Danish Police Accidentally Censor Over 8,000 Sites As Child Porn... Including Facebook & Google

from the censorship-is-bad,-mmmkay? dept

Mon, Mar 5th 2012 7:24am — Mike Masnick

Reminiscent of the mooo.com screwup in the US, where Homeland Security's ICE division "accidentally" seized 84,000 sites and plastered them over with a warning graphic about how they'd been seized by the US government for child porn, the Danish police similarly "accidentally" had 8,000 legitimate sites declared as child porn sites that needed to be blocked. Among the sites listed? Google and Facebook. Visitors to those sites, from ISP Siminn were greeted with the following message (translated, of course):

The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police [NITEC], who assist in investigations into crime on the internet, has informed Siminn Denmark A/S, that the internet page which your browser has tried to get in contact with may contain material which could be regarded as child pornography...

Upon the request of The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police, Siminn Denmark A/S has blocked the access to the internet page.

And people wonder why so many people around the world were so concerned about the threat of something like SOPA -- which would make DNS blocking at the ISP level a lot more common.

So how did this "accident" happen?

According to NITEC chief Johnny Lundberg, it began when an employee at the police center decided to move from his own computer to that of a colleague.

“He sat down and was about to make an investigation, and in doing so he placed a list of legitimate sites in the wrong folder,” Lundberg explained. “Before becoming aware of the error, two ISPs retrieved the list of sites.”

It would seem that there's a problem in this process. The fact that just one employee can change the list seems wide open to abuse. And the fact that the list seems somewhat automated beyond that is even more problematic. You know what would solve this problem? A little thing called due process. What a concept.

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Filed Under: accidents, blocking, denmark, filtering

44 Comments

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silverscarcat (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:28am

Due Process...
What is this thing called...

Due Process?

I know that I've heard it before...

You know, back before the Terrorists won and made the American people super paranoid and allowed the government to eat away at freedoms in the name of security...

Ah, must be something fictional.

After all, something like that would almost allow people to have a fair chance, and you know that would never happen.

"Those who give up essential freedoms and liberties for the sake of temporary security deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:37am

Re: Due Process...
I assure you, due process was not a fiction!

It was a historical anachronism--a wonderful concept which died out along with pastoral agrarian societies, enlightened philosophical cultures, and pastel cheeses.

Some things were simply never meant to survive in the harsh, cruel world which we live in.
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BuckRogers1965 (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:40am

Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
Or is it libel? I never can figure out which is which.

Regardless, it is bad to accuse people of something so heinous which they did not do and block access to their business until they can prove that they are innocent.

The fact that a single police officer could accidentally block sites as legitimate as Google or Facebook without any due process tells me that the little guy could be screwed without any recourse at the whim of any number of police officers.

Imagine being an individual or small business trying to get your web site back on line after being accused of being a child pornographer by the national police. This could lead to people committing suicide with the politically correct climate in full force now.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:41am

It is abundantly clear that they can't even use the current system responsibly; that alone would be enough reason not to implement more censorship tools. It's like seeing a kid fall of his bicycle three times in a row, and yet succumb to his crying pleas for a motorcycle.
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Emil, 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:47am

Note
As people noted on a Danish tech news site that also reported this .. incident .. what were the employee doing with a list of >8000 presumably legit sites? That seems very suspicious.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:50am

"Danish Police Accidentally Censor Over 8,000 Sites As Child Porn... Including Facebook & Google"

Or

"Danish Police Officer Trolls 8,000 Sites In One Single Move"
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hothmonster, 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:52am

Re: Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
http://defamation.laws.com/defamation-laws/libel-vs-slander
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:03am

Re: Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
Here's how to remember the difference.

Spoken = slander
Written = libel
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Mason Wheeler, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:08am

Re: Note
what were the employee doing with a list of >8000 presumably legit sites? That seems very suspicious.

One good thing to use it for would be a whitelist. Like, "this is a set of sites that are legitimate and not responsible for external content that people can reach through them, so don't take them down." Oops!
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silverscarcat (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:10am

Re:
And people cried when Anonymous took down 10 websites at once after Megaupload was taken down.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:11am

How about you get the story right?

Human error, it happens. The guy made a mistake, and the mistake was rapidly fixed. It happens.

You don't think so? Ask your wonderful new hosting company why your site is either unreachable or has no stories about 10% of the time. Oh noes! They need to go to jail or something, they are clearly making errors!
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:14am

Re: Human Error
When human error puts unwanted pickles on your hamburger, it's not exactly a big deal.

When human error threatens the livelihood of tens of thousands of people--then it's a big deal.

See, it's not that hard to think logically about this stuff. Try it some time.
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MrWilson, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:16am

Re: Re: Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
My mnemonic when I was in high school was:

Slobber and slander come out of the mouth and libel and library books are written down.
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silverscarcat (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:16am

Re:
Here's the thing tho...

It should NOT have happened in the FIRST place!

