Some people call this a dark day in the development of the Internet. For the first time, an Internet service provider (ISP) in a free, democratic country is blocking access to websites hosted on other ISP computers.
The company is British Telecom (BT), and the reason for the new measure is child pornography. BT recently announced that throughout this month it would be phasing in a technology to block requests from its customers wanting to access any one of several thousand websites that were particularly nefarious in peddling pictures of children being sexually molested.
BT’s actions were a response to serious pressure from children’s charities. It works like this: A non-profit group called the Internet Watch Foundation lists the worst-offending sites, which are then vetted by the British Home Office before going on the ISP’s “block” list.
So now that one of the West’s largest ISPs is adopting a technology more associated with oppressive countries such as China and Saudi Arabia, we have to wonder if the trend is coming to Canada and if it will grow to include other types of websites.
Should Telus, Shaw, Bell and other large Canadian ISPs be responsible for the illegal webpage queries of their customers?
The arguments for doing so are compelling. To date, however, no one in Canada wants to take the lead.
Toronto sex-crimes police Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie told the Globe and Mail last month that ISPs should start taking responsibility for allowing access to this material.
Telus spokesman Nick Culo replied by e-mail to my request for comment. He said Telus would be examining “the privacy, legal, technical and freedom-of-speech issues” with law- enforcement officials and other Canadian ISPs in the weeks ahead.
Shaw Communications Inc. president Peter Bissonnette has said it’s impossible for the company to search billions of websites for offensive content. And, he added in a phone interview with me last week: “Is it our role to deny access?”
So why block?
Blocking webpage requests is not really a giant leap. ISPs already use a form of blocking, only on their own computers and not the computers of other ISPs. A couple of years ago, the B.C. Supreme Court sided with the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) against Terry Lefebvre in a labour-related libel suit, and the CLAC received a restraining order against Lefebvre’s website, essentially shutting it down. It’s not uncommon for ISPs in Canada to block “freedom of speech” to enforce similar court orders.
But the criminals have figured this out by now, and websites showing children being sexually abused are not hosted on Telus or Shaw machines. “I don’t recall in the last seven years having anybody hosting a child-porn kind of site (on a Shaw server),” says Bissonnette.
Instead, the malefactors use foreign computers where laws are more lax (such as Texas), putting them beyond the reach of Canadian courts. Canadian lawmakers have recently closed this loophole by making it a criminal offence to view child-pornography websites.
But preventative laws are not stopping the kiddie-porn proliferation even in Britain, where the laws against viewing such content go back decades. In a sting two years ago, British police found 7,000 Brits had provided credit-card information to kiddie-porn websites. The authorities there have made about 1,600 arrests thus far.
Obviously, the black market is larger than many of us thought possible, considering the vile nature of the content. But where there is money to be made, businesses inevitably spring up.
The danger here is not so much that people are stumbling across kiddie-porn websites, but that an underground sector peddling the abuse of children is being developed and financed unchecked. Unfortunately, it is the nature of pornography that the more people are exposed to it, the less shocking it becomes. Time is of an essence.
Our children – the most vulnerable people in our world – are being sacrificed every day.
The simplest, quickest fix is by blocking access.
Police investigations are long, drawn-out processes, after all, and criminal gangs move fast.
When I spoke with Shaw’s Bissonnette, he expressed a sincere desire to work with police when someone within his company’s domain is breaking the law. But he also cited several reasons why Shaw is not blocking kiddie porn at this time.
He said it’s the government’s job to outlaw certain sites, if that’s what people want. If Parliament made it illegal to provide access to a particular site, he would obey the law.
Bissonnette also said blocking web queries is not the most effective way to prevent children from being exposed, since “net nannies” and similar parental controls are more broadly applicable, helping prevent chat-room abuse, peer-to-peer and e-mail dissemination of kiddie porn.
We should not be lulled into thinking that blocking access to websites would protect children from online predators and e-mailed smut.
Blocking access might even make the problem worse, since the criminals would go deeper underground. Catching those 7,000 people in Britain was relatively easy. So would identifying people who visited certain websites, if a court order were used to trace them. People who use the Internet to find child pornography are the stupid pedophiles, the low-hanging fruit for law enforcement.
But the most compelling argument against ISPs blocking access to child-porn sites is that it would open a Pandora’s box of requests.
It does not take much imagination to think that websites that show innocent civilians being executed would face potential blockage. So would sites that incite violence against identifiable groups. Then there would be a call to block chats when sex with minors is being solicited. These are all extremely dangerous scenarios. Who would support them?
You may think I’m in favour of keeping the Internet a free-for-all. But I am not.
The biggest fear I have is that government takes control of the prevention, as Bissonnette suggested. I don’t trust that bureaucrats or politicians could handle the power of being able to block a site on the pretext of “protecting children.”
No, the simplest solution is the best: That ISPs copy the example set by British Telecom and simply block sites that an independent third party, such as a non-profit charity, deems horribly offensive.
It’s not perfect by any means, but it would be the best of a bad bunch of options.
I salute BT and encourage Canada’s other ISPs to voluntarily jump on board. It should never be marketed as a way to provide “parental” controls, but it will help make our kids safe from a most disgusting business.
(Ian van de Burgt can be reached at ian@businessedge.ca)
