The British public stands four-square behind ISPs over moves to curb the availability of images of child abuse on the net. In a MORI poll of 1,00O UK adults, 89 per cent said they would support ISPs if they tracked those visiting child porn websites and 93 per cent said that ISPs should report this information to the police.

Leaving aside the four per cent of folks out there who want ISPs to hand over data to the police without favouring the monitoring that would need to go with it, the study suggest the public reckon people who access child abuse websites have no right to hide behind claims of privacy violation.

The study also shows that 90 per cent of the country’s adult population would support the voluntary blocking by ISPs of access to child abuse and paedophilic web sites, and 89 per cent said they would support the official monitoring of the content of such sites. The survey, sponsored by content filtering firm StreamShield Networks, will doubtless be taken by BT as an endorsement of its CleanFeed scheme for blocking access to child abuse websites. However it's worth wondering whether when people are questioned by strangers on subjects as charged as child abuse they might respond with what is seen as the "correct response" rather than their considered opinion. ®

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