Kids, Surfing Safety and Other Considerations

About 400 online-industry insiders, public-interest group representatives and government officials will be gathering in Washington this week for a meeting dubbed Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children.

The subject is how to protect children from dangers in cyberspace while encouraging kids to get on the Net and protecting the free-speech rights of grown-ups.

That might sound like a laudable enough agenda, but the issues surrounding kids and the Internet have for several years now been the focus of one of the fiercest arguments in cyberspace, and the controversy shows no sign of abating.

This week’s summit is a follow-up to an earlier White House meeting at which a smaller group of industry representatives met with President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in the wake of the Supreme Court’s vote to strike down the Communications Decency Act in June.

That law, enacted by Congress in 1995, would, among other things, have made it a crime to post “indecent” material on a computer network in a way that children could access it. The high court threw it out as a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment, and since then the Clinton administration has been pushing for technological means of controlling what kids can see and do online.

As would the congressionally mandated “V-chip” that will eventually enable parents to control what their kids can see on TV, Internet filtering programs and ratings systems in theory enable parents to control their kids’ online activities.

In a ratings system, Web sites have labels that signal the type of content they contain; software programs can be adjusted to block access. There is already a number of ratings systems, most of which rely on Web sites’ labeling themselves voluntarily.

Software filtering programs rely on long lists of sites that contain adult content or other material that their makers deem inappropriate for kids. Some programs can also be set to filter out Net content according to key words.

Many Internet companies, including America Online, Microsoft, Netscape and Walt Disney Co., support ratings systems. But free-speech advocates, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, fear that a national or international ratings system will be tantamount to a new type of censorship.

The ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and other groups plan to announce today the formation of the Internet Free Expression Alliance to address the free-speech issues raised by ratings and filters.

In a white paper posted on its Web site (https://www.aclu.org/), the ACLU asserts: “People who disseminate quirky and idiosyncratic speech, create individual home pages, or post to controversial news groups will be among the first Internet users blocked by filters and made invisible by the search engines.”

The civil-liberties group isn’t opposed to parents’ choosing to use filtering software in their homes. Rather, it is worried about the potential for a government-mandated or industry-controlled ratings system in which sites would essentially have to consent to ratings or be blocked.

The ACLU, along with the American Library Assn., has also been fighting the increasing use of filtering technology in public libraries. An ALA policy statement asserts that “current blocking/filtering software prevents not only access to what some may consider ‘objectionable’ material, but also blocks information protected by the 1st Amendment. The result is that legal and useful material will inevitably be blocked.”

Michael Seers, general manager of SurfWatch Software, acknowledges that some decisions that vendors make in their lists have been overly broad. “It’s imperative,” he cautions, “that parents understand the vendors’ criteria so that they can match that criteria with their values.”

This week’s meeting in Washington, according to the organizers, is designed “to help ensure that the Internet online experience is safe, educational and entertaining for children.” (You can check out the agenda at https://www.kidsonline.org). Sponsors include a range of companies and public-policy groups: AT&T;, America Online, Disney Online, Microsoft, the ALA, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as filtering software vendors Microsystems Software, Net Nanny and SurfWatch.

I’m speaking on the Tuesday morning “safety panel” that will examine methods for keeping kids safe online. Although everyone on the panel shares an interest in protecting children, there are differences as to how to go about it.

Two members of the panel, Donna Rice Hughes of Enough Is Enough and Bruce Taylor of the National Law Center, were supporters of the Communications Decency Act and generally favor strict measures to “clean up” the Internet. Other members include representatives of Net Nanny and SurfWatch.

As for me, I’m opposed to government censorship and have mixed feelings about parental-control software. I don’t necessarily object to parents’ using filtering software to keep their kids away from the seamy side of cyberspace. But I think such programs, if used at all, should be supplemented with family meetings about online safety.

The trouble with filtering programs is that they present a mechanistic solution to what is very much a human problem. To begin with, the filters are imperfect. There is no way to block out every sexually explicit, violent, racist or hateful site on the Internet. Having a filter on the computer could create a false sense of security.

It’s also disturbing that filters can block sites that some young people should be able to look at. Sites that use street language and illustrations to educate young people about safe sex, for example, are often blocked by such filters.

The greatest dangers on the Internet have nothing to do with dirty pictures or nasty words that you can filter out. The way kids--especially teenagers--can get into serious trouble is if they meet someone online in a chat group or newsgroup and then arrange a face-to-face meeting.

What’s a parent to do? You could ban the Internet from your household, but that would deny your kids the benefits of cyberspace. Besides, if they can’t log on at home, they’ll log on somewhere else. You can stand over your kids whenever they’re online, but aside from being time-consuming, that “solution” would make you an awfully intrusive parent.

A better way is to sit down with your kids and set some ground rules. Be open, supportive and as nonthreatening as possible. Kids need to know that you won’t overreact and take away their online privileges if they confide in you about troublesome people or material they encounter online.

Make sure your kids understand the dangers as well as the benefits of going online, and be sure they know the rules of the road.

Several years ago I wrote a pamphlet, “Child Safety on the Information Highway,” (https:///www.safekids.com/) for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Interactive Services Assn. It contains a few simple rules for online safety that, if followed, will greatly reduce the risk of kids’ getting into trouble:

* Kids should never give out identifying information--home address, school name or telephone number--in a public message such as chat or bulletin board, or in an e-mail message to someone they don’t know.

* Kids should never arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone they meet online without checking with their parents. If a get-together is arranged, the first one should be in a public spot, and the child should not go alone.

* Kids should never respond to messages or bulletin board items that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent or threatening, or that make them feel uncomfortable.

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Lawrence J. Magid can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. His World Wide Web page is at https://www.larrysworld.com