The inclusion of the spud is a nice touch.
Miscellaneous 
In this fifth installment of my series to coincide with “National Internet Safety Month” (Here are parts 1, 2, 3 and 4), I will be outlining search engine filters and kid-friendly web portals.
Safe Search Tools
Parents can use tools embedded in search engines to block a great deal of potentially objectionable content that children might inadvertently stumble upon during searches. For example, Google offers a SafeSearch feature that allows users to filter unwanted content. Users can customize their SafeSearch settings by clicking on the “Preferences” link to the right of the search box on the Google.com home page. Users can choose “moderate filtering,” which “excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesn’t filter ordinary web search results,” or “strict filtering,” which applies the SafeSearch filtering controls to all search engine results.
Similarly, Yahoo! also has a SafeSearch tool that can be found under the “Preferences” link on the “My Web” tab. Like Google, Yahoo! allows strict or moderate filtering. Microsoft’s Live Search works largely the same way. Other search engine providers such as AltaVista, AskJeeves, HotBot, Lycos, and AllTheWeb, also provide filtering tools. Working in conjunction with other filters, these search engine tools are quite effective in blocking a significant amount of potentially objectionable content.
This is part 4 or a multi-part series of essays to coincide with “National Internet Safety Month.” Previous installments discussed online safety metasites, filtering and monitoring tools, and operating system and web browser controls. In this installment, I will be discussing the importance of website labeling and metadata tagging.
All the information in this series is condensed from my forthcoming Progress & Freedom Foundation special report, “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods” which we will be launching on June 20th with an event at the National Press Club.
This is the third in a series of essays about how parents can deal with potentially objectionable online content or contacts to coincide with “National Internet Safety Month.” The first installment in this series outlined the many excellent online safety organizations or websites that should be the first place parents begin their search for assistance. The second installment discussed Internet filtering and monitoring tools and software. This installment will discuss how companies like Microsoft and Apple are integrating parental controls into PC operating systems and web browsers.
The Senate recently passed a resolution (S. Res. 205) declaring June “National Internet Safety Month.” The resolution was sponsored by Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Vice Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). It also had 15 other bipartisan cosponsors. The Resolution “calls on Internet safety organizations, law enforcement, educators, community leaders, parents, and volunteers to increase their efforts to raise the level of awareness for the need for online safety in the United States.” In a press release, Senator Stevens noted that “The Internet is no longer a luxury for American families, but a necessity. It is important to provide a safe online environment for children because use of the Internet is an essential part of our children’s education.”
I think this is a worthwhile goal, and Sen. Stevens and his Senate colleagues are to be commended for their focus on Internet safety education as opposed to the knee-jerk regulatory response we all too often see coming out of Congress on this front.
In a few weeks, I will be releasing my new PFF special report, “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods.” The booklet provides a broad survey of everything on the market today that can help parents deal with potentially objectionable media content, whether it be on broadcast TV, cable, music, cellular phones, video games, the Internet, or social networking websites.
I spend a great deal of time in the report dealing with Internet issues and online safety concerns since it is driving so much legislative and regulatory activity these days. I conclude that, even though it can be quite a challenge at times, parents do have the power to effectively control the Internet and online activities in their children’s lives. But, to do so, parents need to adopt a “layered” approach to online child protection that involves many tools and strategies.
Of course, it goes without saying that these tools and methods should not be considered substitutes for talking to our children about what they might see or hear while online. Even though various tools and strategies can help parents control the vast majority of objectionable content that their kids might stumble upon while online, no system is perfect. In the end, education and ongoing communication are vital.
Anyway, in conjunction with Internet Safety Month, I thought I would put together a multi-part series of essays about how parents can deal with potentially objectionable online content or contacts. This first installment will feature the many excellent online safety organizations or efforts that should be the first place parents begin their search for assistance.
Via Yglesias, Robert Farley thinks that we’re not giving enough attention to economic “cyber war”:
Lots of work has been done on “cyber war”, the promise and vulnerability of networked military organizations. Less attention has been paid to the economic prospects of cyber warfare, and to the ability of states to exert power and coercion through a new set of tools. When Russia tries to coerce its neigbors through threatening to destroy their economic and governmental activity, it becomes a problem for NATO and consequently the United States.
