BRUGES, BELGIUM — Belgium has joined a growing list of European nations that intend to maintain secret lists of websites blocked from internet users in their countries.The move is not entirely popular with rank-and-file Belgians, many of whom fear creating an official list would put too much power in the hands of the federal police.
Under current proposals, the Federal Computer Crime Unit, a special division of the Belgian police, would be tasked with composing a national blacklist of sites blocked for reasons some watchdog groups said could be vague, capricious or the result of knee-jerk reactions to public or political opinion. Currently under consideration for inclusion on the blacklist are sites suspected of distributing child pornography, as well hate and racism websites and sites suspected of engaging in fraud.
Belgians, like many residents of the U.K. and Germany — both of which are in the process of implementing federally sanctioned blacklists — are worried about overzealous government censorship of the internet. That, coupled with a lack of judicial due process under which websites might challenge their blacklisting, is a recipe for disaster, critics claim.
“The decision to block websites must remain under exclusive authority of the judicial branch,” a representative of the Flemish League for Human Rights said in a prepared statement. “It is unacceptable that the police get a wild card to block certain websites at will.”
Romania, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and Finland already employ internet blacklists. The U.K. also blacklists sites through a non-governmental agency, the Internet Watch Foundation, that maintains close ties with law enforcement.
