Police and ISPs working together to block online child pornography makes a difference

Digital infrastructure Privacy

The police, through the IT&Telecom companies, have been working with a number of internet service providers for more than a decade to prevent access to and distribution of child abuse material on the internet. Per-Åke Wecksell, Inspector, who works at the special unit within the police that, among other things, combats the distribution of child pornography images and films on the Internet, talks about the work within the police and the cooperation with Internet service providers.

How does cooperation on blocking child pornography on the internet work?

- The police regularly receive tips from various sources about websites containing images or videos of child sexual abuse. We review the content and save it in a special program, and then deliver information about the sites in question to the internet service providers that are part of our cooperation so that they can block the site. Blocking means that customers of the provider who surf to - or accidentally end up on - one of these sites will be greeted by a stop sign informing them that the site contains child pornography and that the distribution of such material is a criminal offense.

How does cooperation between ISPs and the police make a difference?

- Every time a child appears online in a context where they are being sexually abused is a new abuse. In many cases, the images are there for commercial reasons; we know that serious organized crime has made a lot of money from handling child abuse material. Any way to disrupt this activity and have the opportunity to protect children from exploitation is extremely important. Cooperation is very important and has made a difference. It is much more difficult to find child sexual abuse material on the open internet now than it was just a few years ago.

Will the new police technical solution for blocking facilitate cooperation?

Yes, we are currently developing a solution that will allow us to block the material at the file level. This means that we will be able to access more pages, and it will also make it much more difficult for the user to get around the block.

Crimes against children evoke strong emotions such as hatred and hopelessness, what drives you to work on this?

- Knowing that there are children being raped and sexually exploited at this very moment motivates me to find, identify and help vulnerable children and bring perpetrators to justice. Society as a whole must join the fight in whatever way that particular company or organization can.