Abusive images of children online is still a cause for concern
New figures from the Internet Watch Foundation 2004 Annual Report which was launched today.
The number of reports relating to potentially illegal content where action was taken by the IWF, increased to 20% of all reports compared to 17% of in 2003. This is a clear indication that the prevalence of child abuse images online remains a serious problem.
Despite this however, the number of reports processed by the internet hotline staff in 2004, dropped for the first time in IWF history; nearly a 12% reduction on the previous year.
We attribute this reduction to a number of factors;
- the public are now more aware of the problem of spam emails and simply delete incoming messages from sources they do not recognise
- new email software does not display images as a default, so consumers are not so exposed to potentially illegal images
- anti spam measures taken by the industry have had an impact on reducing the quantity of spam and therefore the risks of consumers seeing potentially illegal content
- the high profile media reporting of police activities in this area means the public are more aware of the penalties for visiting and downloading content from websites selling or trading in abusive images of children.
- 50% of the websites containing potentially illegal content were Pay-Per-View sites. This is indicative of the high level of commercialisation of abusive images of children on the internet.
- The good news is that potentially illegal content hosted in the UK remains at less than 1% at the end of 2004, compared to 18% in 1996. This is a testament to the effective partnerships between the IWF, the UK internet industry and the police.
Home Office Minister Paul Goggins had these words of support:"The IWF plays a crucial role within the UK in combating illegal material on the internet - a role we value very highly. The IWF and the UK ISP industry can take real pride in the effectiveness with which they are helping to make the UK one of the safest countries in the world to use the internet.
Members of the Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet and those who work with us have developed a common understanding of the challenges and problems we face. Working with a range of partners - including search engine companies and the banking and finance community, the IWF are helping to ensure that all sectors understand what they can do to combat the trade in illegal images."
- Intelligence relating to offenders was passed to the police every working day of the year. In 2004 the IWF contributed to 9 arrests and forwarded information relevant to other ongoing police investigations.
- Overseas, there has been a geographical shift in the locations of where websites containing illegal content are apparently hosted.
- The proportion hosted in Russia has increased from 23% to 31%.
- The proportion hosted in the USA has been reduced from 55% in 2003, to 40% in 2004.
- There appears to be an emerging trend in some Asian countries with Thailand, China, Japan and South Korea accounting collectively, for 13% of potentially illegal content during 2004.
- From all the reports received in 2004, self classification of complaints from reporters about child abuse images constituted 82%, criminally obscene 15%, criminally racist 1.5% and 1.5% related to other types of content.
- Criminally obscene content is a less well defined area to determine as this type of content is rarely traced to UK servers. A small proportion of these complaints would lead to police action if hosted in the UK however because they are hosted on foreign servers, this falls outside IWF remit.
- IWF are not experiencing incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK; again, the authorities need to look beyond the UK to trace the location. The IWF cannot act on this type of content overseas.
IWF membership grew by over 30% in 2004, 55 companies now financially support the IWF.
Recognition of the importance and success of internet hotlines also came in the form of increased funding for hotline initiatives from the EU, in a new €50m ‘Safer Internet Plus’ plan which will run from 2005 to 2008.
The IWF also remained high profile within UK Government receiving words of support from the Prime Minister himself:
“The UK has perhaps the world's best regime for tackling child pornography, the Internet Watch Foundation, and we continue to work closely with the industry, law enforcement agencies and children's charities to seek ways of protecting children from abuse.”
Last year, the IWF was named as a ‘relevant authority’ in a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Director of Public Prosecutions and President of the Association of Chief Police Officers to receive reports of potentially illegal child abuse images. This MoU also provided IT professionals with a conditional defence to enable them to copy and store for a limited time, any online content found on their company networks, which they consider to be potentially illegal, so that it can be assessed by the IWF or Law Enforcement Agencies.
Looking to 2005 and potential challenges the following issues are all set to be prominent issues on the IWF agenda: increasing public access to the internet via broadband, more mobile communication devices giving access to the internet and therefore increasing the prospect of more consumers being exposed to potentially illegal content, the movement and obscuring of illicit content on the internet, anonymous payment mechanisms for purchasing illegal content online and the concern about extreme adult content.
Please click here for an online version of the 2004 Annual Report.
Please email media@iwf.org.uk for a hard copy of the annual report.
Created: Fri, February 4th, 2005 | Last Modified: Mon, April 4th, 2005
