IICSA: With up to 450 paedophiles arrested monthly in the UK, tech companies not doing enough

The Internet Investigation Report March 2020 by the UK based Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA),  highlights up to 450 paedophiles are being arrested every month in the UK; and  law enforcement is struggling to keep up with the new methods adopted by predators and ease of access to child sexual abuse material online.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey stated ‘All I see is the numbers growing, the scale of the threat growing, the number of children being abused growing and, actually, we should be having a public debate that says: what else can we do to try and meet the threat?’.

The IICSA has accused tech companies of being reactive, driven more by a desire to avoid reputational damage than to prioritise child protection. It urged companies to make proactive efforts to remove uploaded child sex abuse images, including using automated programmes, before they can be accessed.