PM To Host Internet Safety Summit

The Prime Minister will host a key summit at Downing Street where he will welcome the progress made by internet service providers, leading search engines and police agencies to better protect children from harmful material online and block child abuse and other illegal content but will warn that there is still more to do.

Speaking ahead of the event, the Prime Minister has said the internet search engines in particular have made "significant progress" since July to prevent child abuse content from being available across the world but will make clear that he will still bring forward legislation if they fail to deliver.

Changes introduced by search engines

Google and Microsoft have introduced a number of changes to their search function, not only in the UK, but across the world and National Crime Agency testing of the new measures shows that child abuse images, videos or pathways are no longer being returned against a blacklist of search terms at present.

The changes introduced by the search engines include:

• the introduction of new algorithms that will block child abuse images, videos and pathways that lead to illegal content, covering 100,000 unique searches on Google worldwide

• stopping auto-complete features from offering people child abuse search terms

• Google and Microsoft will now work with the National Crime Agency and the Internet Watch Foundation to bring forward a plan to tackle peer to peer networks featuring child abuse images

• Google will bring forward new technology that will put a unique identification mark on illegal child abuse videos, which will mean all copies are removed from the web once a single copy is identified

Speaking ahead of Downing Street summit with the internet industry, National Crime Agency and leading charities, Mr Cameron said: "Back in July, I said I wanted to do much more to protect our children from the risks posed by the internet and those who seek to use the web to look at and share illegal and vile content.

"Since then, we have made real progress on filters and parental controls to protect children, and on the government side we’ve strengthened Britain’s ability to combat child abuse online with the new National Crime Agency, with over 4000 specially trained officers.

"But we were clear that we needed the search engines to do more to ensure people can’t access extreme material via a simple search.

"At the time, Google and Microsoft - who cover 95% of the market - said blocking search results couldn’t be done, that it shouldn’t be done.

"They argued that it was against the very principle of the internet and search engines to block material even if there was no doubt that some of the search terms being used by paedophiles were abhorrent in a modern society.

"I did not accept that then and I do not accept that now.

"Since then, we have worked closely with both Google and Microsoft and they have made significant progress in preventing child abuse content from being returned.

"Both companies have made clear to me that they share my commitment to stop child abuse content from being available not only in the UK but across the world.

"This must mean making sure that it is not possible for people to find child abuse content via search engines now or in the future.

"If the search engines are unable to deliver on their commitment to prevent child abuse material being returned from search terms used by paedophiles, I will bring forward legislation that will ensure it happens.

"With the progress that has been made in 4 months, I believe we are heading in right direction but no-one should be in doubt that there is a red line: if more isn't done to stop illegal content or pathways being found when someone uses a child abuse search term, we will do what is necessary to protect our children."

(CD/IT)