Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org) Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:13:33 -0500

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A UK-based Internet monitoring group said on Thursday it had received a record number of reports of online child pornography in the first six months of 2006, with half of all content traced back to the United States. The Internet Watch Foundation said it had received 14,313 reports between January and June, up almost a quarter from the same period in 2005, involving 4,908 cases where investigators found potentially illegal content, an increase of nearly 50 percent. "2006 is proving our busiest year yet, with record reports processed and record number of Web sites confirmed to contain child abuse," said Peter Robbins, IWF chief executive. The report said the increase did not necessarily mean there were more illegal Web sites being set up, saying it could reflect a greater public intolerance and knowledge of where to report such sites. Just over half of all the child abuse content had been traced to the United States, with 15 percent traced to Russia, 12 percent to Japan and 9 percent to Spain. That compared to just 0.2 percent in the United Kingdom. "With a large proportion of the world's internet users, servers and ISPs in the U.S, their Cybertipline, NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and U.S. law enforcement agencies have a considerable task in tackling the apparently high level of abuse of their hosting networks," the report said. Despite warnings to relevant authorities around the world, some Web sites with child abuse remained accessible for up to five years, according to the IWF, the official UK body for the public and IT professionals to report suspicious content. One Web site, first reported to the IWF in 1999 and which had been reported 96 times since, was still up and running despite 20 alerts to the relevant authorities. "This new information underlines the need for unified international efforts, transcending borders and legal jurisdictions," the IWF report said. Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said the UK was pushing for better worldwide cooperation. "Whilst the IWF works to have illegal content hosted in the UK taken down within 48 hours, not all countries have such an effective record," he said in a statement. The IWF also warned that new technology designed to allow Internet users to share their pictures and videos with friends was being abused by pedophiles. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html

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