Email to Blue Coat regarding allegations of Pagan internet censorship

[icymist]

To Whom It May Concern,

This email is coming from the Indianapolis Pagan Issues Examiner and it has become necessary to speak with you regarding your web-filtering categories and definitions.

It has recently been reported that the Indianapolis Public Schools were filtering Pagan, Wiccan, and Atheistic web content from its computers; a clear violation of freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

After speaking with IPS and ENA, the company responsible for providing the web-filtering service, it's been made clear that Blue Coat is the company who actually designed the database of categories which can be blocked along with their definitions.

It's a mystery as to why you are censoring out anything that's Pagan, Wiccan, or Atheistic in nature when the Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Wicca or Witchcraft, as some people call it, has been a federally recognized and protected religion since 1985. Why have you chosen to censor this protected religion?

More

Also check out the related links to this story.

[Ignis]

1. I'm glad they mention the roots of filtering in the article.

It was incredibly slick of the Christian Right to have their filter lists poised and ready to be sold (at a reasonable profit, of course! :eyes: ) to school districts, ISPs, etc.

And now their horrible blacklists are often the de facto standard. :grr: