Editorial note: Some (not all) links which are now broken in the original, have been fixed in the text below.
June 28, 1999 - Secure Computing still has not responded to our followup report last week, proving their software "SmartFilter" to have a failure rate of one in twenty.
Ten days ago, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) toured Secure Computing's facilities and was told that our March report showed its failure rate to be 0.0006%. This was a lie. Secure Computing then issued a misleading press release with that same lie, which prompted us to take action.
A reexamination of the Utah proxy log files we obtained shows that, for every twenty times their software blocks a site like Hustler.com, it also blocks the Bible. Or Shakespeare. Or Mark Twain. Or Emily Bronte. Or a GeoCities site, or the Student Association for Free Expression, or any one of hundreds of other worthwhile places to visit on the web.
To put a human face on it: during school hours, the Utah government stops a child from reading a valuable webpage every 99 seconds.
Meanwhile, John McCain's bill to mandate government purchase of censorware in every school and library that accepts E-Rate funds across the nation (S.97) has passed out of committee and will soon be voted on by the Senate. It has already passed the House.
We've asked the president of Secure Computing to retract their false press release misusing our Project's name. They have not done so. We've heard no response at all.
- The Censorware Project