Jonathan Sher reports:
Just why Internet filters at London public libraries were scrapped became murkier yesterday after key supporters of their removal challenged explanations by the chair of the city’s library board.
Board chair David Winninger, also a member of city council, had said the board was prompted to investigate the removal of the filters last year after a legal clinic in Ottawa threatened to sue.
The board then paid for its own legal opinion before removing filters from computers in adult sections, a decision that went unnoticed until a man was arrested weeks ago in the Central Library and charged with viewing and printing child pornography.
Winninger’s explanation was challenged by the clinic’s head.
“That statement is unequivocally false,” David Fewer, acting director of the Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa, said yesterday.
Read more on The London Free Press.