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On 18 November Prime Minister David Cameron met with the internet search engines, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Facebook’s European boss Joanna Shields, the National Crime Agency, Internet Watch Foundation and the NSPCC in Downing Street to discuss how to rid the internet of child abuse.
Those attending agreed action to block child abuse search results worldwide, to help people search the internet safely, to continue to work to bring offenders to justice and a series of further steps to help remove child abuse from the internet.
Preventing child abuse search results
Google and Microsoft have introduced changes to their search engines to prevent any images, videos or pathways to child abuse being returned from blacklist search terms used by paedophiles.
Google’s actions will prevent child abuse results against 100,000 unique searches worldwide. The changes will be rolled out in 159 languages over the next six months. Microsoft have prevented all child abuse images, videos and pathways from Bing and Yahoo! searches of blacklist terms supplied by the National Crime Agency, and are working now on a rapid expansion of the approach to block all child abuse content against a much wider list of search terms.
Google and Microsoft have also implemented clear warning messages which appear whenever people use blacklist child abuse search terms, telling people of the consequences of their actions and pointing them to charities – such as stopitnow.org.uk – who can help. On Google searches alone, this will mean warning messages appearing against 13,000 search terms.
Taking down images, videos and pathways across the internet
Google and Microsoft both welcomed the national database of child abuse images being set up by the Government from next year. The database will use Microsoft's PhotoDNA technology to create unique image identifiers that enable the removal of child abuse images and any copies of them across the internet. Google has also developed and agreed to share new technology that allows duplicate copies of videos of child abuse on the open web to be identified and removed.
Both companies agreed to take part in a joint work programme between the search engines, IWF and CEOP to tackle the problem of peer-to-peer networks, which will establish a new reporting process to remove pathways to child sexual abuse. They have also made changes to their auto-completion features to prevent suggestions that lead people to child abuse searches.
Bringing offenders to justice
The Government reiterated its commitment to use the new National Crime Agency to provide a step-change in enforcement action to bring paedophiles to justice. The industry committed itself to continuing the swift reporting of illegal child abuse images to law enforcement.
The Prime Minister made clear that he would consider whether further powers were needed for the police and National Crime Agency to help investigate and prosecute offenders.
Government and industry agreed that the joint UK-US taskforce should include a specific, in-depth programme of work on how we tackle paedophiles using the 'hidden internet' to view and share child abuse images.
David Cameron said: “We have made huge progress in terms of getting child abuse imagines off the internet. It is worth remembering that we were told that cleaning up searches couldn’t be done and shouldn't be done. We’re now being told by the industry that it can be done and will be done and 100,000 unique searches will now get clean results, not just here in the UK but around the world. That is a massive breakthrough in cleaning up the internet, in dealing with the repulsive crime of child abuse and I think the industry are to be praised for the way they have responded to the initiative I launched back in July.”
NCA Director General Keith Bristow commented: “Tackling child sexual exploitation effectively has to be a concerted and joined-up effort by law enforcement, government, international partners, industry and others. Today is a graphic demonstration of that in action. Not only are victims harmed in the making of these images, they are re-harmed every time they are shared and viewed. That is why removing them and blocking access to them is so important.
“Today's initiative is a real step forward, but the focus now rightly shifts towards more cunning and determined offenders who use the hidden internet and peer to peer networks. By bringing CEOP into the NCA this year, we are maximising our investigative capabilities and the specialist support, for example cyber expertise, which is available to all our operations.”