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CNN SATURDAY MORNING NEWS
Interview With Emily Sheketoff, Bruce Taylor
Aired April 6, 2002 - 09:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: America's librarians are squaring off against the federal government; a constitutional battle is now underway. At issue, a law that was intended to block online pornography from library computers.
Joining us now, Emily Sheketoff with the American Library Association, and Bruce Taylor of the National Law Center for Children and Families. Thank you both for being with us.
EMILY SHEKETOFF, AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION: Good morning.
PHILLIPS: Good morning.
Well, Emily, let's talk about the Internet Protection Act, and if you think indeed this is a necessary law.
SHEKETOFF: Well, in fact, we don't, because it can't work. This law requires libraries to filter out information for both children, adults and staff. We find that unconstitutional. Librarians care very much about children, and we want them to have a safe experience on the Internet.
And that's why we're insisting that rather than filtering, which doesn't work, we believe there needs to be education, education of both children and their parents. They need to know how to have safe and responsible experiences on the Internet.
And this gives parents a terrific opportunity to talk about their family values, to sit down with their kids and talk about how to be responsible on the Internet and what's important in their family and how they should have an Internet experience.
The other reason we think this is unnecessary is because every library has an Internet use policy, which talks about what is acceptable at that library for the Internet. And every library is different. Some libraries offer filtering in the children's room, some libraries offer parents the choice of what kind of access they want their children to have. Some libraries require that you take some sort of training before you can go onto the Internet.
Every library has their own policy designed to fit that community. And we feel that that's how we should be proceeding.
PHILLIPS: Bruce, is this a violation of one's constitutional rights?
BRUCE TAYLOR, NATIONAL LAW CENTER FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES: No, it -- because for one thing, Congress only asked the libraries, in order to get the federal subsidies to pay for the Internet access, to try to block that material that is illegal and not protected by the First Amendment. In other words, for adult terminals, the libraries and schools are only asked to try to use a filter to get at child pornography and hardcore obscenity.
And on a child's terminal, then you block what's obscene for children. So you're only telling the library to tell its filter, in a sense, to use the technology to do the same things in the Internet that you would do on the shelves. In other words, you don't buy "Deep Throat" for your shelf collection, so you don't have to have it on your Internet terminal. And the technology exists to do that.
PHILLIPS: Emily...
SHEKETOFF: But Kyra, even the Justice Department lawyers in court admitted that there is no technology that can do that. And that is our objection. If people think that this technology is protecting children, it's setting up a false sense of security, and children are really more at risk than if they don't go through some sort of real education in how to use the Internet safely.
PHILLIPS: Well, I...
SHEKETOFF: There is no technology now and there is no technology in the future that can do what this law is asking.
PHILLIPS: So Emily, how is -- let's talk about the -- how immediate is the threat right now? Are you -- do you see these kids coming across these Web sites in the libraries? Is this a big problem? Librarians are saying, I can't handle this, it's out of control, I don't know what to do?
SHEKETOFF: It's -- this is not a big problem. The biggest problem in libraries is being able to supply enough terminals and enough electronic resources for what people want. The big complaint we get in libraries is not what kind of access children are having or anything like this. The big complaint we have is that people are restricted to only 20 or 30 minutes on a terminal at a time, or the fact that there are only 10 or 15 terminals available for a large branch.
These are the issues, and this is why we want to invest our resources in training, in education, and in making more terminals and more electronic resources available.
The real crime in this is that you're asking a library to choose either accepting federal subsidies and then having to censor the Internet, or giving up these federal subsidies and then being able to offer people less information, less access.
And so what you're doing is, you're setting up a digital divide. You're saying to rich communities that can afford to give up federal subsidies, they can get everything. They can offer their library users all this information, all these terminals, and then people who live in poorer areas, people with disabilities, people who depend on the libraries for this access are going to be stuck, are going to have not as rich an experience as those who are in rich communities.
