Protecting children online.

The views expressed in this post are my own and not those of my party.

As a father I am all in favour of governments taking action to protect children from all forms of abuse. There should be heavy penalties for anyone involved in creating or distributing child pornography.

It is also a good thing to have policies in place to make it more difficult for children to get access to pornography - though anyone who thinks you can completely stop all teenagers from doing so is wildly optimistic - and to restrict public displays of such material so as to make it easier for those who do not wish to see it to go about their lives without doing so,

However, the policies which are enacted in support of these laudable aims should be realistic, practical and proportionate.

Our laws should also be designed to avoid driving people who not currently breaking the law and whose activities it is not proposed to criminalise into the arms of suppliers who are outside the law.

I would like to see the government bring together a task force of people who genuinely understand the internet and people from law enforcement who understand, as well as any sane and balanced person can, the minds of those who prey on children, and get them to devise a policy which will; actually work to protect children online and crack down on child pornography but, as far as possible, leave adults who look in private at material involving consenting adults alone.

I think that is in fact what the policies of the present government and its immediate predecessors were designed to do but I'm not convinced that present policies or those which are planned will actually achieve it.

Some of the practical problems which need to be resolved are given in an opinion piece in Wired by Rowland Manthorp, last updated on 6th March 2019, which you can read here. I don't agree with every word he writes, but his arguments that the currently proposed regime will not work and will actually encourage illegal behaviour strike me as all too plausible.

Is British politics mature enough to permit an intelligent debate on this issue, in which one can call for a rethink without one's words being twisted to score very nasty political points? 

Comments

Jamess said…
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9:44 am
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