The UK government's white paper on online harms, which is due to be published soon, may entail "unintended consequences" to the victims of child sexual abuse, the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) CEO, Susie Hargreaves, said on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd February, 2019) The UK government's white paper on online harms, which is due to be published soon, may entail "unintended consequences" to the victims of child sexual abuse, the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) CEO, Susie Hargreaves, said on Friday.
According to Hargreaves, the United Kingdom is leading the world in tackling online child sexual abuse images and videos, but there is still work that should be done, including on regulating harmful content.
"My worries, however, are about rushing into knee-jerk regulation which creates perverse incentives or unintended consequences to victims and could undo all the successful work accomplished to date. Ultimately, we must avoid a heavy cost to victims of online sexual abuse," Hargreaves said in a statement.
The watchdog's chief noted that that her organization would use its 22 years experience in the area to assist the UK government in creating regulations that would not harm victims. She also stressed that that it would require participation of industry and other key stakeholders, instead of imposing regulation on them.
"We recommend an outcomes-based approach where the outcomes are clearly defined and the government should provide clarity over the results it seeks in dealing with any harm. There also needs to be a process to monitor this and for any results to be transparently communicated," Hargreaves said.
The statement comes as the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Home Office are expected to unveil a white paper on reducing online harms and making the internet safer for UK users later this month.
UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright has earlier left for California to discuss online security issues with tech giants representatives, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this week, UK lawmakers from parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have concluded that Facebook has intentionally violated users' privacy and competition laws in the United Kingdom by trading people's data to some application developers while preventing others from accessing the same information.
