Facebook has come under attack from Britain's most senior police officers, who have criticised the social-networking giant for refusing to adopt a "panic button" which would allow victims of online sexual grooming to report their concerns directly to the authorities.Which is a little disingenuous – they have agreed to the button, they just aren’t placing it where the odious Jim Gamble, Paedofinder General, thinks they should.
And like every thwarted bully, he’s run to his mates to back him up.
The social-networking site yesterday announced that it would adopt the "button", designed by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), on one page of its site – a page which appears when users have already decided to report abuse. But it is still refusing to adopt the button on every page of its site, as requested by Britian's online protection agency, because it claims that to do so could create "additional complexity" and may result in fewer people reporting grooming.Which didn’t suit the people who know best:
Yesterday, in a letter signed by chief constables from 43 police forces across Britain, senior police officers said that the steps taken by the social-networking giant are not good enough.Oh dear, really? How sad.
What do they plan to do about this?
After the four-hour meeting, which both sides said was "constructive", Facebook said that it would introduce a link to CEOP's reporting system which would appear when users decided to report abuse via the site's own measures. It also said it would invest £5m in education about how to stay safe online – a relatively tiny amount for a company valued at more than £9bn.But more than they are obliged to do! Most blackmailers would be quite happy with £5 million…
While acknowledging the concessions, Mr Gamble said the situation was still not satisfactory. "The critical issues remain unresolved," he said. "We believe that – without the deterrence provided by direct visible access to the CEOP button on every page – children will not be empowered, parents cannot be reassured and the offender will not be deterred.God! This man’s rampant ego could provide us limitless cheap power, if we could only find some way of harnessing it…
"During yesterday's constructive meeting with Facebook they did not say 'No' to the button. We are hopeful that, once they have considered their position, they will take the critical final step to make their environment safer by adopting the direct CEOP link."
The police officers' letter, sent to Facebook, said: "In the real world we do not filter reports through another organisation or company; the individual simply picks up a phone or visits their local police station. The 'CLICK CEOP' mechanism offers such a reporting service for the 21st-century citizen."And will you be any more careful with that information than you currently are with other records?
I bet the answer will be ‘No’…
Richard Allen, Facebook's director of policy for Europe, said: "We completely accept that our users should be able to report abuse directly to CEOP but we disagree on the best design solution to implement that.That doesn’t matter. The Righteous have spoken, and you WILL do what they want.
"From our experience, 'buttons' produce less good results in terms of people actually reporting abuse. They intimidate and confuse people. We think our simple text link is a far more effective solution.
"All we are saying is that when it come to the specifics of how to design online reporting systems we have considerable expertise."
They don’t want to hear from experts in designing online material. They are listening to the experts in
So what do the kids themselves think? Well, the ‘Indy’ has Rose:An 11 year-old's view:
I was only 10 when I first started using Facebook about a year ago. Like many children in Britain, I lied about my age. It's only supposed to be for those aged 13 and over, but of course many others (and me) ignored this and made ourselves appear years older.Well, who’dathunkit?
None of the parents really agrees with their children using Facebook, but we still use it anyway. After that incident, my school sent out a letter about Facebook saying we shouldn't be using it.Ignore the school like you ignore your parents, Rose!
The site now has this new report button: if anyone posts anything rude or mean you can report him or her, and he or she will get banned.Errr….
Hopefully, that’s not quite how it works! Though, would anyone be surprised?
My mum says I am breaking the law, but to be honest I don't care, because I know I won't be arrested or anything like that.Out of the mouths of…
My view on children using Facebook is that, as long as they don't make friends with people they don't know, they will be fine – this is all a big fuss about nothing.Well, one little nugget of wisdom there!
Perhaps we should give Rose Jim’s job? Could an eleven-year-old do any worse?
7 comments:
My kids were the "victims" of a paedo. He took pictures while he was babysitting while his wife and the kids' mum were out.
The kids don't know, and they won't, that he was part of a paedo swappie ring. He also used to stalk kids on t'internet, under a (silly) assumed name.
He got 2½ years. He was out in less than one.
It wouldn't have mattered had they called the police - he WAS the police. Met. Nearly retired, too.
All true. You couldn't make it up. If you google right you'll find the c**t in question. In the Sun.
Yes, I know where he lives, and what name they gave him. Oh yes. And he knows I know. And he lives in daily fear, which is how I like it.
they just aren’t placing it where the odious Jim Gamble, Paedofinder General, thinks they should.
