huridocs-tech Controversy over Internet "hate filters" (1)

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SF Weekly
February 2 - 8, 2000

Spy vs Spite

[Part one of two]

The Clinton administration has praised the Anti-Defamation
League for helping shield kids from Internet hate. But
should a group that spied on thousands of Californians be
allowed to police the Web?

By Matt Isaacs

The first snow of the season is falling on New York in big
fluffy flakes, making the city look new again. The offices
of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, located in
U.N. Plaza, are stuffy, the windows steamed. Everyone
appears a bit disheveled; rumpled clothes and flattened hat
hair seem to be in vogue. Jordan Kessler, a handsome young
man with a beard, sits at a computer terminal, talking about
how he compiles his list.

Kessler is personally responsible for the ADL's HateFilter,
a software program that blocks access to Web sites that, the
ADL contends, contain bigoted or hateful speech. This
25-year-old Columbia grad has accepted the enormous task of
seeking out and cataloging inflammatory language among the
roughly 800 million Web pages available to the public. He
has help, of course. The ADL, a group dedicated to securing
"justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike," has 30
offices around the country tracking extremists of every
different shade, and each office has Kessler's direct line.

Kessler assembles a list of all the groups his organization
deems dangerous; it's a list that must be constantly updated
because, he says, hatemongers have a tendency to mutate. To
be deemed objectionable by the ADL, a site must be cleared
by a committee of the organization's managers before it
makes Kessler's list. He won't say how many people are on
the committee, or reveal the names of the organizations he
has labeled as dangerous.

Some of the groups he watches, Kessler says, also watch him.
Some revel, just because their sites have been chosen by the
ADL, he says. It's like making the big time. The Web
designers for the white supremacist site World Church of the
Creator, for example, actually promote their work with a
quote taken out of context from a Kessler report in which he
grudgingly complimented the graphics for that site.

"If their Web site gets blocked by the ADL, in their eyes
they've made it," he says. "They think we are all-powerful,
in control of the government and everything that stands in
their way."

Kessler's screen displays a number of yellow file folders.
One folder is titled "Gays," presumably a file on
gay-bashers. Another is titled "Arabs," presumably a list of
anti-Arab groups. He says he takes great care in reviewing a
site before he brings it to the committee. Many sites may be
offensive, he says, featuring anti-Semitic jokes or
caricatures, but they won't make the list of those to be
blocked by the ADL's HateFilter. On the other hand, he says,
some sites might be recommended for the list based on what
the ADL knows about the organization rather than the content
of the site. His organization has been monitoring hate
groups for more than 85 years, he says, bringing an
expertise that stretches far beyond HTML or Java codes.

The ADL has been fighting anti-Semitism, in its own way,
since 1913. The organization was founded by Sigmund
Livingston, a Chicago attorney, hoping to fight the overt
presence of anti-Semitism in American society following the
turn of the century. Livingston began with two desks, $200,
and the sponsorship of the Independent Order of B'nai
B'rith, meaning "Children of the Covenant." Since then the
organization has grown into a national nonprofit
organization that took in $46 million in revenues in 1998
and employs 200 people in its New York headquarters alone.
In the 1960s the ADL fought stridently for the passage of
the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights
Act of 1965. More recently it pioneered efforts to create a
model for "hate crime" laws.

It is an organization with a unique mission, given that its
existence is largely based on the continuance of racism and
bigotry. If anti-Semitism had disappeared from the face of
the Earth during the 20th century, the ADL might have
withered away, too. But even five decades beyond the fall of
Nazi Germany, the world continues to be a prejudiced place,
and the organization still regularly denounces anti-Semitic
statements made in print, over the airwaves, and, more
recently, over the Internet.

The Web is a new frontier, presenting the ADL with fresh
challenges and opportunities for growth. The medium has
given every electronic pamphleteer the reach of a worldwide
television broadcasting network, making it easy for anyone
with a computer to spread his message, racist or otherwise.
Because the Web is essentially unregulated, the ADL believes
cyberspace is "a dangerous place for children," according to
the organization's literature. "There are no parents or
teachers standing by to guide and advise a child who has
come upon a site that promotes hate. Without that guidance,
there is a real chance children will simply accept what they
read as fact."

In response to this supposed threat to young minds, the ADL
has stepped up its own efforts to combat intolerance by
introducing the HateFilter, which runs on Mattel's
CyberPatrol, a software package that blocks a wide gamut of
material on the Internet. Consumers who purchase the
HateFilter receive all of CyberPatrol's features, including
categories other than hate speech, among them graphic
violence and pornography. But CyberPatrol purchased on its
own does not include the HateFilter, because Mattel has its
own version of what it considers hate speech, and does not
market the filter, nor does it necessarily approve of what
the ADL's HateFilter blocks, company officials say.

