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techUK comment on Home Secretary Sajid Javid's recent speech on keeping children safe.

Commenting on the Home Secretary’s speech today given at the NSPCC, Vinous Ali, Head of Policy, techUK said:

“Sharing and viewing child sexual abuse images is illegal and the tech sector is united and dedicated to both the identification and removal of that content, as well as supporting law enforcement in prosecuting perpetrators.

The Home Secretary has acknowledged that the identification of those committing these acts is a challenging task with perpetrators employing sophisticated techniques in an attempt to avoid detection. It is for that reason that collaboration between industry and law enforcement is so vital and why the sector has dedicated significant resources over many years to this issue.

The tech industry is constantly investing in new ways to tackle illegal child abuse content online. The creation of the industry-funded Internet Watch Foundation, for example, was ground-breaking and provided a model for the rest of the world to follow.

However, technology is only part of the solution and technology companies rely on being able to work closely with law enforcement. We must not fall into the trap of believing this is an online only issue. Today’s announcement of more resources for law enforcement agencies is much needed and is very welcome, this will allow more perpetrators to be identified and prosecuted.”

Notes to Editors

In 1996, the UK hosted 18% of the world’s known online child sexual abuse material. Today, it hosts just 0.2%. - https://www.iwf.org.uk/what-we-do/why-we-exist/our-history. According to IWF’s most recent report, the majority of known child sexual abuse imagery is located on image hosting sites and cyberlockers. Less than 1% of known child sexual abuse material is hosted on social networks.

Since 1996 IWF analysts have manually assessed nearly 700,000 reports and removed over 250,000 individual webpages of criminal content, primarily child sexual abuse images and videos.

The Internet Watch Foundation is funded by the EU and Member companies from the online industry, including internet service providers (ISPs), mobile operators, content providers, hosting providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector. A list of member companies can be found here: https://www.iwf.org.uk/become-a-member/join-us/our-members 

Industry is working in collaboration globally to tackle this issue. In 2006 the Technology Coalition was created to tackle child sexual exploitation online. The WEPROTECT Global Alliance launched a new strategy in 2016, which sets out how they will work to identify and safeguard more victims and apprehend more perpetrators.

Microsoft’s PhotoDNA technology, is a free service that helps identify and remove child sexual abuse images, and is now available in the cloud.

Google is today making available cutting-edge artificial intelligence that can dramatically improve how NGOs and other technology companies review this content at scale and protect more children