Adults are concerned about online child abuse, Kids are worried about embarrassing pictures, SPAM and viruses on the Internet Report from the public presentation on “Protecting children using the Internet” hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee

Representatives from Business, Government, Police and NGOs attended a public presentation in Brussels, Tuesday 5 May 2009 on how best to protect children using the internet.

The meeting was made up of three sessions; The European institutions view, The Industries’ and NGO’s view and finally “....Who are we to decide?”, in which Janice Richardson of Insafe introduced two young panellists to give the youth perspective on the issues discussed that day.

The European institutions view

Kicking off the first session chair János Tóth, president of the TEN section of the EESC, called for the need to make the Internet a safer place for everybody, “but most importantly for the children”. He reminded us how the issue concerned human rights, privacy and human decency. He emphasised the need for International partnership on the matter.

Georgios Dassis, President of Group II of the EESC, echoed these views and added that today’s children grow up in a world of new technology bringing about new social challenges. The fact that the Internet has no borders brings great challenges as each of the countries have their own cultures, laws and police forces. Closing he said “It’s the right time, right place and the right people to help protect children from abuse online and in real life”.

Christine Korman, Head of Sector Safer Internet, European Commision, DG Information Society & Media, introduced the Safer Internet programme which “protects and empowers children by promoting safer use of the Internet”. (This site is part of this programme). The programme promotes international co-operation through a network of Safety Awareness Centres. In summary Christine highlighted three points; keeping track of emerging online technologies, tackling harmful content and conduct and focusing on illegal material, bullying and misuse of social networking sites.

Christina Schulman, Programme Manager, Economic Crime Division, Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs, Council of Europe, outlined the Council of Europe measures for the protection of children against online sexual exploitation and abuse. She spoke of the need for countries to consistently criminalise child abuse and also for the need of ISPs to be at least responsible, if not liable, for the content passing through their systems.

Madi Sharma, Rapporteur of opinion TEN/343, EESC Member (Group 1, UK) introduced herself as a non expert but with the qualifications of a Mum and everyday person on the street. Her motivation is first and foremost for the safety of her kids online and was concerned that her inexperience of these technologies could be like the blind leading the blind. She introduced Peter Robbins, CEO of Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Peter talked of the decline in commercial child abuse sites thanks to cross border co-operation. He explained how these sites use a franchise business model and distribute the same content through differently branded sites. However, for non-commercial sites it is a lot harder to track and identify as IWF have no authority to access closed systems.

The industries views

Jean-Christophe Le Toquin, Safer Internet Director EMEA, Microsoft, highlighted the huge array of devices from which children can get online and the shift from individual PCs to cloud computing and hosting of content. He explained CETS (Child Exploitation Tracking System) a system Microsoft has developed to help share information for investigators across borders. Although the technology is ready the legal framework required to operate such international efforts, providing the space for Microsoft to make this product commercially available, is not.

Paul Durrant, General Manager of ISPA Ireland and Council Member of European Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA) explained how the ISP industry deplores the illegal use of it’s networks and storage facilities. He spoke of a huge drop in the number of reported illegal content cases. This could point to the fact that we are winning the war against child abuse online. It is the ISPs position that blocking sites is not the answer, as this would slow down networks and disrupt services for the millions of legal users. It was their view that more effective reporting and take down procedures on a global scale was the answer.

Mikael Conny Svensson, Mastercard representative on the Eurpean Financial Coalition (EFC) Steering Committee, co-chair of the Payments Industry Working Group, talked of the move from Credit Cards to Paypal and other payment methods. He described how Mastercard pays third party companies to search for misuse of sites accepting or claiming to accept payments from Mastercard. Mastercard is part of the European Financial Coalition. Banks will monitor and ban merchants who misuse their service by exploiting children. This decreases the methods these criminals can use to sell illegal content.

Peter Robbins, CEO, Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) described IWF’s legal standing which allows them to download and view images and videos of children being abused without being prosecuted. The IWF has 90 members who pay for the blocking list of specific URLs which they claim to contain illegal content. The goal of the IWF is to go after content and not suspects as they have no powers to prosecute.

Julia Van Weiler, Director of Innocence in Danger, described various harrowing cases in which vulnerable children were abused online. She said we tend to become “lost in technology and can forget about the children who have been affected”. From her experience she says that there is a clear need for information distribution for councillors and training on how to deal with such cases.

“....Who are we to decide?” - the youth’s perspective

Finally, Janice Richardson, Senior Advisor, European Schoolnet, introduced Cosim-Bogdan Coman and Razvan-Alexandru Ilinca, two youths from Romania who had recently won a Data Protection Day 2009 award for a video they created. Janice asked for their opinions as to how they saw safety online from a young persons perspective. It seemed they were more worried about everyday issues such as spam, phishing and viruses rather than being the victims of online predators. They described a common problem is the way in which information (such as embarrassing photos) can disperse so easily from Social Networking sites. Cosmin-Bogdan suggested that more time should be spent at school learning about safety issues on the Internet. At the same time he felt that teachers needed to be more “aware” of the issues facing young people online.

Summary

To summarise the afternoon’s discussion Soscha Eulenburg, EESC Member (Group III Germany) called for a European Knowledge base of best practise programmes and International hotlines to report illegal content. Madi Sharma highlighted the importance of listening to, rather talking at young people and to bring them into the conversation.