The simple fact that "human error" can take down 8000 LEGITIMATE sites means that the system is screwed up horribly.

If they can do that under existing laws...

Tell me WHY we need new ones.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:28am

Re:
How are you missing the fact that your own retarded analogy fails due to this instance being roughly 8000x more severe?

It would be like saying stabbing murders are okay, because you allow your doctor to give you injections....
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Richard (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:31am

Re:
Human error, it happens. The guy made a mistake, and the mistake was rapidly fixed. It happens.
Way to miss the point.

Yes human error happens - and so when anything important is at stake then systems should be in place to make sure this kind of accident doesn't get through the system and into the outside world unchecked. This is not a matter of legal due process - this is a matter of basic quality control procedures - like every organisation is supposed to have
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:32am

Re:
One person made a mistake that labelled 8,000 sites (including Google and Facebook) as being seized by the government over having child pornography.

You don't see how this was actually a pretty big deal?

If Techdirt was unreachable due to the mistake of it's hosting company, that'd be one thing. It's understandable that such things do on occasion happen. While an inconvenience, it's nothing to get in too big of a tizzy over.

But for one man to have the power to censor that many sites, while putting them in the awkward position of having to later explain that "Hey, it was an accident caused by one government worker, we DO NOT host or condone child porn on our sites", that's a pretty ridiculous amount of power to let one worker have. Even if accidental, it shouldn't be that easy to allow to happen. Hence the point of the article.

How about you focus on the important issues instead of just trying to slam this site.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:35am

Re:
Neurosurgeon accidentally drills through your brain?

No problem. Mistakes happen.

Mechanic accidentally forgets to tighten some crucial bits on an air plane and said plane crashes killing everyone inside?

Human error. Let it slide.

Danish police accidentally censor over 8,000 sites as child porn?

My bad, won't happen again

Do you understand what I am trying to say?

There are certain people that we trust to perform certain critical tasks. If they fail at doing their job, we get angry. Very angry.
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Mesonoxian Eve (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:38am

The takedown is bad enough, but even worse is this:

"which could be regarded as child pornography... "

Could be?

Could be the Danish Police are good at their jobs.
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Neal, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:39am

Re:
You make a good point and, truthfully, Mike misses one. All the due process in the world can't prevent a human error like this. But there certainly could be, and should've been, a better process in place to manage and disseminate the list - one that safeguards against such simple errors. Imagine if this list didn't contain big names like Google, but were a list of individual's personal web sites that was being compiled for some other purpose. How many reputations and livelihoods might that ruin before someone noticed and fixed the error? How many of these individuals could never recover because there is no way or means to reach out to those who saw the censor warning and say "hey, we screwed up and accused an innocent party."
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:49am

Hey, let's try and look at this in a positive light? I mean, at least they're really really good at censoring things! Not necessarily the things they mean to, or when they mean to, but I'll be damned if they can't swing that hammer with some power, even accidentally.

Ok...yeah...that's the most positive I could come up with...oh God now I need a drink
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 8:50am

Bigger picture or low caffeine?
Why is it that, when one bothers to lift the rock and see what crawls out from beneath, these government "High Tech Crime" units seem to bear more of a resemblance to Keystone Kops with a metric butt-load of self-righteousness and self-entitlement thrown in than they bear to actual law enforcement agencies? I'm really trying to laugh at the level of gleeful buffoonery that law enforcement agencies around the globe define as Standard Operating Procedure, but really, isn't it a bit past time that Someone In A High Place While In Possession Of A Brain realized that painting one's actions in bold, colorful strokes of cretinism only /reduces/ respect for law enforcement agencies and their actions. Am I expecting too much, or do I just need a few more cups of caffeine to stabilize my (already low) expectations of the People We Depend Upon To Protect Us From Evil? Gah!
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:00am

But this is all fixed now.
The system now requires 2 people to sign off before the list goes out.

One has to wonder about the intelligence of we'll protect the world, but we won't buy an isolated machine to avoid Bob from accounting trying to play Angry Birds and mucking it all up.
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Machin Shin (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:02am

Re:
There is human error like deleting your book report and there then is human error like opps I launched nuke at North Korea. For some odd reason though the second one never seems to happen. Ever wonder why that is? It is called safeties you moron.

When you have a great destructive power you don't set it up so some bumbling idiot can launch it. You set it up so that it requires several people to be involved and so it never "accidentally" goes off.

There is NO excuse for a system like this to be setup in such a way it is susceptible to "human error".
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Berenerd (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:10am

We still do it bigger...
Puh, only 8000? in the US we go big! 84000 is better! So what if you got google? Facebook? Bah! it still only counts as one!

