Cameron warned Google, Bing and Yahoo that they faced being forced by law to ban internet searches for illegal images if they refused to do so voluntarily.
Google and other internet firms are helping to supply illegal images of child abuse to "sick and malevolent" people, David Cameron said Monday. The Prime Minister accused the company of making money out of circulating pictures and videos of children being sexually abused as he demanded that search engines compile a list of illegal terms that should produce no results.
Cameron warned Google, Bing and Yahoo that they faced being forced by law to ban internet searches for illegal images if they refused to do so voluntarily. In an escalation of his argument against the internet giants, Cameron said they had a "moral duty" to act because their technical expertise was "aiding" paedophiles. He set Google and the other firms a deadline of October when they would be called to Downing Street to produce their plans for "obliterating this disgusting material from the net".
The Prime Minister issued his warning as he outlined a series of measures the Government, law enforcement agencies and companies were taking to tackle the threat to children from the internet. All internet services are to be automatically set to block adult content when they are sold to domestic customers. Adults who buy services from firms such as BT, Virgin and TalkTalk will be required to switch off the content filter if they want to be able to access websites containing legal pornography.
By the end of next year, all 19 million households already connected to broadband internet will also be asked to choose whether they want parental control filters to be activated on their systems. Law enforcement agencies will also have more powers to police the "dark" corners of the internet, where paedophiles share illegal images of children being abused, under the proposals. In a speech to the NSPCC charity in London, Cameron said he felt "profoundly as a politician, and as a father" that action was needed to "protect our children and their innocence". "Companies like Google make their living out of trawling and categorising content on the web," he said.
"In a few keystrokes you can find what you're looking for out of unimaginable amounts of information. Then they sell advertising space to companies, based on your search patterns." He called on the search engines to draw up a list of illegal search terms. If an internet user searches for "child sex", the results should provide options including "sex education" but no links to images of abuse, Cameron said. A Google spokesman said the company had a "zero tolerance" attitude to child sexual abuse imagery.
"We use our own systems and work with child safety experts to find it, remove and report it," he said. The firm is "committed to continuing the dialogue with the Government," the spokesman said. Mark Bridger, who was convicted of murdering five-year-old April Jones, and Stuart Hazell, who murdered Tia Sharp, 12, were both found to have viewed child pornography online.
Jim Gamble, the former chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre criticised Cameron's new measures. He said the proposals would not be a deterrent and called on the Government to provide more funding to policing and child protection teams.
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