The UK Government yesterday called for the internet industry to
improve child safety in internet chatrooms, to "make UK cyberspace
the safest place in the world for our on-line generation."
Following publication of a report by the Internet Crime Forum
(ICF), "Chat Wise Street Wise - Children & Internet Chat
Services," Home Office Minister Lord Bassam announced a meeting of
internet industry representatives, child welfare organisations and
the police to take forward the report's recommendations.
The meeting will take place at the Home Office next Wednesday,
28th March, and will focus on four key areas:
- How to tackle the increasing problem of internet chatrooms
being used as a means by paedophiles to groom and subsequently
abuse children;
- How to prevent access to child pornography available on parts
of the internet;
- How ISPs and the police can work in partnership to bring
paedophiles on the internet to justice;
- How to increase the confidence of parents that their children
will be safe on the internet.
Lord Bassam called for a mixture of industry self-regulation and
Government legislation. He said:
"We must also ensure that the law
enforcement authorities have necessary, but proportionate powers to
detect and pursue crime committed through the internet. That is why
we introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and have
invested extra resources to create a National Hi Tech Crime Unit
and to enable police at both national and local level to acquire
additional skills and equipment to undertake computer network
investigations and the forensic examination of a suspect's and
victim's computers and secure evidence to bring it before the
courts.
The ICF report makes recommendations for ISPs including:
- ISPs should provide clear advice to their subscribers about
child-friendly chat, and actively promote chat services
specifically targeted at their age range;
- Children's chatrooms should be supervised ('moderated'), and a
user-friendly reporting mechanism should be available for users to
report incidents in chat rooms for investigation;
- ISPs, user groups and children's organisations should develop a
kitemarking scheme which would offer a simple way for parents to
identify chat services which are safe for children; and
- The IT industry should continue to research better, cheaper and
more user-friendly technical solutions to the potential dangers of
chat, including measures to ensure an appropriate level of
traceability for online abusers.
- Any moves to make ISPs monitor the content of chatrooms is
likely to be opposed by industry. At present, ISPs are not required
to police their systems, but must take action when notified of
illegal content. Thus, the parent company of Demon Internet,
recently courted controversy by offering to police its own systems
for paedophile activity.
