Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has labeled hundreds of publicly available web sites in USA, as well as several in Germany, The Netherlands and other countries, as child pornography. The implication is that authorities in those countries are unwilling or unable to do anything about it, even when the sites operate openly and child pornography is definitely illegal in those countries as well.

Little or no attempt has been made, however, by the NBI to alert the FBI or similar authorities about said sites, with no explanation other than that the law does not require it. Given that, e.g., the FBI is well known to react quickly to reports of child porn sites even from individuals by email, it would hardly be any real strain on NBI resources to notify them whenever adding a site to the blacklist.

Why don’t they, then? One cannot help suspecting the reason is that they know they’re censoring sites that are not child porn at all, and attempting to initiate actual legal proceedings would reveal that – that they are in fact breaking the law themselves, as it explicitly states that only child porn sites may be put in the blacklist.

News of NBI’s overbroad censorship came about when Internet activist Matti Nikki published part of the officially secret list on his web page `lapsiporno.info `_. The NBI reacted by blacklisting his site as well, even though it contains no child porn, and after public outcry summoned him for questioning and announced he may be prosecuted for abetting child porn distribution.