Dodging the internet nannies

Burger King' s recent blunder - giving away a promotional CD-Rom with children' s meals which contained 2,000 web porn addresses - has re-ignited fears about children's safety in cyberspace. Ironically, the porn-site list was part of an internet-filtering program, Net Nanny, included on the free disc.

But, while the debate rumbles on about how effectively such products can keep increasingly tech-savvy children away from the net's dark side - around four million young people aged seven to 16 now use the net in the UK according to NOP, and a third of parents are thought to use filtering software - one young man in America is on a mission to render the filters completely useless. What's more, he insists it's his moral duty to do so.

Bennett Hasleton, 21, has been successfully cracking net filters since he was 17. His website - we won't reveal the name or address here for obvious reasons - offers instructions on how to disable blocking software. The US-based site encourages under-18s to sidestep censorware like Net Nanny.

Over the past few years Hasleton has produced programs to foil most of the main net filters. His code either reveals the complete blacklist of blocked sites, cracks the password to that list, or both.

"It's actually not as easy as people think," admits the mathematics graduate and freelance programmer. "To discover the methods for getting around the software - which is what I'm doing - takes a little work.

"But if you have access to our website, then it's trivial to get around the software by following someone else's instructions. Soon we'll probably even have a program that you can just pop into a computer on a floppy disk and use it to disable any known censor-ware program."

Not surprisingly, Hasleton's site has been blocked by most of the main net filters. But, he insists, teenagers can still reach it - he claims it gets a thousand new visitors a day. Some might see him as a kind of terrifying 21st century Pied Piper figure, but Hasleton has won support from freedom of speech groups including the American Civil Liberties Union. His anti-censorware cause has been picked up by Time magazine which even claimed its own web-site was blocked by the net filtering program Cyber Sitter, after one of the magazine's articles criticised it for censoring a women's organisation and newsgroups discussing gay politics.

Civil liberties groups say web filters routinely censor sites for reasons which have nothing to do with children's welfare.

Mainstream religious or environmental sites have found themselves lumped in with hardcore porn and terrorist sites. The groups say that, with the notable exception of Net Nanny, net filter programs keep these secret black-lists encrypted; hidden even from parents installing the software.

Hasleton isn't working alone either. Toy firm Mattel, until recently the company behind another web filter, Cyber Patrol, launched a legal campaign against two programmers who cracked their code. The company used an injunction to force websites to remove the program. The case returns to court next month.

But do anti-censorship activists, such as Hasleton, believe all material on the net, however disturbing, should be available to everyone, regardless of age?

"I think some content can be harmful to some people, but age is not the most important factor," Hasleton argues. "For example, if I had a friend who was chronically depressed, I would go out of my way to try to stop them from reading something I thought might depress them further and put them at risk of suicide. But, in a situation like that, I think age is not relevant. I would be doing my friend a huge disservice if I said to myself, 'Well, since he's under 18, it's OK for me to censor this book from him, but once he's over 18 I can't interfere any more because that would be a violation of his rights'."

The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is working on an EU-backed alternative to net filters. A voluntary self-labelling scheme, it requires content providers to rate their subject matter and is incorporated into the latest Internet Explorer browsers. An improved version will be launched later this year.

But as ICRA executive director Stephen Balkam admits, the system isn't perfect. It seems the only way to know for sure where your kids are surfing is to watch over their shoulder.

Websites: Cyber Patrol: www.cyberpatrol.co.uk; Cyber Sitter: www.cybersitter.com; Net Nanny: www.netnanny.co.uk; ICRA: www.icra.org.