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Municipalities
“The number of municipal Wi-Fi projects
has skyrocketed to more than 300 nationwide, including several major cities."
"Municipalities will first block web-sites
exhibiting child and adult pornography before filtering an expanding list of
objectionable material."
"Municipalities are often politically
similar to autocratic state regimes, single party controlled and
self-perpetuating."
above quotes NetRightsAdvocates.com
"Experience hath shown, that even the best
forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow
operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Thomas
Jefferson
Censored Internet for Everyone
In Community Wireless
Networks ("CWN's") are rapidly building tomorrow's public service communications
infrastructure. They provide inexpensive (or even free), high-speed,
wireless broadband connections to neighborhoods, local businesses and public
institutions. The number of municipal Wi-Fi projects has skyrocketed to
more than 300 nationwide, including such major cities as San Francisco, Portland
(Oregon), Dayton and Minneapolis. Some projects have stalled as corporate
sponsors run out of financial fuel.
Besides providing Internet access for
citizens' fixed and mobile access, these CWN's can be used for public service
purposes: (1) helping local government increase efficiency and service;
(2) extending the reach of public health services; (3) providing educators with
affordable, high-tech resources; (4) empowering citizen, civic organizations and
churches through communications and (5) bolstering business and the local
economy. (see http://www.cuwireless.net
for expanded descriptions of these social benefits.
All CWNs
will be filtered--tailored to the local norms and the discretion of the local
Politburo
"Congress shall make no law...prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press..." The First Amendment
"Free" municipal WiFi service will
come at a price -- mandatory content filtering that blocks a range of sites that
are not even close to illegal, nor sources of pornography that might be harmful
to minors.
"Government control over
infrastructure might act as the entry point for regulating the content that
flows over it. This is already happening at public libraries."
The Children's Internet Protection Act
("CIPA") (see side column Resources) ties federal universal service
"E-rate" discounts to the filtering of Internet content. CIPA may even
extend to requiring filtering of patrons' laptops using the library connections
partially funded by E-rate. A subset of item (3) above anticipates that
"local libraries will rapidly become a hub of free, open access to information."
In fact, some communities intend to receive E-rate funding to cover the costs of
building out their municipal network. Will CIPA require filtering on such
CWNs?
Q uotes in the above two paragraphs from 'Not in the Public Interest
- The Myth of Municipal Wi-Fi Networks' by the New
Millennium Research Council. See Resources.
The types of websites that will be
blocked by sample counties and municipalities include: child pornography
(okay), child abuse (okay), adware (sure), spyware (sure), gambling (Virginia
has no expressed prohibition on Internet gambling), malicious code (sure), adult
pornography (problematic), web-based proxies (echoes of third world
autocracies), anonymizers (same comment), phishing (sure), material deemed
obscene (okay, but who deems it so) or tasteless (whoops), sites that facilitate
peer-to-peer ("P2P") applications (although P2P can be used to copy and exchange
copyrighted materials, the applications themselves are not illegal and are
inherent requirement of multiplayer gaming).
As seen above, child pornography and
material harmful to the system and users should be blocked by municipalities.
P2P files can crowd CWN's bandwidth, but should be allowed on a premium basis.
With regard to indecent, but not obscene, adult pornography, in the majority
opinion in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (See Resources.) Justice Stevens opined
that the Government may not "reduce] the adult population...to...only what is
fit for children." Prohibitions on web-based proxies and anonymizers are
more typical of third world autocracies and are easily defeated.
 go to
Filtering
Bottom Line
As CWN's are rolled out, we imagine that a smorgasbord of
censorship will limit each municipalities' citizens full access to the Internet.
Despite recent Supreme Court decisions, these micro-autocracies will likely do
as they want.
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The Advocates support the goals of the NCMEC, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit
organization, which serves as a national clearinghouse for information and a
resource for child protection. NCMEC's congressionally mandated
CyberTipline, a reporting mechanism for child sexual exploitation, has handled
nearly a half million leads. The organization received $32.6 million in
tax dollars in 2005.
Summary: The Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000
In late
2000, Congress enacted The Children’s Internet Protection Act (“CIPA-2000”),
which required school and libraries to employ filtering software to address: (a)
access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet; (b) the safety and
security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms and other forms of
direct electronic communications; (c) unauthorized access by minors online; (d)
unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information
regarding minors; and (e) restricting minors’ access to materials harmful to
them. The current proposed legislation addresses the fact that Parents have
failed to supervise their children’s access to the Internet at home and that now
new mobile technologies have dispersed Internet access away from the “protected”
schools, libraries and the home access point.
U.S. Supreme Court Opinions
In United States v. American
Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court decided
that Congress could require libraries receiving federal Internet access
subsidies to filter pornography.
The Communications Decency Act (the
"CDA) was an attempt to protect minors from explicit material on the Internet by
criminalizing the "knowing" transmission of "obscene or indecent" messages to a
minor or anything "that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently
offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory
activities or organs." In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997)
held that major portions were unconstitutional and unenforceable, except for
cases of obscenity or child pornography, because they abridge the freedom of
speech protected by the First Amendment and are substantially overbroad.
The Court decreed that the Internet is entitled to the full protection given to
print media; the special factors justifying government regulation of broadcast
media do not apply, because users must take "a series of affirmative steps" to
access explicit material.
In Ginsberg v. New York (1968)
the Supreme Court said that as part of the definition of "obscene" that the
material must be "utterly without redeeming social importance for minors."
New
Millennium Research Council's report 'Not in the Public Interest - The Myth of
Municipal Wi-Fi Networks'
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May
2007, More than $3 billion will be spent over the next four years to
build and operate public wireless networks for U.S. municipalities. San
Francisco: Portland, Oregon; Dayton, Ohio; Minneapolis; Chicago; Houston; Los
Angeles and Atlanta have announced plans or issued requests for proposals.
