerns, historical accounts (some of contested accuracy), gender-specific issues, medical procedures, economic material, and a host of other materials.
It is amazing how ideas and words can threaten some people!
Because it is nearly impossible to impose strong controls on a large, distributed system that is operated by hundreds of thousands of individuals in thousands of jurisdictions, each with different social and cultural norms, attention has turned instead to technology for controlling the web’s users.
The most recent trend in the censorship/blocking arena is that of commercial services creating censorship software for home computers. This software is designed to load onto standard Windows and Macintosh computers and thereafter block access to particular kinds of “objectionable” material.
Blocking software employs a variety of techniques to accomplish its purposes:
- Site exclusion lists
The censorship company makes a list of sites known to contain objectionable content. An initial list is distributed with the censorship software; updates are sold on a subscription basis.
- Site and page name keyword blocking
The censorship software automatically blocks access to sites or to HTML pages that contain particular keywords. For example, censorship software that blocks access to sites of a sexual nature might block access to all sites and pages in which the word “sex” or the letters “xxx” appear.
- Content keyword blocking
The censorship software can scan all incoming information to the computer and automatically block any transfer that contains a prohibited word.
- Transmitted data blocking
Blocking software can be configured so that particular information cannot be sent from the client machine to the Internet. For example, parents can configure their computers so that children cannot transmit their names or their telephone numbers.
Blocking software can operate at the application level, interfacing closely with the web browser or email client. Alternatively, blocking software can operate at the protocol level, exercising control over all network connections. Finally, blocking software can be run on the network infrastructure itself. Each of these models is increasingly more difficult to subvert.
Blocking software can be controlled directly by the end user, by the owner of the computer, by the online access provider, or by the wide area network provider. The point of control does not necessarily dictate the point at which the software operates. America Online’s “parental controls” feature is controlled by the owner of each AOL account, but is implemented by the online provider’s computers.
The biggest technical challenge faced by blocking software companies is the difficulty of keeping the database of objectionable material up to date and distributing that database in a timely fashion. Presumably, the list of objectionable sites will change rapidly. To make things more difficult, some sites are actively attempting to bypass automated censors. Recruitment sites for pedophiles and neo-Nazi groups, for example, may actually attempt to hide the true nature of their sites by choosing innocuous-sounding names for their domains and HTML pages.[98]
The need to obtain frequent database updates may be a hassle for parents and educators who are seeking to uniformly deny children access to particular kinds of sites. On the other hand, it may be a boon for stockholders in the censorship software companies.
Another problem faced is the danger of casting too wide a net and
accidentally screening out material that is not objectionable. For
example, during the summer of 1996, NYNEX discovered that all of its
pages about their ISDN services were blocked by censorship software.
The pages had been programmatically generated and had names such as
isdn/xxx1.html and
isdn/xxx2.html, and the blocking software had
been programmed to avoid “xxx” sites. Censorship
companies may leave themselves open to liability and public ridicule
by blocking sites that should not be blocked under the
company’s stated policies.
Censorship companies may also block sites for reasons other than those officially stated. For example, there have been documented cases where companies selling blocking software have blocked ISPs because they have hosted web pages critical of the software. Other cases have occurred where research organizations and well-known groups such as the National Organization for Women were blocked by software that was advertised to block only sites that are sexually oriented. Vendors treat their lists of blocked sites as proprietary, so customers cannot examine the lists to see what sites are not approved.
Finally, blocking software can be overridden by sophisticated users. A person who is frustrated by blocking software can always remove it—if need be, by reformatting his computer’s hard drive and reinstalling the operating system from scratch. But there are other, less drastic means. Some software can be defeated by using certain kinds of web proxy servers or by requesting web pages via electronic mail. Software designed to block the transmission of certain information, such as a phone number, can be defeated by transforming the information in a manner that is not anticipated by the program’s author. Children can, for example, spell out their telephone numbers—“My phone is five five five, one two one two”—instead of typing them. Software that is programmed to prohibit spelled-out phone numbers can be defeated by misspellings.
Parents who trust this software to be an infallible electronic babysitter and allow their children to use the computer without any supervision may be unpleasantly surprised.
[98] This tactic of choosing innocuous-sounding names is not limited to neo-Nazi groups. “Think tanks” and nonprofit organizations on both sides of the political spectrum frequently choose innocuous-sounding names to hide their true agenda. Consider these organizations: the Progress and Freedom Foundation; the Family Research Council; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; People for the American Way. Can you tell what these organizations do or their political leanings from their names alone?