I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the Seanad this evening and
to address the motion before the House.
I listened with interest to the previous speakers who outlined in great
detail the need for ongoing strong measures to combat child abuse images,
commonly referred to as “child pornography”, on the internet. The
protection of children from sexual abuse and sexual exploitation, including
measures to combat child abuse images on the internet, is of critical
importance. We all abhor the evil trade in illegal images of children being
sexually abused.
I can assure the Senators that the Government is fully committed to
fighting child sexual abuse, including the issue of child sexual abuse
images on the internet. This commitment is demonstrated in the fact that
Ireland has signed up to the various international instruments referred to
in today’s motion. The implications for policy and Government in the whole
area of the internet are severe and complex, since the situation is
evolving quickly and is subject to frequent significant technological
change. There are no easy solutions to these issues. The internet is a
worldwide phenomenon with no borders and no single organisation controlling
it. International cooperation is therefore vital. Every country is
struggling to deal with these issues and this is evidenced through the
various international instruments which touch on this sphere. Technological
change is so rapid that policy is almost inevitably in a situation of
continuous catch-up.
I should also say that my Department has been conducting a wide-ranging
review of the law on sexual offences and that I, as Minister, expect to
bring legislative proposals in the form of a Sexual Offences Bill to
Government in the coming months. These will include measures to enhance the
protection of children against sexual abuse and sexual exploitation,
including exploitation through prostitution and child pornography. These
will facilitate full compliance with the criminal law provisions of the UN,
Council of Europe and EU instruments referred to in the motion.
I say full compliance because, in fact, much of the Optional Protocol to
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child
Prostitution and Child Pornography has been implemented by either the Child
Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 or the Criminal Law (Human
Trafficking) Act 2008. For example, our trafficking legislation
criminalised the sale of persons, including children, for any purpose.
Also, my Department has been advised by the Department of Health that the
Adoption Act 2010 meets other requirements of the optional protocol.
Likewise many of the criminal law provisions of the Council of Europe
Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and
Sexual Abuse (the Lanzarote Convention) are already covered by the Child
Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 and the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences)
Act 2006.
The EU Directive on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of
children and child pornography was adopted only recently – in December
2011. Ireland’s participation in the adoption and implementation of this
measure had been approved by the Government and the Oireachtas. The
deadline for transposition of this Directive by way of national measures is
18 December, 2013. As with the both the UN and Council of Europe
instruments already mentioned, many of the Directive’s provisions are
already implemented by existing legislation.
There is an existing self-regulatory framework for internet service
providers (ISPs) in operation in Ireland which aims to combat illegal child
pornography content online. Members of the public who encounter such
material may report it to the hotline.ie service of the Internet Service
Providers’ Association of Ireland (ISPAI). If the material is hosted in
Ireland and is deemed to be illegal and in contravention of Irish law,
ISPAI members are obliged to remove such materials. The Garda Siochana is
automatically advised of any such instances so they can follow up if
appropriate. If the material is hosted in another jurisdiction, it is
notified to the internet hotline in that jurisdiction and/or to the
relevant law enforcement agencies for follow up, with the aim of having
illegal content taken down. I and my predecessors as Minister for Justice
have continually drawn the public’s attention to the existence of the
hotline.ie service. The first and most important response to illegal child
abuse images on the internet is to track down the source and to have the
material removed from the internet. This focus on so-called “notice and
take down” is a key measure stressed in the new EU Directive on combating
the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography.
The hotline.ie service along with An Garda Siochana plays a vital role in
this regard.
There are some important facts to consider in contextualising the debate
around child sexual abuse material on the internet. In only a handful of
cases has illegal child sexual abuse material been found to be hosted in
Ireland. In the first case in 2009, illegal web content reported to
hotline.ie was found to be hosted in Ireland in an incident where a website
owned by a small Irish business was hacked into. Garda investigation
discovered that because of weak log-on passwords the site had been hacked
by criminals outside of the jurisdiction. In 2010, there were two cases of
“mirroring” of illegal content in Ireland. The cases involved large website
mirroring services that have servers located in Ireland. Although the USA
was the actual source of these incidents of child sexual abuse images, this
illegal content was replicated here. This material was reported to the US
where it was removed and as a result it also disappeared from the
“mirrored” websites hosted in Ireland.
There has been a continuing downward trend, from a peak in 2007, of
confirmed illegal content reported by the public to the hotline.ie service
– 186 such reports in 2010 compared with 284 such reports in 2007. This is
despite the fact that the number of reports of suspected illegal content
has continued to rise. The total number of such reports was 2646 in 2010, a
25% increase over the 2009 figure. At the very least this suggests that
illegal material is being encountered less often by the average internet
user in Ireland. This correlates with international experience in recent
times.
The Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 provides penalties for child
pornography offences which I consider to be robust. The offence of
knowingly possessing child pornography attracts a maximum prison sentence
of five years or a maximum fine of €6,350 or both. The maximum penalty for
knowingly producing, distributing, printing, publishing, importing,
exporting, showing or selling child pornography is a maximum prison
sentence of 14 years or an unlimited fine or both.
The Garda Síochána’s Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Investigation
Unit is responsible for the investigation of criminal offences involving
child pornography. Any suspected offence involving the abuse of children
through the internet or other technology, whether originating in this
jurisdiction or coming to the attention of An Garda Síochána through
international agencies or by any other means, is subject to thorough
investigation. Specialist computer software is available to An Garda
Siochana and is utilised to gather information and intelligence on possible
suspects operating in this jurisdiction. The resources available for the
investigation of this type of crime are continuously monitored by the Garda
authorities to ensure they are sufficient.
There is a vigorous and ongoing debate internationally about the merits of
employing blocking mechanisms or “filters” to prevent access to either
illegal or harmful content on the internet. It is important to note that
blocking systems will only prevent inadvertent access by internet users to
illegal content and the use of such systems should not give a false sense
of security to internet users.
Those against blocking systems fear that they may undermine freedom of
expression online.and lead to “mission creep” where blocking initially
relates only to webpages containing illegal child pornography content but
potentially could be extended to any webpages which
Governments might find
objectionable. I do not regard this as a credible reason for inaction.
In the past decade blocking systems by Internet Service Providers in
respect of child abuse images have been implemented in several
jurisdictions including the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy
and Finland. In the majority of these cases, such blocking systems were set
up on the basis of a voluntary opt-in approach by individual ISPs (rather
than a legislative mandate on all ISPs). In addition, many individual
well-known internet companies implement their own filtering systems, e.g.
Google in respect of search results and Facebook in respect of uploaded
images. On the other side of the argument, last year the German government
decided to repeal a law on internet blocking of child sexual abuse images
it had previously introduced because it considered that deletion of the
images should be the priority and because of the success of internet
hotlines and police forces internationally in ensuring that child abuse
images were being removed in a much more timely manner. In 2011 a majority
of the Dutch Parliament supported the Dutch Minister of Security and
Justice in his decision not to require Dutch ISPs to block access to
webpages containing child sexual abuse images. This was on the grounds that
other internet services, rather than websites, are now being used to
distribute child sexual abuse images and that as a result, blocking
websites containing child sexual abuse images on the basis of a blacklist
can no longer serve as a reliable and efficient way to contribute to
fighting child sexual abuse images on the internet.
At present all mobile phone operators in Ireland, under a voluntary
agreement brokered by the European Commission with the GSM Alliance Europe,
the association representing European mobile phone operators, implement a
form of blocking on their mobile internet service, which prevents access to
websites which have been identified as containing child pornography
content. This is important since a key ongoing development in internet
technology is the shift to persons using mobile devices such as
smart-phones to access the internet.
Article 25 of the new Directive specifically relates to measures against
websites containing or disseminating child pornography. Firstly it provides
that Member States shall take measures to ensure the prompt removal of web
pages containing or disseminating child pornography hosted in their
territory and will seek to ensure the removal of such pages hosted outside
of their territory. This reflects the fact that the primary aim of all
efforts in respect of child abuse imagery on the internet should be to
ensure that it is removed at source. Secondly, Article 25 provides that
Member States may take measures to block access to web pages containing or
disseminating child pornography content. It further provides that any such
measures should be set by transparent procedures and provide adequate
safeguards, in particular to ensure that such restrictions should be
limited to what is necessary and proportionate and that users should be
informed of the reason for the restriction. The Directive also specifies
that these safeguards should include the possibility of judicial redress.
I am, this evening, giving a commitment to this House that blocking will be
fully considered in the context of the development of the planned Sexual
Offences Bill.
While blocking is of assistance in preventing inadvertent access on the
internet to child abuse imagery it is not enough. It can not adequately
deal with the transfer of material of this nature via peer-to-peer
filesharing systems, usenet and email (rather than on standard webpages).
How to best implement article 25 of the recently adopted EU Directive is
presently under consideration. Today’s debate will make a valuable
contribution to our deliberation on this very important issue.
It is the Government’s view that everything practical and effective that
can be done should be done to address the evil of child pornography. It
has been rightly said that every such image is evidence of a crime scene
and records the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. In an internet
world of no territorial boundaries and an extraordinary evolving
technological ecology the children presented on such sites continue to be
abused and their images viewed across the world. The removal of such sites
is crucial and because of the extra territorial dimension, international
cooperation is essential.
This is an important issue concerning the welfare of children on which I
believe there is no substantive disagreement amongst members of this House.
As outlined in my speech, a great deal has been done in our legislation to
address this evil. Further steps must now be taken pursuant to the
recently adopted European directive. I am asking Senators to not divide
the House this evening on this important issue and to unitedly support the
Government’s amended Motion as a clear and unambiguous signal of a united
commitment to the protection of not only our children but children across
the globe.