The ADL: More about the “monitors” (February 2000)

” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai Brith, USA Merchants of Hatred February 2-8, 2000 URL: http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2000-02-02/feature.html Spy vs Spite The Clinton administration has praised the Anti-Defamation League for helping shield kids from Internet hate. But should a group that spied on thousands of Californians be allowed to police the Web? By Matt Isaacs THE first snow of the season is falling on New York in big fluffy flakes, making the city look new again.

The offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, located in U.N. Plaza, are stuffy, the windows steamed. Everyone appears a bit disheveled; rumpled clothes and flattened hat hair seem to be in vogue. Jordan Kessler , a handsome young man with a beard, sits at a computer terminal, talking about how he compiles his list.

Kessler is personally responsible for the ADL’s HateFilter, a software program that blocks access to Web sites that, the ADL contends, contain bigoted or hateful speech. This 25-year-old Columbia grad has accepted the enormous task of seeking out and cataloging inflammatory language among the roughly 800 million Web pages available to the public. He has help, of course.

The ADL, a group dedicated to securing “justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike,” has 30 offices around the country tracking extremists of every different shade, and each office has Kessler’s direct line. Kessler assembles a list of all the groups his organization deems dangerous; it’s a list that must be constantly updated because, he says, hatemongers have a tendency to mutate.

To be deemed objectionable by the ADL, a site must be cleared by a committee of the organization’s managers before it makes Kessler’s list. He won’t say how many people are on the committee, or reveal the names of the organizations he has labeled as dangerous. Some of the groups he watches, Kessler says, also watch him. Some revel, just because their sites have been chosen by the ADL, he says. It’s like making the big time.

The Web designers for the white supremacist site World Church of the Creator, for example, actually promote their work with a quote taken out of context from a Kessler report in which he grudgingly complimented the graphics for that site. “If their Web site gets blocked by the ADL, in their eyes they’ve made it,” he says. “They think we are all-powerful, in control of the government and everything that stands in their way.” Kessler’s screen displays a number of yellow file folders.

One folder is titled “Gays,” presumably a file on gay-bashers. Another is titled “Arabs,” presumably a list of anti-Arab groups. He says he takes great care in reviewing a site before he brings it to the committee. Many sites may be offensive, he says, featuring anti-Semitic jokes or caricatures, but they won’t make the list of those to be blocked by the ADL’s HateFilter.

On the other hand, he says, some sites might be recommended for the list based on what the ADL knows about the organization rather than the content of the site. His organization has been monitoring hate groups for more than 85 years, he says, bringing an expertise that stretches far beyond HTML or Java codes. The ADL has been fighting anti-Semitism, in its own way, since 1913.

The organization was founded by Sigmund Livingston , a Chicago attorney, hoping to fight the overt presence of anti-Semitism in American society following the turn of the century. Livingston began with two desks, $200, and the sponsorship of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith, meaning “Children of the Covenant.” Since then the organization has grown into a national nonprofit organization that took in $46 million in revenues in 1998 and employs 200 people in its New York headquarters alone.

In the 1960s the ADL fought stridently for the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More recently it pioneered efforts to create a model for “hate crime” laws. It is an organization with a unique mission, given that its existence is largely based on the continuance of racism and bigotry. If anti-Semitism had disappeared from the face of the Earth during the 20th century, the ADL might have withered away, too.

But even five decades beyond the fall of Nazi Germany, the world continues to be a prejudiced place, and the organization still regularly denounces anti-Semitic statements made in print, over the airwaves, and, more recently, over the Internet. The Web is a new frontier, presenting the ADL with fresh challenges and opportunities for growth.

The medium has given every electronic pamphleteer the reach of a worldwide television broadcasting network, making it easy for anyone with a computer to spread his message, racist or otherwise. Because the Web is essentially unregulated, the ADL believes cyberspace is “a dangerous place for children,” according to the organization’s literature. “There are no parents or teachers standing by to guide and advise a child who has come upon a site that promotes hate.

Without that guidance, there is a real chance children will simply accept what they read as fact.” In response to this supposed threat to young minds, the ADL has stepped up its own efforts to combat intolerance by introducing the HateFilter, which runs on Mattel’s CyberPatrol, a software package that blocks a wide gamut of material on the Internet.

