Child Abuse

The Greens/EFA home affairs expert in the European Parliament, Jan Philipp Albrecht, comments on the censorship plan by EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström to filter websites:

"Commission and council must abandon their plans for an EU internet censorship directive. Filtering certain content on the web is counter-productive for the real take-down of illegal websites and constitutes a threat to liberal democracy. There is a slippery slope from filtering child abuse and other illegal websites to filtering unwanted or politically unfavourable content. I call on the home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström to follow her justice colleague Viviane Reding who has already condemned such attempts as dangerous. 

Sexual abuse of children is one of the most severe crimes, and any wrongdoers must be prosecuted. Instead of pretending to do something by merely hiding child abuse content, law enforcement authorities must get better resources and training for quick and effective international cooperation in taking offline such websites and in catching the criminals. Censoring websites only leads to a shift to less visible underground networks and distracts attention from real law enforcement. Germany has learned its respective lesson after a severe public debate last year. The German government must now stop Malmström's attempt in the council, as we Greens will do in the parliament."