A Norwegian Internet service provider has teamed up with the Scandinavian country’s national criminal investigators to develop and introduce a new, centrally-implemented Internet filter against child pornography, which will become operational in October.
Telenor and KRIPOS announced the filter September 21, saying it will block access to child porn Websites, with Telenor responsible for the filter’s technical solutions and management and KRIPOS providing updated listings of child porn Websites.
"Child pornography on the Internet is a serious problem, and we want make a contribution to the fight against it," said Telenor director of consumer marketing Berit Kjoll, announcing the new filter, and adding that the company itself is not going into the censorship business.
The filter will apply for all Telenor Internet customers, dialup and broadband alike, installed centrally at the company’s headquarters with no installation required on a customer’s own computer. A Telenor customer trying to access a child porn site will be hit with a blocking site popping up automatically, showing information about the filter and a link to KRIPOS.
Telenor insisted, however, that they would not perform any kind of general, non-child porn related monitoring of content or otherwise try on its own to determine “the lawfulness of content distributed by others.” Nor will the filter block “access to certain Internet sites…as the filter only blocks sites listed by KRIPOS,” and the filter won’t impact upon e-mail or peer-to-peer file distribution.
Telenor also said it has no intention of building up a log against users who come across the filter, perhaps understanding that many Internet users happen upon child porn sites unwittingly or unwillingly.
But both Telenor and KRIPOS hope other Internet service providers accept Telenor’s invitation to share the technology that built this child porn-blocking filter, saying it could destroy a major portion of the world’s Internet child porn distribution if other ISPs develop their own such filters.
"It is important to emphasize that we are not introducing any form of censorship, and we also want to stress that KRIPOS decides which Websites customers should be denied access to,” Kjoll said. “We do, however, want to make a contribution whenever we can, and this combined effort, in which we provide the technology and KRIPOS provides the expertise, may lead to fewer assaults on children."
KRIPOS is now said to have several-hundred known child porn sites or affiliates listed in its cybercrime files.
The Telenor/KRIPOS cooperative project came in the wake of a 2003 call by Norway’s Minister of Justice, Odd Einar Dorum, inviting police and industry players to make a joint effort to fight child porn. The Telenor/KRIPOS filter may be the first such cooperatively developed Internet child porn filter in the world, though this could not be confirmed before this story went to press
KRIPOS chief Arne Huuse called the project crime prevention at its best. “The filter will stop a considerable number of potential users, users that we must assume to exist in Telenor's customer base, which consists of nearly one million Internet customers,” he said. “If we are able to work across sectors and find new partners in society, we will greatly improve our crime prevention efforts."
Telenor has also offered to share the technology that went into the child porn filter with other Internet service providers in Norway and abroad, the company saying that if more ISPs partner up with them to develop similar filters of their own, it could prove a major blow against child porn distributors online.
Huuse concurs. "If police authorities and Internet suppliers in other countries follow our example, we could succeed in destroying part of the client base of a cynical, international industry which exposes children to violence and sexual assault with the aim of making money," he said. "KRIPOS will distribute information about the filter through Interpol, Europol and other international forums that we are part of." said Huuse.
