Interior Ministry wants “Red Button” system for reporting illegal online content
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The Ministry of the Interior wants to introduce the so-called Red Button system to make it easier for Internet users to report unlawful content.
The model comes from Norway, where police have agreed with online communities on a system in which a small red button at the top of the screen can be clicked to inform police about pages that contain illegal material.
The Ministry of the Interior wants the system to be included in popular online services, such as MySpace, Facebook, and IRC galleria .
Ritva Viljanen, Chief of Staff at the Ministry of the Interior, says that Norway has had good experiences about this.
A working group has been set up to investigate how self-monitoring by service providers can be improved.
Viljanen says that in Norway, the mere fact that a page shows that the virtual community is cooperating with the police, will help keep inappropriate material off the pages.
“The Finnish state administration should think more about being where the people are. it is good that public administration sets up its own Internet portals, but I must say that the number of visitors is very small”, Viljanen adds.
By way of comparison she mentions the state-run otakantaa.fi site, where there was a recent discussion on legislation concerning the rescue services and the chimney-sweeping business. About 80 people took part in the discussion, which Viljanen says was a good result. Meanwhile, the commercial IRC galleria gets 900,000 visitors a week.
Viljanen feels that each popular website should have an easy way to alert police to inappropriate material.
Robin Lardot, Chief Inspector of Police at the Ministry of the Interior, says that the proposal and its technical details will be considered in the coming months.
He says that by clicking on the red button, a user would get to a page maintained by police, where it would be possible to report what has been seen. The police would then react as needed.
The system would be voluntary, and service providers would not be required to include the Red Button on their page.
A distant hope is that we might bet it on all sites, but if we could get it on the most important ones that are in active use, then the coverage would be good.”
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 19.11.2008 - TODAY |
 Interior Ministry wants “Red Button” system for reporting illegal online content |
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