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UK Child Abuse Investigators Resent Being Charged For ISP Data

Posted by timothy on from the thinly-veiled-threat dept.

nk497 writes "In the UK, ISPs are charging a child protection agency for access to IP user details they need for their investigations into online-related abuse. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has paid out over £170,000 since 2006 on IP data requests related to child abuse cases, and expects to pay another £100,000 this year — enough to fund another two investigators. The CEOP's CEO said that any ISP which can't afford to give the police such help 'simply can't afford to do business.'" Surely it must cost the ISPs money to comply with such requests, no matter how official the quest.

6 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Good by RMH101 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First off, when did it become private enterprise's problem to pay for law enforcement?
    There is obviously a cost of some form to the ISP for providing this information, and it seems fair that this cost should be passed to the law enforcement organisations to be serviced out of their budget - this is what their budget is for. If it's not sufficient, they should lobby for it to be increased via taxation or other methods.
    The telcos are already allowed to charge for providing background information - and this is as it should be. If information is made available freely and at the drop of a hat to third parties then it encourages misuse of that information and encourages scope creep to monitoring a wider population than you might originally have required.

    1. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's like there is this imaginary fantasy that IT work costs nothing. They made 9400 requests last year, that's 36 a day or a request every 15 minutes. By my estimation, that could be the work of two people doing nothing but requests for officials. It sounds like to me that they are being charged fairly.

    2. Re:Good by daveime · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More than 300 people get arrested on a single Friday night for having had too much to drink. They get to sleep it off in the cells and get released at 4am, even if the police station is 4 miles from where you actually live. All were arrested, none were convicted.

      Likewise, out of those 10000 requests leading to 300 arrests, we might assume that 10 actually made it into the courts system ? And if it isn't thrown out for improperly appropriated evidence (police fishing attempts), or thrown out because the arresting office decided to stick the boot in before bundling the suspect into the paddy-wagon, maybe we might just see one conviction.

      At what point does 100,000 pounds of taxpayers money and 299 peoples lives tainted due to false arrests cease to justify the successful conviction of the one person who spent too much time surfing 4chan ? Or does "won't somebody think of the children" throw a mental blanket over common sense ?

  2. Back to front logic by lucas+teh+geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Any chills protection agency who can't afford to help ISPs with the costs of THEIR investigation simply can't afford to do business

    --
    TIAEAE!
  3. ISPs should not be cooperating by unlametheweak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ISPs should not be cooperating with pseudo-government institutions who want to know the addresses of people who look at album art on Wikipedia.

  4. Costs. by malkavian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The costs of this seem to average out at approximately £18 per query, which is less than the amount that can be charged for a "Freedom of Information Act" request, so the ISPs definitely are not gouging the investigators.

    It also definitely does cost the ISPs money to obtain the specific requests, so by any measure, they should be able to charge. If they're suddenly expected to donate their time for free "because of the children", then surely the investigators should be expected to do the same (how would they like their job to be suddenly unpaid)?

    This token amount, though small, operates as one of the balances to ensure that investigations are at least slightly sane, otherwise I can see requests flying out on every person they can find, simply because there is no reason not to.

    From reading the figures, the information gained from about 10,000 requests was useful in about 240 arrests. While a little on the low side for hit rate, it does show that they're targeting the searches at the moment. Long may the targetting, rather than scattershot fishing expeditions so favoured by digital enforcement agencies, continue.