Protection of Consumers and Children on the Internet

Protection of Consumers and Children on the Internet Barcelona, 16 th October, 2001 John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ John Carr Associate Director, NCH Children & Technology Unit Member of Home Secretary’s Internet Task Force Member of the Df. ES Safety Strategy Group Member of BECTa Gridclub Advisory Board Member of the Board of the Internet Watch Foundation DTI Appointee to Review of Internet Self-Regulation Member of the Home Office/ACPO/Industry Forum on Chat ¬ Contact details: johnc 1912@msn. com (020) 7263 9229 07961 367960

Children and the Internet v v v v In this session we will be looking at Children’s use of the Internet The upside of the Internet And the downside The different kinds of hazards to children online Cases Protective Measures & Increasing Awareness John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ The world’s greatest educational, artistic, scientific and cultural institutions are all opening up their virtual doors to the whole of the planet ¬ Unprecedented resources are now available to all our children ¬ And of course, to us as well ¬ Evidence is starting to accumulate which suggests that children with regular access to the Internet are gaining an educational and career advantage over their less fortunate classmates ¬ Children with special needs are also gaining disproportionately from the greater use of computers generally ¬ But of course a familiar “digital divide” is also opening up between the children of richer and poorer parents ¬ There also serious issues of safety for children John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet In the UK the level of investment in getting the Internet into schools is gigantic. PM has said every child in Britain will have their own email address by 2002. Over £ 1 billion is going into the hardware and network connections. Over £ 200 million of Lottery Fund money is going into retraining teachers. BECTa is the lead agency. Education is moving on to the National Grid for Learning (NGf. L). Internet safety in schools is starting to get a lot more attention. All Government services which can be supplied online should be available online by 2005. UK Government portal up and running: www. ukonline. gov. uk and certain transactions can already be carried out online, see www. gateway. gov. uk ¬ No “involuntary digital divide” by 2005. ¬ 6000 UK Online Centres ¬ Local government and other services following suit ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet Ø 16 August 2001: NOP announced that 5. 6 million UK children in the 7 -16 age range were now regularly going online – 75% of the age group. Ø Up from 51% in October, 1999. Ø 90% of all children said they found the Internet helped with homework Ø 20 m regular Internet users in the UK. 14 m regular users at home (Neilsen) Ø 8% of all home users are under 15 (Neilsen) Ø Very nearly 100% of all UK schools are now connected. Ø Children are one of the fastest growing groups of Internet users in the OECD countries. In the USA over 25 million children under-17 are regular Internet users. Ø Goldman Sachs predict that by 2007 more than 70% of all households in the richer OECD countries will have Internet access. John Carr Ø In fact it is more likely to be nearer 100% as TV goes digital. Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet v Government has also declared that it wants the UK “to be the safest place in the world for kids to access the Internet” v Established the Home Secretary’s Internet Task Force to move things along. v Looking at every area of the Internet but a priority given to v Chat Rooms have had a lot of publicity, and for good reason. v They can be dangerous places, but they can also be a lot of fun. Kids love them. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ It is important to understand that the Internet is not one single thing. ¬ It consists of several different technologies, each with their own benefits, each with their own problems and each requiring different approaches or solutions. ¬ These different technologies are: email, the world wide web (with or without audio and video streaming), newsgroups, chat rooms, instant messaging, FTP and other file transfer protocols, especially the peer-to-peer varieties e. g. Napster, Gnutella, Morpheus ¬ However these different technologies all cohere around a single technical standard: TCP/IP, and that is why they all tend to come bundled together and work together interactively. ¬ This facility for the Internet to bring together in a single place cheap, easy to use and more or less instantaneous access to published material all over the world, and to allow instantaneous interactive communications has created a wholly new phenomenon, the like of which has never been seen before. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet v Back to Chat Rooms v Chat Rooms are electronic meeting places on the Internet. The "conversations" which happen within these rooms are conducted via typed messages which are more or less instantaneously relayed to all the participants. Today, at any one moment, there might be upwards of 100, 000 public Chat Rooms happening on the Internet and an unknowable number of "private" Chat Rooms. v There are two types of Chat Rooms: web-based and IRC v There also private Chat Rooms, generally established by two or more people following an initial meeting in a public Chat Room or because the individuals concerned had a pre-existing relationship, either from the online world or the real world. v Chat Rooms have been used by paedophiles either in attempts to contact children whom they could never otherwise have hoped to meet, or as a means of soliciting or trading child pornography. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet The Web v The worldwide web (www) is arguably what made the Internet popular. The web allows people with little or no knowledge or experience of computers to access text, video, graphics and sound quickly and easily using intuitive commands which can be executed using simple clicks of a mouse. There is a vast amount of information available on the web, often freely. The web is a major source of hard core pornography, much of which cannot legally be displayed in public places in the UK. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ Email ¬ A means of sending written messages or larger texts to individuals. Email can also carry attachments which might contain photographs, either stills or video, sounds, or destructive viruses. ¬ Spam ¬ Unwanted and unsolicited email. On average 30% of spam is sexual in nature and 30% is linked to financial scams of one kind or another. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet Instant Messaging, Buddy Lists and ICQ (I-seek-you) An automated system which can let people know when a particular person is logged on to the Internet so they can then exchange "instant" messages. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ Newsgroups or Usenet Groups ¬ A public bulletin board for people who share common interests. Today there are upwards of 60, 000. An increasing number in Spanish. ¬ This is also the place where most child pornography is to be found and is traded. Most UK-based ISPs block access to those Newsgroups which regularly contain such material. Some do not. ¬ Communities and discussion boards are emerging as an alternative place where child pornography is found. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet • FTP (file transfer protocol) • FTP and other file transfer protocols are often used to move large files more rapidly across the Internet. • Napster, Gnutella, Morpheus are forms of “peer-to-peer” networking allowing two or more people in remote locations to connect directly to each other’s computers and swap files without having to post them to a third-party’s server. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ Encryption software enables an Internet or computer user to encode whatever material he is sending or storing, in such a way that it is completely unreadable by anyone who does not possess the relevant key to decrypt it. ¬ Paedophiles and other criminals are already using encryption and this was one of the reasons why the Government took the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill through Parliament. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ When thinking about hazards to children on the Internet it is important to distinguish between illegal and undesirable ¬ Although in practice it often comes to same thing ¬ Everything that is illegal is also very likely to be undesirable whereas things that are undesirable need not necessarily also be illegal John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ Some of the warnings about “Adults Only” sites act as come-ons rather than as “off-putters” ¬ As yet no widely available, reliable means of distinguishing between Internet users on the basis of their age ¬ Filtering technology offers the best hope for now, but it is still far from perfect. ¬ The most useful way of thinking about issues of child protection on the Internet is under the three Cs ¬ Content ¬ Contact ¬ Commerce John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ Child pornography can cross over between content and contact ¬ Some collectors might seek to entrap children by getting them to take pornographic photographs of themselves or their friends and then use this as a lever to get the child involved in further illegal acts, perhaps including real life meetings where they will be sexually abused. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ Child Pornography and related abuse ¬ US Customs study showed that 80% of those who buy child pornography are themselves active child sex abusers, and a proportion of the 20% simply haven’t been caught. ¬ Chicago police in 1984 did a study and found that in almost all arrests for the possession of child pornography they discovered photographs of the abusers having sex with children, and the photos had been taken by themselves. ¬ US Postal Inspection Service found 36% of everyone arrested in 2000 (over 800 people) were active abusers ¬ Child pornography is traded, swapped and solicited online. ¬ There are fears that by easing supply and increasing the market size that the Internet is creating new demands for new victims. ¬ What the Internet is certainly doing is bring the bad guys together. Mutually reinforcing and validating their behaviour. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ Trafficking in children Live sex shows Operation Cathedral, The Orchid Club Paedophile rings Email attacks Hard core adult pornography Obsessive use John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet Most of the worst cases we have heard about involving children and the Internet started in Chat Rooms: Sam Manzie Ø Ø John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ There is no easy way of quantifying the amount of child pornography “out there”, or otherwise of quantifying the dangers to children on the Internet. ¬ NOP and Professor David Finklehor have also published studies which suggest that at least 1 in 4 children have had “upsetting” experiences online, and most acknowledged that they did not tell their parents for fear of being blamed or having the Internet “taken away” from them. ¬ A report recently from Professor Richard Estes from the University of Pennsylvania suggested that 1% of US children have become involved in the US sex trade following a history of abuse at home or elsewhere. Many of these will end up on the Internet in some way or another. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet How can technology help and what are the limits of technology? Walled gardens are going to be important. Moderated chat rooms There also now perhaps hundreds of other technological solutions which can be deployed which can monitor and report on a child’s or other person’s use of a computer, whether in relation to the Internet or generally. Good idea if they are told this is being done. ¬ There also a huge array of programmes that will block access to certain parts of the Internet or restrict the sort of things one can do, or material one can view. ¬ See www. getnetwise. org or www. which. org. uk ¬ These are of varying levels of efficiency ¬ ¬ John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet ¬ But the key point to grasp about any and every technological solution is that it should only ever be used to underpin or reinforce a policy which has been agreed and understood by the children concerned. ¬ Software breaks down or can be rendered inoperative, either by a clever child or a cleverer attacker ¬ The children might find themselves in new environments where the software has not been installed in the first place ¬ Children need to know how to behave so as to avoid getting into trouble in the first place, and they need to know how to get out of trouble should it nonetheless come their way despite their best efforts ¬ They need to learn to be Street. Wise in Cyberspace ¬ They need to be Net. Smart ¬ And so do the Grown Ups John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet Increasing awareness and sources of advice ¬ NCH and other children’s charities ¬ Internet Watch Foundation – notice and take down service for any illegal material, but especially child pornography. ¬ Df. ES “Information Superhighway Pack” and other public education initiatives ¬ BECTa ¬ ISPs and technology companies John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet The children’s professions v No doubt that children are taking to the new technologies like the proverbial ducks to water. v Teachers are getting re-trained because the Government understands the importance of providing teachers with the tools and the confidence to deal with 30 -odd young people who would otherwise bamboozle them, and might do that anyway! v Other professions have exactly the same needs, not least social workers and the police. John Carr Internet Consultant

Children and the Internet 1. For good or ill, the Internet is set to become an all-pervasive, ubiquitous part of lives for the foreseeable future. 2. It holds great promise and anyway you look at it is a tremendous human achievement 3. We should accept the best it has to offer and reject the rest 4. We are dealing with our old friends: the doctrine of unintended and unforeseen consequences 5. The Internet is still in its infancy and we haven’t quite yet got ahead of the criminal classes. 6. But we will! ¬ THE END John Carr Internet Consultant