(Oslo, 21 September 2004) Telenor and KRIPOS, the Norwegian National Criminal Investigation Service, have introduced a new filter against child pornography on the Internet. The filter, which is one of the first of its kind, will prevent access to web sites containing sexual abuse of children. Telenor is responsible for the technical solutions and KRIPOS provides updated lists of web sites that distribute such material.
The filter will be operative during October, and will apply for all of Telenor's Internet customers, both via dial-up-lines and broadband. The filter will be placed centrally at Telenor, and no installation at customers' computers will be required. KRIPOS will provide lists of web sites containing child pornography, and Telenor will handle the technical management of the filter. Should any of Telenor's customers attempt to open a web site containing child pornography, a blocking site will automatically pop up, containing information about the filter, as well as a link to KRIPOS. Several hundred sites containing illegal child pornography are currently registered in KRIPOS' files.
"Child pornography on the Internet is a serious problem, and we want make a contribution to the fight against it," said Berit Kjøll, Director of the Consumer Market at Telenor. "It is important to emphasize that we are not introducing any form of censorship, and we also want to stress that KRIPOS decides which web sites customers should be denied access to. 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," said Berit Kjøll.
Last year, the Norwegian Minister of Justice, Odd Einar Dørum, invited the police to cooperate with industry players to make a joint effort in the fight against child pornography. KRIPOS and Telenor have now responded to the Minister's challenge, and together they have developed this filter, which is likely to be the first of its kind in the world.
"This is crime prevention at its best," said head of KRIPOS Arne Huuse. 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. If we are able to work across sectors and find new partners in society, we will greatly improve our crime prevention efforts," he said.
The child pornography filter comes free-of-charge, and Telenor will be happy to share its experience and its technology with other Internet suppliers. If other Internet suppliers in Norway and abroad are willing to enter into this partnership, this could be a serious blow to commercial distributors of child pornography.
"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," said Huuse. "KRIPOS will distribute information about the filter through Interpol, Europol and other international forums that we are part of," said Huuse.
Security for Telenor's Internet customers
"For several years Telenor has cooperated with Save the Children to promote safe use of the Internet for children, and we have developed a very efficient programme, KidSurf, to help parents control their children's Internet use," said Berit Kjøll. "We have also addressed issues relating to so-called modem kidnapping and spam. We are now taking further steps through our partnership with KRIPOS in the struggle against child pornography, as a natural strengthening of our efforts to make the Internet safer and prevent the abuse of children," said Kjøll.
For more information, please contact:
Esben Tuman Johnsen, head of information at Telenor Norge, tel: +47 905 08 400
Jan Tore Knutsen, head of information at KRIPOS, tel: +47 916 83 864
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES
- Telenor shall not conduct any form of general monitoring and shall not exercise any form of judiciary power e.g. in evaluating the lawfulness of content distributed by others, beyond what is stipulated in prevailing requirements of due care. Telenor still considers that in special cases, it may be appropriate to take a pro-active stance against the content that is being distributed, e.g. in the event that child pornography is distributed. Customers who do not wish to have a content filter for their Internet subscription may have this removed if they contact Telenor.
- Telenor will not in any way store the data, or run a log of users who come across the filter.
- We would especially like to call attention to the fact that access to certain Internet sites will not be prevented, as the filter only blocks sites listed by KRIPOS.
- Distribution via file-sharing, e-mail or similar will not be affected by the filter