Public pressure worked in the U.K. Why not Europe?

By JULIAN SHER

Emily was shocked and scared when her best friend Julia told her how she had narrowly escaped being kidnapped by a stranger she had met on the Internet. Julia*, a 12-year-old student from Kent, in the southeast corner of England, had been chatting online for the previous three months with someone she thought was 14. Unsure of her sexuality, Julia was exploring her feelings about being gay or straight. Like many teens, she had turned to the web for help - -and found a sympathetic friend who called herself Samantha.

Finally, they arranged to meet in real life. After waiting nervously for an hour, Julia got up to leave. That's when a man who had been parked in a car watching her drove up.

"Are you here to meet my daughter?" he asked. "We've had an argument and she stormed off. If you get into the car, we can go find her."

Even in her distressed state, Julia sensed danger. She hesitated. The man grabbed her arm but she managed to shake him off and flee.

Frightened and ashamed, she confided only in Emily*. Emily knew something more had to be done – and she did the smart thing. She clicked on an "Internet Safety" button, UK – a red alert icon on her chat software that put her in touch with police in a couple of clicks. Her request for help went straight to the London headquarters of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) agency. Here Emily's email was classified as a "Grade 1" emergency, where a child may be at "immediate risk." A CEOP analyst sent the report to local police right away.

Julia was able to give the Kent police the make and model of the car the man had been driving. They also had a snippet of a street address from one of her online chats with "Samantha". It was enough to lead them to a registered sex offender in Hertfordshire.

Within 24 hours, police burst through the door of the home of a 45-year-old man. They found wall-to-wall computers, indecent images of children, condoms -- and a knife. He had been chatting with 30 girls online, pretending to be a 14 year-old. Police also uncovered a letter he had prepared to blackmail Julia, warning her: "I'm going to tell everyone that you're a lesbian if you tell anyone what I've done."

He was jailed for 4 ½ years. Julia was safe. So were 30 other potential victims.

But sadly, outside of the UK no other countries or Internet companies in Europe have yet adopted the idea of a standard safety alert for kids who find themselves in dangerous situations on the web.

"The case for something like this [in Europe] is clear and overwhelming," says John Carr, a leading member of the European NGO Alliance for Child Safety Online and a special advisor to the UN.

We have emergency phones or call buttons on subways, trains, highways and many other public places, why not a similar safety device for the Internet, the biggest playground in the world in the 21st century?

"I dream of the button expanding all through Europe," says Jim Gamble, the former director of CEOP who was instrumental in setting up the safety button. "It's not rocket science. We should be grabbing this and running forward with it."

As Head of Counter Terrorism in Northern Ireland, Gamble spent years fighting terrorism and he brought the same relentless but creative approach to tackling child predators when he served as head of CEOP from 2006 until 2010.

"Making the internet safer is not about the number of criminals we arrest – that's dealing with the symptom," he said. "It's about the number of young people we educate and empower."

Gamble saw the safety button as central to that strategy. In the last year alone, CEOP has received more than 6,000 reports – more than 400 of them concerned a child incited to perform a sexual act, and another 135 involved a suspect trying to make arrangements to meet a child in the real world. The average user is between 11 and 16 years old, but calls for help have been received from children as young as six.

Since its launch in 2006, there have been more than 1,100 arrests as a result of its intelligence reports and over 260 "high risk sex offender networks" disrupted and dismantled – all of which helped CEOP rescue more than 600 children.

"Every day we're making a difference," says George, a CEOP intelligence officer, who asked that only his first name be used for security reasons. "It is making children feel the Internet is a place where they can play and interact without fear."

In the UK, the safety button has spread to dozens of social network and youth community sites like Netlog, Moshi Monsters, WeeWorld, Club Penguin, MSN Live Messenger, Habbo and Bebo. "It just seems so obvious to me that one would do it," says Kevin Bachus, Chief Product Officer for Bebo, one of the most popular social networking sites that appeals to young people. "Our users want the reassurance that if something was to happen, they know how to handle it."

Not every Internet company was initially as keen. Gamble and CEOP fought a pitched and very public battle with Facebook, the largest social networking site in the world, to adopt the button on its UK site. Facebook argued its own safety measures were adequate, but eventually bowed to intense pressure from a public aroused by the media and angry politicians.

Now Facebook users in the UK can contact the police through a CEOP fan page, a reporting link on Facebook's safety page and – perhaps most importantly in the cool, connected world for young people – through a ClickCEOP app that was downloaded 55,000 times in just its first four weeks.

"It's allowing young people who use Facebook a way to interact with CEOP in a format that they are familiar with," says spokesperson Sophy Silver.

So why has such a successful idea failed to catch on in Europe?

It's true that Europe does not have a powerful single child protection force like CEOP, much less a crusading cop like Gamble and politicians and the press clamouring for action.

But even the companies that have the button installed on their software in the UK have not tried to expand it elsewhere in Europe. Some, like Bebo, say they need police or parents to take the initiative. Others, like Facebook, are less certain the safety button idea could be easily transplanted. "The ClickCEOP application is one solution for one country," says Silver. "It may not work for every law enforcement agency across Europe."

But child safety advocates like Carr don't buy what they see as corporate excuses for delay.

"We're talking about companies with billions of dollars, huge assets behind them," says Carr. "They have achieved technological innovations that were unthinkable, unimaginable four or five years ago. They can do these things if they want to -- but they are not going to voluntarily do it unless there is public pressure."

There are signs that pressure is slowly building across Europe.

In France, "e-enfance," one of the country's leading Internet safety groups has been pushing Facebook to install an alert button on their French website.

"The example of England shows us there is a need for an independent alert button," says Fahed Toumi, the organization's multimedia director. "Children can feel guilty or afraid -- it's important to give them something that makes them feel safe."

Even smaller countries like Slovenia are catching on. "I'm a big fan of this button," says Vasja Vehovar, who heads SAFE-SI, an Internet safety project at the University of Ljubljana that is pushing for a Europe-wide safety alert system.

There are already 27 countries in Europe that operate some kind of "hotline" web pages for parents or children to report problems. But the problem is that these hotlines are on separate web sites people have to know about and navigate to -- they are not instant click buttons integrated into chat programs or game sites frequented by children.

"You have to have something right on the sites where the young people are on the Internet," says Chris Groeneveld a chief inspector with the Dutch National Police Agency's cyber crime team. He has been negotiating for several months with Microsoft to integrate a safety button into their chat software that would not only connect children with a special Dutch police hotline but also automatically save any Internet "crime scene" information on their computers.

The European Commission is also getting into the act, encouraging social networking companies to "provide an easy to use and accessible report button," according to Roberta Angelilli, a member of the EU's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

"Children online must be able to report abuse quickly and easily at the click of a button," she says, vowing to monitor the companies in the coming months to see what actions they have taken.

But child safety advocate John Carr worries that it's all taking too long.

He fears that it might take an Internet-related tragedy -"something terrible happens to a kid" – to spur the companies and the authorities into faster action.

"Why not just do the right thing now?" he asks.

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*To protect the victims, the names and some of the details of this case have been changed.

Julian Sher is the author of "Caught in The Web: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators.

Fast and Direct

Many different organizations aim to provide children with help when they feel threatened online. But the U.K's Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) hotline has additional important features, unlike anything provided by other Internet safety organizations.

Why this button?

• An instantly recognizable safety button on sites most frequented by children

• A safety button that is integrated and available on websites, games sites and chat rooms

• A safety button that provides children with direct contact to police

By adopting a similar system, or if these important functions are added to existing Internet hotlines, it would greatly improve children's access to help and their safety.

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