Tests prove that today's best filtering software works badly, highlighting the crucial difference between complex human thinking and simplistic computer logic. Filters eliminate sites for breast cancer, Holocaust research and AIDS prevention. Several dozen Congressional candidates' sites were blocked in November. Most troubling of all, filtering software blocks the sites of groups that criticize filtering software. Filtering software companies will not tell you which sites are blocked.
Sites just disappear from computer access.
They won't tell you exactly what criteria are used to block sites. They won't even tell you why a site is blocked if you try to access a forbidden one. In no other medium would Americans stand for this kind of censorship. Worse yet, librarian- cops aren't required to disable the filters for such adults, only permitted. More than 90 percent of public libraries already have policies setting acceptable usages, developed over the years by local parents, library boards and professional librarians.