Anonymous

UK

Network Manager

I'm not entirely sure what Paul Goggins and the IWF are thinking here, because they seem detached from the front-line reality of ISP abuse desks. There are two issues here - capturing the abuse in the first place and then what happens even if you do report abuse.

Firstly, most ISPs are not given (By the IWF) sufficient information to locate abuse mostly because of well-founded and widely-held fears that the database of such sites (One does exist, it's used by BT) might fall into the "wrong" hands. There has been discussion on this issue within ISP circles but no conclusion has yet been reached. Even if the list of sites was given out, confirming that someone is visiting the paedophilia sites and not just an innocent site that happens to be located on the same server requires intercepting and logging the transmissions - although as I understand it this would be legal, I'm not a lawyer and it's something no ISP is going to do without sound legal advice. Lawyers are, of course, always goin to err on the site of caution and say "It might be illegal, there is no case law" so few ISPs would be willing to do this unless forced to do so. (There is of course also the investment in time and infrastructure required to put such a system in place - for little commercial benefit for the ISP concerned)

Secondly, what happens if you do catch something accidentally and report it? As a Network Manager for an ISP in the UK, I have reported suspected paedophilia to both the IWF and the police in the past. However, the IWF simply directed me to contact the police and the police took some details but not enough to investigate - they promised to contact me for more information but never did, presumably workload.

It's certainly untrue to say that such things are not being reported at all by ISPs.