Home Office confused about child porn blacklisters

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The Home Office is trying to encourage ISPs to subscribe to the Internet Watch Foundation’s (IWF) blacklist, even though the IWF could possibly be breaking the law in creating it.

This is according to a Home Office interview with IT PRO’s sister site Computer Shopper.

When questioned about whether the IWF had permission such as a licence to view and investigate child porn websites, the spokesman said it didn’t. However, the spokesman was under the impression that the IWF was not acting illegally because it was deleting content, which it in fact didn’t do.

The IWF was actually a self-appointed watchdog that reported illegal websites to the government and law enforcement agencies, which investigated those who were involved and took down the offending websites.

The spokesman also admitted that there wasn’t any official government body that ISPs could subscribe to if they didn’t want to subscribe to the IWF blacklist.

A transcript of the entire interview is here.

It’s not the first time that the IWF’s role has been questioned in recent months. Computer Shopper revealed that IWF staff had been threatened after the Wikipedia incident, where many UK users of Wikipedia were denied access due to a Scorpion album being blocked from the site.

On the other side of the argument, children's charities are concerned that more ISPs haven't signed up to block known child porn-hosting websites.

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