PHILLIPS: All right, let's get to the Internet, shall -- or the e-mails. This one comes from Elias Soto. "As a citizen, I agree that Internet access in the public library should filter content. Pornography site marketing practices are so devious, and so they mask their offering as legitimate offers and employ scripts that pop up windows with offending undesirable graphic content that children can be exposed to."
Now, Bruce, does this filtering software work? Emily is saying it doesn't.
TAYLOR: Well, it works very well for what it's designed to do. And as your e-mail pointed out, it's not the library's fault that they have to filter, it's the pornography industry that markets to people, that spams people, that puts false leads into their headers so that you get pornography when you're looking for cheerleaders or boys or girls or Girl Scouts or football.
And so the only thing this bill says is that, use it to block out the hardcore pornography. You're not going to ask the library to restrict sex education or AIDS prevention or sexual orientation political speech, and therefore the technology that brings you it, information on the Internet, is the same technology filter companies use to screen it out.
And so the libraries aren't really restricting information, they're really allowing the kids and other adults to go to the library and get all the good information without being bombarded by pornography at the same time. And that's all this bill really does.
(CROSSTALK)
SHEKETOFF: Bruce, every expert in the court case that just finished this week admitted that there is no technology that can do that, that can screen out everything that is objectionable, that thousands of Web sites get through. And that's why we really need to teach children how to protect themselves from this unwanted spamming, from this unwanted information that's coming at them, and how to get out of it so that they don't get stuck into some loop that they can't get free of.
There is no...
TAYLOR: I know there was one thing that came out...
SHEKETOFF: ... technology that can do this.
TAYLOR: There was one thing that came out in the trial. One of the expert witnesses for the ACLU and the ALA looked at 500,000 sites to see which filters would block some sites inappropriately or accidentally, and it came up with, like, 3,000 or 4,000 out of 500,000. And some of those were properly blocked. So it's not a very big percentage, less than 1 percent.
So if you can block out 99 percent of child pornography and hardcore obscenity, which is illegal even for adults, then that's a pretty good technology. When you say we don't have it, yes, we do.
And this bill says only block that which the librarian finds to be obscene or child pornography, and if the librarian doesn't think a site should be blocked, the librarian can have it unblocked.
But the technology isn't as bad, and it does a 99 percent effective job. We wish the Internet search engines could do that good a job.
PHILLIPS: All right, let's...
SHEKETOFF: I...
PHILLIPS: ... get to another e-mail. This comes from Dan in Ontario. "Why should libraries be put in the position of censoring their Internet computers?"
What do you think about that, Emily?
SHEKETOFF: Well, we totally agree. We think that the way this law is set up, you're forcing librarians to invade a library user's privacy by having that library user come up to a librarian, explain what kind of research they're doing, and then the librarian is forced to decide if that research is bona fide or not.
We don't want to be the Internet nanny. We don't want adults to have to tell us what kind of research they're doing. We do not endorse anything that is illegal. If it's illegal someplace else, it's illegal in the library as well. That's not what we're talking about.
What we're talking about is really protecting children and making sure that everybody gets access to important information. We're talking about not only important health information but political and social information.
The kinds of Web sites that have been blocked are a Republican congressional candidate was blocked on election day, a number of other congressional candidates were blocked in the campaign last year. Planned Parenthood is blocked regularly. And other -- the National Organization for Women and other social organizations that, for political reasons, companies don't like. A lot of these companies have a right-tilting or a left-tilting philosophy, and they block out political and social Web sites that don't match their political philosophy.
PHILLIPS: All right, Emily...
SHEKETOFF: We think in a democracy, that is dangerous.
PHILLIPS: Yes, I'm going to have to leave it there. Bruce, no doubt this is probably going to go to the Supreme Court, yes? TAYLOR: Oh, yes.
PHILLIPS: OK. And we're -- we will be following it too.
SHEKETOFF: Well, thank you very much.
TAYLOR: Kyra...
PHILLIPS: Thank you, Emily Sheketoff with the American Library Association and Bruce Taylor of the National Law Center for Children and Families, appreciate your time, both of you.
TAYLOR: Thanks.
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