British Prime Minister David Cameron/AFP
LONDON, June 2013 – British Prime Minister David Cameron on Saturday demanded that Google and other search engines do more to rid the Internet of child pornography, warning that lives were being put at risk through the “disgusting” material available online.
“Internet companies and search engines make their living by trawling and categorising the web. So I call on them to use their extraordinary technical abilities to do more to root out these disgusting images,” he said.
Britain’s culture minister Maria Miller, whose remit covers Internet safety, has summoned representatives of several online giants including Google and Facebook for talks on June 17, to hear what they are doing to police their content.
There have been two high-profile trials over grisly child sex murders in Britain in recent weeks, and the killers of five-year-old April Jones and 12-year-old Tia Sharp were both found to have searched for child porn online.
Cameron said there were “encouraging signs” that major websites were increasing support for organisations combating child pornography. “But I want more action,” he added.
“The time for excuses and blame is over we must all work together. The safety of our children is at stake and nothing matters more than that.”
Google has insisted that it takes appropriate action to remove illegal and extreme material from its search results.
“Google has a zero-tolerance policy on child sexual abuse images,” the search engine says on a Frequently Asked Questions page.
“We prohibit any advertising related to child sexual abuse images. When we become aware of child sexual abuse images or child pornography anywhere in our search engine results or hosted on our site(s), we remove them and report the incident to the appropriate authorities.”
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