[The following report was prepared by a Minnesota school official who was charged with evaluating the option of purchasing SmartFilter for her school district. The official asked to remain anonymous to prevent her school district from being identified.] SmartFilter: (9/5/97) How it works The product was originally launched for use "in a standard business setting." The product works by maintaining a list of approximately 77,000 URLs - or web pages- that are divided into categories. If a computer user attempts to navigate to any of these pages on the Control List, s/he is denied access. Currently, the categories include: Alternative Journals Art and Culture Chat Criminal Skills Cults Dating Drugs Entertainment Extreme or Obscene Gambling Games General News Hate Speech Humor Investing Job Search Lifestyle Non-Essential (customizable to specific needs, "ie:Competitors web pages") On-Line Sales/Merchandising Opinion, Politics, and Religion Personal Pages Self-Help Sex ("This will range from all discussions of sex including sexually transmitted diseases, safe-sex, teen pregnancy, bikini-clad women and men, nudity, soft and hard-core porn, etc") Sports Travel Usenet News Worthless ("URLs that are neither harmful nor offensive in a business situation.") While a customer can decide which categories to block or unblock, there is no option to view the individual URLs contained in the categories. For example, the Lifestyle category may include such things as the straight men's groups, generation-Xers, gay and lesbian discussions, senior citizen clubs, vegetarianism, transgender, etc. The Sex category contains URLs that either reference, discuss, show photography, pictures or videos of sex or sexually oriented material. Would pictures of Michelangelo's art be blocked? What about the Mayo Health O@sis site? There is no way to know unless each site is visited to see if access is denied or permitted. Although the option of adding or overriding individual blocked sites (once they're found) is an improved feature of this product over others, the district would ultimately be hiring a commercial enterprise to determine and control what is appropriate content for local students. Cost In terms of the financial implication, the offer referred to by legislators is effective for one year only. It covers the one-time purchase fee of $6,000.00. At this time it does not include the subsequent annual renewal fees of $1,800.00. The grant offer does not obligate the district to renew, nor does it obligate the district to use the software at all. The cost of a trial use would depend upon the scope of the trial. A small test on one or two machines in the training lab, for instance, would cost just setup time. An intermediate test in a building's computer lab could require approximately $3,000.00 worth of hardware and a day or two of Tech Support staff time. A larger test involving multiple schools could require approximately $7,000.00 worth of hardware and about a day of Tech Support staff time per site. As of September 5, 1997, there are approximately 50 districts in Minnesota who have applied for the grant. While these are mostly rural districts, there are also a few in the Twin Cities. At this time it is unknown whether these districts will indeed use the software in all of their schools. If implemented system wide, there may be a hidden cost in terms of technical support personnel, since the updated Control List needs to be downloaded weekly. If teachers needed several individual sites unblocked on a number of machines, in different buildings every day, it is unclear as to how much time this task would take. It also means that teachers would have to do the searching, instead of students, to obtain appropriate URLs to unblock. General Issues 1. Reliance on filtering software may create a false sense of security among parents and teachers as well as increased liability. All of these types of programs keep their Control Lists secret. However, the Control List of one of the three leading products has recently been deciphered by "outsiders" and is available for download to anyone on the Internet. No commercial filter is foolproof. Fran McDonald a professor at Mankato State University argues that if schools adopt filters or other mechanical means of limiting access to the Internet, they place themselves at greater legal risk than by not doing so. By assuring parents and the community that students won't be exposed to "harmful" materials, the responsibility for Internet use shifts from the student user to the school administration and staff. It sets up a not-too-difficult challenge for the determined hacker to overcome.1 1. Johnson, Doug. "Internet Filters: Censorship By Any Other Name?" 1997 (djohns1@west.isd77.k12.mn.us)