Dr. Roma Harris in a letter to the London Public Library Board stressed quite eloquently that Internet filtering software should not be used in the adult section of the library because the filters would block access to health-related information.

That is false information. Honestly, it surprises me a Professor Faculty of Information & Media Studies does not already know that is false. It is false for two reasons, one being that modern filters no longer block health-related information. The second is that Google only indexes one eighth of the Internet and libraries that do not make available methods of accessing the remaining seven eighths cannot claim that software that blocks a few sites for one eighth is bad when the libraries themselves are not making available entire major portions of the Internet.

Modern filters no longer block health-related information. How do I know this? From the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] and from the recent court case relying on the ACLU’s expert to determine modern filters no longer block health-related information. See for yourself:

ACLU v. Gonzales, E.D. Pa., March 2007 (ACLU expert and court agrees Internet filters are about 95% effective and no longer block out breast cancer and other health-related information—so effective that another law, COPA [Children’s Online Protection Act], was found unconstitutional.)

http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/07D0346P.pdf

Now as to that second reason, libraries themselves are not making the full power of the Internet available to the public, so they have no right to claim that blocking a few sites (which is not true as shown above) from the small portion they provide is improper. What’s improper is that librarians do no work harder to make available at least portions of over seven eighths of the Internet. The problem here is the librarians, not software that filters out p()rnographic web sites.

What I am talking about is something called the “Deep Web.” Google, as huge as it is, simply exposes only one eighth of the Internet. The remainder is accessible, but specialized techniques must be used to search it. And librarians should make those specialized techniques available to the public. Instead, some complain of a few sites blocked from Google searches. Regarding the “Deep Web,” see for yourself:

The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value (white paper on the Deep Web, an area of the Internet 550 times larger than the surface web crawled by traditional search engines.)

http://www.brightplanet.com/resources/details/deepweb.html

Now an Internet blogger named “SIO” at “LibrarianActivist.org” republished Dr. Roma Harris’s letter then added more to support it. See the blog here:

http://www.librarianactivist.org/2007/06/30/dr-roma-harris-letter-to-the-lpl-board/

Given the above, especially after considering the underlying court case and article on the “Deep Web,” and given blocking p()rnography has nothing to do with “intellectual freedom,” it is now easy to see why the following statements from blogger “SIO” are misleading:

“Filtering software is a tool for thought control and it has no faith in the intelligence of the Internet user. And librarians who install filtering software (especially on adult computers!) have no faith in the intelligence of their patrons. I reckon ‘internet filters’ should be renamed ‘internet blinders’ because they make whole parts of the Internet invisible. A filter is too benign a word when intellectual freedom is at stake.”