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Deutsch: EDRi zum Thema Kinderschutz

The interests of children should be put first, even if that means allowing them to learn and adapt to online risks

An unseen threat is the scariest threat of all. An unseen threat to our children provokes our most basic protective instincts, which is exactly as it should be.

The internet is a public space and it is as safe or dangerous to allow a child to wander in its various neighbourhoods as for them to wander through any city. The challenge is to fight the temptation to be over-protective and instead allow our society’s children and young people to develop into responsible adults.

Panic and assumptions lead to policies that are counterproductive. Effective child protection measures are those based on facts and not fear. The European commission has sought the facts, financing truly impressive research on which solid policy can be based. The European Union’s kids online research project on the experience of European children online is excellent, setting global standards for both scope and quality.

Bizarrely, however, the commission’s recent communication on a ‘European strategy for a better internet for children’ only briefly references this research. Instead, it is pushing internet companies to adopt unspecified voluntary measures that will not be subject to the rigours of democratic decision-making, will not be based on research and risk being either useless or, even worse, counterproductive.

The threat of the implementation of bad policies as a result on over-reliance on industry ‘solutions’ is very real. For example, it would seem logical for internet providers to offer strong internet filtering to protect children. The public relations value of such a service is tempting. However, research from the UK office for standards in education indicates that students are safest when they are not using strongly filtered internet connections. Instead, children gain better knowledge, awareness and security by using open services, which allow them to learn about, confront and adapt to risk.

The commission has been funding child abuse image (child pornography) prevention hotlines for several years. On the basis of direct or indirect reports from these hotlines, internet providers in many EU countries voluntarily remove images or sites from their services. The commission is now demanding a quicker takedown of such images. However, despite funding the hotlines, the commission can produce no statistics as regards how fast sites are removed in each EU member state, nor on the causes of delays. In other words, the commission is asking for an unspecified improvement on an unknown baseline value that it is unable to make available. This is simply not good enough.

Worse still, the commission cannot produce any reliable data on the number of prosecutions – or even investigations. Criminal activity must be treated more seriously than this.

It is difficult to understand the basis of the commission’s apparent belief that companies instinctively know what is in the best interests of children and society and will put these interests ahead of their own profits. Companies frequently have conflicts between their own interest and that of the public. It is unwise and inappropriate to devolve policy-making to them on such an important issue. Children deserve better, a policy for child protection must be based on evidence and not the public relations needs of parts of industry or even of the commission itself.

If any policy area deserved to be treated with more diligence, it is this one. We need European leadership on this issue, not facile nonsense about corporations regulating children, free speech and our digital heritage.

Article published in TheParliament.com (7.09.2012)
http://www.theparliament.com/latest-news/article/newsarticle/child-pro...

(Article by Joe McNamee - Executive Director of European Digital Rights EDRi)