Thanks to every American coming-of-age comedy set in the hallways of a high school, the British quiz me on my own experiences as an angry teenager in North Carolina. After covering pep rallies and the prom, I am inevitably asked about the image of a high school football coach awkwardly explaining the evils of teenaged sex. My parents decided to opt out of my state-mandated sex education, but my disappointed peers relayed to me a cringe-worthy experience involving our stout wrestling coach rattling off scripted warnings about the dangers of teenage fornication, and the magic of abstinence.
In my high school, learning about sex was a case study in the blind leading the blind. Sex was a secret, and we turned to our peers for the answers, rather than state-mandated sermons. It was cool to already know about sex, and if you didn’t, you were reduced to trying to glean explanations from more experienced peers, and discretely using Urban Dictionary to decode the information. Sex was confusing, but many of us felt too ashamed to admit our ignorance. As teenagers in the early noughties, school internet access served as a resource, answering the questions that we did not feel comfortable asking aloud.
On 15 August, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit against Camdenton school district, in Missouri, on behalf of four LGBT organisations that have had their sites blocked by filters on the school district’s computers, arguing that it violates the First Amendment. The suit, filed on behalf of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG National), the Matthew Shepard Foundation, DignityUSA and Campus Pride, involves a filter that blocks websites providing information on LGBT issues, rather than merely blocking sexually explicit content, and demands that it be taken down. The ACLU sent a letter to the district in May, notifying them that it was unconstitutional to block four websites known for providing information on anti-bullying and gay-straight alliances. After unblocking a couple of sites, the school board refused to unblock hundreds of other websites that provide information for LGBT students, forcing students to ask for permission every time they visit one of the sites. Anti-LGBT sites, on the other hand, are unrestricted. It is outrageous to think that a teenager would have to publicly announce such a private matter in order to access information.
According to a policy briefing published by the Guttmacher Institute in January 2011, Missouri is one of 26 states that “stress” abstinence as the best option for teens. Missouri’s sex education program also leaves out a discussion of sexual orientation, and the proper usage of contraception.
An out of touch and uninformed sex education program leaves most students with unanswered questions, and this is most true for LGBT students, who have less access to resources than their heterosexual counterparts.
Jody M Huckaby, executive director of PFLAG National, an organisation that has provided information to young members of the LGBT community for almost forty years, believes that blocking such websites can be detrimental to youths wrestling with questions of sexuality:
Many LGBT students either don’t have access to the Internet at home or, if they do, they don’t feel safe accessing this information on their home computers. In order to ensure the physical and mental well-being of LGBT youth — especially given the wide access to negative information on LGBT issues — these resources must be accessible.
In addition to inadequate sex education, LGBT students also face the risk of harassment. According to a 2009 report by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), “nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students experienced harassment at school in the past year, and two-thirds felt unsafe because of their sexual orientation”.
Camdenton school district should take note of this increase in bullying and suicide, as their students are unable to get answers through a sensible sex education program. They should take a step towards prioratising the sexual health and safety of their students and remove the filters.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index on Censorship.
Last Thursday evening, the Bay Area Rapid Transit authority in San Francisco — better known as BART — was worried about the consequences (and likely public relations mess) of a protest planned inside its subway system to denounce a fatal police shooting earlier this summer by BART police officers. As a preventive measure, BART deployed a tactic many commentators have since likened to Hosni Mubarak’s playbook: It shut down cell signal in four stations for several hours to prevent protesters from organising.
As it turns out, inviting comparisons to deposed Egyptian dictators — and at the historic epicenter of the US free-speech movement — posed a much bigger PR disaster than anything that would have come from a nonviolent police protest. More protests were then planned. Anonymous hacked BART’s website. The Federal Communications Commission is now looking into the incident. Several California politicians have expressed shock. And free speech advocates across the country are furious about a US precedent for exactly the type of social-media policy officials in the UK have been weighing since last week’s riots.
Making matters worse, BART officials have dug in to defend the decision rather than distance themselves from it, arguing that riders’ constitutional right to safety trumps protesters’ constitutional right to free speech. The agency has not promised it won’t deploy the same tactic again in the future.
“Inside the fare gates,” a BART spokesperson told a local TV channel, “is a non-public forum, and by law, by the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court, there is no right to free speech there.”
“Cell phone service has not always been available in BART stations. The advent of reliable service inside of stations is relatively recent. But once BART made the service available, cutting it off in order to prevent the organisation of a protest constitutes prior restrain on the free speech rights of every person in the station, whether they’re a protestor or a commuter. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. Censorship is not okay in Tahrir Square or Trafalgar Square, and it’s still not okay in Powell Street Station.”
The ACLU on Monday sent a letter to both BART and the Federal Communications Commission saying:
“BART’s actions must be seen in the context of today’s events. All over the world, people are using mobile devices to protest oppressive regimes, and governments are shutting down cell phone towers and the Internet to silence them. BART has never disrupted wireless service before, and chose to take this unprecendented measure for the first time last week in response to a protest of BART police. BART’s decision was in effect an effort by a government entity to silence its critics.”
Rex Huppke, a commentator with the Chicago Tribune, downplayed all the drama, underscoring that many people view electronic communication — and the right to freely text, email, or associate online — as some less legitimate version of free expression.
“We have more than enough ways to communicate in this day and age. Briefly losing access to a score update or a Facebook note about sushi or a message from work isn’t an assault on freedom.”
A year ago, BART might have gotten away with the move with less public outcry. But in the wake of the Arab Spring, any police action in the West that conjures up images of censorship in the Middle East will inevitably alarm Americans. Along with reaction to the riots in the UK, the BART incident has awoken many people to the reality that technology creates complex new means of censorship anywhere in the world.
The New Republic has published a piece online this week taking the US State Department to task for its seeming lack of urgency in doling out its internet freedom budget — and its choices over which tools that budget has so far been used to fund. Author Max Shulman argues that this reality is at odds with the image Hillary Clinton has portrayed to the world of the US as the benefactor of internet freedom fighters toiling away in repressive regimes. Writes Shulman:
“This is complicated, Clinton finds new ways to say with every speech, but we’re doing all the right things. Official U.S. policy unequivocally favors a “free and open Internet” and opposes repressive censorship regimes worldwide through the best available means.
“But, in reality, this isn’t exactly true. An examination of the State Department’s record of its 18-month-old Internet freedom agenda reveals significant failures, both in overall funding efforts and in the omission of vital tools from its approach to helping activists crack through the layers of censorship imposed by repressive regimes. Before democracy advocates abroad can truly take heart in Clinton’s words, the department needs to admit to past mistakes and adopt a truly comprehensive approach to addressing the issue.”
There has been bitter dispute among technologists and politicians in the US over the wisdom of relying too heavily on circumvention tools to open the internet, particularly in countries where dictators are prone to simply shutting the whole thing off. But Shulman argues that the State Department should be trying everything — “mesh networks and circumvention tools, training for activists and pressure on antidemocratic corporations” — even as it acknowledges no one strategy will solve the problem.
Rebecca MacKinnon, internet freedom guru and Global Network Initiative / Global Voices stalwart was at TEDGlobal 2011, in Edinburgh yesterday.
Ahead of the January 2012 of her new book, Consent of the Networked: A Citizen’s Guide to the Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, MacKinnon was reiterating her belief that the internet is headed for a Magna Charta moment when citzens rise up to demand their governments protect free speech online. She draws a fascinating correlation between the factors that led to the “great charter” in 1215 and modern interet censorship.
