In April 1998, the Salt Lake Tribune, a Utah newspaper, ran a story entitled "Web Sex Sites: Public School Logs Show Denied Hits". The story was picked up by the Associated Press and eventually ran in a number of newspapers nationwide. The story indicated, among other things, that the Utah Education Network, which provides internet access for essentially all Utah public schools and many libraries, kept log files of the internet accesses made through their service and employed a software censoring product, Smartfilter, to censor internet access at schools and libraries. (Smartfilter is a product of Secure Computing Corporation, http://www.securecomputing.com/). The Censorware Project and David Smith decided to request these log files under Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act (known as GRAMA, this is Utah's "Freedom of Information" act).

Internet access in schools and libraries is a hot topic. And there is a great lack of hard data about it. We hope this report (and the accompanying data, which is also available) will begin to fill that void.

Obtaining the files was easier decided upon than accomplished. UEN refused to provide these public records, and under GRAMA, we appealed to the Utah State Records Committee. UEN's cited reasons included an invasion of privacy of the users of the system, although many administrators have access to these computer log files and UEN specifically bans websites which users could use to protect their privacy on-line. In June 1998, after a hearing on the issue, the State Records Committee ordered UEN to provide the files. To eliminate any question of invading the privacy of the users, all of the originating internet addresses were redacted. The log files as presented represent an anonymous picture of the aggregate usage of UEN's network.

In July 1998, UEN decided not to appeal the decision of the State Records Committee and offered a set of the log files. UEN had flouted Utah state law by destroying the log files from April-May 1998, which we had requested, and instead offered the current files from July, when school was not in session and the log files were therefore much less useful. We complained to the State Records Committee, which took a step it had never before taken: they recommended the matter to the Salt Lake County District Attorney, Neal Gunnarson, for investigation and possible prosecution.

Mr. Gunnarson, who achieved fame in 1997 by getting caught destroying copies of a Utah newspaper which he took exception to, failed to investigate or take any action against UEN. The complaint was promptly buried and forgotten, proving that no matter what the law says, and no matter how blatant the violation, if the will to enforce it is not present, the law is worthless.

Since the original log files had been destroyed, we decided to get a set of files from September 1998, when school would be in session. We obtained them, with much better cooperation from UEN this time, and after some delays, produced the following report.

continue: Methodology

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This document last updated on Thursday September 07 2000.