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.