A Wi-Fi censorship story with a happy ending -- more or less

Note the "free WI FI" promise right there on the window.

by Ken

This is a good-news, bad-news -- or perhaps glass-half-full, glass-half-empty -- story about open Internet access. No, we're not talking about the recent DC Circuit Court of Appeals overturning the FCC's none-too-vigorous attempt at mandating "Net neutrality," or equal access for all content providers, opening the way for ISPs to offer higher speed for higher pay, very likely putting pressure on poorer providers. No, we're talking about a perennial access problem, especially with Net access in public places: site-blocking by service providers.

The good news is that Tuesday, after a DNAinfo New York report, "Au Bon Pain Blocks Gay and Abortion Sites on Wi-Fi Network," the popular café-bakery chain moved quickly into action.

Rosa Goldensohn noted in her report:

Attempts to use the WiFi on Monday to search the Internet for GLAAD.com, the official website of a well-known gay and lesbian rights organization, were met with an error message that read: "This website is not allowed. This website is categorized as Sexual Orientation and is blocked as part of this network's web content filtering policy."

The same thing happened when a reporter tried to log into websites run by groups from both sides of the abortion debate.

Au Bon Pain's filtering software shut down the website ProLife.com with the message, "This website is categorized as Abortion and is blocked."

Attempts to search for the reproductive rights website sherights.com were also blocked, but the error message was different -- it was blocked as "pornography," according to the filter.

"We write about sexuality and sexual education and breastfeeding. That's the only thing I can come up with," said sherights.com editor and founder Maureen Shaw, who said she was alerted to the issue on Monday.

But by Tuesday morning, as Goldensohn reported, Au Bon Pain had addressed the matter on Twitter:

"We want our cafes to be welcoming places for everyone & will do all we can to make sure every cafe holds up that standard."

"We're not perfect, but will do our best to limit filtering as much as we can," the eatery wrote on their official Twitter account. "We take this very seriously and want to remedy it best we can."

And by Tuesday night Goldensohn was able to report in a subsequent piece that filters that were discovered to have been in place had been removed, and by Wednesday, she noted in an update, many of the previously blocked sites were accessible at six Au Bon Pain locations in Manhattan.

The bad news: Au Bon Pain claims the filters were applied by its Wi-Fi provider ("We're just the innocent bystanders"), but Symantec, the provider, "said it does not control which websites are blocked at Au Bon Pain, beyond giving the company the option to block pornography and attempts to share files."

Au Bon Pain Blames Wi-Fi Security Company for Blocking Gay, Abortion Sites

By Rosa Goldensohn on January 15, 2014 6:04pm | Updated on January 16, 2014 7:10am

MANHATTAN -- Au Bon Pain officials blamed a Wi-Fi security company for blocking customers from viewing gay advocacy and family planning websites in their cafés, calling themselves "innocent bystanders."

The chain removed the filters Tuesday night after a DNAinfo New York report.

The company said Internet security giant Symantec unilaterally instituted the restrictions, which excluded sites categorized as "Abortion" or "Sexual Orientation."

"We're just the innocent bystanders," said an Au Bon Pain spokesperson. "Symantec changed its parameters and didn't communicate it to their customers." The company later apologized on Tumblr.

But Symantec said it does not control which websites are blocked at Au Bon Pain, beyond giving the company the option to block pornography and attempts to share files.

"We don't have the visibility to see what filters were or weren't in place," a spokeswoman wrote in an email Thursday night, adding that she believed the café chain worked with its Wi-Fi provider to create filters.

Wi-Fi users attempting to log on to the websites of the gay rights organization GLAAD, the anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee and the reproductive rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America were met with messages saying the pages were "not allowed," DNAinfo uncovered Tuesday.

A survey of six Au Bon Pain locations in Manhattan Wednesday showed that those sites are now accessible, although the homepage for Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays, known as PFLAG, remained blocked.

Joshua Block, an attorney with the "Don't Filter Me" campaign at the American Civil Liberties Union, said such blocks are part of common "family-friendly" Web filter settings.

"When people first hear about the issue, they think this is just an over-sensitive filter that just around the edges sometimes sweeps up non-sexual material," Block said. "These categories by definition are established to identify LGBT-related sites that do not otherwise qualify as pornography."

Block called Web security companies "the gatekeepers."

"It's bad enough that a company has a list of these as potential categories. It's even worse to be providing guidance that steers them toward blocking," he said. "Ultimately, the change that really works is to eliminate the categories."

Maureen Shaw, of the formerly blocked site sherights.com, was impressed with Au Bon Pain's reaction. "This never should have happened in the first place, but I'm very excited that they not only acknowledged my concerns and others' concerns, but they acted quickly to rectify the situation."

But she said the incident is far from resolved. "It is now a larger question of whether or not other public Wi-Fi providers are enacting similar restrictions, either with or without establishments' knowledge of it."

Derrick Jones of National Right to Life said the flap was a rare occasion when his organization agreed with abortion rights advocates. "We would prefer it not be blocked. I'm sure NARAL would feel the same way," he said. "But if we're both blocked, it's kind of a wash."

Arman Dzidzovic contributed reporting.

This content "filtering," in the interest of providing "family-friendly" Web browsing in public places, is a familiar problem to users of these sites. Especially maddening to LGBT users -- both content providers and Web users -- is the assumption that any site that deals in LGBT issues is by definition sexually oriented or outright pornography. Imagine a 13-year-old kid who goes to a café with public Wi-Fi to see if there's a better solution than suicide for his/her unbearable "differentness." There's plenty of help online, but he or she may not get it.

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