25.10 Russian Government Seeks Child Porn Experts

MOSCOW, October 25 (RIA Novosti) � A Russian state Internet and media watchdog has launched a tender for experts who can identify pornographic material involving minors.

The ideal candidate would be educated to university level and have at least two years� work experience in medicine, sociology, psychology, philology, culture studies or art history, the Roskomnadzor watchdog said.

Experts, working in teams of two, will be expected to field up to 200 requests daily and review various materials to establish whether they contain child porn.

The maximum price tag for an unspecified number of people to spend a year weeding out child porn is 43.7 million rubles ($1.4 million), the tender says.

Announced earlier this month, the tender closes on Nov. 12.

Since November 2012, Roskomnadzor has not needed a court order to blacklist websites hosting child porn and those deemed to be promoting suicide or illegal drugs.

The agency already faced criticism over some blacklisting decisions, particularly a ban on Japanese erotic cartoons, some of which were ruled to be child porn.