UK Child Abuse Investigators Resent Being Charged For ISP Data

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.

Comments

Good

[RMH101]

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.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good

[Tx]

Absolutely, having these charges will hopefully reduce the amount of spurious fishing trips. Let's face it, if it didn't cost them, we all know how that would end.

Mind you, when I read about this yesterday on theregister, it said that ~10000 requests had resulted in ~300 arrests, but no data was available on how many of those arrests had resulted in convictions. So we don't really know the quality of those requests as it is.

Re:Good

[daveime]

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 ?

Back to front logic

[lucas teh geek]

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

ISPs should not be cooperating

[unlametheweak]

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.

Costs.

[malkavian]

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.

British Government idiocy

[Kupfernigk]

The root cause is nothing to do with IT or information policy. It is the ability of the British Government to govern by statutory instrument (SI), an essentially undemocratic tool not overseen by Parliament which allows civil servants to make laws. The result is that they pass laws in response to to Murdoch- and Rothermere- dominated tabloids, without stopping to consider how they will be paid for. Additional work is placed on the police, the emergency services, local government and the NHS without any funding. They are then left to consider which activity, not being screamed about by Paul Dacre just at the moment, they will have to cut. We're at risk of child abduction by paedophiles! Stop it! OK, let's cut the traffic police to pay for it. Or stop manning local police stations.

The answer, which won't happen while the Civil Service is run by Civil Servants, and while the government is run by politicians, is either to roll back the SIs and rely on properly thought out laws, or to require that any SI must first identify all funding issues required and explain how they are to be addressed.

My favourite idiotic SI is the one passed a few years ago, under which it is now illegal for, say, a professor of electrical engineering to rewire his or her own kitchen or bathroom, while the same job can be done by an unqualified trainee who merely works for a registered electrical contractor. That's typical of Civil Service thinking: don't look at the job to be done, look at the paperwork.

Re:Indeed, innocents accused have ruined lives.

[Anonymous Coward]

Happened to my friend's dad two years ago: he was investigated on suspicion of being part of a child porn ring. He lost his job, and the family had to move house because of the weight of the mortgage. Then had to move again because news of the investigation leaked out in his new community, resulting in several smashed windows and graffiti on the door.

7 months later, the allegations were all dropped. After turning his home, his office and his life upside down the police found no evidence of child porn, or any "morally dubious" (scare quotes intended) items of any sort. My friend's dad is perhaps one of the most boring people in the world.

Well over a year after the charges were dropped, he is still unemployed and he and his family still suffer regular abuse. He had a nervous breakdown late last year and is still recovering.

Still, I suppose he can take comfort in knowing that it's all for the children.

Blime

[Hognoxious]

[phone rings]
Ford: Hello, fleet sales. How can I help you?
Police: The Met here, we're after some new cars. About 20 mondeos, we were thinking.
Ford: Estate or saloon?
Police: Hmmm, ten of each.
Ford: To you squire, bulk discount and you being on the level and all, I can do that for [tappety tap tap] 400 grand.
Police: But it's for the children!
Ford: Well why didn't you say? Have them, just have them. Do me a favour and take them off my hands. I'll throw in a full tank of fuel and fluffy dice.
Police: You're a gent! Careful how you go now, sir.

Re:Children at UK

[Stuart Gibson]

Because the tabloids use child abuse as a big stick to further their own political aims, whipping the unwashed (and mostly dumb) masses into a frenzy with a big "think of the children" stick.

Of course, this is a really easy one, because anyone who tries to logically argue that there has been no actual increase in child abuse or child kidnap in the last 30 years can be pointed at and branded as "doesn't care about children being abused" or onside with paedophiles. I thoroughly recommend getting hold of the satirical "Brass Eye" special on paedophilia which addresses this exact hysteria and caused outrage in the tabloids for trivialising this "serious issue". Most notable was the Daily Star who had a full page decrying the show and writer Chris Morris while the page opposite had a picture of a then 15 year old Charlotte Church in a bikini with the headline "She's a big girl now".