Facebook stands up to UK.gov's cyberbullying

The Home Office has half-heartedly claimed victory in its effort to strong-arm Facebook into publishing a child protection "panic button" on its users' profiles. In fact, the government has been given an embarrassing lesson in rationality by the leading social network. Following a meeting with Facebook's regulation staff on …

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame

Boo!

I was looking forward to the "Panic Button" being abused to the point that the uk.gov asks for it to be removed.

"My mate looked at me funny"

"He left a dirty plate in the kitchen" etc

I was also hoping for it to be a huge sarcastic button taking up 50% of the screen.

Why the chuff should facebook be ordered to do something like this is beyond me. Surelly uk.gov should offer a proxy server service to those vunerable folks that sticks a panic button on the top of EVERY website they go to (along the lines of clicking a link on google images), but that would involve them doing some work that would go to waste when no one used it rather than ordering a business to do unneccessary work for free.

[Number6]

I'm with Facebook

Having such a button on every single page is pretty typical of this government's attitude. The nanny state knows everything and is always right. Overkill, lack of common sense, etc.

It's a bit like walking around almost anywhere in California where there are wonderful signs on pretty much every public building warning that the building contains substances known to the State of California to cause cancer. After a while you just tune them out as irrelevant, and the same goes for most of the goverment's initiatives. We all laugh or are horrified at some the stupid health and safety regs, which means that the ones we really should take seriously get lost in the noise.

So, to Facebook I say: Just Say NO.

[jackharrer]

True

It's been known as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" for at least several centuries... Shame that UK.gov cannot learn this simple story.

[hplasm]

As the Internet itself cannot harm you,

neither can it protect you.

[Lionel Baden]

AWESOME!!!!

i like that ^^

now to be quoted all over the webz

[seanj]

Indeed.

"More prescient questions over police inaction in response to Peter Chapman's failure to update the sex offenders' register when he moved house were largely obscured by the storm - a politically convenient side-effect for Johnson."

Perhaps demanding a giant "Do your fucking jobs properly" button be installed on the Home Office website may prevent future tragedies such as the young Ashleigh Hall befell?

[John Robson]

(untitled)

Might even drive some traffic to uk.gov - and then their "performance metric" of traffic seen will be excellent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Title...

Have to support Facebook on this one, however, of much deeper concern is their recent change to how privacy settings are implemented - now if CEOP pressured them to make more private settings the4 default with the users action required to decrease them i'd support that wholeheartedly.

Facebook argue on the one hand that users are well able to change their own settings, but on the other they make the default settings wide open (bringing in loads of revenue from Google etc.). Surely if their users are able to change their settings then they can allow them to set them to less secure? The fact is that they know fine well that the largest block of users will leave their settings at default and they therefore make the default that which gives them the mosst revenu rather than making users the most secure.

CEOP and the government have been barking up entirely the wrong tree!

[I didn't do IT.]

All about the money, really

If you think that any "social networking" site would put the privacy (or protection) of their users over the profit potential, you are sadly mistaken. The only time this happens is when there is pressure from some other group - financial, media, or legal, in that order of high to low power.

The very nature of "social networking" means that if it is not open to searching and viewing - it dies.

[Anonymous Coward]

In summary

http://www.thatsfuckingstupid.com/index.php/2010/03/push-my-fucking-buttons/

nice summary of what the conversation probably sounded like

[NB]

good to see

El Reg doing what no other media outlet seems to be willing to do; providing calm, measured and balanced reporting.

[BenDwire]

Calm, measured and balanced reporting?

Well, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later!

[Rob]

Expand the restrictions

If sex offenders aren't permitted to hang around schools can we not ban them from using the internet as well?

The failings that led up to this murder are not with the internet, but as others have mentioned, the system which governs these convisted sex attackers. Yet again another example of how our modern society teaches us to dodge our reponsibility for our failings and attempts to drop it on someone else's lap.

[Anonymous Coward]

might as well send them to Gumtanmo then...

