(written by Ernie Allen- Former President & CEO of both NCMEC and the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children)
In July 2013 UK Prime Minister David Cameron addressed the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, “Today I am going to tread into territory that can be hard for our society to confront. It is frankly difficult for politicians to talk about, but I believe we need to address as a matter of urgency. I want to talk about the internet, the impact it’s having on the innocence of our children, how online pornography is corroding childhood and how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children and that must be stamped out. Now, I’m not making this speech because I want to moralise or scaremonger but because I feel profoundly, as a politician and as a dad, that the time for action has come. This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence.
Now, let me be very clear right at the start: the internet has transformed our lives for the better. It helps liberate those who are oppressed, it allows people to tell truth to power, it brings education to those previously denied it, it adds billions to our economy, it is one of the most profound and era‑changing inventions in human history.
But because of this, the internet can sometimes be given a sort of special status in debate. In fact, it can almost be seen as beyond debate, that to raise concerns about how people should access the internet or what should be on it, is somehow naïve or backwards looking. People sometimes feel they’re being told almost the following: that an unruled internet is just a fact of modern life; any fallout from that is just collateral damage and that you can as easily legislate what happens on the internet as you can legislate the tides.
And against this mind-set, people’s, most often parents’, very real concerns get dismissed. They’re told the internet is too big to mess with; it’s too big to change. But to me, the questions around the internet and the impact it has are too big to ignore. The internet is not just where we buy, sell and socialise; it’s where crimes happen; it’s where people can get hurt; it’s where children and young people learn about the world, each other, and themselves.
The fact is that the growth of the internet as an unregulated space has thrown up 2 major challenges when it comes to protecting our children. The first challenge is criminal and that is the proliferation and accessibility of child abuse images on the internet. The second challenge is cultural; the fact that many children are viewing online pornography and other damaging material at a very early age and that the nature of that pornography is so extreme it is distorting their view of sex and relationships…Children can’t go into the shops or the cinema and buy things meant for adults or have adult experiences; we rightly regulate to protect them. But when it comes to the internet, in the balance between freedom and responsibility we’ve neglected our responsibility to children.”
The Prime Minister launched efforts to address both challenges, criminal and cultural. On the criminal side, he created WePROTECT, a global campaign on online child sexual exploitation. He also took action on the cultural side. He called together the four major British ISPs: British Telecom (BT), Virgin Media, Talk Talk and Sky, and asked them to automatically filter pornography at the network level so that children could be insulated from exposure. Any adult who wants to receive such content unfiltered could still do so.
Some argued that default filtering was censorship even though users could easily and simply “opt out” and eliminate the filters. Ultimately, the companies agreed on a compromise approach short of default filtering. It was called “Active Choice.” Following a public awareness campaign, the companies would offer a choice to customers as to whether they wanted such filters or not.
In December 2015 the BBC reported that Sky had decided to implement default filtering, the only UK ISP to do so. The results from “Active Choice” were disappointing: just 6% of BT customers had opted to switch on the filters; 12% on Virgin Media; and 14% on Talk Talk.
The BBC quoted Sky, “We think that default filtering is the best way for industry to meet the government’s commitment to reduce children’s exposure to inappropriate content.” So, Sky turned on the filters for everybody. Customers could still easily and simply opt out of the filters, but Sky would not wait for a customer to make an affirmative decision.
I met with a Sky senior official. I asked if default filtering had harmed Sky’s business. He said, no, that they expected backlash, but it didn’t come. They implemented a strong communications plan in advance, and only received 25 complaints out of 6 million users. Most importantly, 70% of Sky’s users left the default filters in place. That includes filtering for malware and phishing, but for inappropriate content for children alone, the utilization rate is 64%, which is phenomenal. The percentage of Sky users with children in their homes is just 35 — 40%.
Sky calls its approach “Sky Broadband Shield.” It is an excellent model for the US, and is good business for a company, identifying it as a company that cares about families and children. The default filter is set at “13,” but parents can customize the filtering to meet their unique situations. “PG” is more restrictive, also blocking social media and gaming sites. “18” is for adults, blocking only malware, phishing, etc.
The categories of content addressed by the Sky Broadband Shield filter include – social networking; online games; pornography & adult; suicide & self-harm; weapons, violence, gore & hate; anonymizers, file sharing & hacking; drugs & criminal skills; dating; and phishing & malware.
The “Watershed” option in Sky Broadband Shield enables parents to apply time restrictions; i.e., they can turn off the filters each night at the child’s bedtime and have them come back the next morning. The customization approach also enables parents to select particular sites they do not want blocked. For example, if parents use the “PG” setting which blocks social media, they could elect to allow Facebook and block all other social media. The Sky Broadband Shield configuration follows:
https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-broadband-shield-explained
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