The debate about web filtering, and what a government should be able to do to prevent child pornography, and children stumbling onto adult images, has been raging in the UK in recent days. Prime Minister David Cameron has said that he wants to make search engines and ISPs block images of child abuse and add filters. People who wish to access adult material will have to ask their ISP to turn it on. All around Britain couples are preparing for 'that' conversation.
In an email to members of his Conservative party, David Cameron said that “few things are more important” than dealing with this issue. However, as is so often the case when government gets involved in the web, it's not entirely clear that he is fully aware of at the issues are.
In his speech on the topic last week, the Prime Minister said:
“The fact is that the growth of the Internet as an unregulated space has thrown up two major challenges when it comes to protecting our children.
The first challenge is criminal: and that is the proliferation and accessibility of child abuse images on the internet. The second challenge is cultural: the fact that many children are viewing online pornography and other damaging material at a very young age…”
Cameron said that he knew that “these challenges are very distinct and very different”, and yet he still still discussed them as one.
Any right thinking person would want to prevent the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. That's why it's already illegal, and why UK and US courts rightly hand out severe punishments for anyone convicted of such terrible offences.
The UK campaigning group the Open Rights Group (ORG) told me that while Cameron’s “intention is really important”, he has actually suggested “one of the least effective” ways of tackling child pornography and abuse on the web. They encourage the Prime Minister to do more to take the content down at source, not just block routes to it, and accused him of “winning the headline” not tackling the very serious problem.
So having seemingly failed the first objective, will David Cameron's plans make its harder for children to put in innocuous search terms and get back adult content by mistake? Is he really saving the innocence of a generation’s childhood? Some filters at ISP or search engine level may prevent children accidentally stumbling onto adult material. However, much can already be done, and parents need to be better educated in order to utilise the huge number of tools already available.
Turning Safe Search on is the first setting within Google search. Safe searching is also pretty easy to switch on in Yahoo! search too, and BING gives a variety of filtering options, with 'moderate' set as the default. In all of the major search engines safe searching is just two clicks away, but how many parents know about it and utilise it though? Instead of threatening the tech industry with legislation, the UK government should be educating teachers, parents, and pupils to browse the web safely far better than it currently does.
The aforementioned ORG have posed 20 questions to the ISPs on the proposed filtering systems, which highlight many of the flaws in the proposals and are worth reading. They also criticised the lack of consultation with device makers, as filtering at device level can be the most effective. For example, iPhones already have the ability to filter out adult content. Furthermore, erotic filters can be very erratic. Some have been known to block out LGBT community and news sites and even hotmail. The Prime Minister said he had taken this into consideration, but there remains huge issues with what gets blocked, and indeed what doesn’t.
The issue of web filtering is far from a new one. Back 2008 in the US, Federal Communications Committee Chairman Kevin Martin ended up having to backtrack on plans that would have public wifi with the adult content filter out, and in 2011 the Electronic Frontier Foundation condemnded moves towards we filtering from both the Australia and the UK
This time, Prime Minister Cameron may also have to take some strong public opinion into consideration as he progresses. A petition calling for a stop on default filtering has abeen signed by nearly 7000 people since the plans were announced. Many people fear that the by filtering content, the government is slowly moving towards censorship of the internet. There is also a fear that moves will lull parents into a false sense of security, and mean that they will not take proper precautions to protect their children online, believing them already to be safe.
Supporters, such as the Conservative MP Claire Perry who is leading the campaign for the Prime Minister, said the proposal “represents a comprehensive and pragmatic approach to tackling the key issues which threaten the safety of our children online.”
As ever with government and web filtering issues, David Cameron seems to have posed more questions than answers this week. On both sides of the Atlantic the debate about how we keep the internet both open and safe is likely to go on for a long time to come.