Tech giants must block sick child abuse images and prevent grooming
GLOBAL tech giants must do more to block sick child abuse images freely circulating online, said the boss of Britain’s lead crime-fighting organisation.
Lynne Owens, director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), said she was convinced offenders migrating to the murky corners of the internet started their twisted habits on the open web.
The NCA said there were 144,000 UK-registered accounts on the most harmful dark web child sex and exploitation [CSAE] sites as offending reaches epidemic proportions.
Mrs Owens said: “Some of the offences are almost indescribably horrific; the numbers of offences are burgeoning and some offenders are extremely technologically advanced, building higher, more difficult barriers for law enforcement to climb.
“There is no greater priority for us than child safety and we and UK policing do everything possible to catch these offenders working with partners at home and abroad.” She warned: “It’s very likely most offenders who end up on the really sadistic dark web sites began their offending on the open web.
“That’s why the open web needs to be somewhere there is no tolerance for this type of abuse. Industry must block abuse images upon detection and prevent online grooming.”
The Daily Express is leading a crusade for immediate and effective protection for children using the internet.
There is widespread concern they are prey to predatory paedophiles while routinely being exposed to images of sexual abuse, suicide, torture and violence against which there are no proper safeguards.
Law enforcement agencies are worried about an escalation in offending where perverts become desensitised, join dark web or encrypted forums with other high-harm offenders, and are incited to record first-generation abuse and post it online as part of a sick initiation.
The NSPCC said a sex crime against a child is recorded every
seven minutes – 76,204 offences in the past 12 months – an increase of more than 60 per cent in five years.
Concern has been raised that disturbing sexual images still circulate freely on social networks while teenagers are subjected to horrific bullying and online abuse via popular forums including Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and WhatsApp.
The Daily Express notified Google of one deeply disturbing and illegal image which was easily found using a routine and legal search. It was immediately removed.
A spokesman said: “This type of content is abhorrent. Fighting child sexual abuse material [CSAM] is an ongoing challenge and we continue to invest in technology and organisations to help keep our platforms safe.
“Our work includes algorithmic advances to identify never-beforeseen CSAM, development of video matching to tag and remove known CSAM videos, the launch of a Content Safety API to share image classification technology with the industry, and more.”