Internet: Crime
Hugo Swire MP: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions she has had with internet search providers on tackling the use of search engines to provide (a) illegal and (b) harmful internet content.
Vernon Coaker MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Crime Reduction, Home Office: In December 2005, the Home Office Task Force on the Protection of Children on the Internet published the “Good Practice guide for search providers and advice to the public on how to search safely”. This document was produced in conjunction with representatives from the search provider industry and other UK experts, and is aimed at the public and at companies who provide search across all platforms. It provides a model of good practice to search providers and gives advice to help the public, especially parents and carers, make good use of search engines and reduce the risk of being exposed to unwanted and unsuitable results.
Furthermore, the major search provider companies work closely and effectively with UK self-regulatory body, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), to promote online safety. The IWF provides a dynamic list of child sexual abuse websites to search providers which enables them to better manage the quality of search returns, blocking those that feature on the child sexual abuse list, to help protect internet users.
The IWF is also in a position to provide intelligence around the number and nature of search returns regarding potentially illegal and potentially inappropriate online content. It has provided this intelligence recently, for example, to the Government’s consultation on Extreme Pornography legislation, the Byron Review and the DCMS Select Committee Review regarding online content such as adult pornography, child sexual abuse ‘cartoons’, and mutilation, bestiality and necrophilia websites.
Source: Hansard 4 March 2008
Page Created: Tue, March 11th, 2008
Page Modified: Mon, March 17th, 2008
