Google and Microsoft will reprogram their search engines so that 100,000 potentially relevant terms will no longer yield links to illegal child porn images. Details for how this will roll out in the US are not clear yet.
After months of pressure from the British government, tech rivals Google and Microsoft have announced they are working together to try to push child pornography off the public Internet. The two companies, which account for 95 percent of all online searches, will reprogram their search engines so that 100,000 terms potentially related to the sexual abuse of children will no longer yield links to illegal images.
Skip to next paragraph"We're agreed that child sexual imagery is a case apart; it's illegal everywhere in the world, there's a consensus on that. It's absolutely right that we identify this stuff, we remove it, and we report it to the authorities," Peter Barron, a Google communications director, told the BBC. The filters will take effect immediately in Britain and roll out in more than 150 languages over the next six months.
The details of how and when the system will roll out in the United States are unclear, but the algorithm changes are already in place, an industry source says.
“The sexual abuse of children ruins young lives. It’s why we proactively remove these awful images from our services – and report offenders to the authorities," said Mr. Barron in a statement released by Google.
While Barron was careful to make a distinction between child sexual imagery and other online content that's inherently abusive, some free-speech advocates see the crackdown as being at the top of a slippery slope toward a government-controlled Internet – especially since it comes on the heels of Edward Snowden's revelations that the British and US governments have been tapping these same companies for user information for at least six years in the name of criminal and security investigations.
Such curbs on pornography "could eventually rob Britain of the moral authority to denounce government-imposed Internet filtration in countries such as China," The Washington Post wrote in a Sept. 28 article. "Perhaps more than any other Western nation, critics say, Britain has become a test case for how and whether to more deeply police Internet images and social media in free societies."
British Prime Minister David Cameron placed himself at the helm of an anti-pornography crusade in July, in response to the brutal assault and slaying of two young girls in separate cases. Two British men who were known to have used child porn were convicted of the crimes.
But Mr. Cameron's campaign goes beyond child sexual imagery. Starting next year, British households will have to choose to opt in if they want their Internet providers to continue giving them access to any pornography. Cameron has also announced plans to criminalize the possession of porn images that depict rape, simulated or not.
After months of pressure from the British government, tech rivals Google and Microsoft have announced they are working together to try to push child pornography off the public Internet. The two companies, which account for 95 percent of all online searches, will reprogram their search engines so that 100,000 terms potentially related to the sexual abuse of children will no longer yield links to illegal images.
Skip to next paragraph"We're agreed that child sexual imagery is a case apart; it's illegal everywhere in the world, there's a consensus on that. It's absolutely right that we identify this stuff, we remove it, and we report it to the authorities," Peter Barron, a Google communications director, told the BBC. The filters will take effect immediately in Britain and roll out in more than 150 languages over the next six months.
The details of how and when the system will roll out in the United States are unclear, but the algorithm changes are already in place, an industry source says.
“The sexual abuse of children ruins young lives. It’s why we proactively remove these awful images from our services – and report offenders to the authorities," said Mr. Barron in a statement released by Google.
While Barron was careful to make a distinction between child sexual imagery and other online content that's inherently abusive, some free-speech advocates see the crackdown as being at the top of a slippery slope toward a government-controlled Internet – especially since it comes on the heels of Edward Snowden's revelations that the British and US governments have been tapping these same companies for user information for at least six years in the name of criminal and security investigations.
Such curbs on pornography "could eventually rob Britain of the moral authority to denounce government-imposed Internet filtration in countries such as China," The Washington Post wrote in a Sept. 28 article. "Perhaps more than any other Western nation, critics say, Britain has become a test case for how and whether to more deeply police Internet images and social media in free societies."
British Prime Minister David Cameron placed himself at the helm of an anti-pornography crusade in July, in response to the brutal assault and slaying of two young girls in separate cases. Two British men who were known to have used child porn were convicted of the crimes.
But Mr. Cameron's campaign goes beyond child sexual imagery. Starting next year, British households will have to choose to opt in if they want their Internet providers to continue giving them access to any pornography. Cameron has also announced plans to criminalize the possession of porn images that depict rape, simulated or not.