Because you can't ban someone from using the Internet... it's against their 'human rights', no?

[EvilGav 1]

Convicted

If someone is convicted and served a sentence, then the conviction is "spent". The person has supposedly paid their debt to society.

However, thanks to Dail Fail mentality and reporting, the media have decided that certain people should never be allowed to get away from what they did, to move on and, heaven forbid, maybe become a citizen again.

Someone who murders whilst drunk behind the wheel will get scant press interest at the time of the offence and the trial - unless it's a child or OAP that gets run over (or some other person for whom the media can fire the sympathy button at). Once sentence has been served, scant press coverage will continue.

Compare that to a person who has viewed an image of an underage person in a sexually provocative pose on their PC and has subsequently been caught. The media feeding frenzy is disproportionate to the crime.

The latter person has many restrictions placed on them, including barring them from an ever growing number of jobs (all thoe requireing an eCRB) and volunteering oppurtunities, the former has no such restrictions.

[Pax681]

convictions not spent till years after

for example, i had to go to court for traffic stuff. got convicted, but not banned or anything however............... that conviction wasn't spent till 2.5 years after then i could apply for jobs etc without mentioning it.

it's covered in the rehabilitation of offenders act 1974

http://www.lawontheweb.co.uk/rehabact.htm

[Rob]

Query

@AC - Not saying your wrong but I find the human right argument unbalanced. The US Justice system has orders where convicted people can't use computers usually due to hacking type offenses.

@EvilGav - Completely understand what your saying but is it wrong to just consider them as criminals and not as people with mental health issues instead. They can serve their time and pay their dues but when back in society are they themselves not fighting an internal battle not to look at pics and such like again? When in prison is there any type of rehabilition that helps with their 'addiction'?

[Ross 7]

Power grabbing

That's all it is. CEOP want to be seen to be attached to large organisations like Facebook et al so they can grab more power and more budget. End of.

It makes me want to kill ppl. Well, Alan Johnson...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, FFS.....!

"In the days that followed, however, Andrea Hall was drawn into the campaign to spread the panic button, arguing that social networks could "never do too much" to protect users.

It's a statement that nobody could reasonably dispute."

Well I'd bloody well dispute it, what sort of ignorant tosh is this? It's bad enough that some hard-of-thinking woman is spouting nonsense, but when an El Reg writer is happy to agree with it I start to reach for the puke bucket.

When are people going to learn, children are perfectly safe from physical attack on the internet because they are not in the physical presence of the potential abuser. The fact that eventually they become so is no different from having exchanged text messages, made a phone call or even written letters to organise a meeting. Sad though it is, Ashleigh Hall made a bad decision and paid for it (yes I know her killer should not have been able to contact her and meet her), in the same way that a local 16 year old was run over by a car when he road his bike without lights on the wrong side of the road in the dark. He did something stupid even though he knew the risks, so did this girl.

FFS people, just use your brains before opening mouths or deploying the typing fingers!

Yes, I know, I've taken the coward's way out and gone AC. Tough!

[Chris Williams]

Re: Oh, FFS.....!

AC,

I'm agreeing with Andrea Hall's general point, which seems to me almost a truism. The statement under consideration is:

'Social networks can never do too much to protect users.'

Implicit in that is that the things they are hypothetically doing are protecting users. That would seem to most reasonable people a good thing. It follows that safety measures that don't protect aren't necessarily, which is the point.

Do try to calm down and heed your own advice.

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Chris, I'm not AC above but you're still wrong.

'Social networks can never do too much to protect users.' is very different from 'Social networks should always do their best to protect users'. While the latter is hardly disputable, the former opens the door to all kinds of abuse. Yes, social networks definitely _can_ do too much to protect their users. For example they could cross-correlate your activities on their website (keywords, contacts, ...), deploy tracking cookies, they could try and gather informations on your system (browsing history, suspicious programs or files,...) and ban users deemed "risky" (Shown any interest in non-gov-endorsed groups? Stated that The Killers are your fave band? You're "friends" with both fat old men and young ladies? Browsed pr0n recently? Installed emule? Got any pics of your daugther in her bathing suit? No Facebook for you sir.). Optionnally they could pass all this useful info on potentially dangerous people to the police, together with IP. All that could theoretically protect the users (well, the remaining ones). Would that be enough for you to consider "too much"? I have little doubt about that. See, they _can_ do too much to protect their users.