So far, the ADL HateFilter has been marketed as a service to
be used in the home. But that may soon change. CyberPatrol
is already in 15,000 private and public libraries, schools,
and universities, and the ADL has not ruled out broadening
the distribution of HateFilter software to public
institutions. "Right now, the HateFilter is not meant to be
used by the government, but over the next few months we will
be discussing whether we will advocate for its use in
schools and libraries," says Sue Stengel, an ADL attorney.

It appears, however, that the organization, which wields
tremendous clout in Washington, has already begun to
advocate -- at the highest levels. The ADL's national
director, Abraham Foxman, met with President Clinton at
least twice last year, once following the Littleton shooting
in May, and again in the wake of an attack on a Jewish
community center in Granada Hills in August. After the
latter meeting, Malcolm Hoenlein, a top official in the
Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, told
reporters that Clinton had agreed to take the lead in
persuading Americans to install a "hate filter" on their
computers. In October, Clinton again met with the ADL, and
began his speech with a tribute to the organization's new
software. "Thank you for your pioneering work to filter out
hate on the Internet -- which, lamentably, was part of the
poison that led to the tragedy at Columbine High School,"
Clinton said.

More recently, Elizabeth Coleman, the ADL's director of
civil rights, was asked to participate in a panel discussion
concerning a "family friendly" Internet at a conference for
the National Association of Attorneys General a few weeks
ago -- a conference where Attorney General Janet Reno gave
the keynote address. Coleman demonstrated the filter for all
the law enforcement officials in attendance. She said over
lunch that the organization had also shown the filter to
Vice President Al Gore, who "loved it."

If made explicit, White House support for the ADL filter
could have a significant impact on the policy decisions of
public schools and libraries across the country. Although
decisions regarding school and library Internet filters are
currently made at the local level, a bill before Congress
spearheaded by Sen. John McCain, called the Children's
Internet Protection Act, would require all schools and
libraries receiving federal funds to install Internet
filters on computers accessible to children. If the bill
wins approval, even a mention by the White House, combined
with the ADL's strong regional lobbying, could go a long way
toward encouraging local jurisdictions to choose the
HateFilter from the filtering software on the market.

But if Clinton likes and Gore loves the HateFilter (at least
in the ADL's eyes), many are aghast at the thought of the
ADL having any say over what children may or may not see.
These critics, whose political and religious affiliations
vary widely, repeatedly describe the ADL as a self-appointed
agent of Israel that cloaks itself in the rhetoric of
fighting hate, while actively attempting to silence those
who are not hatemongers, but mere opponents of Israeli
government policy.

"The Number 1 goal of the ADL is the protection of Israel,"
says Pete McCloskey, a former Republican congressman from
San Mateo who regularly criticized Israel's policies. "Any
group whose sole purpose is to protect a foreign nation
should not have anything to say about what's said or written
here in America."

On a number of occasions since the 1970s, the ADL has been
caught distributing lists of its enemies, replete with
detailed descriptions of "black demagogues" and "pro-Arab
propagandists," including poet Amiri Baraka in the list of
demagogues, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
professor Noam Chomsky under the propagandist label. Then,

in 1993, a longtime ADL investigator admitted to working
with a member of the San Francisco Police Department to
illegally gather information on almost 10,000 people,
including members of socialist, labor, and anti-apartheid
groups.

Some of the targets of that information-gathering effort
have gone to court in an attempt to gain access to their
dossiers, currently in possession of the ADL, but the ADL
has refused to release the files, claiming that its
investigator was an "investigative journalist" whose
unpublished reporting materials are protected against
disclosure by the California shield law, which was
originally adopted to help journalists keep confidential
sources who reveal important public wrongdoing confidential.

Thus the ADL finds itself in a sticky position: While it
advocates for a software product that limits access to the
Internet's open exchange of ideas, the Anti-Defamation
League is also hiding behind a law put in place to encourage
people to speak freely.

The ADL recently added one episode to a videotape it uses in
workshops that are meant to promote cultural understanding
in schools. The vignette shows a boy, about 15 years old,
surfing the Web in his school library. He comes across a
page called the Zundelsite, with the headline "Did Six
Million Really Die?"

"Hey guys, come here," the kid says to his friends. "Check
this out. It says here the Holocaust was a bunch of bull.
Like it never really happened like the Jews say it did."

Two blond students lean over his shoulder, as a dark-haired
student listens to the conversation in the background. "Wow,
big surprise. I hear they always lie," one boy says.

"I guess they just want us to feel sorry for 'em," says a
girl, as they look at a page titled "Holocaust Myth 101."

"Well. They can lie all they want," says the boy who found
the page. "Looks like we dug up the truth."

At this point, the instructor leading the workshop is
supposed to stop the video and begin a discussion, using
questions from an accompanying guide. On the whole, the
questions are predictable classroom fare: "What happened?,"
"Has anyone ever experienced a similar situation?," and so
on. But one question stands out: "Should the school have
some kind of policy regarding what students can access on
the Internet?"

