Facebook Fails to Act on Child Pornography

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have claimed that Facebook knew about pages on the site containing illegal child pornography but failed to report them to authorities (The Age). This follows from a successful AFP operation which resulted in 11 offenders being arrested in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada - 3 people were arrested in Australia (AFP Media Release) . Offenders had allegedly created fake accounts to post and view sexually graphic images of children.  One of those arrested in Australia told police that he had sent at least 10 messages to Facebook. Facebook had responded by removing the content and deactivating accounts but had failed to pass the information on to authorities (The Australian). Despite its alleged failure to cooperate with authorities over illegal child pornography, Facebook are still not indicating whether they will station a liaison officer in Australia (as reported in The Age). A later report on ABC Radio PM indicated that the AFP and Facebook were agreeing to cooperate but that the details of this arrangement were still not clear.

As a result of these police operations, two men arrested in Victoria include a 33-year-old due to appear in Melbourne Magistrates Court on October 6 and a 18-year-old due to appear in Geelong Magistrates Court on September 24. An Illawarra man is due to appear in Wollongong Local Court on October 14 (Bigpond News).

Facebook have consistently adhered to their policy of accepting no responsiblity for the actions of its users – even when this includes illegal behaviour – beyond providing mechanisms for other users to report misuse. At least now it seems that Facebook may have been embarrassed into taking a more responsible stance.

Articles on Facebook at Sapidblog can be found by following this link:

http://sapidblog.wordpress.com/category/social-networking/facebook/

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