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Archive for the ‘Child Protection’ Category

MEPs call for shutting down of child pornography web pages throughout EU

Tue, Feb 15 2011 09:29 CET
byThe Sofia Echo staff

MEPs call for shutting down of child pornography web pages throughout EU

Child pornography or child abuse material on the internet must be removed at source in all EU countries, the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee said on February 14 2011, in amendments to new EU rules that are designed to prevent abuse, stiffen penalties, and protect victims.

Where removal is impossible, for example because pages are hosted outside the EU, then EU member states may ‘prevent access’ to this material, in line with their national laws, adds the committee, the European Parliament said in a media statement.

Members of the committee made a series of amendments to a proposed EU directive to combat sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. Studies suggest that between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of minors in Europe may be sexually assaulted during childhood.

‘We must strengthen prosecution, criminalise new forms of child sexual abuse, such as ‘grooming’ through social chat rooms, and above all protect child victims before, during and after criminal proceedings’, said Roberta Angelilli (EPP, IT), who is steering the legislation through the European Parliament, the media statement said.

The original European Commission proposal would have made blocking of child pornography web sites mandatory for EU member states. MEPs instead advocate removal at source and, should that prove impossible, allowing member states to ‘prevent access’ to this material.

Removal at source

The number of child pornography web sites is growing and an estimated 200 images containing child pornography are put on line every day. The children portrayed are ever younger, and the images are becoming more graphic and more violent.

EU member states must impose binding requirements to ensure the ‘removal at source of internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material,’ MEPs say.

The EU must also co-operate with third countries in to secure the prompt removal of such material from servers hosted in these countries, they add.

Preventing access

Should removal at source prove impossible (for example because the state where servers are hosted is unwilling to co-operate or because its procedure for removing the material from servers is particularly long), EU member states ‘may take the necessary measures in accordance with national legislation to prevent access to such content in their territory,’ say MEPs.

National measures preventing access ‘must be set by transparent procedures and provide adequate safeguards, in particular to ensure that the restriction is limited to what is necessary and proportionate, and that users are informed of the reason for the restriction,’ MEPs say. Content providers and users must also be informed of the possibility to appeal, and to whom to appeal, under a judicial redress procedure, they add.

Tougher penalties and ban on working with children

The new rules would introduce tougher penalties across the EU for those who sexually abuse or exploit children. The proposal sets minimum penalties for 22 criminal offences, but also allows member states to impose harsher measures and sentencing.

Offenders would face penalties ranging from two to more than 10 years in prison, depending on the crime. Since about 20 per cent of sex offenders go on to commit further offences after conviction, MEPs also stipulate that member states may impose on convicted offenders a temporary or permanent ‘ban on engaging in occupations involving any form of contact with children’.

When recruiting, employers will be entitled to obtain information on any convictions for sex crimes. After recruitment, if serious suspicion arises, employers may still request such information, even if it has to be obtained from criminal records held in other EU countries. Member states may also take other measures, such as putting in place ’sex offenders registers’ accessible to the judiciary and/or law enforcement agencies, add MEPs.

Abuse by people in a position of trust, authority or influence over the child (for instance, family members, guardians or teachers) is included in, and punishable under, the new criminal offences. Higher sentences would also be imposed on anyone committing an offence involving children with a physical or mental disability, in a situation of dependence or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

‘Sex tourists’ travelling abroad to abuse children will also face prosecution, under the new rules on jurisdiction.

EU-wide criminalisation of ‘grooming’

New forms of abuse and exploitation, such as ‘grooming’ (befriending children through the web with the intention of sexually abusing them), or making children pose sexually in front of web cameras, will also be criminalised. MEPs have added a rule that offenders who use different means to target a great number of children so as to multiply their chances of committing the crime would face harsher penalties.

Protecting victims

MEPs have strengthened proposed rules on assisting, supporting and protecting victims, to ensure that they have easy access to legal remedies and do not suffer from participating in criminal investigations and trials.

