Switzerland: Internetproviders block access to child pornography

Published on: 30.01.07
Source: Sonntagszeitung Schweiz

More than 50 providers agreed in Switzerland to block the access to websites with child pornography, Bluewin, a Swisscom daughter starts the campaign. Only a few providers refused to join in due to economic reasons and in the name of freedom of speech

Last year the Swiss federal police had contacted all Internet providers asking for cooperation. Together with the providers who joined the campaign it is now possible to cover more than 80 percent of the Swiss Internet surfers.

The idea is simple: the URLs of websites in question are part of a filtering list installed on the provider's server. If a user types inone of the URLs he will be redirected to the website of the federal police where he finds an admonition.

For the start the Danish police delivered more than 1.000 adresses, 200 more came from own investigations of the Swiss police. The filtering list is top secret and the providers must oblige not to publish or to sell the adresses mentioned in the list.

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