Background

The Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet was established in March 2001. The work of the Task Force has been taken forward by a number of Sub-groups which have met regularly and have been looking at the criminal law, law enforcement, child protection measures, public awareness, training and further developing co-operation between the industry and others on reporting and handling child protection issues.

Representatives are from industry, government, law enforcement, child protection and ISP’s. Those from industry include Miscrosoft Ltd. Yahoo! UK, LINX, and ISPA. There are also representatives from various child protection organisations such as, NCH and NSPCC, as well as government agencies such as the National Crime Squad, Met Police, Crown Prosecution Service, National Hi-Tech Cime Unit and the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

AIMS:

- To make the UK the best and safest place in the world for children to use the Internet: and
- To help protect children the world over from abuse fuelled by criminal misuse of new technologies

OBJECTIVES:

- Building on current good practice, for industry involved in providing Internet services in the UK to promote ethical business standards across the industry;
- Building on existing co-operation, for law enforcement agencies and industry involved in providing Internet services in the UK to work together to develop effective procedures to prevent, detect and investigate crime on the Internet;
- For the Government to ensure that the law properly covers criminal activity on the Internet; and to consider in co-operation with the industry involved in providing Internet services in the UK the structure of co-regulation for the industry and whether it needs to be strengthened;


The Task Force has developed and put forward proposals for a criminal offence to tackle the “grooming” of children by paedophiles online or offline. This is intended to allow prosecution at an early stage when children are being groomed, before an existing sexual offence has been committed. In addition, the proposals include the creation of a new civil protection order relating to behaviour towards a child for an illegal or harmful sexual purpose.

It has published good practice guidance for the Internet industry which deals with chat, instant messaging and web services. These encourage, amongst other things, clear and accessible safety messages and advice and user-friendly ways of reporting abuse.

It launched a public awareness campaign in January.

THE FUTURE

The Task Force will continue to work in partnership with the industry to: consider the extent to which the criminal law currently covers unsuitable material being sent to children and all forms of indecent representations of children; assess the new challenges posed by development of 3G mobile phones. It has already begun to consider some of the potential issues posed by 3G mobile phones and picture messaging for child protection. Representatives of the mobile industry have joined the Task Force and work is going on to look at guidance for parents, to support wider safety guidance about children's use of mobile phones. Japan is some years ahead of the UK in the proliferation of these phones, though we do not believe we can simply extrapolate their experience to the UK. The Task Force will actively monitor the issues raised for child protection by the use of next generation of mobile phones.