Raising awareness to prevent crimes

MEPs emphasise the need to prevent crime, through information campaigns, research and education programmes to raise awareness and reduce the risk of children becoming victims of sexual crimes. These measures must be addressed to all parties concerned, including children, parents and teachers, to show them how to recognise signs of sexual abuse, both online and offline. Help-lines should also be set up, adds the committee.

Next steps

Negotiations between European Parliament and European Council representatives will continue in the coming months, with a view to reaching a compromise in the first half of 2011. Once adopted, this directive will replace current EU legislation dating from 2004. Member states would have two years to transpose the new rules into their national laws.

Note from Yaman Akdeniz: Mandatory EU wide blocking is rejected but the provisions still allow the MS to adopt state level legal measures that provide for blocking access to know child pornography sites outside the EU jurisdiction.

Vote on Blocking in Libe Committee | MOGiS e.V. –: “Vote on Blocking in Libe Committee

Posted on 2011/02/14

by Joe McNamee => http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring

The Civil Liberties Committee of the Parliament this evening, in an ‘orientation vote’ that will set up the negotiations with the Council adopted a text which:

* rejects mandatory EU-wide blocking
* removes all references to ‘self-regulation’
* removes all references to ‘non-legislative measures’

What we did not get is a specific obligation on Member States to require a prior judicial ruling before blocking sites nor a ban on countries that currently block. Both of these, in my view, were wholly impossible, but they are still a ‘stain’ on this being a full success. But from absurdly unrealistic to some (intermediate!) success is quite a journey.

The texts adopted are below.

Article 21

Measures addressing websites containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material

1. Member States shall take the necessary legislative measures to obtain the removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material. Internet pages containing such material shall be removed, especially when originating from an EU Member State. In addition, the EU shall cooperate with third countries in securing the prompt removal of such content from servers in their territory.

2. When removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material is impossible to achieve, Member States may take the necessary measures in accordance with national legislation to prevent access to such content in their territory. These measures must be set by transparent procedures and provide adequate safeguards, in particular to ensure that the restriction is limited to what is necessary and proportionate, and that users are informed of the reason for the restriction. Content providers and users shall be informed of the possibility to whom to appeal under a judicial redress procedure.

2a. Any measure under paragraphs 1 and 2 shall respect fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, as guaranteed by the European Convention of the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and general principles of Union law. Those measures shall provide for prior authorisation in accordance with national law, and the right to an effective and timely judicial redress.

2b. The European Commission shall submit to the European Parliament an annual report on the activities undertaken by Member States to remove child sexual abuse material from Internet pages.

Recital 13

(13) Child pornography, which constitutes child abuse material, is a specific type of content which cannot be construed as the expression of an opinion. To combat it, it is necessary to ensure as quickly as possible the full removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material and to identify the offenders to start procedures against them, as the investigation and prosecution of such crimes should be a priority. Any webpage originating from an EU Member State and containing sexual abuse material of children should be removed. The EU, in particular through increased cooperation with third countries and international organisations and with the help of bilateral or multilateral agreements, should seek to facilitate the effective removal by third country authorities of websites containing child pornography or child abuse material, which are hosted in their territory, as well as concurrent criminal prosecution of persons who placed such content on or distributed it over the internet. In that regard international cooperation between judicial and police authorities should be strengthened and reporting points put in place. However, should despite such efforts the removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material prove impossible to achieve where the original materials are not located within the EU,either because the State where the servers are hosted is not willing to cooperate or because the procedure for removal of the material in the State concerned proves to be particularly long, Member States may take the necessary measures in accordance with national legislation to prevent access to such content in their territory. There should be strengthened cooperation between public authorities, particularly in the interest of ensuring that information regarding websites containing child pornographyor child abuse material is as complete as possible and of avoiding duplication of work. Any suchmeasure must be in accordance with national legislation, respect the rights of the end users, adhere to legal and judicial procedures and comply with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The Safer Internet Programme has set up a network of hotlines whose goal is to collect information and to ensure coverage and exchange of reports on the major types of illegal content online.

