Sure. As a senior at Dryden High School in upstate New York, my web surfing was frequently inhibited by Websense and its oppressive filtering policies (e.g., no blogs, forums, or https:// URLs) in the name of the Children's Internet Protection Act.

Whenever I encountered a blocked site that I thought shouldn't have been, I would shoot off an e-mail to the network administrator, Patti MacCheyne. One day I was prohibited from visiting krazydad.com, the blog of the creator of the Coverpops featured previously on Boing Boing, due to his downloadable kaleidoscope screensavers. I shot off an e-mail requesting access, but got back a reply saying that only teachers' requests would be considered.

This new policy was asinine and (I argued) illegal -- CIPA only mandates the filtering of things like pornography, and furthermore states that access to legitimate sites must be granted. I blogged about this on my homepage, reproducing the e-mail I was sent and citing several court cases (e.g. ALA v. US) and EFF reports.

The network administrator found the post and had disciplinary action brought against me for publishing her e-mail (ignorant of the fact that, as a public employee, her e-mails are public domain). After the EFF declined to intervene, I was able to successfully argue my way out of discipline by citing numerous lawsuits that were decided in the student's favor. The fact that I had to make a case at all was disturbing -- "it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," indeed!

That said, my website was banned under the category of "Illegal or Questionable" -- according to Websense, reserved for "sites that provide instruction in or promote nonviolent crime or unethical or dishonest behavior or the avoidance of prosecution therefor." (I argued this was slanderous and offered a better categorization of "Exercise of Free Speech").

As far as I know, my blog is still blocked from within the school district. Today, Websense incorrectly categorizes my whole site as a message board. According to my Apache logs, they denied my request for re-categorization without ever visiting. That's efficiency.

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