Bennet sends out this story pasted below in increments below about a school board not allowing Al Gores “An Inconvenient Truth” to be shown because of a single complaint from the Creationist thrust. This has made me think of the twelve years I have known Bennet, not personally but through intermittent correspondence and a limited exchange. Bennet probably doesn’t know how much he has contributed to our project so I am writing this to tell him now.

Bennet is a founder of Peacefire an early investigative and advocative force describing the nature of the “evils ” of Internet Filtering and trying to find work rounds for their fellow teenagers who could be viewed as intellectual prisoners behind a filter based on their parents likely primitive beliefs. This is my description not theirs.

Bennet and several others worked against filtering by exposing the blunt brutal nature of keyword filtering and it’s relationship to over blocking.
Filtering at that time (1995) was largely marketed as “child protection from the “evils of pornography”. However, it was self evident to anyone who was involved in either producing a filter or advocating against the use of filters that they represented a tool in which institutions could exert access control upon those who were dependent upon them. This is true if the institution is a family, a workplace, or a government. This is true if the motivation and intent is benevolent For example filters can be used to protect from “social taboos” such as pornography as well as melevolent downloads and legal consequences in the work place. However, filters are a technology and the use of a technology is only as good as the intent of the human implementing it. Filters can be used to censor, spy by logging and e-mailing logs forward. Our next feature for the Mac will implement the camera to take a photo of the user when ever there is an access violation. Either way.
Filters are about controlling and being controlled. As such they have a political side.

Bennet first contacted in 1995 when he was probably around sixteen years old. He wanted to ask me if I knew that a particular client of ours in Southern California who had re branded our Internet filter engine and was successfully marketing it and had implemented his own blocking criteria with a vengeful hateful agenda. In short why was I supplying this evil Bastard. Also did I know that his agenda also included blocking us. Our own filter engine was being deployed to block our own business.

Ironic.

He also informed of the existence of Peacefire and was a polite well written letter with a touch of finger wagging at me.

I’m constructing this from memory because the 486 running on Window 3.1 eventually exploded taking all the data of that time with it. It was 1995 before Win 95 had arrived.

I recall taking time out to respond with a thoughtful letter. I knew of all these things except for the fact that we were blocked by the filter. My latitude would have been clients can do anything they want with our product.
We do not determine their usage we are just suppliers. Sort of the latitude you would take if you manufactured bullets. They can only be fired out of guns but we have no idea if they are fired at targets, fired by cops or fired by robbers.

And then I finished it with a very stupid patronizing remark. Something about he was coming close to throwing rocks and “you don’t want a rock fight do you?”

Well, yes he did. And so he should. And so he did.

To this day he is dedicated to providing a way of circumnavigating filters for youth to escape the barricade of the institutions they may be trapped in.

Bennet writes:

œAs of this day the new circumnavigations site is here:

New CV site at: http://www.PresidentCowboy.com/ - And if you want to set up your own site on your computer you will find the instructions here:

http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circumventor-instructions.html

Bennet writes in his mail out today:

“By the way, I usually don’t send out just random news items about censorship, but have you guys heard about the schools in Federal Way, Washington, that have stopped showing “An Inconvenient Truth”, the documentary about global warming, because a parent complained:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/299253_inconvenient11.html

Explaining why he wanted the movie banned from being shown in school, Frosty — yes, the parent who led the charge to ban a documentary about global warming is named “Frosty” — said, “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.” He also said he opposes teaching of evolution and believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. So in response, the school board in Kansas — I mean, Federal Way — told schools not to show the movie

This is a filtering Issue. Not the filter in the computer but the filter behind the eyes. Bennet is as horrified by this as he was in his early and work against filters. Why not ? It is fundamentally the same control issue.

Bennet adds

“If you’re a student, I hope in some small way the Circumventors help to keep you from going crazy, which I’m sure is what I would be doing if I were still in school here.”

This is why I like Bennets work so much. Evan though others might see me as a filter producer supplying “evil bastards” I “ought” to come out on the other side of the fence. I don’t. I see both sides. In my intermittent correspondence I advised Bennet to look into Religiosity for some of the comments he made about being puzzled by events.

In North America everything is becoming politicized. Any subject discussed will usually start out with a couple reasoned arguments then into “left wing wing nuts” and “right wing assholes”and then further degenerate into Godwins law. The article Bennet alludes to when I looked had 539 comments.

The class where evolution and creationism belong in the same room is 

“the philosophy of myth or the philosophy of belief” Ina this class the history, philosophy , literature, cultural environments and methodologies of each are explored. That might be a very good class. If your position is laughable then everyone can have a good laugh. The problem here is to dilute ignorance and closed minds.

Bennet expresses this concern:

“Two years ago The Onion published a joke article, “Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory”:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

These days the joke writers must be wondering how long they’ve got before they get put out of business by real people.”

I’m sure Leno and Letterman hated the thought of Clinton leaving. The dress in the fridge. The Cuban cigars. How could you top this ?

Enter George Bush. He is such a topper he put Comedy Central “over the top.”

Likely the next guy well be a great source as well. That is human nature in contemporary North America.

To wrap this up I have to say that œvirtually knowing of Bennet has helped my thinking.
I instantly regretted my stupid rock fight comment and looked further into his point of view. Young people have always had an impact on my thinking. Jeff Koftinoff, my business partner was nineteen when I met him. I was forty five. He was” given” to me by Roland Music Canada” for a digital music project I was working on . We were creating two rock bands of severely disabled quadra poligics. Two of them were on ventilators in the same condition as Superman.. Knowing Jeff opened lead to a business relationship and new ways of thinking that changed my life. Not only with his obvious gift of technological brilliance but his world view and values of the generation twenty five years behind. At that time Bennet would have been about eleven years old.

Back to filtering. The school board that shut down the Gore movie on the basis of an argument put forward by the authority of the holy bible is such a disservice to their children that I consider to be as equally destructive as physical or sexual child abuse. The damage is going to be as long term and problematic as the child becomes an adult. The perp walks free.

This is so clear that when Bennet started his circumnavigator we built and hosted one on our server. This likely puzzled a lot of Bennets colleges and I never explained it much. Jeff just did it. Then we moved on. We’ve got quite a bit to do here. As I recommend that issues become œphilosophized rather than œpoliticized it seemed imperative to support his efforts “ quietly.

And because we’ve got quite a bit to do here I’ll wrap up for now. Think of this as Bennet part One.

One day I was having lunch with Gordon Ross the founder of Net Nanny whom Bennet has debated several years ago. Gordon wanted us to produce a Mac version for them. I wasn’t that interested in the terms he was offering. He was very concerned about the damaging influence of pornography on children and at the end of the lunch he made an emotional appeal. He actually teared up and said. “Bob, what about the children?”

Indeed Gordon what about the children.

As the saying goes Bennet. “Thanks for your service.”