Anti-smut boss: 'We won't be net police'
Even if UK.gov thinks IWF are already
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The Internet Watch Foundation has no intention of becoming the UK government's net police, its new boss has declared.
Speaking to El Reg in her first interview in her new role at the IWF, Susie Hargreaves also revealed the need for greater openness, independence and transparency at the anti-child sex abuse organisation. The IWF's fundamentals, she believes, are just about right, but the public don’t always get what it does.
Meeting at the Commonwealth Club, near London's Charing Cross, Hargreaves is smartly turned out and slightly nervous. She was passed the baton from Peter Robbins, who spent the best part of a decade successfully transforming the IWF from a slightly suspect fringe organisation – and bête noire of the civil liberties lobby – to what is now reckoned to be a world-class model for tackling the spread of child abuse material online.
The organisation is frequently praised by governments and eyed up by ministers who see it as a potential agent for greater enforcement of official policy on the net.
She does not have, as Robbins did, a policing background. Was that a deliberate decision by the IWF? She says not.
Rather, she tells us: "I have a track record of advocacy, both at home and internationally, and I see a major part of my role now as building new links between stakeholders and international partners and supporters."
Throughout her career, she has worked with charitable causes, governance and young people, and believes all three come together in the challenges faced by the IWF. She adds: "Working for the IWF will help me fulfil another passion: the elimination of child abuse online."
There is a hint, too, that the IWF is seeking to expand its funding base to make it less reliant on one or two funding sources, particularly its EU grant. Again, this is a role for which Hargreaves is well suited.
"The IWF," she stresses, "is not about policing the net. Nor should it be. It needs to remain independent of government and police. Independent funding is a key part of that."
The IWF may wish to be seen as independent, but, we suggest, that is not how many ordinary users of the internet see it. Robbins at one time spoke of his hope that the need for the IWF would one day just fade away. But is it still necessary and how justified are its interventions?
Agreeing that the number of URLs on the current block list (500 to 600 at any one time) is a long way short of the 1,500 average that were there a few years back, Hargreaves argued that this in part reflects a position today that is far more dynamic.
She said: "Sites set up and clear down within 24 hours, as compared to weeks previously.
"In our last annual report, in 2010, the IWF highlighted the fact that we received some 10,000 more reports of potential child abuse sites on the web than in 2009.
"It is very hard to define exactly who is behind these sites: greater research is needed to identify the prime movers and their motives. At the end of the day, the 'enemy' is the sites themselves. They pose a threat to children, and therefore there needs to be a response to them, which the IWF provides."
Next page: Selling itself to the public
COMMENTS
Looking for new funding ?
I'm sure these would like to help:
RIAA, MPAA, BSA, BPI
I am a stakeholder. Where is my vote?
Their blacklist of badness isn't opt-in, or even opt-out. It's "voluntary" for the ISP, but the end-user gets no choice. Doesn't even show up as a stakeholder here.
Informing is one thing. Opting in another. Having to opt-out (something I'd do on principle, after complaining loudly at having to opt-out in the first place) is really not right. Not even being able to opt out means that however you put it, it's policing. By quango. Well.
Love the assertion that because no policeman in sight, it's not policing. Right. So, because there's no convicts on the board, you can't do anything wrong either?
You could draw parallels with, oh, spamhaus. They keep a blacklist of badness. There, it's the mail admins that choose to use it or not. There is no government "kindly suggesting" ISPs "voluntarily" use it. There is also a way to check if you're affected and there is a reasonably well-defined way to get off; better your ways and ask them nicely to be let off. And if you don't want to use them, that's fine. Some ISPs give their users fine-grained controls over how to go about reducing spam in their inbox, down to picking and un-picking blacklists. Otherwise you're free to take your email custom somewhere else.
The IWF is the essence of the unaccountable quango with government fiat endorsement. Is spinning themselves farther into independence then supposed to be a good thing? Perhaps to be better able to resist the slowly mounting pressure to do more censoring than what they set out to do? All we have for that is their promise they won't; they're still not accountable to those whom they deprive of choice. That remains a problem even if for now and forever they will never ever again goof with another false positive.
Well, at least the girl dresses nice and believes she herself when she thinks the IWF has it "about right". Also, policing done by quango apparently isn't policing, nosiree. Would it be inopportune to bring up the ACPO here?
This isn't the smartest, nor the fastest, of quangos. Like how she's only now started to kick the idea of a proper complaints and appeals procedure --and only for sites in the UK, how provincial can you get?-- a nice couple years after having publically fallen on their faces. Compared to how long they exist it's even worse. The whole thing does seem a little self-absorbed. Which makes sense; being a moral grauniad does seem to require a certain amount of density, yes.
Blighty must want it, for it's got it.
I would like to know
When did we become too stupid to tie our own shoes with out govt help? Who made that decision for us ? Seriously if the govt wants treat me like a child, then take care of me like I'm child. Children don't work, don't pay bills. Now if you want me to act like an adult you need to treat me like one .
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