Finland and the Freedom of Expression - part II

They're going after the Internet!

I posted a link to an Electronic Frontier Finland press release a couple of days ago: Effi: Finnish police censors a critic of censorship. To recap, the National Bureau of Investigation (KRP) maintains a list of websites that they say contain child pornography. In 2005, the Finnish government pressured Finnish ISPs into blocking the websites on this list "voluntarily", or the state would bring about legistlation that would force them to. All major ISPs complied.

EDRI already commented on the measures in 2007. They state the following:

EFFI points out serious problems with this arrangement: there is no judicial review of items that end up on the list, meaning that the police is assuming powers belonging to the judiciary; there are bound to be mistaken entries due to simple human error in the absence of a review process; and there is also a grave potential for abuse due to secrecy and lack of review.

...

The announcement was accompanied by a study conducted by the ministry exploring the legal and practical aspects of such a system. The study concludes that the system is not efficient at curtailing child porn distribution, but may result in legitimate pages being blocked.

The list is maintained by the NBI, and its contents are secret. Finnish ISPs are not permitted to disclose which sites are blocked, and the police will not answer queries as to which sites are blocked and which are not. The list is maintained by the NBI and the process by which a site is put on the list is not open to any kind of public scrutiny.

EDRI and other commentators raised the point that there is massive potential of abuse here. In Finland, this kind of criticism always falls on deaf ears. The vast majority of the Finnish population cannot accept the idea that their government might do something wrong, or that the police would abuse their powers. In the Finnish media and in public discussion in general, the entire issue is framed in terms of fighting child pornography. Who could possibly oppose fighting child pornography? A pedophile, that's who.

Although the list is supposedly used to block child pornography, the vast majority of the sites on the block list are regular, legal Internet pornography sites. Even though the police are blocking sites they are not supposed to be blocking, no-one cares, and ISPs, the government and we, the people, are all going along with it.

I want to use boldface again, because I need to repeat this.

The Finnish national police are forcing Finnish ISPs to block Internet sites that the police want them to block. The list of blocked sites is secret. The decision to block a site is made in secret and cannot be appealed. The list and its enforcement is not based on any law passed by the Finnish parliament.

And no-one cares. When the prevailing public mood is what it is, it's hardly surprising that the entire project has flown under the news radar. Until now.

This month, the NBI blocked http://lapsiporno.info. Although the Finnish name means "child porn", the website contained no pictures or pornography of any kind; it contained information on the Finnish Internet blocks and general discussion on the legality of child pornography and the means of fighting it. As of this writing, a mirror of the site was still up at http://www.helsinki.fi/~mjrauhal/lapsiporno.info/.

The site contained a list of blocked websites, easily obtained by trying to access loads of Internet porn sites and seeing which ones were blocked. Let me recap again:

In February 2008, the Finnish police blocked access to a website that criticized the Finnish government's Internet censorship.

Do you think you live in a free country? If you still do, here's the latest news: the guy who runs lapsiporno.info has been called in for questioning by the police. Helsingin Sanomat: Nettisensuuria vastustava aktivisti poliisin kuulusteluun. He is suspected of a crime under Section 18 of the Finnish penal code: Distribution of sexually obscene pictures.

Section 18 - Distribution of sexually obscene pictures (650/2004)
(1) A person who manufactures, offers for sale or for rent, exports, imports to or
through Finland or otherwise distributes sexually obscene pictures or visual
recordings depicting
(1) children,
(2) sexual violence or
(3) bestiality
shall be sentenced for distribution of sexually obscene pictures to a fine or
imprisonment for a maximum of two years.
(2) An attempt shall be punished.

Apparently, posting the URL of a site the Finnish police suspect contains child porn is "otherwise distributing" child pornography. In case that sounds sensible to you, think about it this way. The NBI list of blocked websites is secret. If you post one of the blocked websites' URLs, you're committing a crime.

Here's the next point. I quote liberally from a post on effi.org:

The list of censored web sites is supposedly secret. However, due to the implementation of the censorship mechanism, described more in detail later, it has been possible to find and study the censored sites.

The censorship supposedly applies only to foreign web sites that are used to distribute child pornographic images and the block list indeed reportedly contains such sites.

However, many of the censored sites are apparently legal pornographic sites. Most of the censored sites are located in the United States or in the EU countries which have strict legislation against child pornography. Many of the censored US sites contain the 18 U.S.C. 2257 notice.

Many of the blocked sites are link farms, without actual independent image content. The block list reportedly contains disproportionately many gay sites.
The censorship however extends not only to the adult sites. For example, the following sites are censored:
*THC hearing aid devices
*IT consulting service for teachers
*Music instrument store
*Doll store
*Computer repair service
*Windows tips in Thai
*Data Management and Biostatistics Network Journal Guestbook
*English and Thai discussion of gay rights (no images!)

The Finnish police also censors the site www.thaimisc.com, root page of which is shown in the figure on the right. The root page appears (even though I don't understand the Thai text) to be set up in honour of the late HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana of Thailand. This is not a proud moment to be a Finn. :(

I agree.

If the blocked sites do contain child pornography, then a very strange issue arises. The great majority of them are porn sites based in the United States. If they contain child pornography, then why are the Finnish police not notifying the FBI? Could the answer be that they do not, in fact, contain child porn at all?And how do a computer repair store and a memorial for a Thai princess constitute child pornography?

We won't know the answer, because the police have consistently refused to comment on individual blocked sites because the fact that they're blocked is a secret. Now a Finnish site criticising this has also been blocked. Even if it can be demonstrated that these sites don't contain child pornography, the police is under no obligation to unblock them or explain their actions.

The police are operating totally outside the law. Along with the attack on "Internet racists" I talked about in the previous edition of Finland and the Freedom of Expression, this secret censorship black list constitutes a direct attack by the government of Finland on the freedom of expression on the Internet. They're doing this, and getting away with it, because the general public in Finland simply does not care about their own human rights.

We need to start caring!