This surely can't be the same Jim Gamble who led Operation Ore, which resulted in numerous (read thousands) false arrests of victims of credit card fraud, and people who's card numbers merely appeared on a database and weren't actually used to buy porn?
Arrests that resulted in the unnecessary immediate removal of children from their homes, and even a couple of suicides?
Thought so.
Of course, no-one reported as a result of clicking these magic buttons on Facebook will be arrested without a thorough investigation beforehand.
They won't just count how many clicks a certain IP has, and if it goes over a certain threshhold, a request to the ISP won't be made without a subpoena, and every male at the resultant address won't be arrested.
1984, coming to a house near you...
what's wrong with calling 999 or asking thier parents. Why is it FaceBook's responsibility to do something. Its a bit like blamming an ink manufacturer for paedo porn in print.
having said all that if they can do anything why not?
"And he knows I know. And he lives in daily fear, which is how I like it."
Out in less than one year? So he should live in fear!
"This surely can't be the same Jim Gamble..."
Yup! If we had real reporters, like we used to, maybe one would start tacking that little fact on the end of ANY report about CEOP's doings...
"Why is it FaceBook's responsibility to do something. Its a bit like blamming an ink manufacturer for paedo porn in print."
Wouldn't surprise me to see us get to that...
Do you ever wonder about these rabble-rousing types that get a bee in their bonnets about kiddie-fiddlers or miaow-miaow or violent video games? Isn't there something a bit 'off' about them? It's almost like they want there to be a law or else they'll haul off and do something heinous. I remember getting a severe dose of the creeps from that awful staring-eyed woman who led the campaign to ban legal firearm ownership in the wake of Dunblane? She just looked like a wrong-un who if you saw her on a news report after a playground full of toddlers getting shot you'd think, "huh, figures." One track minds usually have more kinks in them than a ride at Alton Towers. Gay marriage is another case in point. I'm not gay, and I'm not married, and consequently the whole issue is yawn city. Andrew Sullivan used to be a readable, interesting commentator. But now, thanks to his inability to see anything except through the prism of gay marriage, he has become a frothing, deranged laughing stock. In my experience, single-issue obsessives are psychologically damaged. I'm not, of course, suggesting Jim Gamble has pederastic tendencies. But for most of us, unless it involves our own kids, child abuse is a background-noise concern. For him, it's front-and-centre, and that's not healthy.
You mark my words once CEOP has bullied enough sites into putting on their 'free' button then they'll start to charge a 'modest' amount for it and the righteous will squeal if they don't pay saying its putting children at risk etc.
The spectacularly useless CEOP was only 'involved' in about 57 arrests of online paedos last year, the majority of which happened overseas (mainly SE Asia) and the perps were caught by the local police yet CEOP claimed credit. Yest they cost the thick end of 100 mill a year to run: big money for a building full of ex plods on generous salaries (Gamble is on over 250 thou a year) watching porn all day. Most of them are deployed overseas on generous packages, in places like Cambodia where they stop and harrass (sweriously) western looking men in places like Svay Pak outside Phnom Phen. They then boast that they helped catch over 8,000 paedos there, yet the real story is that only ONE westerner was caught, the rest were Khmers.
The taxpayer doesn't pick up all the bill though. CEOP makes about 15 mill a year from selling its'Childbase' system to virtually anyone that wants it. It contains a neatly indexed database of EVERY pedo image ever found. In other words they sell Child Porn and thanks to the SOA 2003 its perfectly legal for them to do so.
One final point Gamble was Cheif Super in Belfast's anti terrorist squad (ie in chartge) when a list of IRA symapthisers was passed to UDF thugs by his department. He has a lot of questions to answer does our Mr Gamble particularly with regards to his lying and falsifying evidence during ore.
Read more about Ore here
Sorry about the extra letters on my previous, I was annoyed when I wrote it.
One final point; the majority of the credit card details used to create ore victims were stolen from Tesco Expresses' database. Funny how they never came out nor did the fact that two very senior Labour politicians were on the original Ore list but were scrubbed before the list was released to the times by Gamble.
The names WILL come out. I know them (I've seen the database) and so do others. Its only a matter of time.
The Porn site operators bought the credit card details ($5 per credit card) from gangsters (Russian apparently) and used to sign up for child porn sites on the basis that the people would never complain or even notice a small amount from their credit card account. Mind you even those people who reported their stolen cards to their cc company were targetted by the police during ore. It was a REALLY foul operation and all so Gamble could get his shiney new department and a fat salary. Evil!
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