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Danish Police Accidentally Censor Over 8,000 Sites As Child Porn... Including Facebook & Google
from the censorship-is-bad,-mmmkay? dept
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):
So how did this "accident" happen?
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...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.
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.
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.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.
“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.”
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Due Process...
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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Re: Due Process...
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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Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
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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Re: Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
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Re: Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
Spoken = slander
Written = libel
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Re: Re: Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
Slobber and slander come out of the mouth and libel and library books are written down.
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Note
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Re: Note
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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Or
"Danish Police Officer Trolls 8,000 Sites In One Single Move"
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Re:
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Re: Note
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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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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Re: Human Error
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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Re:
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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It would be like saying stabbing murders are okay, because you allow your doctor to give you injections....
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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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Retarded analogy.
0/10 - failtroll.
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Re:
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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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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Re:
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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Re: Re:
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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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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Re:
How did TD get the story wrong?
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Re: Re:
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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Re:
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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Re:
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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"which could be regarded as child pornography... "
Could be?
Could be the Danish Police are good at their jobs.
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Ok...yeah...that's the most positive I could come up with...oh God now I need a drink
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Bigger picture or low caffeine?
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Re: Bigger picture or low caffeine?
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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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We still do it bigger...
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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this is unacceptable
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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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child pornography rampant *rant*
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This part is quite startling
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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Voluntary service
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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