[MadonnaC]

Implict?

So, implicit in that statement is also:

Monitor everything I type so I cannot say something to encourage a possible predator

Block everything I show so I cannot show something to encourage a possible predator

Easiest case - block me from everyone else, so I cannot do something to encourage a possible predator.

I feel this is an argument with the red herring fallacy of appeal to fear.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Chris Williams

To follow that thinking, then social networks shouldn't exist at all becouse by their very nature they add risk into peoples lives (if said person uses them without having common sense which we have tried to drum into people for decades, from news paper confidentials, to the man turning up to check your boiler, to social networking sites).

What help could a button that you press if you think you are being taken advantage of give?

The whole point is that if you feel you are being taken advantage of you'll move on without a second thought, and if you don't think you're being taken advantage of (and you havn't been correctly taught how to deal with risk) then you are likely to arrange to do something unwise (like meet someone you've never met, somewhere you don't know, without telling people what you intend to do.)

A button will do nothing to help, parents taking proper responsibility for teaching their children fundemental basics for safety is the quintessential element for greatly reducing the risks. A button in fact is counter productive as parents, media, teachers, government, quangos, and a long list of others shall wrongly believe that due to this magical silver bullet children are once again safe.

This is a lie. The only thing that will make children safe is education.

In the end it is a persons responsibility too look after themselves, not a web site, not the government, not the police, but the individual. Anything else is to shirk your responsiblity as a human being.

[PirateSlayer]

I can't believe...

...I am almost saying "think of the children".

Children are children. Children are stupid, inexperienced morons with limited common sense.

As far as I am concerned, treating them like adults at a young age is folly. Trusting them after educating them is folly. What is required is for a software engineer (and GASP a human computer interface expert) to come up with a viable and simple way to manage children's access to content on the web.

I don't understand how brats can be left online with no parental supervision when parents are loathe to let children out of their vision when wondering around outside. While the risks are small (both inside the house and out), they are present. Parents need to take responsibility for their brat's safety...not the state. Parents need decent software (not for geeks, but for people who are quite possibly thick as shit and need as simple an interface as possible!).

There are a lot of engineer attitudes on this board waffling about how people should have known better. Judging everybody by your standards won't fix the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

@PirateSlayer

Attempting to fix a social problem with a technical solution is like trying to protect a sand castle against the incoming tide with a plastic spade.

There is a perfect way of managing a childs access to resources, it's called a parental figure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually....

..you callthis woman hard of thinking.

Well lets see, her daughter has been murdered, then she's had months of waiting for arrest and trial, then sat through gruesum details about her daughter rape and murder. Then to top it all the media and goverment want her to spout some words of wisdom. Then to top it all, insensitive c**ts decide to lecture her on what seh did wrong.

Personally I think everyone else involved is hard of thinking, not her.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the original AC....

..who is probably feeling a bit guilty that he missed the fact that the person I moaned about was actually Ashleigh's mother, for some reason the brain just didn't connect the two surnames even though they were the same. I'd have been more gentle if the synapses had fired in the right order.

The thing that really went wrong here was the failure of the police in various places to ensure that the murderer's previous restrictions were correctly applied. No amount of education and adding of buttons to anything is going to make such omissions unimportant. Having the police spend 2/3 of their time on paperwork seems a good way to ensure they're unable to oversee such things properly, adding more bureaucracy to their tasks will just make it worse.

