New Software Blocks Online Filtering Programs

Responding to last week's congressional passage of legislation
requiring the use of Internet filtering software in federally funded
schools
and libraries, an online civil liberties group today unveiled software
capable of blocking many popular filtering programs.

Called "Peacefire," the software, available online at
http://www.peacefire.org ,
will disable Windows-compatible filtering programs like Net Nanny, Cyber
Patrol, CYBERsitter and others, Peacefire developer and Webmaster
Bennett Haselton told Newsbytes today.

While Haselton does not openly advocate that peacefire.org visitors use
the
free software to stymie censoring programs on school and library
computers, he conceded that "Anytime you would be using this software,
you'd be using it on a computer that was not your own."

Haselton, who had been tinkering with the first version of the Peacefire
program for many months, said he decided to time the release of the
software to coincide with the congressional approval of the long-pending
filtering legislation.

Passed late last week as an addendum to a massive congressional spending
package, the filtering language requires that schools and libraries
receiving
federal "E-rate" funding to install approved filtering software on their
computers.

The E-rate program provides funds to help connect poor and rural public
schools and libraries to the Internet.

Although many civil liberties groups have blasted the mandatory filtering
language as fundamentally unconstitutional, most opponents of the
legislation have seen the writing on the wall for several months, Center
for
Democracy and Technology (CDT) Policy Analyst Rob Courtney said
today.

"We've been waiting for the hammer to drop on this for some time,"
Courtney said of last week's vote. "The door just hasn't been open to
negotiation."

And already, free speech proponents are vowing to fight the mandatory
filtering legislation should President Clinton sign it - as is widely
expected
- in the next few days.

"This is the first time since the development of the local, free public
library in the 19th Century that the federal government has sought to
require censorship in every single town and hamlet in America," ACLU
attorney Chris Hansen said in a release today.

"More than 100 years of local control of libraries and the strong
tradition
of allowing adults to decide for themselves what they want to read is
being
casually set aside," the statement said.

In the release, the ACLU promised that it would "soon" launch a legal
challenge against the filtering provisions in the spending bill.

Courtney said that the CDT also is weighing its options for attacking the
filtering language in court on First Amendment grounds.

CDT and other groups are still sorting out their options for launching a
legal attack against the legislation, which they say violates First
Amendment free speech protections.

Most observers expect President Clinton to sign the spending bill that
includes the filtering language.

In the meantime, Haselton has canvassed his e-mail list with notices about
the Peacefire blocking program, suggesting that the program could be
downloaded to a floppy disk to make a "nice gift" for people accessing the
Internet through filtered Internet browsers.

The Peacefire software only works on Windows-driven personal computers
and is ineffective at disabling filtering software installed at a network
level
rather than on an individual PC, Haselton said.

And while the software will disable some older versions of filtering
software, Haselton predicted that filtering companies will design their
future updates to be Peacefire-proof, forcing him to update the Peacefire
program in response.

Peacefire.org itself is blocked by most filtering programs, Haselton said.