Secret Censorship in Denmark

By: Jillian C. York on 23 December 2008
Posted in Denmark, Europe, Obscenity, Publications, IP blocking

While you were sleeping, Wikileaks released yet another report on Internet filtering...But this time the filtering is not in China, or Thailand, or Saudi Arabia...this time, it's in Denmark.

The report states that Denmark chooses to filter child pornography rather than face legislation, and has included nearly 4,000 sites in their filtering scheme. The country's top 3 ISPs participate.

Rather than simply post a list of blocked sites that they felt were actually legal, Wikileaks has published the entire secret list of sites, including many which truly contain child pornography. Wikinews (not affiliated) questioned Wikileaks on this:

We asked if Wikileaks was worried about the criminal implications of linking to so much illegal content, but they were not. The said that it was "politically untenable" to prosecute them, pointing out that Wikileaks is hosted in many different countries accross the globe.

We asked them if they were "concerned about the possibility of censorship in the UK, Denmark, Finland etc.?" "No," Wikileaks told us "We welcome it." Wikinews wondered if this was because of the Streisand effect, but Wikileaks said it was "because it will demonstrate how censorship systems are abused."

Indeed, there are several pornographic sites caught in the list which do not seem to contain child pornography. Many of the links on the list direct to dead sites.

While it is doubtful that many will come forward against the filtering of child pornography, Wikileaks states that "secret censorship systems are unaccountable and dangerous."

When asked how child pornography should be dealt with, Wikileaks responded:

Block financial transactions after due process. It's easy to set up servers. It is not so easy to set up merchant accounts...

Due process would involve sending a letter to the owner of the merchant account with the accusation and giving them a right to be heard and an appeal process. The banks are politically a lot more powerful than the internet industry so this hasn't happened.