I've personally known 4 people under the age of 20 who have died in the last 3 years, 3 of them were murdered under extremely gruesome circumstances through no fault of their own beyond bad luck and inexperience. I'm certainly not insensitive to the suffering of their parents, families and friends. I have my own children of a similar age, what I tell them is that they need to think carefully and act sensibly and that I won't mind what they do as long as they let me know enough details of what, who and where so that I can decide for myself whether they're opening themselves up to excessive risk.

Ultimately as a parent you can't protect your children against everything, and it's an essential part of growing up to learn to recognise and avoid potential threats to oneself. One of those threats is the expansion of state surveillance and control without cease, but of course there are reasons for some surveillance being necessary on people who have already demonstrated their penchant for causing trouble.

Have I got an answer that squares the circle and causes birds to sing and rabbits to smile? Nope, I haven't, but please no more comments about it being impossible to do too much about a problem with some internet-delivered service.

[Christoph]

Empire building

"His organisation wants to be the "central portal for helping keep children safe online". "

So a tragic death is simply something to exploit for a bureaucrat to build his empire bigger?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Bigger Empire

Reverend Gamble (for it is he) has much work still to do. In this climate of paedohysteria his organization has prospered (and continues to do so). CEOP can be found lurking (actively) behind most of the 'bad law' around sexual matters to have emerged from NuLabour's Central Politburo in the past thirteen years or so - everything from somehow redefining a 'child' as aged 17 when 'indecently' pictured -despite the UK's age of consent being 16 for boys and girls - to being one of the most vociferous (and unapologetically punitive) of those lobbying for the new laws against 'cartoon porn' - a law they recently got on to the statutes here in the UK.

Nulabour (and successive craven Home Secretarys) have been more than generous with taxpayers money towards Mr Gamble and his congregation, falling over themselves to the tune of £5million (and rising) a year. Private 'stakeholders' like Microsoft, Visa and many other well-known brands also line CEOP's coffers handsomely on an annual basis. Added to this are the profits CEOP makes from it's lucrative sideline hosting lectures, talks and presentations to 'stakeholders' in the child protection industry and public sector bodies like education (events at which it can also flog its literature at a satisfyingly premium price).

His Holiness has done well out of the paedoscare - and looks set to do even better as yet another bunch of spineless politicians ready themselves to occupy government here in the UK. It must be very satisfying being at the head of a quango nobody dare take issue with, nobody dare question, nobody demand explanations or proof from. Mr Gambles goes on TV or radio, spouts off his well-rehearsed hyperbole and - amazingly - nobody ever dares to take his increasingly surreal claims to task.

I'll bet he just can't believe his luck - at this rate, luck that shows no sign whatsoever of running out any time soon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Update for today

" the Boy Who Cried Wolf" is to be republished in a new updated 4 - volume set...

Vol 1. The Minister Who Cried Terrorist

Vol 2. The Minister Who Cried Paedophile

Vol 3. The Minister Who Cried Climate Change

Vol 4. TBA

[Drunken]

Why Facebook?

I find it beyond logic, why the mobile phone operators have not yet implemented a big red panic button. Real life is a dangerous place and we can never do too much to protect our children.

;)

[Ally J]

Yay for knee-jerk legislation

You know it's coming - any social networking site will be obliged by law to have panic buttons, and their very presence will be 'proof' that the internet is a dangerous place.

Cue 'good' censorship of the web (like Australia has) rather than 'bad' censorship (like China has) because it's in our own best interests.

I'm afraid it's very likely to happen as none of the parties likely to be anywhere near power come May have the requisite balls to say 'wait a minute'....

[Seanmon]

Good.

Yep, firmly behind facebook here. In spite of many of my so called adult friends playing at running cafes or farms or wtf-ever, Facebook is stil the most grown-up of all the social networking dross. It came out of a university, it is aimed at those of us who went to university or are otherwise well-traveled and educated and are more likely to have friends who ended up in distant places. This is how I use it and it works well.

It is not intended for teenages to arrange bing-drinking sessions or upload happy-slapping videos. If you are using an adult's network, you must behave like an adult, which means excercising proper care and responisibility for your own safety.