MEPs putting child pornographers’ rights ahead of abuse victims, claim campaigners | Society | The Observer: “MEPs putting child pornographers’ rights ahead of abuse victims, claim campaigners

Childrens’ charities attack move to inform child pornographers when images are removed from the internet

* Jamie Doward
* The Observer, Sunday 13 February 2011
* Article history

European MPs have been accused of putting the rights of child pornographers ahead of abused children after it emerged that they are to water down new laws, backed by the UK government, for curbing the dissemination of child abuse images [see footnote].

The European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee (LIBE) will meet in Strasbourg tomorrow, when it is expected to approve a controversial measure that would compel EU member states to inform publishers of child pornography that their images are to be deleted from the internet or blocked. Child pornographers will also have to be informed of their right to appeal against any removal or blocking. The measure would make the UK’s system for blocking and removing child pornography without informing the publisher illegal.

‘MEPs seem more concerned with the rights of child pornographers than they do with the rights of children who have been sexually abused to make their foul, illegal images,’ said John Carr, an adviser to the UK government on child internet safety and the secretary of the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety.

For the directive to become an EU-wide law it must be agreed both by the Council of Ministers and the European parliament.

The Council of Ministers agreed tough new measures approving the blocking and deletion of child pornography images shortly before Christmas. But LIBE intends to reject them after civil rights campaigners mounted a lobbying campaign, warning that they were a form of internet censorship.

• This footnote was added on 14 February 2011. The Information Office of the European Parliament has asked us to make clear that the amendment in question clearly states that in cases where it is not possible to remove internet pages with child porn material because the images are held outside the EU, member states ‘may prevent access’ to them. The option of blocking sites is therefore still available to countries such as the UK.

University Professor Ignites Controversy Over Report to Legalize CP: “A retired University of Hawaii professor is sparking controversy over his study that supports legalizing child pornography, claiming it would reduce child sexual abuse and child prostitution.”

(Via XBIZ.com | News & Articles.)

ISPs under pressure to control online porn: “

Minister thinks of the children

Campaigners will meet with the internet minister, Ed Vaizey, to lobby for ISPs to be forced to control access to pornography.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

‘Children’s Law’ Used to Censor Online Media in Turkey

Monday, 27 September 2010

Bans on websites containing a small amount of content in violation of Turkish law may be depriving people of their constitutional right to free access to information, according to a legal scholar in Istanbul.

The popular websites YouTube and Google are among those Turkish users often have difficulty reaching, a problem the country’s president chalked up to tax-related issues, rather than censorship, in a recent speech.

‘The law initially aimed to protect children and families, but it has mostly been used for political control and censorship,’ Yaman Akdeniz, a lawyer and professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review late last week after an informational meeting. The meeting is a first step toward discussions that will be held among civil-society organizations and the Parliament on the ‘Internet ban’ law in Turkey.

Law No. 5651, which entered into force in November 2007, followed by the approval of three related bylaws, authorizes the country’s courts or its telecommunications authority to cut off access to Internet websites under certain circumstances.

‘Banning access [to Internet sites] does not solve the problem,’ Akdeniz said, adding that problems such as child pornography, libel and the like, included in the framework of the law’s eighth article, cannot be solved in this way. Even if the law could solve such problems, blanket bans on access would be a disproportionate response, he said.

Akdeniz also said there were many gaps in the law and existing provisions were not being implemented properly by the relevant public authorities. ‘Those who commit crimes such as posting child pornography are not punished by the Internet ban,’ he said, adding that it is the general public that is harmed by such bans.

‘This is why I believe the law takes a disproportionate approach,’ he said, explaining that criminals are left free to repeat their crimes while innocent people are deprived of the ability to use Internet website sources for educational, informational and other legal purposes. Moreover, Akdeniz said, the Turkish penal code already covers the crimes listed in Article 8 of the Internet ban law.

