Re: FC: ADL and CyberPatrol On Wed, 17 Dec 1997 at 00:04:33 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
From: "David Smith" <bladex@bga.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 21:25:23 +0000 Subject: Cyber Patrol to Block Hate Speech
Cyber Patrol to block hate speech http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,17431,00.html?dtn.head
Summary -- Cyber Patrol has teamed up with the Anti- Defamation League to offer a "special version" of sites reviewed by the ADL.
Here's the weirdest thing about the story --- if you access a site on their "hate list" you don't get a block, but rather you get redirected to the ADL website.
... Blocking access isn't enough -- you will now be told what to read and what to think about prejudice, bigotry, and race relations.
I don't have anything for or against the ADL -- just that history dictates that this power will be used and abused to stifle thought and free expression.
Much as I agree in principle with counteracting mindless prejudice such as that directed against Jews, and despite the fact that I grew up among Jews and studied with my best friend in grade school when he took his religious lessons, the ADL has zero credibility with me for a very good reason: I had a role in an organization that, while it was populated with a good many bible-thumping Christians, took great care not to encourage, promote or give a platform to voices of unreason. The nature of the organization was political and in no way dealt with religious issues or issues which would find people dividing along any religious or ethnic line. Nonetheless, I was stunned one day to read mention of our organization characterized as "anti-semitic" by the ADL in a national publication. To have provided such erroneous information to the author of the article the ADL either had to have been grossly negligent in its gathering and analysis of facts or had to be pursuing other agenda in using the clout of its pronouncements. I rather think it may have been the latter (the organization was Constitutional and anti-income tax, while the ADL probably harbors more than its share of socialists who bristle at any challenge to the taxing authority of the state). My qualification to judge the ADL's deficiency in this matter was absolute. I had personally written and/or reviewed every piece of literature the organization had published, including newsletters, from its inception. There was no propagation of policy or position with which I was not personally acquainted, and nowhere had the organization ever published anything that could even vaguely be interpreted as anti-semitic. So I regard the ADL with extreme suspicion, not on the vaporous basis of pre-judgement or hearsay but on the solid basis of having been visited with unwarranted and groundless personal damage at their hands, not unlike the small club of people who know the treachery of Sixty Minutes for what it is by personal experience. The ADL does its proclaimed purpose a radical disservice by verging sharply from the straight and narrow that is mandatory in any holier-than-thou endeavor. I would lay down my life for any of a number of my Jewish friends, but I wouldn't give the ADL the time of day even if the Apocalypse were upon us. VeracityMongerII