Former Gary Hart cupcake, Donna Rice Hughes, who singlehandely brought down Hart's bid for the presidency with her penchant for cooing, is now vice president of Enough is Enough, an advocacy group lobbying for government controls on the Internet. Rice Hughes was on CNBC's Hardball this week to debate issues with Chris Hansen, senior staff attorney for the ACLU.
The question was posed by moderator Mary Matalin: "Are we talking about protecting free speech vs. protecting our kids, or is this a red herring description of the issue?
Hughes: "I think it is more of a red herring description. I don't think we have to sacrifice children on the altar of the First Amendment. We've always protected children from pornography in the print and the broadcast medium. We're trying to get the laws that we already have in place on the Internet in force. There are also some loopholes. For instance, a child can't buy a Hustler magazine in a convenience store, but it's okay, it's legally constitutional for you and I as adults. We want to get those same kinds of protections that segregate adult-protected pornography from children on the Internet. You can get it, but I child couldn't.
Matalin: "You've been taking reporters and others on cyber tours. One review said one reporter threw up after seeing what producers here call the 42nd Street of the Internet. What's actually on there that our kids can tap into?"
Hughes: "It's far beyond air-brushed nudity like the Playboy-type of pornography that many of us think of. Kids can access for free, for instance, bestiality - pictures of women having sex with animals; excretory types of pornography, women being tortured and mutilated and even child pornography. All of this is available to any child that has unrestricted access to the Internet. One of the problems is that our laws aren't being enforced, and we have some loopholes in the laws. We've also got a lot of parents who simply don't understand that their very well-behaved children could accidentally stumble across material that they may not, in fact, go looking for.
Matalin: "Chris, if there aren't any laws on the books to protect our kids against this computer access and before that, even, against it in the printed form, what is your side of the issue? What's the ACLU fighting for here?
Hansen: "Well there are laws on the books that prevent explicit speech about sex on the Internet. There are obscenity laws. This material on the Internal is just as illegal as it is in books. There are child pornography laws, and child pornography is just as illegal on the Internet as it is in books. The question here isn't reaching that kind of speech which nobody is really suggesting be legalized on the Internet. The question here is do we reach speech that everyone agrees is constitutionally-protected? At least for adults. Congress has now tried twice. States have tried three or four times to reach that kind of speech and censor it on the Internet. And every single court to have addressed this issue has said we shouldn't sacrifice the First Amendment in the name of protecting our children. Not only that, but all the obvious ways that the proponents of censorship suggest we should be censoring the Internet, won't work. They not only will result in a great deal of censorship, but they'll also result in a lot of people being deprived of material they should be able to have access to. Totally harmless material. We did a case in Loudoun County Virginia in which an awful lot of sites in which you and I would both agree should not be censored, were, in fact, censored. Like, for example the map of Disneyworld. Or the American Association of University Women's website. Once you start down the road of censorship, you end up with that level of censorship.
Matalin: "I've had enough arguments with ACLU-types, no offense Chris, to know they pull out these absurd examples. What is he saying that these solutions won't work? What are some of the solutions?
Hughes: "First of all, Chris was talking about two points. One is the loopholes in cyberspace. It is illegal, for instance, for a child to get Penthouse or Hustler magazine in the print media. But it's perfectly legal in cyberspace because Congress keeps trying to find ways to segregate THAT type of pornography away from children. And then we have these battles with the ACLU. So we're trying to get that segregated. The point that he just mentioned in Loudoun County had nothing to do with law, it had to do with filters. That particular library decided to screen pornography away from children in the library. And because filters are not perfect, often times material may have been filtered out. But then if a patron couldn't get something that they should have been able to get, all they had to do was tell the librarian. We believe that the solutions are three-pronged. First of all, parents to have a role. They need to teach their children safety and implement the software that's available to them. The same with schools and libraries. The technology community has a role to be corporately responsible. And, thirdly, we believe that the pornographers, those that are causing and profiting from this whole problem of putting free pictures on the Internet that any kid can stumble across, that they bear some burden of the responsibility. So that's what the law is trying to get at. And that is hold the pornographers responsible and accountable. Just like we're trying to do with the technology community.
Matalin: "Chris, who are your clients in this case?"
Hansen: "Let's notice, in fact, that Donna admitted the sites I mentioned were censored by the software that she's promoting in Loudoun County, Virginia. In fact, we represented the American Association of University Women. They had been blocked at the Loudoun County library site using the exact kind of software that Donna's promoting, using it in exactly the way she's promoting it. We ended up with vast overblocking.
Matalin: "But she also said in those cases that, while we're trying to perfect this software, all you have to do is mechanically walk up to the librarian and say, 'I can't be blocked. I'm an adult. What's wrong with that when we're trying to protect the software? Meanwhile, our kids are being protected and adults have merely have to ask for it."
Hansen: "First of all. That wasn't true. That's not how the software works. In fact, what happens is that the librarian has to call the software people in California and ask them to look at it, and ask them to decide whether they think it should be uncensored. But more importantly than that, the software does, in fact, censor speech that it might be embarrassing for library patrons to have to go to the librarian and say they want access to this speech. For example, the software often blocks gay rights sites. It often blocks safer sex websites. It blocks the kind of material I might want to access as an adult, but I might not want to say to the librarian that I want to be accessing this kind of material. I might be a little embarrassed to do that. And it might be really important that I have access to this kind of material. Take, for example the lone gay teenager in Boise, Idaho who doesn't know that anybody else is gay or doesn't know anything about being gay. There are now websites that that kid can go to that can help him deal with the feelings that he's having. If we shut down the Internet for that teenager, I'm afraid we've done a disservice."
Matalin: "How come in this age where we can send our technology to China to come back and bomb us, we can't provide software that can accommodate those persons that Chris says should have access to that kind of information. We can't create this kind of software?"
Hughes: "There is software out there. In fact there's newer and better software every day, every month. And so there are many new options that are open to libraries and schools. But, again, Chris is interchanging a lot of the issues all at the same time, here.
Matalin: "Chris, would you be happy if there was software that could segregate out specifically for children, bestiality and all this cyberporn. Would you be happy with that? Or would you want no software of any kind that would potentially censor anything?"
Hansen: "There's currently no software that can distinguish between bestiality and safer sex websites."
Matalin: "That's not what I asked. If there was, would you be for it?"
Hansen: "It's a totally theoretical question. In addition, bestiality is already illegal. Bestiality is obscenity, obscenity is illegal. If Donna finds bestiality on the Internet she ought to call her local prosecutor and get them to prosecute.
Hughes: "Chris, I've been calling them everyday and you know that."
Hansen: "She shouldn't be going on TV and suggesting that we censor OTHER kinds of speech in order to get at...
Matalin: "I'm going to take a stand, here. I don't think that's what she's saying. I've made up my mind. I've changed my mind. I now have an opinion on this decision. I want my kids to be protected, and call that censoring if you will."
