Web Warrior

On an early June evening at the Samuel S. Seward High School in Florida, New York, a Hudson Valley village of 3,000 in semi-rural Orange County, about two dozen parents in casual attire saunter into the monthly PTA meeting. On the agenda are discussions of the upcoming ice cream social, district garage sale, and Florida Family Fun Day. But it appears that most people have turned out for the panel of speakers the PTA has assembled to talk about a less festive topic—the dangers of the Internet.

Florida may look like an idealized, Hollywood small town, with a main street dotted by delicatessens, a bar, a Chinese restaurant, and a Christian bookstore, but parents here are worried that technology is bringing real-world problems to the community. During the school year, three Florida 6th graders visiting a chat room from their home computers encountered a man who asked to meet them offline. Though the high school uses a filter to block students from sexually explicit sites on the 80 computers in its classrooms, labs, and library, parents are uneasy. So, they listen closely as the county district attorney and representatives from the state attorney general’s office, the New York State Police Major Crimes Office, and the FBI confirm their worst fears about pornographic Web sites, X-rated chat rooms, and sexual predators.

Then Jack Hayes, a slim man with gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a mild manner, steps to the podium. “Whoever you are—if you’re Jewish, Catholic, a member of a minority group, a member of a political party—there’s a hate site out there that’s against you,” announces Hayes, a New York state trooper. The most dangerous sites do not broadcast their hate, he suggests, but hide their vitriol in legitimate-looking articles—the kind of articles kids download as research for reports. “Children are the biggest target group,” he tells the parents, the color in his ruddy face deepening. “They feel they have to get them...