Wednesday, 4 December 2013

Are Internet Institutions such as Google doing enough to combat illicit use of the Internet?


Information from the article:
Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt has announced that a strong team of 200 people have ‘cleaned up’ Google Search to target 100,000 terms that can be used to locate child sexual abuse images.  The company is now also showing warnings at the top of its search results for 13,000 queries.
YouTube has now created new technology, which identifies videos made my pedophiles. Google and Microsoft have now been working together in attempt of identifying child abuse images.
A transatlantic taskforce will now identify ways of targeting criminals/ pedophiles that use secret encrypted networks to distribute images of abuse.

Quote from Google’s executive chairman:
"We've listened, and in the last three months put more than 200 people to work developing new, state-of-the-art technology to tackle the problem. We've fine-tuned Google search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results."

Quote from Joanna Shields (Chief executive of London technology investment agency, Tech City, who previously worked for Google and Facebook): "It's vital that governments and industry work together to eradicate child abuse content from the internet, and that we mobilise the best and brightest in the technology industry to come up with innovative solutions."

BBC Article:
100,000 search terms will now return no results that find illegal material and will trigger warnings that child abuse imagery is illegal.
David Cameron is responsible for welcoming the move. The National Crime Agency director said that tests show that the changes are working. Therefore, David Cameron argues that the next stage is to tackle the “dark web” where people share images online without making them publicly available. The image to the left shows what now comes up when key words are now typed into Google.

Microsoft’s General Manager:
"It will be much harder to find that content on both Bing and Google. We are blocking content, removing content and helping people to find the right content or also sources of help should they need that,"

I think that Internet Institutions such as Google, Microsoft and Bing are doing a good job at attempting to combat illicit use of the Internet as they have blocked and removed various websites that contain forms of sexual child abuse. This has evidently had a positive impact overall as the NCA state that tests show that the changes are working and therefore it is harder for individuals to access illegal content through these search engines. However, I feel that the impact is not all beneficial because of the “dark web” where people share images and material online yet can keep their identities hidden. Overall I feel that Internet Institutions are making an effective decision through removing content, however there is still room for improvement.  

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