New measures to tackle online child abuse

An unprecedented package of measures to eradicate online child abuse will be announced today by the Prime Minister at the UK government’s #WeProtect Children Online summit in London.

Delegations from more than 50 countries, 26 leading technology companies and 10 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are taking part in the 2 day summit at Lancaster House, the first of its kind in the world.

Speaking at the summit, the PM will announce a new joint National Crime Agency (NCA)/Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) specialist unit to tackle the worst cases of child sexual exploitation online.

Persistent paedophiles are increasingly communicating on the so-called ‘dark web’, using ever more sophisticated techniques to disguise their identities and encrypt the horrific images of children that they are sharing with peers.

The new unit will bring together GCHQ’s technical expertise with NCA’s investigatory prowess to develop new high tech capabilities to address the challenges of analysing vast volumes of child abuse imagery hidden on the ‘dark web’. They will focus on the most prolific offenders.

All internet technologies used by these offenders leave ‘digital footprints’ of some form. UK daily users to secret or encrypted networks have increased by two thirds according to the NCA who expected to see 20,000 daily UK users in 2013 (CEOP Threat Assessment 2013).

In one recent investigation, GCHQ and the NCA became aware of an individual in the UK using his technical know-how to maintain chat services and websites in the Far East and Eastern Europe to share child abuse material across the world.

He also offered advice to other paedophiles about how to hide their behaviour online. The individual was using software which enables online anonymity, as well as an online nickname to disguise his real identity. Analysis by GCHQ and NCA enabled them to identify the individual for arrest.

He was charged with making and distributing indecent images of children and later sentenced to 3 years in prison.

The Prime Minister will also unveil ground-breaking new technical solutions developed by the industry which will support law enforcement action to close the net around paedophiles, protect more children and make it significantly harder to use the internet to share child abuse images:

The digital fingerprints (hash values) of thousands of known child sex abuse images identified by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) will be used by the major tech companies (Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Yahoo) to prevent these images being shared on their services, so they can no longer be viewed.

Hashing technology which allows known child abuse videos to be identified and blocked from being shared has been developed by Google who will share it with the wider industry. Yahoo will be the first industry partner to pilot it.

Microsoft, Google and Mozilla have committed to investigate the feasibility of implementing browser level blocking restrictions designed to prevent people getting access to URLs of known child abuse material via Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.

The package of measures follows a strongly-worded call to action by the PM last year where he said that more must be done to reduce the proliferation of child abuse images on the internet.

Since then Google and Microsoft have introduced a number of changes to their search functions not only the UK but across the world. This includes changes to their algorithms to prevent images and videos of child abuse material from appearing in their search results.

Microsoft is increasing the size of its search term ‘blacklist’, and Google’s algorithm has now rolled out around the world – in all 40 languages Google search supports – and it automatically checks against millions of search terms. Google has seen a fivefold reduction in the number of searches for child abuse images since these changes were made.

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Every time someone chooses to view an online image or a video of a child being abused, they are choosing to participate in a horrific crime. Every single view represents that victim being abused again. They may as well be in the room with them.

"I want to build a better future for our children. The package I am announcing today is a watershed moment in >reducing the volume of child abuse images online. It marks significant progress in delivering a truly world-leading response to a global problem.

"The so-called ‘dark-net’ is increasingly used by paedophiles to view sickening images. I want them to hear loud and clear, we are shining a light on the web’s darkest corners; if you are thinking of offending there will be nowhere for you to hide."