Protecting children
on the internet
February 06, 2007
Home Secretary John Reid today proposed strengthening the sex offenders
register to better protect children using the internet.
Home Secretary John Reid today proposed strengthening the sex offenders
register to better protect children using the internet.
As part of his wide-ranging
Child Sex Offender Review, John Reid is considering extending the
notification requirements for offenders on the register to include
their on-line identities such as e-mail addresses and names used
in chatrooms.
The Home Secretary said:
"Protecting the
public is my priority - nowhere is this more important than protecting
children from harm when using the internet.
"We already have
one of the best systems in the world for managing sex offenders
- we are one of only seven countries worldwide to have a register
of such offenders.
"The internet can
be a wonderful resource for children, but it can also pose threats
which we must be alert to. Often children are net savvy, but not
necessarily worldly wise. We already ask sex offenders to give us
their names and addresses and I want to see if that could be extended
to their online identities too."
The Home Secretary made
the announcement as he toured the Child Exploitation and Online
Protection (CEOP) centre in London. Launched in April last year,
CEOP is the UK's new national centre set up by the Home Office to
protect children and young people on the internet.
Today's announcement
is part of the Government's drive to tackle sex offenders. Previous
action has included:
* creating the Task Force
on Child Protection on the Internet which is a partnership of Government,
industry, law enforcement and child protection specialists;
* working with UK Internet
Service Providers and the Internet Watch Foundation to effectively
end the hosting of images of child abuse on UK servers (0.2 per
cent of reports now relate to UK hosted images compared with 18
per cent 10 years ago). Many of them also now block their broadband
customers from accessing websites hosted overseas and the Home Office
has set a target that the rest should do so by the end of 2007;
* providing funding to
set up the Interpol database and championed its development through
G8 and EU. The database will help law enforcement around the world
identify, trace and locate victims and offenders involved in seized
images of abuse to prevent further abuse; and
* strengthening the law
on managing sex offenders in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 by making
the notification requirements more robust and introducing new civil
preventative orders whereby prohibitions can be placed on the behaviour
of the offender.
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