The real story on filtering

The latest news isn't so much about filtering software on desktop computers plugged into household wall sockets. What parents need to be aware of is how hard it is to depend on technology to "filter" kids' experiences on an increasingly mobile Internet that can be found on a rapidly growing number of devices: handheld game players, cellphones, MP3 players, DVD players, laptops, palmtops, etc. Filtering software for desktops and laptops is still flawed but improving, according to CNET, in an update that doesn't break much new ground but does a great job of pulling together all we currently know on filters and their use by US families. It's just that filtering is less and less any kind of a solution for protecting online kids. The article is a followup to last week's news that the US Justice Department is seeking search-engine data as it gathers evidence for its next defense of the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 in federal court next fall (see last week's "COPA revisited"). The most interesting part is the info on p. 2 about how kids find work-arounds for filters: e.g., proxy servers and proxy sites. For example, Peacefire.org, which opposes filtering, offers a free software program that "takes just minutes to set up," CNET reports. It "lets Web users turn their desktop computers into Web proxies that fly under the radar of filter programs. Users can invite friends with computers protected by filters to use their machines to override" filters. Some two dozen copies of it are downloaded every day, its publisher, Bennett Haselton, told CNET.