Help police or expect state regulation, inspector warns web giants

TECHNOLOGY giants and social media companies should expect to be stateregulated unless they start acting more responsibly, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary has said.

Sir Tom Winsor, who oversees the 43 forces in England and Wales, said some internet giants showed a “questionable lack of willingness” to be held to account. Some global firms allowed paedophiles, terrorists and organised crime to exploit their platforms, but refused to cooperate with police, he said.

Sir Tom added: “It should come as no surprise if this leads to the establishment and ever-tightening of internet regulation, to compel responsible and proportionate actions which these companies could voluntarily take today.”

Experts and children’s charities agree that current safeguards are insufficient, with youngsters exposed to predatory paedophiles, harmful images and addictive games.

Sir Tom warned that police were becoming frustrated with the way internet firms prevented them pursuing serious criminals, some even making a virtue of developing technology impossible for agents to intercept, paving the way for terrorists to plot attacks in secret.

Delivering his annual State of Policing report, he said patience would eventually run out. Senior police officers have been angered by the failure of firms, such as Google and Facebook, to cooperate when investigating terrorist plots and serious crime, he said. In some cases British police had to apply to courts in the US to access encrypted or hidden material. In other cases counter-terrorism officers struggled to persuade tech firms to remove inflammatory material from their platforms.

Sir Tom said the situation was unsustainable: “If the giants of that world continue to devise ways to frustrate law enforcement agencies, the public will not accept it.”

But he was also critical of the police for failing to use cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence to fight crime. “Instruments and technology exist today which can process information, far faster, more efficiently and more reliably and effectively than any human could,” he said.