DoJ and DHS Announce Initiative to Combat Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
The Justice Department and Homeland Security, along with government counterparts from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, announced the publication of Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. Developed in consultation with several leading technology companies, the 11 voluntary principles outline measures that companies in the technology industry can choose to implement to protect the children who use their platforms from sexual abuse online and to make their platforms more difficult for child sex offenders to exploit.
At the Five Country Ministerial Digital Industry Roundtable on July 30, 2019 in London, the Five Country Ministers and senior representatives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Roblox, Snap and Twitter agreed “tackling [the online child sexual abuse] epidemic requires an immediate upscaling of the global response to ensure that all children across the globe are protected…and that there is no safe space online for offenders to operate.” As a result, the Five Countries developed the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in consultation with the six companies and a broad range of experts from industry, civil society and academia.