What web filtering software is the White House using?

With the country focused on the theatrics of the Presidential transition, Ben Smith of Politico reminded his readers of some of the mechanics of it-- particularly the transition away from using instant messaging ("Obama staff will say cu l8r to IM"):

"It sucks. It's really going to slow us down," complained another [senior staffer], saying that lawyers had warned that, along with instant messaging, White House software will restrict users to a range of sites roughly "like your average grade school."

The IM issue, as expected, brought the usual handwinging (like handwringing, but winging it). All written correspondence, paper or electronic, is subject to disclosure through the 1978 Presidential Records Act. While IM is trivial to record (the technology for doing so has been around for years), the worry is what actually gets recorded. A former associate White House  counsel told Smith: "IMing encourages a kind of casualness in conversation that will be the bane of the lawyers down the line."

But the second complaint, about content filtering software (aka "censorware"), deserves an even greater look-- due to its tortuous legal history.

What software is being used? Consider that the IM "prohibition" can be individually worked around simply by picking up the phone or sending an email. The content-filtering, by contrast, will necessarily have to be worked around by a request process. How would this process work?

Here's what is generally known about the content filtering of the White House systems. By 1999, the White House was using firewall technology to track incoming emails and web links. This only came to public light after a visiting Y2K consultant found a huge portion of the bandwidth was consumed by porn downloads-- a story reported by the conservative WorldNetDaily in 2000. (The story didn't catch on widely; WND's publisher's had noted the Clinton "scandal fatigue" at the time). Nobody was outed by name; only a systems administrator was referred to porn addiction treatment. No similar story emerged from the Bush Administration. It may have been the culture of weekly Bible sessions (USA Today, 2002). Or it's just as likely that home high-speed access has grown to 55% from around 4% in 2000 (see Pew study)-- the high-speed work access is no longer needed for high-speed habits. Still, it appears that between the end of the Clinton administration and the end of the Bush administration, content filtering has been applied.

A key problem with content filtering is that the users often don't know what's filtered, or why, until they find something blocked. Seth Finkelstein, a pioneer in censorware research, had decrypted software to try and get a handle on it. But he quit doing censorware research in 2003, finding little support or funding for it-- particularly with a federal law (the Digital Millenium Copyright Act) increasing the burden of carrying it out.

In place, there has been great interest in documenting filtering/censorshop by state entities abroad, through the OpenNet Initiative, funded by the likes of the MacArthur Foundation. Broad filtering generally takes place in nondemocratic regimes in Asia and North Africa. Still, it continues in the United States: the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000 specifies that libraries & schools can't get "E-rate" educational discounts unless filtering software & policies are in place. The law was even upheld by the Supreme Court after a 2003 suit by the American Library Association (see overview from ALA).

In 2006, three library patrons in Washington State filed suit in federal court against their library system, claiming that certain websites of interest were blocked (Bradburn et al . North Central Regional Libary District). It took 18 months for both parties to agree on the facts through a joint declaration (see filing 71 in March 2008). This clarified the name of the software (FortiGuard replaced SmartFilter / Bess), the particular websites blocked, the library's policy for allowing new websites. Throughout the litigation, the library opened up access to websites like YouTube, MySpace and womenandguns.com; Craigslist personals and Google images remain blocked (perhaps the library is not aware of the safe-google.com interface?) The library district maintains that they have a right to follow their collections policy online as they do for physical materials. In April, the federal judge requested that the State Supreme Court clarify state constitutional speech protections; there has been no update since.

Civil libertarians would charge that this a case of a rural library imposing "small-town" norms on its patrons? Maybe, maybe not. The library explained that they do not have alternatives to filtering. They had privacy screens at one point, but users complained, since privacy screens make it difficult for two people to look at the computer at once.

The discovery part of the case did yield some instructive research. Of the 60,000 URL's requested by patrons, 2,180 were blocked. This included 289 pages, 20 of which appeared to be blocked in error. A more noticeable came from images, which accounted for half of the blocked URL's -- and over half of those were erroneously blocked. Unmentioned was whether web proxies were blocked; these are handy for web document translation.

The reasons for blocking web content at the White House remain as vexing as those for IM remain clear. There is no librarian with a collection policy. Whereas a library has an interest in proactively stopping pornography from being viewed, the White House, like any office, can deal with it retroactively (as was done in 1999). The concerns about spyware/malware can be addressed on their own. It's possible that the last 8 years of White House web use have not yielded many complaints about web filtering; more tell-all books about the Bush administration may reveal that.

From all the information we have publicly, the risks outweigh the benefits. If the Obama administration wishes to promote transparancy and change -- and have its team's use of technology generally unencumbered -- the least they can do to start is to clarify the existing policy publicly and see whether it still necessary.

And then we can move on to IM...