Bennett Haselton

Bennett Haselton is the American founder of Peacefire.org, a U.S. based website dedicated to preserving First Amendment rights for Internet users, particularly those younger than 18, those who work for a business with an internet censorship program, people serving in the military, and in countries that have filtering systems that censor the internet.

Early Life and Education

Haselton was born in Oklahoma. Haselton's father is a geophysicist and his mother is a piano-teacher. [http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=5632 the Stranger. "Regular Genius: Bennett Haselton Attacks Censorship So We Can Say Fuck" by Pat Hearney. November 29, 2000.] ] Haselton lived in England and Denmark and graduated from Copenhagen International School. [ [http://alumni.cis-edu.dk/?page=1995Haselton Copenhagen International School. "Dear Fellow CIS'ers (no “former” CIS'ers – it's a lifetime designation)" by Bennett Haselton.] ] At 15 Haselton became a member of the Danish National Math Team. "You don't have to be Danish," he says.

Haselton's interest in censorship dates from when he was 10 years old and heard swear words for the first time. "I remember my parents and some other adults talking about profanity to some kid," Haselton says. "I just thought, 'Why not declare on midnight, January 1, that all swear words are not swear words anymore? Then there will be no such thing as foul language.'" Haselton also credits growing up in Denmark for his views on censorship. "In Denmark it's totally different," Haselton says. "For example, between the train station and our school, there was a strip club that had pictures of topless dancers, and kids had to walk right by it. Nobody really thought anything about it. It never occurred to me until I came back to the U.S. how something like that could never happen here. The club would have been fined and shut down."

In 1995 Haselton returned to the United States for college. [http://www.news.com/2008-1082-1007974.html CNET. "Newsmaker: Cracking the great firewall of China" by Paul Festa. May 20, 2003.] ] Haselton earned a master's degree in mathematics from Vanderbilt University. After graduation, Haselton worked on Visual Basic at Microsoft for 7 months. The New York Times said on May 15, 2000 that Haselton was fired from Microsoft [http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/16/technology/16tsc-soft.html?ex=1195016400&en=1a14f2df8dbc0140&ei=5070 New York Times. "Ex-Microsoft Employee Publicizes a Potential Security Flaw" by Michael Brick. May 15, 2000.] ] however Haselton says that he resigned in good standing and "showed the NYT editors a copy of my personnel file from Microsoft which has "Term. type: Voluntary" and "Term reason: Resignation" printed on it, but the paper has still not corrected the article." [ [http://www.publiceditormyass.com/ PublicEditorMyAss.com. "My experience trying to get the New York Times to correct an online article" by Bennett Haselton.] ]

PeaceFire

Haselton started PeaceFire in August 1996 [http://www.peacefire.org/info/about-peacefire.shtml PeaceFire.org "About Peacefire.org"] ] to educate young people about the 1996 Online Communications Decency Act that made it illegal to send indecent material to minors over the Internet. "Many people online still remember that as the first big Internet censorship law, and it sort of drew everybody together to unite against it," Haselton says. The Supreme Court struck down the law in 1997.

Haselton thinks that minors should have the same first amendment rights as adults. "I think intellectual development is one of the fundamental human rights, and it's also a right that people under 18 have," says Haselton. "It's totally arbitrary what words are considered swear words and what body parts are considered pornographic," says Haselton. "I sometimes feel like I'm involved in some huge conspiracy, an experiment to see how long it takes to drive me crazy. People are so conditioned about censorship in this country that it begins to look like I'm arguing against people who believe two plus three equals four," said Haselton. "To me, though, it is no less ridiculous to say the word 'fuck' is going to harm someone than it would be to say two plus three equals four."

Peacefire first received national attention in December 1996 when CYBERsitter added PeaceFire to their list of "pornographic" Web sites. CYBERsitter also sent a letter to PeaceFire's ISP threatening to block all of their hosted sites if they continued to host PeaceFire. Two years later in October 1998 PeaceFire started posting information about how to disable blocking programs. "I was amazed that these filters had existed without anybody taking a good look at what material was being lost," says Haselton.

Haselton has come under criticism for starting PeaceFire. "When he started Peacefire, he was a kid himself," says Marc Kanter, marketing director for a software company that makes the filtering program CYBERsitter. "Basically he was enticing minors into his beliefs and activities, which was to undermine parents' rights. As an adult now, he should know better than that." Haselton opposes such blocking software. "This is something that practically nobody else is working on, and only a couple of people in the world actually know as much about the blocking software issue as I've found out," said Haselton .

The New York Times reported on June 19, 2006 that reporters from the Los Angeles Times were blocked from accessing PeaceFire from their office. "It just seemed odd that the class of people that we rely on for our information have less Internet freedom than a citizen in China," said Haselton. "We rely on reporters for our information of what's going on in society, and they can't necessarily do their job if a third party is deciding what they can see." [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/technology/19times.html New York Times. "Some Sites Off Limits, Even in a Newsroom" by Sara Ivry. June 19, 2006.] ]

Haselton has appeared on CNN and The Montel Williams Show to discuss first amendment issues and been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and the Village Voice.

Other Internet Activities

Haselton's other activities include "bug hunter, spam litigant, censorware buster, [and] circumvention software provider."

Internet Security

Haselton has become well known for finding security bugs in Internet software. Haselton found a security hole in Netscape that allowed web sites to gather details from visitors' computers, including bookmarks and cache information. [http://www.iwr.co.uk/vnunet/news/2112130/security-hole-found-netscape Information World Review. "Security hole found in Netscape" by John Geralds. April 21, 2000.] ] "We think this may be one of the most powerful Netscape Communicator exploits ever," said Haselton. The exploit allowed a web site to introduce JavaScript through a cookie allowing access to a user's hard drive. "Getting 'read' access to the user's hard drive is the second most powerful exploit you can possibly launch," Haselton said. "If I run the exploit on a specific person, I can determine what other sites they have visited." Haselton earned a $15,000 bounty from Netscape in 2001 for uncovering holes in the company's browser software. [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/72981_crusader03.shtml Seattle Post Intelligencer. "'Supergeek' fights spam" by Luis Cabrera. June 3, 2002.] ]

Anti-Spam Activities

Haselton has won 10 small-claims cases and thousands of dollars in judgments against senders of unwanted e-mail. Haselton has become one of the most well known spammer-suers in the United States. "What he's doing definitely has an effect. It raises awareness of the laws that are available," says Dan Birchall, executive director of the anti-spam SpamCon Foundation.

Blacklists

In 2003, Haselton found out that the PeaceFire.org domain had been placed on a blacklist by the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) list because of complaints that his ISP, Media3 Technologies, refused to cut off service to companies suspected of doing business with spammers. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53496-2003May14?language=printer Washington Post. "Blacklists vs. Spam" by David McGuire. May 14, 2003.] ] Blacklists, also called "block lists" or "blackhole lists," are lists of Internet addresses associated with known spammers that are used to block all incoming e-mail from those addresses. It took Haselton over a year to get off the MAPS list. "The biggest problem I have, by far, with any of it, is that [administrators who use blacklists] hide the fact that any of it's going on so that their users won't know and therefore won't complain," Haselton said.

Citations

External links

* [http://www.peacefire.org/ Peacefire.org]