With a victory in the public libraries behind them, anti-censorship activists joined with parents, teachers, and students Sept. 18 in a move to beat back the imposition of federally mandated web filters in schools.

The nationwide "speak-out" served as a rallying point for anti-censorship organizations—including, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and National Coalition Against Censorship—to sound off against the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The law that requires all schools receiving eRate funds to use "technology protection measures" to keep kids from accessing inappropriate material online.

Although the event, which took place simultaneously in Boston, New York, and San Francisco, did not include the announcement of any formal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of CIPA in schools, it did encourage a national student letter-writing campaign, which organizers hope will increase public scrutiny of the act and pressure lawmakers to adopt new policies for safe, effective internet use in schools.

CIPA detractors claim that school-imposed web filters inadvertently block access to educational sites, making it virtually impossible for teachers to use professional discretion when deciding what content to allow in the classroom.

One speak-out participant, Marjorie Heins, who is director of the Free Expression Policy Project and author of Not in Front of the Children: 'Indecency,' Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth, called the law "outrageous," saying it's inconceivable that the federal government should ask teachers to give up their professional discretion in favor of corporate filtering products designed by companies that are far removed from students and their individual instructional needs.

Several educators agreed with Heins. These needs, they said, go unfulfilled because web filters often operate by singling out certain words—including "rape," "terrorism," and "anarchy"—which might or might not be used in an inappropriate fashion.

For instance, in one New York City school, students were blocked from accessing information related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks because the filtering system there inadvertently identified the word "terrorism" as dangerous and offensive to students, said John Elfrank, a social studies teacher with the city's school system.

David Burt, public relations manger for N2H2 Inc., which makes one of the most widely used filtering products in schools, said a lot more goes into choosing blocked sites than simply red-flagging certain words for detection. Burt said N2H2's filter does not block solely on the recognition of a potentially harmful word, but rather looks for such indicators as adult warnings, pornographic content, and specific tags in web addresses commonly associated with lewd or inappropriate content. Like most other filtering companies, N2H2 also uses human reviewers to check red-flagged sites to make sure they are not blocked inadvertently.