Wikileaks published the censorlist of a German provider named Lycos, which ceased to exist in November 2008. It is quite interesting what Lycos all filtered, as it’s quite clear to see that it definitely does not only include outright criminal websites, but also legal sites, or at some points in a forum only a certain thread. Keep in mind though that the list is almost a year old.

Such an example would be this thread, which is a thread in a motorbike forum about legal investigations against BMW. There’s nothing criminal about this thread.

Another site which is on the list is this site, which is the website of the electricity provider of the city of Hameln. What reasons could there be to filter the website of a city electricity provider?

The irony peaks through filtering this website, which is a German forum around the topic of world conspiracies. The domain itself means translated exactly that. The forum has a subforum called “Geheimdienste und Überwachungsstaat”, meaning “Secret services and surveillance state”, next to other forums dealing with conspiracies (e.g. 9/11 etc.). However even those forums are not illegal.

Seeing what just one provider filtered in one country, you can think for yourself what other providers across several so called free democratic countries filter. And now imagine a state created non-publicly controlled censor list.

The next time you try to access a legit website and you receive a “website not found” error (or similar, non-website-fault) for an ongoing period, ask yourself if that page may not be censored by your ISP too.

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