Google, Microsoft Take measures to Stop Child Sexual Abuse Images

Images of sexual child abuse will no longer be able to be accessed on search engines operated by Google or Microsoft following a recent agreement by both Internet giants that they will block any such searches. UK Prime Minister David Cameron had been pressuring both companies to take action regarding blocking internet users queries to obtain images pertaining to the sexual abuse of minors and even threatened to enact legislation if they continued to ignore the problem. An estimated 100,000 queries on computers around the world daily pertain to photos, videos and other images of children being sexually abused that are searched for by pedophiles and other individuals who want to gain access to this illegal material.

Representatives of Google insist that they cannot prevent new images from being downloaded onto the Internet, but have promised to use new technology in order to detect illegal child abuse images already available and have them permanently removed from their search engines.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt says: “These changes have cleaned up the results for over 100,000 queries that might be related to the sexual abuse of kids.

“As important, we will soon roll out these changes in more than 150 languages, so the impact will be truly global.”

Google communications director Peter Barron said: “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.

“But the Government’s right that our industry can do more. So we’ve developed new technology to detect and remove videos of abuse, we are showing warnings against search terms related to child sexual abuse, and we are fine tuning our search engine to prevent this material appearing in our results.

Although both Microsoft and Google expressed concerns about controlling search engine activity and creating a list of blocked materials, public opinion has grown stronger that they must take a more active role in preventing such images from appearing upon request.

On The Web:
Google and Microsoft agree to block child abuse web searches
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/google-and-microsoft-agree-to-block-child-abuse-web-searches-8946170.html