ISPs should report online child abuse, says minister

Internet service providers should be reporting incidents of online child abuse to the police and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a Home Office minister said today.

Speaking at an IWF event in London today, Paul Goggins, the Under Secretary of State for Policing, said companies selling internet services should report suspected paedophilic activity.

"They should be," said Goggins. "They will have a relationship with the IWF and should know what to do. Wherever we are in this system we should report it as soon as we see it."

But no ISPs are currently doing this, the IWF said. Although BT and a handful of other ISPs are blocking child abuse websites as recommended by the IWF, none are reporting the downloading of illegal images to the police.

Chief executive of the IWF Peter Robbins said: "There is a problem with the reporting of suspects. At the moment [ISPs] don't have an easy reporting mechanism. They aren't policing what people do but when they find criminality, they will behave responsibly. My thinking is that the majority of the customers want them to do this."

Robbins added he thought data protection laws should not prevent ISPs from reporting suspected paedophiles.

As part of its research, the IWF found that 74 per cent of companies surveyed (out of 200) would not report employees caught downloading photos of child abuse.

As a result of its findings, last month the organisation launched a campaign to make business owners aware of a new law, the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which can help businesses to report suspects without the company being held liable.

The Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office, the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children and the police have backed the campaign.

Jim Gamble, deputy director general for the National Crime Squad, said: "We're making the work place more hostile for the paedophiles. The majority are white, middle-class men who work in IT. If you have a colleague who is downloading this, you can't afford to ignore it. We'll support you. And we ask you to support the IWF."