Floor Statement of Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT).
Re: S 2260, S 1619, and Internet Filtering.
Date: July 21, 1998.
Source: Office of Sen. Burns.

I would like to state for the record that I continue to have serious reservations about the federal government mandating the use of specific technologies to solve the problem of schoolchildren's access to inappropriate material on the Internet. I believe that school boards are much more effective in making decisions about appropriate policy or technology when dealing with Internet access for students than Washington, Advances in technology have brought wonderful opportunities, but we must not rely on technology to deal with complex public policy questions. Congress sets a dangerous precedent by stamping its "seal of approval" on software that may be obsolete next year or even next week.

I initially expressed my reservations about a bill which would require mandated filtering systems, S. 1619, during the Commerce Committee markup that was held this past March. I considered offering an amendment during the markup that would have required schools and libraries to certify that they had appropriate Internet Acceptable Use Policies in place in order to receive universal service funding. The Chairman of the Commerce Committee assured me that if I were to pull my amendment he would be open to working with me to reach a compromise on the issue. Upon receiving this assurance, I withdrew my amendment.

Over the last several months, I have held numerous meetings among all of the parties involved in the markup in an effort to reach consensus. My office has had an open door policy and had significantly altered the original language to expand its scope to reflect the concerns of my colleagues. The draft compromise amendment I was prepared to offer required that schools have Internet use policies in place that address not only access to the World Wide

Web, but also the security of schoolchildren when using E-mail and chat rooms. These policies would have to be public, widely distributed and effective. Furthermore, the compromise amendment would significantly expand criminal penalties on "cyberstalkers" - criminals who use computers to exploit or abuse children. The compromise amendment has achieved significant support because of its inclusion of these vital matters and its reliance on local communities rather than federal mandates.

I am deeply disappointed that the Chairman of the Commerce Committee chose not to compromise on this very important issue. I had anticipated that this issue would be dealt with in its own right and that we would have several hours of debate to deal with S. 1619 and the amendment I had planned to offer along with several of my colleagues. Instead, it was attached to the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill today. I did not express my opposition to the inclusion of S. 1619 because I did not want to hold up the passage of crucial CommerceState-Justice appropriations. However, I want to make it very clear that I remain steadfastly opposed to big government mandates on the filtering issue and I will work closely with my colleagues as S. 2260 heads to conference to perfect the bill to reflect these concerns.

I continue to believe that local communities acting through their school and library boards, rather than software programs that are at best questionable or the federal government, are in the best position to make decisions on this critical issue.