Helping to make the UK the "Safest Place in World for Children to use the Internet" 28 March 2001

Childnet International has been asked to attend a special "Internet Safety Summit" hosted by the Rt. Hon. Jack Straw, British Home Secretary on Wednesday 28th March 2001.

Nigel Williams, Childnet's Director, will be joining senior representatives from Industry, Law Enforcement, Non-Profit organisations and Education, for the Summit which has, as the Home Secretary outlined, the objective of making the UK "the safest place in world for children to use the Internet". Childnet has already submitted a paper outlining some examples of good practice and Internet Awareness initiatives that have been taken elsewhere in the world.

Childnet strongly supports the proposals in the Agenda for Action by the major UK children's charities and is urging that the following 6 issues be prioritised:

1. Government should set out a cohesive strategy and then monitor its implementation by each of the stakeholders. The summit is an excellent first step, but this will require continuing work, especially in coordinating the inputs of different Departments, of law enforcement, the diverse elements of the Internet industry, and the voluntary sector.

2. Industry should declare and implement a policy of zero tolerance of child pornography on the Internet. ISP's (acting on the advice of the IWF in consort with law enforcement where necessary), should remove any newsgroup, club, community, user room, web site or other channel, found to consistently allow the publication, distribution or exchange of child pornography.

3. Government and Industry should fund a continuing Internet safety education and awareness campaign aimed at parents and children. There are many attractions in having a specific body tasked with this function (as in Australia and Singapore) but the key issue is to be creative in using every available channel online and offline to communicate positive safety messages adapted for the different audiences involved.

4. Law Enforcement should proactively engage in covert operations to identify paedophiles targeting children in Chat rooms. The new Hi-Tech Crime Unit should have a section dedicated to combating paedophile activity online. The law should be clarified to ensure that the activities involved in enticing and luring children to the point of allowing an offline sexual assault are outlawed.

5. ISPs and those hosting Chatshould overhaul their procedures putting child safety first. This means offering more moderated Chat; offering Chatfree services; enforcing terms of service in open Chat rooms, especially in relation to age verification for those participating in rooms aimed at children or those aimed at adults; and clear safety messages such as the chatdanger.com banner. There is an urgent need for some agency (IWF might be appropriate) to challenge the companies hosting Chatwhich is popular with teenagers on web portals, music web sites etc to adopt much safer policies.

6. Education efforts should be focussed on parents and 11-15 year olds to help them understand how to stay safer in Chat. Research in Canada highlights the fact that 11-15 year olds view the Internet in a different way from those who are younger or older. It is their place and they feel intrinsically safe there. Yet it is this very age group with the combination of passing through adolescence and having greater freedom to travel who are most at risk of exploitation. New programmes to communicate with this age group on this topic, inside and outside of school, need to be urgently developed.

Contact Nigel@childnet-int.org for further information.