The Volunteer State has become the first in the nation to arrange for Internet filtering at all public schools. The filtering is accomplished by channeling all school Internet access through a single provider, Education Networks of America, based in Nashville. \n The beauty of the system, according to Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist, is that it gives school districts and even individual teachers some flexibility about what is or is not off limits. As a result, local boards can buy a customized filter and teachers can remove the filter completely from a particular computer, if necessary. School boards also are free not to use the filter, if they so choose. \n The filtering system, called Bess, is programmed to censor 15 categories of material: sex, violence, adults only, pornography, chat, drugs, gambling, profanity, lingerie, nudity, suicide-murder, tasteless-gross, hate-discrimination, illegal and school cheating. \n Other categories are filtered by Bess but, at least so far, won't be blocked as part of the arrangement with the public schools. These include news, stocks, weapons, jokes, sports, medical and swimsuits. \n Vice president Al Gore, a Tennessee native, attended a recent press conference to herald the arrival of Internet filtering and congratulated the state for being the first to make the Internet safe for kids. \n Software to power the filter is provided by N2H2 Inc., a Seattle company. Peter Nickerson, head of N2H2, said his company's data base includes more than a million pages from blocked sites. The company manages to find about 1,000 new pages to block every day. \n Bess is said to have an advantage over other filtering schemes because it works from the centralized server of Education Networks of America and does not need to be installed on each and every computer under its umbrella. \n Despite the careful planning, some legal questions remain about the constitutionality of Internet filters. ENA said there should be no problem because the filter is on its server and his company is a service provider, not a public institution. \n However, legal scholars may argue that the use of a private company is merely a subterfuge to get around what the state is not permitted to do. In that case, it would be like the state contracting with the Christian Coalition to determine what books can be placed in school libraries. \n In addition, there is always the danger that some paranoid or heavy-handed school administrator will decide to censor as much as possible, invariably blocking sites with all kinds of legitimate information
All models were at least 18 years old at the time of their performance. 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement.
