Facebook under fire for response on child porn rings

Suzanne Choney NBC News

March 24, 2011 at 3:57 PM ET

Reuters

Grant Edwards of the Australian Federal Police (R), Peter Davis (C) of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, United Kingdom and Director of Europol Rob Wainwright outline details of arrests during "Operation Rescue" linked to a global child abuse network during a news conference in The Hague March 16, 2011. REUTERS/Jerry Lampen (NETHERLANDS - Tags: POLITICS CRIME LAW)

There is frustration in Australia over Facebook and law enforcement's ability to get the social networking site's help cracking child pornography rings that use the site.

Grant Edwards, the Australian Federal Police's high-tech collection and capability manager, says the problem is exacerbated by a mutual legal assistance treaty with the United States that is outdated, and doesn't allow for fast responses to online crime.

"The treaty is required because Facebook is headquartered in the United States, and is meant to speed the actioning of the police's right to obtain information about online crime using a warrant," Australia's ZDNet reported.

"Edwards said the AFP is still required to jump through archaic legal hoops in order to use US law enforcement as a conduit to force Facebook to respond."

According to Edwards, Facebook is exacerbating the problem by removing profiles of pedophiles too quickly, before police have obtained permission to gather evidence. Further, he complains that Facebook isn't willing to change this practice:

"It is ignorance on Facebook's behalf," Edwards said. "Facebook is brand-protecting."
"We don't hold back with letting them know our disappointment in [their lack of] evidentiary data retention."
He said the police had complained to the social-networking site, and that it will now move to fix data-retention policies for profiles suspected to be used by paedophiles.

But Facebook disagrees that it has been hampering any efforts.

"Contrary to some reports, Facebook has a strong relationship with the AFP," Andrew Noyes, Facebook's manager for public policy communications, told msnbc.com in an email.

"We are in regular, sometimes even daily contact, and have always provided our full, round-the-clock assistance both in cases of emergency, as well as for assistance in investigations and prosecutions. The safety and security of our users is paramount. We bar all sex offenders from using the service and are fundamentally opposed to leaving a predator on the site so that they can be monitored by police. Promptly removing a potentially dangerous individual from our site is simply the right thing to do to protect our users."

Facebook also believes that "a safer Internet requires improvement in laws and regulations, and for governments to give consideration to new and more effective ways to share information about registered sex offenders with social networks," he said. "This model has been widely deployed by the Attorney Generals of several states in the U.S. and led to the removal of dangerous individuals from such services."

Children and cybersafety are big topics this week in Australia, with Parliament committee hearings on the issue, and Facebook is a big target.

Earlier this week, Member of Parliament Alex Hawke asked if Facebook was doing anything to deal with the large numbers of Australian users under the age of 13, who are supposed to be forbidden from using the site.

"I'd suggest to you there's quite a few (children under 13) on Facebook, from my own experience, plus also from the inquiries (undertaken by) this committee," he said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Mozelle Thompson, Facebook's adviser to the company on privacy, testified before the committee, and said that every day the site removes 20,000 people a day who are underage.The system, he said, "is not perfect," and that there are "people who lie" about their age to get on Facebook.

Relations between Australia and Facebook haven't always been so frosty. Last summer, police credited Facebook for its help in cracking an alleged pedophile porn ring on the site.

"Facebook was integral in helping international law enforcement agencies dismantle an alleged child pornography syndicate, resulting in 11 arrests in Australia, Britain and Canada," according to one report.

"In a joint statement with the AFP, Facebook's chief security officer Joe Sullivan said the popular networking site immediately took action once alerted to the offensive activity and was working with police."