Once a court decides to ban access to certain Internet sites, the decision can be appealed within 10 days after it enters into force, a procedure Akdeniz objected to. ‘I see banning access to information as a violation of my constitutional rights,’ he said, adding that there should be no time limit to appeal Internet ban decisions.

Moreover, Akdeniz said, even when he had appealed such decisions on time, the court said he had no right to appeal as he was not a party to the case, something he said was also unjust. ‘The wrong methodology is being applied,’ he said.

Akdeniz also said Internet ban decisions carried the status of preventative measures, which had to be temporary in legal terms, but whose effects could eventually last permanently.

‘The validity time for such decisions must be determined either by law, or by a court decision,’ he said, explaining that the court had said in related decisions that a ban would be annulled once the violation of law No. 5651 had ended.

‘This also constitutes a concern,’ Akdeniz said, adding that Turkish courts considered the violation ended only if the content violating Turkish law cannot be accessed from anywhere around the globe. ‘Although many website-managing companies, such as YouTube, can localize an access ban to [block] content that violates Turkish laws within Turkey, Turkish court decisions have no jurisdiction across borders,’ he said.

President Abdullah Gül said Friday in a speech to students at Columbia University in New York that blocking of websites in Turkey was due simply to unresolved tax issues. ‘A problem that stands is that some Internet sites are unreachable in Turkey, but this is not a result of censorship,’ Gül said. ‘Tax laws have not been updated, and I have urged them to do so.’

Responding to the idea that certain Internet sites had been blocked because their owners had not paid taxes in Turkey, Akdeniz said Turkish tax law does not include any provisions predicting this scenario.

‘Turkey is a country that aspires to join the EU, but its Internet policies are approaching [those of] China,’ Akdeniz said.

The academic said after having exhausted all legal channels within the Turkish system, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a last resort, a place where the issue may find a resolution that does not violate people’s fundamental right to be informed and get access to information.

Monday, 27 September 2010

Hurriyet Daily News&Economic Review

Department of Justice Releases First National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, August 2, 2010

Department of Justice Releases First National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

U.S. Marshals Service to Launch Nationwide Operation Targeting Top 500 Most Dangerous, Non-compliant Sex Offenders

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder today announced that the Department of Justice released its first-ever National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction. The strategy also provides the first-ever comprehensive threat assessment of the dangers facing children from child pornography, online enticement, child sex tourism, commercial sexual exploitation and sexual exploitation in Indian Country, and outlines a blueprint to strengthen the fight against these crimes. The strategy builds upon the department’s accomplishments in combating child exploitation by establishing specific, aggressive goals and priorities and increasing cooperation and collaboration at all levels of government and the private sector.

As part of the overall strategy, the U.S. Marshals Service is launching a nationwide operation targeting the top 500 most dangerous, non-compliant sex offenders in the nation. Additionally, the department will create a national database to allow federal, state, tribal, local and international law enforcement partners to deconflict their cases with each other, engage in undercover operations from a portal facilitated or hosted by the database, share information and intelligence and conduct analysis on dangerous offenders and future threats and trends. The department also created 38 additional Assistant U.S. Attorney positions to devote to child exploitation cases, and over the coming months will work to fill the vacancies and train the new assistants in this specialized area.

‘Although we’ve made meaningful progress in protecting children across the country, and although we’ve brought a record number of offenders to justice in recent years, it is time to renew our commitment to this work. It is time to intensify our efforts,’ said Attorney General Holder. ‘This new strategy provides the roadmap necessary to do just that – to streamline our education, prevention and prosecution activities; to improve information sharing and collaboration; and to make the most effective use of limited resources. Together, we are sending an important message – that the U.S. government, and our nation’s Department of Justice, has never been more committed to protecting our children and to bringing offenders to justice.’

