Schneider Letter to Meeks and Berry

[filteringfacts]

Karen Schneider wrote:

Second, the library association doesn't "deride filtering software"; it
says it opposes filtering software that blocks constitutionally protected
speech.  

David Burt responds:
This is clearly untrue.  The ALA statements on filtering are one long attack on the practices, both in theoretical and practical terms.  From the statement on library use of filtering software:

	Filters can impose the producer's viewpoint on the community. 
	Producers do not generally reveal what is being blocked, or provide 	methods for users to reach sites that were inadvertently blocked. 
	Criteria used to block content are vaguely defined and subjectively 	applied. 

KS:
I should know; I'm the flaming moderate who proposed the
additional wording, because I'm very much opposed to the "four legs good,
two legs bad" mentality that pervades *both* sides of the filtering issue.

DB:
Despite a long history of public statements indicating her firm theoretical opposition to filtering, Karen continues to tell non-librarians she is a moderate on the filtering issue.  In her American Libraries column in September, 1995, she says "The biggest problem with filtering software is that it makes a mockery of our professional responsibilities", and urges librarians not to install filters, lest they "sell your responsibilities to a commercial entity", and closes the column with the statement "But whatever you do, don't trade your soul for a canned solution".  Though she now denies being "anti-filter", as recently as March, 1997, Schneider posted on the fight-censorship newsgroup "don't install tools like CyberPatrol, Cybersitter, or Bess and call yourself a librarian.  That's tantamount to the book burners in Fahrenheit 451 who call themselves firemen".  

KS:
Third, I am sure Burt gets his share of vituperative email, but he hasn't
exactly reached out and said to his colleagues, "can't we all just get
along?"  I encourage you to search the archives of the discussion lists
where he has been active (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/ and
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/PubLib/ are two good places; he's often seen on
ALAOIF, though I think that list is 90% drivel, and that's before Burt
starts posting).  I'm in a committed relationship with a minister, and from
what I see of this community, if Burt were a man of the cloth, I think the
other pastors would whisper that he wasn't a team player.  They sure
wouldn't play reindeer games with him, anyway, not after exchanging a
message or two.  

DB:
This is what I'm talking about when I keep asking Karen to clarify her now very public criticisms of me.  Karen espouses a "can't we all just get along?" , yet makes statements like this, then ignores my attempts to get some clarification, shutting off all communication.

I admit, not everyone appreciates my sometimes flippant and confrontational style.  What Karen leaves out though, is that most of those (generally mild) flippant comments are in response to personal attacks.  I also invite people to pick through the Web4lib and Publib archives and see for yourself.  You will also see hundreds of messages from Karen, where for years she has used these two groups as her family newsletters.

KS:
I do know close to fifty librarians who are team players, however: the
participants of TIFAP, The Internet Filter Assessment Project
(http://www.bluehighways.com/tifap/).  This has been a meandering,
unscientific, slapdash project I pulled together in late March to assess
filters under reasonably real-life settings. We
tested questions, we tested URLs, we tested at full throttle, we tested at
"Lite" settings; 

Burt was an early TIFAP volunteer, by the way, but dropped out just before
the real work began, claiming we were focusing too much on keyword blocking
(if you don't prove it's a problem, how do you know for sure?). 

DB:
Karen grossly oversimplifies my long list of objections to the methodology she was employing.  One of my main objections was the fact that the filters were initially being tested with key word blocking on, and the testers were asking questions like "chicken breast" and "cock fighting" which are clearly designed to trip keyword filters.  Since libraries don't use keyword blocking, and since the "study" was supposed to address the efficacy of filtering, I raised the objection that such methodology gave the impression the study was trying to make filtering in libraries appear worse than it really is.  Several others in the project *also raised the same concern*, a fact Karen leaves out.

The methodology employed has been scattershot and make-it-up-as-you-go-along.  There are list of questions (http://www.bluehighways.com/tifap/k/qs.htm) which the testers are supposed to try to answer using the Internet with a filter on.  But the questions are very broad, and there are no rules as to what constitutes a successful search, how many sites equal an answer, how many of these sites to fill out forms for and report as "Blocked or Not Blocked", how long each tester should spend looking for a site, etc.

The forms the tester fill out (http://www.bluehighways.com/tifap/phase3.htm) are full of subjective judgements, such as " If you did NOT want the URL to be blocked, explain why (check all that apply): 

    a. The information was not harmful. 
    b. The information was potentially valuable to someone. 
    c. Libraries should not block Internet access. 
    d. Libraries should not block Constitutionally-protected speech. 
    e. This information was not inappropriate for my community. 
 

The first partial results have been posted (http://www.bluehighways.com/tifap/prelim.htm), which claim specific sites are blocked/not blocked.  I downloaded the latest copy of CyberPatrol, and found that over half of the sites claimed blocked were in fact not blocked.  

KS:
 Burt now labels me and the rest of the project as "antifilterers," which I think is
either a) related to "disestablishmentarianism" or b) means we haven't
issued  a statement agreeing with absolutely everything he has said.  

DB:
I think most reasonable people would agree that Karen and her admittedly pseudo-scientific study are biased toward anti-filtering.  Regarding "disestablishmentarianism", yes, I admit I'm going against the library establishment.  Karen has indicated before she objects to this.  She seems to think it's ok to criticize ALA, as long as we "keep it in the family", and not do so publicly.  I feel that the filtering in libraries debate affects *all Americans*, not just librarians, and that a wide arrange of views disserves the widest possible discussion.

KS:
"Tweaking a filter" (a term I introduced, by the way--just as
the "cost model" argument for why vendors have private lists is something I
initially raised, which Burt also fails to attribute) to just block the
porn is a good predictor of better performance. 

DB:
I'm not the one who used the term "tweaking", Brock did.  He used it first in his original column "Librarians Need a Reality Check", back in May.  BTW, I don't see Karen crediting Jean Armor Polly every time she uses the word "net surfing".  The notion that stoplists are private because they are proprietary I do not consider to be an especially clever discovery.  Fact is, it's so obvious, it hits you the face.

KS:
  We may have been a slow, ragtag and
unglamorous product, but we've resulted in some spectacularly useful
information for vendors and librarians alike. 

DB:
Here we have Karen's great oxymoron: she admits the study is unscientific and inaccurate, yet claims it has "resulted in some spectacularly useful information".  Karen keeps trying to play it both ways here: she claims to produce useful data, yet when pushed on her methodology, she gives a wink and a nod and implies it's not really useful data after all.

KS:
 If any group of librarians is primed to discuss this topic, it's the TIFAP team.  

DB:
READ: Karen deserves the ink, not David.



David Burt, Filtering Facts, www.filteringfacts.org
David_Burt at filteringfacts.org