Tech firms must stop tolerating child abuse images online, says NCA chief

Technology firms should be more proactive in preventing images depicting child abuse from being made available online, the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) lead for tackling child sexual abuse has said.

Rob Jones said the acceptance that child abuse happens online and that images showing abuse are available on the internet needed to be challenged.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he said: “At the moment there’s a risk that the proliferation of this material will be normalised within society, that the internet is seen as so difficult to police that we will just accept that this stuff happens.

“It’s the moment to press the re-set button, stop tolerating that this stuff happens online and go on to the front foot so this material becomes the exception and not the rule.

“We want to raise the bar to make sure it’s only the sophisticated, resourceful and determined that can obtain images on the open web, not anyone that can use a proprietary search engine.”

He added that this would permit the NCA to focus its attention on paedophiles which pose a higher level of risk.

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