Why Filter CSAI Out? |
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The Case for Filtering Child Sexual Abuse Imagery (CSAI) Whilst agencies representing the rights of children have been around for many years we typically think of these organisations as helping children in the third world, war zones and in disaster relief. But there is now a bigger problem that affects children globally - regardless of location, colour, and standard of living. The Internet has become the central tool of communication world wide and as such has enabled exponential growth in a more sobering and illegal industry exploiting children. Not only is content on the Internet largely unrestricted and unmonitored so that children are now regularly viewing inappropriate adult material, children are increasingly being sexually exploited to fuel the growth in child sexual abuse imagery (CSAI) which is marketed and sold on the Internet. The Internet brings the world to your children – the good and the bad. Whether we like it or not the need to fight the rise in sexual exploitation of children and the distribution of imagery over the Internet is now urgent. Criminals who are involved in child trafficking, child sex tourism, online child grooming and child sexual abuse have benefited from the Internet. Paedophile rings work together using the Internet to collect, distribute and profit from child pornography. They share knowledge on avoiding detection and how they target, groom and sexually abuse children. The Internet has become a major factor in the growth of global paedophile rings. Recent convictions support this. Australian AFP recent paedophile bust. Governments and policy authorities around the world now comprehend the size and scope of child sexual abuse facilitated by the Internet, and are encouraging discussion, research, global agreement on children’s rights and police collaboration to identify and apprehend global paedophile rings. Whilst offenders often believe the possession of such imagery is okay it supports the abuse of children which is not. Research points to regular viewing of such material increasing sexual deviancy and leading to further sexual abuse of children. There is growing global agreement that possession, production and sale of such imagery should be illegal in all countries and progress towards this goal is increasing. Many countries have child protection legislation and laws pertaining to CSAI. Some do not have laws regarding this. Overall, laws surrounding children, ages of consent, and the production of CSAI vary considerably around the globe. Technology – Should ISPs provide part of the Solution? In many countries ISPs are obliged to remove sites which house illegal CSAI. However, CSAI can still enter ISP networks from other countries which are without legislation or police resources to enforce take down procedures concerning CSAI. This variation in law and enforcement make the case for world wide cooperation in the development of global policy. The cooperation of police authorities between countries to identify and arrest international criminal rings combined with increasing education and online help and reporting facilities is just part of a group of strategies to confront the problem of child sexual abuse. To prevent access to illegal material and to fight the sexual exploitation of children there is also a need to implement technical solutions to prevent access to and distribution of CSAI. Filtering at ISP level is one of many technical solutions including:
Governments worldwide are either enforcing filtering through carrier and ISP networks or strongly suggesting that the Internet industry develop and employ solutions to combat these issues. Voluntary solutions have been implemented in the UK, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, and multinational ISPs such as TeliaSonera operating across Europe, and continue to be encouraged with France, Germany being added to the list. ISP filtering has been a hot issue with opposition based on many technical and implementation problems. However, issues of cost, network performance, overblocking and traffic speed have been resolved with the development of the NetClean Whitebox. This technology offers easily implemented, scalable, affordable, fail safe and effective filtering of CSAI with no noticeable affect on network performance. |
