A Connecticut high school student discovered that his school’s web filters block access to conservative, libertarian and pro-gun web sites but will allow students to view sites supporting gun control, abortion and the Democratic Party.
Nonnewaug High School’s SonicWALL Internet filters restrict access to web sites for the National Association for Gun Rights, the Connecticut GOP, RedState and even Townhall.
On the other hand, students are free to access the home pages of Moms Demand Action, Planned Parenthood, the Connecticut Democrat Party and the official site of Hillary Clinton.
“I used my study hall to research gun control facts and statistics. That is when I noticed that most of the pro-Second Amendment websites were blocked, while the sites that were in favor of gun control generally were not,” Andrew Lampart told Campus Reform.
He accused the school’s administrators of political censorship.
“The school is trying to shelter students from real world issues,” he said, adding that none of the administrators did anything a week after he told them about the situation. “They are attempting to influence the way students think.”
SonicWALL can be used by schools and other institutions to deny access to specific domains and domains with certain keywords, according to the software’s tutorial.
Overall, political censorship through web filtering software is becoming more and more common.
Just this morning we reported on how Internet filtering software by Blue Coat Systems miscategorized Infowars.com as a “Violence/Hate/Racism” site, denying access to thousands of users to not only the content of Infowars.com but also the free audio streams of the Alex Jones Show.
Blue Coat described their Violence/Hate/Racism category as sites that advocate “extreme physical harm to people, animals or property” and sites that display hostility towards groups “on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, or other involuntary characteristics,” making it clearly obvious that Infowars.com does not belong in that category whatsoever.
SonicWALL likewise miscategorized Infowars.com as a pornography site back in 2011 and it took three years for the software company to remove the fraudulent label and restore access to the site.
Other alternative media sites have also been targeted, such as World Net Daily in 2007 when American Airlines’ Admirals Club blocked the site as “hate speech” and the Drudge Report, which the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works erroneously claimed was spreading computer viruses.
The establishment and its supporters are not happy that alternative news outlets and other pro-liberty web sites are exploding in popularity on the Internet, eclipsing the government-manipulated mainstream media in terms of influence and reach, so now they’re trying to simply censor the world wide web and turn it into a tightly controlled medium no different than cable television.
And this incident also highlights how government-run education is being used to indoctrinate students into supporting a larger government while also keeping them in the dark about their birth rights.
“When government usurps a parent’s right to control their child’s education, it is inevitable that the child will be taught the values of government officials, rather than of the parents,” former Congressman Dr. Ron Paul wrote. “The result is an education system with a built-in bias toward statism.”
“Over time, government-controlled education can erode the people’s knowledge of, and appreciation for, the benefits of a free society.”
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