Consumers who purchase the HateFilter receive all of CyberPatrol’s features, including categories other than hate speech, among them graphic violence and pornography. But CyberPatrol purchased on its own does not include the HateFilter, because Mattel has its own version of what it considers hate speech, and does not market the filter, nor does it necessarily approve of what the ADL’s HateFilter blocks, company officials say.

So far, the ADL HateFilter has been marketed as a service to be used in the home. But that may soon change.

CyberPatrol is already in 15,000 private and public libraries, schools, and universities, and the ADL has not ruled out broadening the distribution of HateFilter software to public institutions. “Right now, the HateFilter is not meant to be used by the government, but over the next few months we will be discussing whether we will advocate for its use in schools and libraries,” says Sue Stengel , an ADL attorney.

It appears, however, that the organization, which wields tremendous clout in Washington, has already begun to advocate — at the highest levels. The ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman , met with President Clinton at least twice last year, once following the Littleton shooting in May, and again in the wake of an attack on a Jewish community center in Granada Hills in August.

After the latter meeting, Malcolm Hoenlein, a top official in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, told reporters that Clinton had agreed to take the lead in persuading Americans to install a “hate filter” on their computers.

In October, Clinton again met with the ADL, and began his speech with a tribute to the organization’s new software. “Thank you for your pioneering work to filter out hate on the Internet — which, lamentably, was part of the poison that led to the tragedy at Columbine High School,” Clinton said.

More recently, Elizabeth Coleman , the ADL’s director of civil rights, was asked to participate in a panel discussion concerning a “family friendly” Internet at a conference for the National Association of Attorneys General a few weeks ago — a conference where Attorney General Janet Reno gave the keynote address. Coleman demonstrated the filter for all the law enforcement officials in attendance.

She said over lunch that the organization had also shown the filter to Vice President Al Gore , who “loved it.” If made explicit, White House support for the ADL filter could have a significant impact on the policy decisions of public schools and libraries across the country. Although decisions regarding school and library Internet filters are currently made at the local level, a bill before Congress spearheaded by Sen.

John McCain , called the Children’s Internet Protection Act, would require all schools and libraries receiving federal funds to install Internet filters on computers accessible to children. If the bill wins approval, even a mention by the White House, combined with the ADL’s strong regional lobbying, could go a long way toward encouraging local jurisdictions to choose the HateFilter from the filtering software on the market.

But if Clinton likes and Gore loves the HateFilter (at least in the ADL’s eyes), many are aghast at the thought of the ADL having any say over what children may or may not see.

These critics, whose political and religious affiliations vary widely, repeatedly describe the ADL as a self-appointed agent of Israel that cloaks itself in the rhetoric of fighting hate, while actively attempting to silence those who are not hatemongers, but mere opponents of Israeli government policy. “The Number 1 goal of the ADL is the protection of Israel,” says Pete McCloskey , a former Republican congressman from San Mateo who regularly criticized Israel’s policies.

“Any group whose sole purpose is to protect a foreign nation should not have anything to say about what’s said or written here in America.” On a number of occasions since the 1970s, the ADL has been caught distributing lists of its enemies, replete with detailed descriptions of “black demagogues” and “pro-Arab propagandists,” including poet Amiri Baraka in the list of demagogues, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky under the propagandist label.

Then, in 1993, a longtime ADL investigator admitted to working with a member of the San Francisco Police Department to illegally gather information on almost 10,000 people, including members of socialist, labor, and anti-apartheid groups.

Some of the targets of that information-gathering effort have gone to court in an attempt to gain access to their dossiers, currently in possession of the ADL, but the ADL has refused to release the files, claiming that its investigator was an “investigative journalist” whose unpublished reporting materials are protected against disclosure by the California shield law, which was originally adopted to help journalists keep confidential sources who reveal important public wrongdoing confidential.

Thus the ADL finds itself in a sticky position: While it advocates for a software product that limits access to the Internet’s open exchange of ideas, the Anti-Defamation League is also hiding behind a law put in place to encourage people to speak freely. The ADL recently added one episode to a videotape it uses in workshops that are meant to promote cultural understanding in schools. The vignette shows a boy, about 15 years old, surfing the Web in his school library.

He comes across a page called the Zundelsite, with the headline “Did Six Million Really Die?” “Hey guys, come here,” the kid says to his friends. “Check this out. It says here the Holocaust was a bunch of bull. Like it never really happened like the Jews say it did.” Two blond students lean over his shoulder, as a dark-haired student listens to the conversation in the background. “Wow, big surprise.