Frankly, I think this is silly. Most of the IT infrastructure that’s really critical for the functioning of a modern economy—power plants, ATM networks, air traffic control, etc—is physically separated from the public Internet. Even semi-critical infrastructure like stock exchanges and supply chain systems tend to be over-engineered for fault tolerance.
And indeed, this is confirmed by the news coverage of the incident. The opening bullets report that “parliament, ministries, banks, media targeted.” But when you get further down the story, you learn that the websites of these institutions were targetted. Now maybe the Estonia is different, but I doubt most people would even notice if Congress’s website were brought down for a few days by a DDOS attack.
I suppose it would be a bit of a pain if I wasn’t able to check CNN or my bank account balance. But that’s not “cyber war.” It’s petty vandalism. It deserves the attention of network security experts at the companies whose websites were targetted, of course, but it’s ridiculous to get NATO involved or to act as though Russia engaging in this kind of “cyber warfare” is even remotely on par with Russia launching cruise missiles against Estonian targets.
Via Luis, a great Buckminster Fuller quote:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Wow. More proof that we have a long way to go before public officials really “get” the Internet. From a Reuters story:
A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like “Web site” in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet. Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.
“The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a Web site is,” he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws. Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms “Web site” and “forum.” An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: “I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.”
Crosbie Fitch, Scott Carpenter & Enigma_Foundry.. I don’t know exactly what it is you have against open debate about IP issues, but as someone who both works at PFF and who gave birth to this blog many years ago while at the Cato Institute, let me at least try to briefly dissuade you (and others) of any nonsensical notion that there is some sort of grand conspiracy going on here by PFF / IP Central people to control the Tech Liberation Front.
First, if you’d bother reading the “About Us” note at the top of the TLF, you’d notice that this blog is not a one-man or one-issue show. It’s intended to be a clearinghouse of ideas to give the world a flavor for what various libertarians in a wide assortment of think tanks are thinking and saying about technology policy.
Second, libertarians have deep differences over copyright policy. Obviously, Tim Lee and Solveig Singleton stand on opposite ends of the spectrum. I’m somewhere in between. And everyone else who contributes to this blog has his or her own opinion. As I wrote in a 2002 Cato Institute book I edited on this subject (“CopyFights”), there is no clear “libertarian position” on copyright and IP matters. The movement is all over the board on the issue and this blog features contributions that reflect that intellectual schizophrenia.
Third, I would greatly appreciate it if you would refrain from engaging in vicious personal attacks against those who contribute their views on these matters. Despite the alleged, neo-conspiratorial “strange web” you guys speak of between the TLF and PFF, the reality is that PFF has no control over the TLF. Zero. Zip. Nothing. Nadda. Every scholar and commenter is free to post whatever they want here. Tim’s view’s on copyright, DRM, and DMCA certainly dominate here because he writes the most on the issue and he is the most aggressive of all our bloggers. Nothing that Tim says on the matter is ever edited or censored in any fashion. Nor are the comments you guys and many others make edited or excluded. Then again, neither are the opposing views of Solveig or anyone else. Do you think we’d be better off stifling all debate on this issue and telling Solveig or others with conflicting views to go buzz off? Why can’t we debate these things here on the TLF in a mature, adult fashion?
I hope you guys (and others) will take what I have said seriously because we certainly welcome your contributions to the TLF, but I would hope those contributions would not be done in such poor taste in the future.
The Miami Herald reports that Florida has passed legislation ditching touch-screen voting machines. The entire state will switch back to the tried-and-true technology of optical-scan paper ballots. Good for Florida
The rapid shift in the conventional wisdom is kind of stunning. Remember that the primary reason the nation adopted touch-screen voting machines in the first place was the widespread negative publicity surrounding “butterfly ballots” in Florida’s 2000 election. When the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002, there were only a handful of people raising concerns about computerized voting, and they tended to be dismissed as cranks.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. Although it will take some more work (either action by Congress or a lot more legislation at the state level) to replace all the touch-screen voting machines in the country, it’s starting to look like a matter of when, not if.
It’ll be interesting to see how many other states follow Florida’s lead. My guess is that Florida is unique, since they’re the state that had the biggest problems this year, and they’re already sensitive to the issue after the debacle in 2000. But I’m sure people in at least some other states are paying attention. Avi Rubin has been following a paper ballot bill making its way through Maryland’s legislature, so hopefully they’ll be joining Florida in the near future.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.