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

So yeah...hows that censorship thing working out for ya?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:18am

and screw the ISPs who took a 8,000 [legit] site list without even looking at it

this is unacceptable
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Bengie, 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:19am

Re: Re:
"Neurosurgeon accidentally drills through your brain?"
Sued

"Mechanic accidentally forgets to tighten some crucial bits on an air plane and said plane crashes killing everyone inside?"
Sued

When people make mistakes, they should take responsibility for all damages caused by said mistakes. The only time people don't take full responsibility is if there is a contract signed by both parties putting a limit on damages.

Who gets sued this time?
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John Fenderson (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:20am

Re:
How about you get the story right?

How did TD get the story wrong?
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Bengie, 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:25am

Re:
"Human error, it happens. The guy made a mistake, and the mistake was rapidly fixed. It happens."

There is a fine line between a "mistake" and strait up "negligence".

Drunk drivers. They don't intend to kill people. Meh, mistakes happen.
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WysiWyg (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:28am

Re: Note
This was my first thought too. Were they making some sort of white-list? And why?

The conspiracy-lover in me starts to wonder if they are preparing for a law that forces ISPs to censor everything that isn't white-listed.
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WysiWyg (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:35am

Re:
"You don't think so? Ask your wonderful new hosting company why your site is either unreachable or has no stories about 10% of the time. Oh noes!"

If I found out that my site was unreachable because some schmuck at the hosting company was using the servers to play Minesweeper, then yeah, I would be pretty pissed. And not just at the numbnuts that caused havoc, but more importantly I would be pissed at the company for having a system that allows the admins to play Minesweeper on the servers, despite this bringing them down.

(And yes, I know that's not what happened, I just tried to put you analogy in place.)
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WysiWyg (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:38am

Re:
Given the fact that they are only following the law, I see no problem with it. I'm pretty sure that even though that list wasn't on the level, not adding the sites would probably have been illegal. Maybe.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:51am

Re: Re:
i understand what you are saying, but at the same time I am curious to know why only 2 ISPs followed that protocol
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Machin Shin (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:53am

Re: Re:
If I was the one working at the ISP and saw this list then I would just laugh as I put it into effect. I mean sometimes you just have to stand back and laugh while some idiot kicks a hornet nest. The government wanted that list blocked so I would block it just to wake some people up to the stupidity.
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WysiWyg (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 10:06am

Re: Re: Re:
As I understand it, they noticed the mistake pretty quickly, so only two had copied the list. Most likely they don't all update their lists at the same time?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 10:13am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
exactly my point. these 2 ISPs probably have an automated system that accepts what the man tells them to do. without oversight. without review

THAT is unacceptable

cliche, it may be; but who watches the watchers? i don't care if it was an innocent mistake
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 10:14am

Re: Re: Re:
heh. reminds me of BOfH
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 11:12am

Re: Re:
Retarded? How many websites are there? What is the error rate? I have a feeling your doctor would wish for that success rate.

It's too bad that it happened, but it's not the end of the world, especially because only a small number of ISPs picked it up, and the error was reversed quickly.
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Simple Mind (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 11:14am

child pornography rampant *rant*
Are there really (any) websites out there that are just dumping child porn out there for all to see? Considering the effort being put into blocking CP websites it must be a major problem. I guess if you block one website, the evil child pronographers must jump to another like playing wack-a-mole. These guys must be totally motivated to make CP visible for everyone to see. I guess a significant portion of the population must be interested in looking at it considering the huge problem it is on the web. Who knew? And cops are just too few to deal with it by going out and arresting the perpetrators. We need to give them tools so they can sit behind a desk all day pushing buttons to block any hint of the dreaded CP threatening to ooze out onto everyone's screens. If they were to go out and arrest the ones setting up these websites then what buttons would they need to push tomorrow?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 2:22pm

Re: Re: Re:
Said doctor would have killed 8000 patients due to "Human error".

Retarded analogy.

0/10 - failtroll.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 4:25pm

Re: Bigger picture or low caffeine?
Keyboard Kops?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:24pm

This part is quite startling
has informed Siminn Denmark A/S, that the internet page which your browser has tried to get in contact with may contain material which could be regarded as child pornography...

Its so nice to see you great and glorious western democracies, practice such obvious thought crime prevention.

After all, May and Could are the biggest criminals around.
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PaulT (profile), 6 Mar 2012 @ 12:58am

Re: Re:
"How did TD get the story wrong?"

They didn't. AC found an irrelevant angle to attack the story, and decide to use that angle. Completely missing the actual point or focus of the story, of course, but it wouldn't be a day with a 'y' in it if the ACs had to actually admit to there being a problem rather than attacking someone.
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Kronborg, 6 Mar 2012 @ 11:50am

Voluntary service
As far as I know the entire filtering system is a opt in system for ISP�s. It is a service that the Danish police offer ISP�s in corporation with Save the Children Denmark.
It is however unfortunate that it is possible for one error to have such consequences. However when the error was detected it was promptly corrected (the block lasted less than an hour) and the police apologized. Also the automation of the system is on the ISP side of the system.
Source in Danish: http://epn.dk/teknologi2/computer/article2710532.ece
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