Saratoga News

The Library's open policy is protecting the perverts

Last week, K.I.D.S.--Keep Internet Decent & Safe--staged demonstrations at libraries throughout the county, including the Saratoga Community Library. K.I.D.S. proposes that libraries in the county library system install filters, which the group argues would keep children from accessing inappropriate material while using the Internet in county libraries. The Saratoga News invited head librarian Dolly Barnes and Saratoga resident Teri Jones, a member of K.I.D.S., to present their views on the subject. --Editor

By Teri Jones

How social decay has spread--parents worry about kids being safe in the library. Flashers in the bushes, strangers luring kids with candy and "Peeping Toms" in bedroom windows are old-fashioned nightmares. Now cyberperverts "chat" with our kids on the library Internet when you thought they were safe doing homework.

The library's privacy policy doesn't let parents know what materials your kids are accessing. You'll find out only if a "materials overdue" bill arrives. You'll never know what your kids have seen on the library's Internet unless you watch it with them--hard to do when you work nine to five to feed them. Is Mary or Johnny "chatting" with a sexual predator? Urged to meet their "friend" in person? Your tax dollars at work creating unintended tragic consequences.

Sexual predators know kids are easier targets than adults. They're savvy enough to know using a trench coat to flash kids in library bathrooms guarantees jail. Using electronic trench coats to flash kids in the library cyberspace guarantees access.

The library's policy of not policing what content kids see in cyberspace protects the predators, not the kids. Nothing is too graphic, too violent, too depraved, too racist, too anything to be kept from children if it's on the library computer. Anonymous, inexpensive, easy-to-design Web pages promote racial hatred, gang violence, criminal how-to's, designer drug highs, hard-core sex and violence, all child-accessible.

The Saratoga Community Library policy recommends "parents supervise children" but gives unsupervised children unrestricted access to the Internet's explicit sex and violence. Society wisely keeps many things from children and underage minors for the common good, including guns, cars, cigarettes, alcohol, and hard-core pornography. Libraries would never allow unsupervised children unlimited access to "free" (tax-funded) guns, cars, cigarettes or alcohol, so why give them unlimited access to hard-core porn?

Illegal X-rated porn they can't get at theaters or bookstores? Other public libraries have installed lockout programs on children's Internet terminals that block explicit sex and violence. They make sure only adults use the "adults only" unlimited Internet.

Libraries that refuse to have policies blocking children's access to explicit sex and violence are sending the wrong message to impressionable kids. They're undermining parents in addition to not protecting kids. Parents and librarians should be saying together that explicit sex and violence aren't for kids. Sex and violence must have limits. Otherwise, libraries are telling kids sex and violence have no limits. "It's free--do it."

Unfortunately the Saratoga Library chooses not to install anti-porn blocking programs since they aren't perfect (no computer program is 100 per cent perfect), arguing they're of no use at all, even more dangerous than unlimited access. This illogic holds its safer to let kids tightrope-walk with no safety net than to use the best net available, as there might be a hole in it somewhere.

As for parental supervision, even the most conscientious parent can't be with their teenagers all of the time. Teenagers are too old for day care and can't be followed by their parents everywhere, or watched every minute of the day and night like babies. Parents have to work to earn the taxes that fund the library. Please help parents protect kids by installing anti-porn lockout programs on any Internet terminal kids use unsupervised.

To encourage the Saratoga Library to install child-protective anti-porn Internet programs, please write Mrs. Fuller, County Librarian, 1095 N. 7th St., San Jose, 95112. Tax-funded libraries should protect all children from explicit sex and violence--not provide it. Library policy should protect our kids, not sexual predators.

Teri Jones is a Saratoga resident who participated in last week's protest march outside the library.

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]