Hawaii libraries have adequate protections to block access to Web sites deemed harmful to children, and a federal law requiring the use of filters should be declared unconstitutional, the state's top librarian said yesterday. State librarian opposes
federal Internet filter lawBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.comState Librarian Virginia Lowell said she is watching closely a federal court case in Philadelphia, in which the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and others are challenging the Children's Internet Protection Act, which denies federal funds and rebates to schools and public libraries that do not install protective measures such as filters.
Lowell said the lawsuit seeks to strike down the act as an unconstitutional "violation of First Amendment rights of free access to information, which is what libraries are all about."
"The big problem is there is no filter that is effective in blocking the kinds of things that people want blocked without blocking a lot of speech that is protected by the First Amendment," she said.
State lawmakers have taken up the issue of requiring filters in public libraries in recent years.
State Sen. Norman Sakamoto (D, Salt Lake-Moanalua) said he hopes the U.S. District Court can clarify freedom of speech on one hand and protecting the youth on the other.
"The public facility doesn't mean universal access to everything by everyone," said Sakamoto, who supports using filters to protect children and teenagers from pornographic and violent material. "Certainly protecting our youth is an important part of our system even if the youth sometimes say they don't need protection, that's the duty of society to raise up and protect our youth and families."
Hawaii's public libraries do not have the filters; but they do receive more than $900,000 a year in federal money in addition to discounts via the federal e-Rate program.
The state Department of Education installed filters in all of its school and administrative computers in May 1999, said K.J. Kim, the department's telecommunications director.
Lowell said filters will just be an unnecessary cost to the library system because it already has adequate measures in place. That includes a system in which patrons can report offensive use by other patrons as well as the PACE program, or Parents Authorized Cyberspace Entry, in which parents request an electronic block on a child's library card so they can only use the Internet with the help of a library worker, Lowell said.
For the most part, however, just having staff members walk around discourages such activity, she said. "A tap on the shoulder says you're looking at something that is inappropriate. Stop, or I will have to stop your Internet session." Those who persist are asked to leave and can be prohibited from the library for up to a year, she added.
"With all those procedures and guidelines, of course it's unnecessary," she said of the filters. Lowell, who said there has been "very few instances of abuse of our computers," estimated the cost to install the filters would run several hundred thousand dollars.