- Tech companies will have to ensure
greater protection for children, under new proposals
- Changes will mean child sex
offenders cannot hide online
- Proposals are being brought forward
through an amendment to the Online Safety Bill
Greater powers to tackle child sexual abuse online will be
introduced through an amendment to the Online Safety Bill, the
Home Secretary announced today [Wednesday 6 July 2022].
The amendment will give Ofcom extra tools to ensure technology
companies take action to prevent, identify and remove harmful
child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) content.
Ofcom, the UK’s regulatory authority for telecommunications, will
be able to demand that technology companies such as social media
platforms roll out or develop new technologies to better detect
and tackle harmful content on their platforms. If they fail to do
so, Ofcom will be able to impose fines of up to £18 million or
10% of the company’s global annual turnover, depending on which
is higher.
Home Secretary, said:
“Child sexual abuse is a sickening crime. We must all work to
ensure criminals are not allowed to run rampant online and
technology companies must play their part and take responsibility
for keeping our children safe.
“Privacy and security are not mutually exclusive – we need both,
and we can have both and that is what this amendment delivers.”
The National Crime Agency estimate there are between 550,000 to
850,000 people in the UK who pose a sexual risk to children. In
the year to 2021, there were 33,974 obscene publications offences
recorded by the police, and although some improvements have been
made, it is still too easy for offenders to access harmful
content online.
Access to such content online can lead to offenders normalising
their own consumption of this content, sharing methods with each
other on how to evade detection, and escalation to committing
contact child sexual abuse offences.
Digital Minister, said:
“Tech firms have a responsibility not to provide safe spaces for
horrendous images of child abuse to be shared online. Nor should
they blind themselves to these awful crimes happening on their
sites.”
Rob Jones, NCA Director General for child sexual abuse,
said:
“Technology plays an extremely important part in our daily lives
and its benefits are undeniable.
“But it is also a fact that online platforms can be a key tool in
a child abuser’s arsenal. They use them to view and share abuse
material, seek out and groom potential victims, and to discuss
their offending with each other.
“Identifying these individuals online is crucial to us uncovering
the real-world abuse of children.
“We are taking significant action in this space and, alongside UK
policing, we are making record numbers of arrests and safeguards
every month.
“While this will always be a priority, we need tech companies to
be there on the front line with us and these new measures will
ensure that.”
Sir Peter Wanless, NSPCC Chief Executive, said: “We need
urgent action to protect children from preventable online abuse.
Our latest analysis shows online grooming crimes have jumped by
more than 80% in four years.
“The Online Safety Bill is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to
ensure children can explore the online world safely.
“This amendment will strengthen protections around private
messaging and ensure companies have a responsibility to build
products with child safety in mind. This positive step shows
there doesn’t have to be a trade-off between privacy and
detecting and disrupting child abuse material and grooming.”
The amendment will support innovation and the development of
safety technologies across the technology industry and will
incentivise companies in building solutions to tackle CSEA which
are effective and proportionate.
The Government-funded Safety Tech Challenge Fund is demonstrating
that is it is possible to detect child sexual abuse material in
end-to-end encrypted environments, while respecting user privacy.
Notes to editors:
- The government is introducing an amendment to the Online
Safety Bill to strengthen Ofcom’s powers in relation to notices
to deal with CSEA. This amendment will give Ofcom the power to
require companies to prevent, identify and remove CSEA content,
where no accredited technology is available
- The amendment will be considered at the Bill’s Report Stage
- The Safety Tech Challenge Fund (jointly sponsored by the Home
Office, DCMS and GCHQ) was set up to encourage innovation and
support the development of tools that could detect CSEA content
within or around an end-to-end encrypted environment (E2EE),
while respecting user privacy, and further inform the wider
debate around user privacy and user safety
- The Fund was open to UK based and international participants
with five suppliers (4 UK-based and 1 Austrian-based) each
awarded £85,000 funding to develop prototype solutions by March
2022, with two of these companies also receiving ‘stretch
funding’ of £82k in total to develop additional functionality
- The fund was underpinned by a set of technical principles
covering issues such as transparency, protection of user privacy
and accuracy
- The fund has demonstrated what is technically possible, and
it is reasonable to expect that companies can innovate further by
investing resources and engineering expertise in building
technological solutions to tackle CSEA material appearing on
their E2EE platforms
