Gay. Lesbian. Bisexual. Transgender. These are words that are central to the identity of some students at LHS. So why do web filters at LHS block websites relating to these words?

     Several websites regarding the LGBT community were blocked by one of Lincoln’s two computer and internet safety programs, K7 Endpoint Security and ContentKeeper. These websites included LGBT rights organizations GLSEN, GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, and Freedomtomarry, as well as women’s rights and health care organization, Planned Parenthood. The organizations behind these sites are not malicious, and do not contain adult oriented content. Granted, issues such as safe sex, abortion, and the LGBT community may be seen by some as adult, but, in reality, teens face these issues every day. According to The Daily Beast, 7% of the generation known as ‘millennials’ identify as LGBT. And according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 273,105 babies were born to teenage girls in 2013.

    When first approached about the issue, principal, Kevin McNamara was unaware that these domains were blocked. Right from the start, he had no problem with making them available to the school due to their academic and educational purposes. When approached again after contacting district IT Specialist, Mark Gadbois, and district technician, Kenneth Lachance, he promised that he would ensure the availability of those sites to the students of LHS.

    While it’s great that LHS is going to be making the change to allow students access to these sites, the question now is why they were blocked in the first place. Lachance was able to provide information about what specific categories of content LHS blocks. LHS uses two computer security and filtering systems, K7 Endpoint Security and ContentKeeper, and their names are probably all too familiar to students trying to access gaming or Facebook on a school computer. “We don’t use any keywords to block,” says Lachance, “most filters, regardless of who the manufacturer is, come with a generic set of categories - mature content, adult content, violence, these are general categories.” He also said, “an individual web filter appliance decides which website belongs to that particular category is beyond us,” and is decided on the filter’s end.                

    Lincoln’s tech department will chose “generic categories” to block, including pornography, hate/intolerance pages, dating sites, and sex education sites. But beyond that, “We’re hoping that the filter appliance will now recognize inappropriate site[s]...we’re not filtering individual websites, we’re relying on the web filter to categorize things for us and we’ll block that category,” Lachance states. The tech department does, however, have the power to block or allow access to individual domains, such as google.com. They can block a site that they know will be of absolutely no use to any student in the entire district. “We’re not using keyword strikes,” he says, “although, [it’s] not necessarily a web filter in the sense but Google’s Safe Search does trigger keywords.” Safe Search can block individual sites based on keywords that trigger the system.

    Some of these sites, however, were not blocked by Safe Search, K7, or ContentKeeper. When plannedparenthood.org came up, it was reportedly ‘blocked by the administrator.’ According to Lachance, when the user is notified that the page was blocked by the administrator, “it means that we have specifically blocked something on that domain.” For example, sites.google.com is used by many people, including teachers, for legitimate purposes that could benefit students. But there are people who use that site for other purposes, such as games. Because the web filters only see ‘sites.google.com,’ there’s no way that they can accurately block everything that needs to be blocked on that site. But, if the tech department gets a direction from an administrator to block a certain website, they will. “Usually, in every school building in Lincoln, anyway, the principal has the final authority,” Lachance says, “If the principal decides that that web page is...innocent enough or required for research purposes, we’ll open it up.” Essentially, it’s really not up to the tech department as to what is blocked on the school’s internet connection-it’s the administration. It’s highly unlikely that the school is intentionally trying to block LGBT-related content. For the sites that say ‘blocked by administrator,’ it perhaps just could have been that it was a specific request by someone else made to the administrator and they allowed it to be blocked. For the other ones, however, if neither the tech department nor the administration is directly blocking these sites, then who is?

    LGBT rights organizations websites and Planned Parenthood aren’t the only sites with educational value that have been blocked on the filters at here. One LHS teacher was having a class research Buddhism for a project, only to have their students find that several of Google’s top results on the subject were blocked because it was viewed as a ‘cult.’ LHS students have also noticed that articles about LGBT history and bullying are blocked on the filters as well. The school itself is not directly blocking the vast majority of these sites. It must be something in the web filters that view Buddhism, a legitimate religion with a rich history, as a cult. It must be something in the filter that is blocking content related to the plights and rights of the LGBT community as adult content, when in reality it is something that many children and young adults deal with and are treated unfairly because of it on a daily basis. While Lincoln is taking the necessary actions to make these sites available to their students, perhaps they should take a closer look at the filter that blocked them in the first place.