Internet Watch Foundation

 

StreamShield are our newest member. They take up their membership with effect from 1^st January 2005. We have four or five further opportunities to increase our membership on the horizon, so hopefully we can report a favourable outcome at the next meeting. I’ve recently met with a CISCO representative and he was expressing a desire to help us with ‘in kind’ support with advice on routing and traceability experience and other technical developments that we could learn about.

 

We’ve recruited a technical specialist (Fred) to work with our Hotline staff to help them address some of the developing challenges they face and to provide a technical liaison point for all our members so we can better understand the products and services they are launching.

 

Our new website is up and running. Due to the extent of the content and the fast moving media environment we’ve recruited a part time web coordinator to manage this task for us. Lene, pronounced Leena, is now working with Fay.

 

This work is reaching a conclusion with an Editorial team now identified. Search facilities on mobiles will be considered for inclusion in the final document. We hope to have a combined public and industry guide published by March 2005.

 

This is still working well with only a relatively few reporters seeking feedback about the outcome of their reports.

 

We continue to publish the latest child abuse spam information on our website, effectively aimed at reducing public complaints about the same e mail circulating for a period of time.

 

Having experienced a slight drop off in the volume of reports from 19,553 in 2003 to 17,255 we are still processing a steady flow averaging around 330 reports a week or 1430 per month. The quality of the reports are variable but nevertheless our analysts can still identify on average 286 new actionable sites a month.

 

The target date for publication is the lunchtime reception at the House of Commons on 2^nd February 2005.

 

The proposed legislation is part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill presently before Parliament. The Bill had its second reading on 7^th December. A Standing Committee is discussing the fine detail of the Bill on various days through January. We have made representations to the Committee via a Committee MP about the inadequacies of the partnerships that ought to supprt us should the government be minded to make an official request to us to add ‘incitement to religious hatred’ to our existing remit. We have still to complete our discussions with the Faith Unit at the Home Office about the inappropriateness of the arrangements we have for dealing with racial complaints before we are satisfied that we could ask Board and Funding Council to consider whether we should accede to an anticipated Government request to add ‘religion’ to our remit.

Information on this topic can be found at www.homeoffice.gov.uk.

 

This issue is still with the CPS. However if they do decide that adult content depicted on websites open to minors to see and hosted in the UK then we will need to discuss with the authorities as to how the matter should be managed. There may be an implication for us in the longer run if we are expected to issue takedown notices on such websites.

 

A draft has been circulated for consideration by Board and Funding Council. Any feedback on content, style or omissions will be appreciated.

 

A draft has been circulated for consideration.

 

You will all know by now that we have the corridor event week commencing the 31^st January 2005 fast approaching. We will be hosting a lunchtime reception on 2^nd February at the House of Commons to launch our Annual Report and celebrate with our members and wider stakeholders the success of the UK model in tackling online child abuse and other potentially illegal content.

 

Police Commander David Armond (Met Police) and Professor David Wall (Leeds University) undertook an all day inspection and review of our operational procedures, appeals and reinstatement policies on behalf of the Home Office on 9^th September 2004. We still await their written assessment.

 

We were pleased to host a visit from Stephen Carter, CEO Ofcom accompanied by Robin Blake on 17^th October. The purpose of his visit was in essence to see our operations in action and to discuss the issues of potentially illegal content on the internet relative to our remit. As many of you will have noted Ofcom stated in their media literacy consultation that they wanted to embrace the IWF, so we are developing a dialogue with them as to what that might mean in practice.

 

We hosted a dinner at the House of Commons, sponsored by MSN and Ask Jeeves, aimed at drawing together various stakeholders who might help in addressing some of the international problems associated with paedophilia on the internet. Two important outcomes resulted.

 

We regret to say there is no clarity in the publications relating to the new Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the Police reform paper and the National Policing Plan on how internet paedophilia is to be addressed in the longer term. We have been actively engaged with Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hyde on his concept of a National Centre model and I met with the Chairman and Director General designate of SOCA to try and establish where POLIT might feature in the future. What we all desire is an external facing POLIT, ideally multi-agency focussed, but critically, with adequate police resources to tackle real time issues and available to industry to liaise with on a face to face basis. The debate continues.

 

Many of you may not know but there is a very impressive Microsoft Research facility in Cambridge. Through our relationships with MSN and Microsoft we have been working on a project to speed up our viewing of images in newsgroups. As a consequence we have gradually developed a bulk image viewing facility that is helping to improve both our viewing effectiveness and the technological efficiency of issuing newsgroup takedowns.

 

 

Peter Robbins

14.01.05