In fact, many public secondary schools have Internet
policies for minors, as do almost all public libraries. And
both types of institutions are leaning toward the use of
filtering software to limit what children can access on the
Web. The San Francisco Unified School District, for example,
employs a systemwide filter to block access to a variety of
material, including "intolerance." School officials would
not identify the name of the filter.

The policy discussions regarding the protection of minors on
the Internet thus far have dealt almost exclusively with
pornography. In the heated debate over First Amendment
freedoms on the Web, smut has taken center stage because it
has already been addressed and narrowly defined. The Supreme
Court has ruled that "obscene" speech, meaning material
appealing to a prurient or unhealthy interest in sex and
lacking serious artistic, scientific, literary, or political
value, can be regulated by the government.

The Supreme Court has also ruled that the definition of
"obscene" can take the age of the audience into account.
Thus, for adults, pornographic films are, by and large,
protected by the First Amendment. But the government may
prohibit the sale of these films to minors by labeling the
material "indecent," a much broader, generally ill-defined
category.

In 1996, Congress tried to apply the court's broad
definition of "indecent" in its passage of the
Communications Decency Act, a law prohibiting the
transmission of "indecent" material over the Internet. But
in 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the law in Reno vs.
ACLU, declaring that communications on the Internet cannot
be limited to what is suitable for children. The landmark
ruling prevents a library from installing porn filters on
terminals intended for adult use. But it still allows
schools or libraries to restrict a minor's access to smut.


A school or library may also limit children's access to hate
speech, but for a different reason. Ordinarily, in a public
forum, anything outside the narrow definition of "obscene"
is protected by the First Amendment. But schools and
libraries are not the same as the town square (or the
Internet), where people can spout hateful rhetoric to their
heart's desire. A library has only so much shelf space; thus
a professional librarian has the right to choose which
materials to include in a collection, and which to leave
out. The same goes for schools, which have the right to set
their own curriculums and base the selection of library
books on those curriculums.

"That's why if you were to go to your local library in
search of books on the Holocaust, you would probably find
many," says Frederick Schauer, a First Amendment professor
at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
"But it's not likely you'll find any books that say the
Holocaust didn't happen. And I think most people would agree
that's appropriate."

Schauer says he believes the debate over allowing speech
filters for minors into the public forum is only just
beginning. Would it be possible for the ADL HateFilter to
find a place in public libraries and schools? Yes, he says,
although it would be challenged in court, and would probably
be more likely to be allowed in secondary schools than in
public libraries that serve all ages.

Some First Amendment lawyers find it curious that the ADL
would even be getting into the business of speech filters.
The Anti-Defamation League, after all, considers itself a
civil rights organization. Judging from literature promoting
the HateFilter software, it's clear the ADL is thinking
about the apparent conflict between the civil right of free
speech, and the limitation of speech inherent to Internet
filtering software. Almost every page of HateFilter
literature mentions the First Amendment, and explains that
the ADL does not seek to censor or limit speech on the
Internet. The HateFilter does not remove sites or censor
their content, says ADL Director Elizabeth Coleman; it only
blocks these sites from coming into the home at the parents'
discretion.

Parents have good reason for wanting to keep these sites off
their computers, Coleman says. Many extremist sites cater to
children, she says. For example, the World Church of the
Creator site has a special link for kids. Other sites, she
says, are highly polished, presenting themselves as
mainstream academic thought. This misinformation, she says,
can lead to the kind of violence that has made headlines in
recent years. Last August, for example, three teenagers
firebombed a judge's house in San Jose, believing he was
Jewish. (He was actually Catholic.) Investigators say two of
the kids had used computers at school to access white
supremacist Web sites. Also, Matthew and James Williams,
brothers suspected of murdering a gay couple in Redding and
setting fire to three synagogues in Sacramento, were
reported to have been led astray by radical right
philosophies ferried on the Internet. (Although at 31 and 29
years of age, the brothers would not have been constrained
by an Internet filter aimed at minors.)

Coleman says the best part of the HateFilter is that it
doesn't just block sites, it also routes Internet surfers
back to links on the ADL Web page that provide information
about extremists such as white supremacists or Holocaust
deniers. "Nobody else has the same educational component,"
she says.

But critics of Internet filters wonder if they actually do
more harm than good. A highly regarded study by Chris
Hunter, a graduate student at the University of
Pennsylvania, for instance, found that the devices block an
average of 21 percent of Web sites containing useful, legal
information, while failing to block an average of 25 percent
of sites containing "objectionable" content. (The ADL's
HateFilter was not included in the study.)

[End part one of two]

URLs Anti-Defamation League HateFilter
http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/info/default.htm ADL Watch
http://www.webshells.com/adlwatch/





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