Know your Internet Content Provider responsibilities
April 25, 2008
Child Protection is every body’s responsibility. As bloggers or forum managers do you know your responsibility as a content provider or host? If you see, hear of or even suspect, inappropriate online behaviour toward children then the protocol is to report all suspicious activity or knowledge that you may have. This includes any third hand information (if someone tells you that a particular person may be a child sex offender for example) because it is not your responsibility to prove or investigate - just to help keep our kids and internet safe.
On-line Safety is a huge concern for me. Just as sexual predators groom our kids and adults around them in real life, so too do internet sexual predators. Chat rooms, forums, blogs and on-line game messaging are perfect places for those sneaky predators to mask their true colours. Befriending our kids, predators may pose as a similar age, say they have similar interests and skillfully trick our kids into releasing personal information. Similarly, sex predators may befriend us and trick us into trusting them.
Who to report to?
There are several places to report any suspicious online child exploitation or innapropriate behaviour to:
- Your local police, but ask to speak to the detectives that look after sexual assaults. Insist that your information gets passed along to the best team to deal with it. Ask for someone to ring you back and let you know it is being followed up.
- The Australian Federal Police: I am fortunate to have had a lengthy chat with an Australian Federal Officer from the Online Child Sex Exploitation Team Economic and Special Operations. I wanted to know the process for listing Imaginif’s on-line child protection conversation with the team that monitors on-line activity for child sex predators and exploitive material. The Officer was incredibly helpful and provided me some supportive information about where and how to report any suspicious activity.
- The Virtual Global Taskforce is a partnership between police forces from around the world working together to fight online child abuse. Along with offering advice, information and support to both adults and children to protect themselves against child sex abusers the site encourages on-line reporting of any inappropriate or illegal activity with or towards a child online.Created in 2003, The Virtual Global Taskforce, is a direct response to lessons learned from investigations into on-line child abuse around the world. It is an international alliance of law enforcement agencies (Australia, U.S.A, U.K, Canada and Interpol) working together to make the Internet a safer place and it is staffed by specialist police officers and investigators. Once a report is generated, the report will go to straight to them. From there, the report is sent to the country of origin for immediate investigation.Although I am not a supporter of doing things anonymously, I appreciate that many people prefer to make anonymous reports. One of the many advantages of using the Virtual Global Taskforce is that you can make an anonymous report about any suspicious on-line sexualized behaviour toward children.Please, don’t hesitate to use this service if you are concerned about any on-line activity. Investigation and proof is not your responsibility. The global team are trained, professional and passionate. They are the ones tasked with investigating and sorting the innocent from the guilty. The rest of us share the responsibility of reporting exploitive behaviour toward children. Remember,
Child Protection is every one’s business. - Our Statutory Child Protection Departments (i.e: Child Safety, Children’s Services, etc) look after abuse within the family (intrafamilial abuse). The Police look after abuse by people from outside of the family. Sometimes a child may make reference to a family member abusing them (family includes step parents, aunts, uncles and grand parents). This would go straight to the statutory child protection department.
- Corrective Services: If you suspect that somebody may be a registered sex offender then they have to live by certain strict rules (i.e: cannot live with children or within certain distance from schools / daycare centres, must apply to change address, etc). You can report any concerns around this to the Corrective Services Department in your state. Australia does not have a public offenders list but Corrective Services monitor and attempt to risk minimise the likelihood of offender recidivism. Unfortunately in Australia, there are many convicted sex offenders operating underground.
Finally, if you have reported to any or all of the above authorities and nothing appears to have happened then you can seek a Ministerial - a Ministerial is an investigation into what has happened with your reports and notifications. You must remember that privacy laws may prevent you from knowing everything but at least a Ministerial asks questions from the highest level and ensures that your concerns have been noted. Each of the previous authorities will have their own Ministers….you may have to seek Ministerial from all the Departments you have contacted if nothing appears to have happened with your notifications. This is a huge task and not something to be undertaken until you have exhausted all other attempts at reporting your concerns to the correct authorities. Contact your local Member of Parliment for help with this task.
This article first appeared in a similar form twelve months ago, at my blogger blog, as Virtual Global Taskforce Against On-Line Sexual Exploitation of Children
Comments
5 Responses to “Know your Internet Content Provider responsibilities”
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Very sensible, informative advice here.
Lets hope people take it on board and make the world wide web a safer place for all!
Thank you Megan
Hello,
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Thanks for your tireless commitment and work on child safety Megan. As a mother, it heartens me so much that there are people like you working hard to protect our children.
Sage advice here Megan, thanks for putting it together. You’re so right, protecting children from predators is everyone’s responsibility.
Thank you all. I am glad you have found it helpful. It can be confusing and scary trying to work out who to report to.
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