But executives at Book Police believe that even libraries shorn of pornography are dangerous places for children. Book Police makes a unilateral decision to censor a broad range of information and ideas, removing books about feminism, gun control and the Second Amendment, animal rights, environmentalism, homosexuality, as well as censorship and free speech.
These offensive books are locked up in a secret place. Adults are not even told that such bad books exist, but those who do somehow learn of their existence may be granted access to the books if the city's chief information officer decides that they are needed for ``legitimate research.''
This may seem like a farfetched scenario, but recently, it came true. The mayor summarily ordered blocking software installed on computers in the public libraries. Created by a private corporation, Cyber Patrol, the software will sweep as broadly through the Internet as my imaginary Book Police would sweep through the library shelves. It will deprive both children and adults of information about sex and gender roles as well as access to political debates -- notably debates about free speech.
The mayor's action has so far enjoyed considerable support, partly because it is not very well understood. News stories and editorials have described this as a reasonable effort to protect children from pornography without reporting on the scope of materials that will be censored by Cyber Patrol. Nor has it been made clear that employees at Cyber Patrol will be the people deciding which sites to block.
Instead, we've been told that librarians or city officials may pick and choose among the 12 categories of material that Cyber Patrol blocks. If they want only to block pornography, not information about animal rights or feminism, they can choose to block only the sexually explicit category.
That's true -- but terribly misleading. The sexually explicit category will not just encompass ``pornography.'' It may well include feminist sites (which some consider pornographic anyway). The sexually explicit category is also likely to block discussions of free speech that refer to the censorship of pornography, discussions of sexual harassment cases or speech codes, as well as educational sites focusing on sexuality.
The list of Internet sites blocked by Cyber Patrol is not easy to obtain; in fact, it's kept secret from city officials and librarians, as well as parents. My formation about the web sites targeted by Cyber Patrol was provided by Net journalist Declan McCullagh, who received it from some enterprising computer hackers. An encrypted ``CyberNOT'' list of verboten sites is released every Monday; users download it without knowing what sites will be blocked, unless they manage to decode it, as McCullagh's sources did. (McCullagh and Brock Meeks published the CyberNOT list last summer.)
Thus the mayor has given a private, profit-making corporation that power to prevent all of us who use the public libraries from gaining access to information of which the corporation disapproves -- and he has given it the power to prevent us even from learning that the information exists.
It's possible that Mayor Menino doesn't understand how Cyber Patrol works and how widely it sweeps. He may entertain a vague, sincere idea that blocking software will simply protect children from ``pornography,'' however he may define it. Or he may have a sincere disregard for the rights of citizens to make their own decisions about what they and their children should read.
Of course, many people are troubled by the broad range of sexually explicit and violent material on the Internet and worry about its effect on children.
Suppose the great majority of adults in Boston could agree on a list of web sites that children should be prevented from seeing. That is a highly unlikely prospect, given deep differences of opinion about whether children should be given information about homosexuality, feminism, or guns, to name just a few divisive issues, but let's assume we could somehow reach consensus. The mayor's blocking programs on the market, like Cyber Patrol, simply would not allow us to block out only the material we've agreed to block. They don't give users the power to compile their lists of objectionable sites; the corporations compile the lists themselves.
In the end, sexually explicit material is not nearly as harmful to children, or adults, as efforts to censor it. Whether they see it on the street, on computers in a library or a friend's home, or on TV, children will be exposed to sex. Most of us were, and most of us managed. When I was about 11 years old, I asked my father how he felt about my reading ``dirty'' books. He was amused by my question. ``If you're old enough to understand it, you're old enough to read it, he said. ``What you're not old enough to understand won't hurt you.''
Wendy Kaminer is a fellow at the Radcliffe College Public Policy Institute.
This story ran on page a19 of the Boston Globe on 03/13/97.