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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Netzsperren und der Schaden für den Kinderschutz

The child protection industry has been campaigning for years for the introduction of EU-wide mandatory blocking of websites accused of being illegal by the police, by independent authorities, etc. This is as a result of a very laudable reflex - child abuse websites are even more abhorrent than one would imagine and blocking a bad thing can only logically be a good thing. Politically, it is an easy message.

Unfortunately, child protection in an international context is polluted with easy messages and unthinking reflexes. Every government loves sounding tough on child protection and every soundbite that does not require concrete action results in a weakening of real measures being taken to protect children from real abuse. The self-appointed childrens' representatives consistently support and encourage these meaningless and counterproductive soundbites, ultimately damaging the very interests they claim to defend.

Every country in the world except Somalia has signed and ratified either the UN Child Rights Convention or its Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. The Convention requires governments to take all appropriate national, bilateral and international measures to prevent the exploitative use of children in "pornographic" performances. The Optional Protocol requires governments to ensure that child "pornography" is "fully covered under its penal and criminal law".

We are told that some countries leave child abuse websites online for months. Where is the public condemnation from the United Nations for these blatant breaches of its most successful binding Convention? Where are the shadow reports from child protection organisations condemning those countries for gross failures to protect the weakest in society? Where are the sanctions from governments bound under international law to take "all appropriate national, bilateral and international measures to prevent the abuse"? They are lost in soundbites.

The problem is that the Convention and the Optional Protocol have no enforcement mechanisms. They can be signed and forgotten and states can move on to the next soundbite.

We are told that web blocking is meant to be a "complementary measure". It will be part of a wider strategy. Unfortunately, it requires no action from governments - building on years of failure and years of soundbites, they will be able to claim that they are fighting child abuse when all they are really doing is asking Internet providers to put up a screen - a screen which will mask their own failures better than the abuse.

So, why does the child protection industry insist on promoting blocking? It would be unfair to say that they are funded by governments and therefore unwilling to criticise them. The issue appears to be based more on misunderstandings than anything else. If we look at one particular child campaigner's blog (link below), we can see this quite clearly. He says:

"Blocking is, after all, a form of deletion. It renders the material inaccessible to the great majority of internet users in the country where blocking happens."

A system which leaves the material online is not a form of deletion. Nobody has been able to indicate any statistical difference between the number of - or trends in - reports to child abuse hotlines in countries with or without blocking.

It has, therefore, no discernible impact on the great majority of internet users. In any event, the great majority of internet users never find child abuse material, according to statistics from Internet hotlines. Furthermore, the great majority (over 75%) of those who think that they do have actually found entirely legal material.

He goes on to say: "Opponents of blocking are sort of saying everyone should be able to see the images until no one can."

It is difficult to know which opponents of blocking might be referred to here. Innocent people very rarely access the material and there is no evidence that blocking stops this to an appreciable extent. What we object to are measures which take the pressure off governments to take real action against websites containing evidence of real abuse and which destroy fundamental rights in the process

He then explains that: "A number of opponents of blocking make references to "the thin end of the wedge" and to "dangerous precedents", sometimes referred to jointly or severally as the "slippery slope". "Where will it all end?" they ask."

This fails to recognise that this is not a "stand alone" argument. The "slippery slope" is an inevitable cost. Any policy in any area requires the costs and benefits to be compared and balanced. As there is no demonstrable benefit to blocking, the slippery slope alone would make the measure disproportionate.

He continues: "More reprehensible in some ways are those who make no attempt to deny that blocking child abuse images is a good thing to do. Instead, and often without any apparent embarrassment, they say they would do it in a trice if only they could be sure blocking would forever be limited to that.

Terrorism, anorexia or suicide related materials frequently get mentioned as examples of the types of content it is known others are pushing to be blocked."

Having worked on this issue for several years, I have never once heard someone make this argument. Blocking is dangerous, counter-productive and useless for child abuse images, whether other types of site are blocked does not change this.

He adds: "Why do they find it difficult to agree that they should be blocked pending their deletion? It does not add up."

Having seen governments sign, ratify and forget the UN Child Rights Convention, the Convention's Optional Protocol, the International Labour Organisation Convention on the worst forms of child labour and the Stockholm Declaration, it does not add up that people interested in child protection would want to give governments yet another soundbite - another way of hiding inaction on child protection behind empty promises.

There MUST be investigations in order to identify and rescue as many children as possible. There MUST be investigations in order to find and prosecute both the owners and users of such sites. Blocking will immediately warn the people behind the websites that they have been spotted by law enforcement authorities and they can act to protect themselves. Why would child protection organisations want this?

He says: "The techie world generally dislikes solutions which it believes are "broken" i.e. that can be defeated or circumvented, but the point is the knowledge and the determination to circumvent or defeat blocking are very unevenly distributed."

The problem that the techie world has is the same as the one that the political world increasingly has with blocking. Techies are parents too and therefore understand that all efforts to protect children must be effective. They understand that every failed initiative has real human consequences. If a policy has demonstrable costs and no demonstrable benefits, it must be avoided.

He continues: "Critics say that if the EU gives official blessing to the use of blocking it would enable totalitarian regimes in other parts of the world to point to it to justify their own oppressive use of blocking."

Nobody says that blocking of child abuse images will directly cause this.

However, "mission creep" is not a risk, it is a guarantee. Lawless blocking, such as in the UK and Sweden is not a risk, it is an existing fact. If, and it is already beginning to happen, EU countries block child abuse websites to hide their own international failures, if they block entirely legal gambling websites in order to protect tax revenues and gambling monopolies and if they block websites accused of copyright infringement in order to protect outdated industries that cannot cope with the digital age, if EU countries abandon the rule of law and permit blocking without any involvement of law enforcement (let alone judicial) authorities, it is not alone encouraging totalitarian regimes to undermine access to information, it is providing a blueprint for them.

Sadly and disappointingly, the campaigner then goes on to give statistics which have been comprehensively, repeatedly and unquestionably disproven.

One of the many clear analyses of why the "statistics" are misleading nonsense is linked from the bottom of this page.

To finish, and bearing in mind that total lack of any benefit of blocking and the real dangers to child protection that blocking presents, I will finish with two quotations from the campaigner that sum up the debate very neatly:

"If your starting point is the best interests of the child there is no way you can end up concluding that, actually, after a lot of careful thought, a great deal of soul searching and hand wringing it is best to leave pictures of children being raped on full public view for a little while longer."

"This argument turns sexually-abused children into bargaining chips."

This is completely and reprehensibly true. It is incomprehensible to find oneself trying to defend measures that will force governments to take proper action against child abuse, being fought every step of the way by those people whose job it is to do this.

Campaigner's blog: Campaign bulletin: child pornography on the internet - bad reasons and non-reasons for opposing blocking (29.01.2011)
http://johnc1912.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/bad-reasons-and-non-reasons-...

Statistics: Twisting the facts to fit the story: child porn nonsense (7.02.2006)
http://kierenmccarthy.co.uk/2006/02/07/twisting-the-facts-to-fit-the-s...

EDRi's blocking booklet
http://www.edri.org/files/blocking_booklet.pdf

(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)