‘Thanks to law enforcement operations like Operation Nest Egg and Operation Achilles, the department and our law enforcement partners have brought thousands of offenders to justice in the last year. But this progress is only a start,’ said Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler. ‘Tangible steps outlined in the National Strategy will bring our fight to the next level.’

The strategy first analyzed the threat to our nation’s children and described the current efforts at all levels of the government against this threat. Since FY 2006, the Department of Justice has filed 8,464 Project Safe Childhood (PSC) cases against 8,637 defendants. These cases include prosecutions of online enticement of children to engage in sexual activity, interstate transportation of children to engage in sexual activity, production, distribution and possession of child pornography and other offenses.

Despite vigorously fighting all aspects of child exploitation, the department recognized that more work remains to be done. To that end, the department’s strategy lays out goals to increase coordination among the nation’s investigators, better train investigators and prosecutors, advance law enforcement’s technological capabilities and enhance research to inform decisions on deterrence, incarceration and monitoring. The strategy also includes a renewed commitment to public awareness and community outreach.

As part of its public outreach efforts, the department is re-launching ProjectSafeChildhood.gov, PSC’s public website. PSC is a department initiative launched in 2006 that aims to combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, PSC marshals federal, state, tribal and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.

For more information regarding the National Strategy to Combat Child Exploitation, Prevention and Interdiction, please visit: www.projectsafechildhood.gov/docs/natstrategyreport.pdf

IWF: Good on child abuse…: “

…obscenity, racism, not so much

The Internet Watch Foundation is coming of age. Over the last few years it has transformed from an organisation apparently focused on takedown figures and URL hit rates into something altogether more strategic and sophisticated, in line with the nature and scale of the problem it sees itself as dealing with.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Facebook attacked over refusal to install panic button: Britain’s online child protection agency attacked Facebook yesterday for its continued refusal to install a panic button on its site.

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

Court Says Parents Can Block ‘Sexting’ Cases – NYTimes.com

By TAMAR LEWIN, Published: March 17, 2010

In the first federal appeals court opinion dealing with ‘sexting’ — the transmission of sexually explicit photographs by cellphone — a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Wednesday that parents could block the prosecution of their children on child pornography charges for appearing in photographs found on some classmates’ cellphones.

‘It does not resolve all of the constitutional issues implicated in sexting prosecutions, but it’s a terrific start for civil liberties,’ said Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, who represented the parents.

The case, Miller v. Mitchell, began in 2008 when school officials in Tunkhannock, Pa., discovered seminude and nude photographs of some female students — some as young as 12 or 13 when the photographs were taken — on other students’ cellphones. The officials confiscated the phones and turned them over to the Wyoming County District Attorney’s Office.

The district attorney at the time, George Skumanick Jr., said that students possessing ‘inappropriate images of minors’ could be prosecuted for possession or distribution of child pornography, and sent letters to the parents of the students with the phones — and the parents of students who appeared in the photographs — threatening to prosecute any student who did not participate in an after-school ‘education program.’

The syllabus called for the girls to write a report explaining why they were there, what they had done, and why it was wrong.

‘Participation in the program is voluntary,’ the letter said. ‘Please note, however, charges will be filed against those that do not participate or those that do not successfully complete the program.’

Three families whose daughters were in the photographs refused to participate and instead filed suit to block the charges, which they said would amount to retaliation for that refusal. They said the district attorney’s actions interfered with the girls’ constitutional rights to be photographed and to be free from compelled speech — and with the parents’ rights to direct their children’s upbringing.

In March, the district court temporarily barred the district attorney from initiating any criminal charges against the girls. Wednesday’s opinion came in response to his appeal and upholds the injunction but does not resolve the case.

The unanimous ruling of the judges, Thomas L. Ambro, Michael A. Chagares and Walter K. Stapleton, criticized the district attorney’s reliance on the girls’ presence in the photographs as a basis for the potential charges.

‘Appearing in a photograph provides no evidence as to whether that person possessed or transmitted the photo,’ said the opinion, by Judge Ambro.