VANTAA, Finland - Finnish free-speech activist Matti Nikki recently was censored by the National Bureau of Investigation of Finland, calling attention to the pitfalls of secret blacklists that supposedly consist of illegal websites.
According to a C/Net News report, the trouble began after Nikki started researching websites that were secretly blocked by Internet providers, based on a list compiled by the Finnish government.
Nikki said the secret blacklist, which supposedly is reserved for overseas child pornography, blocked several websites that seemed entirely lawful. After Nikki published his findings, the exposé was swiftly blacklisted by government officials.
Sites mentioned in Nikki's blacklist compilation include same-sex erotica and virtual computer-generated material, which is not considered illegal child pornography in the United States. Nikki's list has been picked up by sites such as Docs.Google.com.
Nikki said he may be under police investigation for publishing the blacklist.
"The police have finally asked me to arrange time for an interrogation," he wrote Friday. "The request came from the violence crime unit, which also deals with sex crimes. I haven't yet gotten confirmation, but apparently they'll want to investigate me about aiding the distribution of child porn. Since there's now officially a police investigation, I won't be commenting much more about it until I've discussed the situation with a lawyer."
Electronic Frontier Finland has demanded that the National Bureau of Investigation of Finland explain the censorship of a website that questions Internet censorship.
"If the site really had some illegal content, wouldn't the correct solution be to take the site down and take the site owner to court?" the group asked in a press release. "The site is located on a Finnish server, and the name of the site owner appears visibly on the root page of the site."
As reported by the YLE.fi news site, Finland's National Bureau of Investigation began assembling its secret list in fall 2007. The list consists of about 1,700 sites.
