The Killeen Daily Herald reported today that students at Liberty Hill Middle School in Killeen, Texas accessed porngraphic websites in the school's computer lab.
School officials learned of the incident only after one of the students told his parents, who contacted the school. The school's computers are protected by a popular filter - but it is clear that school administrators don't understand the limits of filters. Killeen Independent School District Deputy Superintendent Robert Muller told the newspaper: "Theoretically, there are ways around the [filter] through a proxy site of some sort."
Theoretically? With all due respect, it isn't a theory. Thousands of children use proxies everyday. Many proxies disguise themselves as legimtate gaming or homework sites, allowing children to easily break filters and other controls parents have come to trust.
We have been force fed filters as the solution since the Internet came online. A filter will do just what its name implies - it blocks some material, but not all. A government survey found that the most protective filter blocked 91% of sexually-explicit websites. That means of the estimated 4.2 million pornographic websites, 378,000 would remain unblocked.
Given that, and how easily children can break filters, it seems pretty clear: filters do not work.
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