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ACLU threatens schools over Internet filtering
Prince William school officials said they were caught off-guard on Monday by a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union that threatened a lawsuit over Internet filters.
The letter, signed by Rebecca Glenberg and Joshua Block of the ACLU of Virginia, states that the school system is blocking gay support group sites in violation of students' First Amendment rights.
The issue is filtering software that blocks access to, among other sites, the Gay Student Alliance Network, Day of Silence and It Gets Better.
“The Prince William County Public Schools do not have a legitimate pedagogical basis for censoring students' access to these websites, which provide support and resources for LGBT students and gay-straight alliances,” states the letter.
Ken Blackstone, a spokesman for the school system, said on Monday night that the school officials found out about the problem at the same time the media did.
“The ACLU is making some claims and we're reviewing them to see if they're accurate and to see how we can respond to that,” he said. “They bring up important points.”
Blackstone said the school system is required by federal law to use Internet filtering software to keep students and staffers from looking at inappropriate content at school. He said the division's Blue Coat filtering software blocks out 32 specific cat3egories, including, for instance, sites containing pornography or promoting violence or drugs.
Butt the process is automated and sometimes the software doesn't correctly differentiate between, for example, gay support groups and gay pornography.
In order to correct that problem, Blackstone said the school division has a process by which students or staff can request to have a site unblocked.
He said that to the best of his knowledge, no one made such a request in this case.
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