BLOCKING SOFTWARE
While Net filtering software toils to save us from ourselves, Bennett Haselton works to save us from the filters. Haselton, a 21-year-old Bellevue, Washington, programmer, has already made a career out of divulging the ridiculous and sometimes frightening shortcomings of site-blocking software.
Four years ago, Haselton founded Peacefire (www.peacefire.org), a free speech organization that's attracted attention - and legal hassles - for posting URLs blocked by several leading filtering apps. In February, Haselton cracked open I-Gear, a popular program made by Cupertino, California-based Symantec. Analyzing 50 .edu addresses blocked by I-Gear for sexual content, Haselton found that 37 of them contained no porn at all. Among the blacklisted sites: one containing the Latin text of Augustine's Confessions (presumably blocked due to the repeated use of the Latin word cum), and another, an academic article on Internet censorship. A similar cracking of Mattel's Cyber Patrol landed several people in federal court in March: two decryption advocates, as well as Haselton, who mirrored a site posting the code. (The two crackers settled, but Haselton isn't giving up.)
"A lot of filtering software is just sloppy," says Haselton. "Because it's sloppy, it ends up targeting controversial sites."
Like his own: Haselton says I-Gear blocks his site because of anti-censorware content. Counters I-Gear: It's because Peacefire posts proprietary information.
Meanwhile, nine states are considering laws that would require public schools and libraries to install filtering software. And both Al Gore and George W. Bush strongly support the idea.
Says Haselton: "We fight blocking software for the same reason the ACLU defends death row prisoners." In other words, surf free or die.
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