I hear they always lie,” one boy says. “I guess they just want us to feel sorry for ’em,” says a girl, as they look at a page titled “Holocaust Myth 101.” “Well. They can lie all they want,” says the boy who found the page. “Looks like we dug up the truth.” At this point, the instructor leading the workshop is supposed to stop the video and begin a discussion, using questions from an accompanying guide.

On the whole, the questions are predictable classroom fare: “What happened?,” “Has anyone ever experienced a similar situation?,” and so on. But one question stands out: “Should the school have some kind of policy regarding what students can access on the Internet?” In fact, many public secondary schools have Internet policies for minors, as do almost all public libraries.

And both types of institutions are leaning toward the use of filtering software to limit what children can access on the Web. The San Francisco Unified School District, for example, employs a systemwide filter to block access to a variety of material, including “intolerance.” School officials would not identify the name of the filter. The policy discussions regarding the protection of minors on the Internet thus far have dealt almost exclusively with pornography.

In the heated debate over First Amendment freedoms on the Web, smut has taken center stage because it has already been addressed and narrowly defined. The Supreme Court has ruled that “obscene” speech, meaning material appealing to a prurient or unhealthy interest in sex and lacking serious artistic, scientific, literary, or political value, can be regulated by the government. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the definition of “obscene” can take the age of the audience into account.

Thus, for adults, pornographic films are, by and large, protected by the First Amendment. But the government may prohibit the sale of these films to minors by labeling the material “indecent,” a much broader, generally ill-defined category. In 1996, Congress tried to apply the court’s broad definition of “indecent” in its passage of the Communications Decency Act, a law prohibiting the transmission of “indecent” material over the Internet.

But in 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the law in Reno vs. ACLU, declaring that communications on the Internet cannot be limited to what is suitable for children. The landmark ruling prevents a library from installing porn filters on terminals intended for adult use. But it still allows schools or libraries to restrict a minor’s access to smut. A school or library may also limit children’s access to hate speech, but for a different reason.

Ordinarily, in a public forum, anything outside the narrow definition of “obscene” is protected by the First Amendment. But schools and libraries are not the same as the town square (or the Internet), where people can spout hateful rhetoric to their heart’s desire. A library has only so much shelf space; thus a professional librarian has the right to choose which materials to include in a collection, and which to leave out.

The same goes for schools, which have the right to set their own curriculums and base the selection of library books on those curriculums. “That’s why if you were to go to your local library in search of books on the Holocaust, you would probably find many,” says Frederick Schauer , a First Amendment professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. “But it’s not likely you’ll find any books that say the Holocaust didn’t happen.

And I think most people would agree that’s appropriate.” Schauer says he believes the debate over allowing speech filters for minors into the public forum is only just beginning. Would it be possible for the ADL HateFilter to find a place in public libraries and schools? Yes, he says, although it would be challenged in court, and would probably be more likely to be allowed in secondary schools than in public libraries that serve all ages.

Some First Amendment lawyers find it curious that the ADL would even be getting into the business of speech filters. The Anti-Defamation League, after all, considers itself a civil rights organization. Judging from literature promoting the HateFilter software, it’s clear the ADL is thinking about the apparent conflict between the civil right of free speech, and the limitation of speech inherent to Internet filtering software.

Almost every page of HateFilter literature mentions the First Amendment, and explains that the ADL does not seek to censor or limit speech on the Internet. The HateFilter does not remove sites or censor their content, says ADL Director Elizabeth Coleman; it only blocks these sites from coming into the home at the parents’ discretion. Parents have good reason for wanting to keep these sites off their computers, Coleman says. Many extremist sites cater to children, she says.

For example, the World Church of the Creator site has a special link for kids. Other sites, she says, are highly polished, presenting themselves as mainstream academic thought. This misinformation, she says, can lead to the kind of violence that has made headlines in recent years. Last August, for example, three teenagers firebombed a judge’s house in San Jose, believing he was Jewish. (He was actually Catholic.)

Investigators say two of the kids had used computers at school to access white supremacist Web sites. Also, Matthew and James Williams , brothers suspected of murdering a gay couple in Redding and setting fire to three synagogues in Sacramento, were reported to have been led astray by radical right philosophies ferried on the Internet. (Although at 31 and 29 years of age, the brothers would not have been constrained by an Internet filter aimed at minors.)

Coleman says the best part of the HateFilter is that it doesn’t just block sites, it also routes Internet surfers