"Freedom does not just consist of the nice bits." - Lord Vetinari.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bing-drinking

There's a meme in here somewhere...

[Marty]

Net bullying.

you may have read in the press in the last few days the case of Joshua Bacon, The 17year old who killed his daughter, Caitlyn Smith aged 7 weeks old. He violently shook her to death and pushed her head into the mattress of the bed in hospital in a so called “momentary of loss of temper”.

I am a close family friend of Caitlyn Smiths mother, I have known Caitlyns grandfather since we were 4 or 5 years old.

Since Joshua Bacon was found guilty and now held on remand until sentencing next month his family and friends have been abusing Danielle Smith via facebook ever since. They have made several statements to the affect that they were going to cause her serious harm. ove even sayis they were going to kill her.

Using the facilities in place on facebook, these posts were reported to and blocked by facebook very promptly. I don't believe their is any need for any further panic buttons.

The youth who made the threat lives in Merseyside so the matter was referred to Merseyside police and they were not interested in pursuing the matter at all. Lancashire police needed to take her laptop off her as evidence to be able to pursue the matter, why? i don't know, as the abuse was visible from any computer. but as she was advised that very little can be done their is very little point.

What the government need to do if anything is make the police take accusations more serious.

there are still a few threats in place for example

"Joel Groves:- guna proper seriouse hurt danielle smith the little dirty slut......always ere josh ur cuz" (18:09 wed)

can be viewed here via http://tinyurl.com/ybdp9e2

What you need to remember is that Danielle is a 17 year old girl whos child was taken from her at 7 weeks old via the hands of Joshua Bacon and still gets abuse. Facebook do what they can, but the police are so poor at dealing with these so called "lesser crimes" its is not a surprise how the yoof of today are as feral as they are.

you can see a proper report of the case at

http://tinyurl.com/ya5o7q2

or the daily fail version at

http://tinyurl.com/y8la32u

[Seanmon]

Bravo

Well said Sir, and condolences for the family's loss.

[ElFatbob]

I am firmly of the opinion that

The police are now part of the problem, not the solution. Too busy chasing government PC targets to actually do any real policing.

Won't tackle anti social behaviour. Want to challenge ASBO-Joe as he traches your car? Fine, but you'll be the one getting arrested. Defending yourself in your own home? Fine, but you'll get arrested.

Policing by consent? What a joke.

Government needs to give the powers back to the police in terms of tackling crime at the local level, stop with the bullshit targets (let the locals hold them accountable). Police need to step up to the plate and actually Police.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can never do too much to protect children?

Except lock them in a cellar for 18 years?

The most common threats to children come from someone they already know.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe

That was popular in Austria a while back.... but doesnt quite solve *all* the problems

[Dave Bell]

It just doesn't make sense

A "Panic Button"?

The inference is that the evil people using Facebook can somehow sneak up on you at your computerm and the only chance of escape is a frantic mouse-click, before you are dragged head-first through the monitor as if it were a "Doctor Who" episode.

I know I'm older than some of these nutjobs. Clearly I have some terrible mental flaw which excludes me from the political arena. Perhaps, rather than a single-minded pursuit of political power, to the exclusion of all knowledge of reality, I had one of these things called a "Real Life".

More likely, I just run a good simulation on this machine.

[Stu]

This type of tragic killing will...

...undoubtedly happen again for the simple fact that teens typically dont follow the news, or indeed any kind of current affairs story. They simply aren't in that mindset to learn about things like this, or if they do hear about it from their mates or whoever, it is quickly ignored/forgotten.

Most of them in the UK are too busy listening to the latest pop band, watching E4 crap or spouting off to their mates about utter triviality. Who fancies who, whens the next dance TV programme coming on, etc ad nauseum.

So in this regard I see it as a good thing having something put up on Facebook simply to reach teens / pre-teens, but not this stupid panic button idea.

Perhaps, I don't know, a small banner ad that flashes up once in a while instead of penile lengthening ads or whatever. Facebook needn't spend an eternity knocking up some Javascript button. I certainly think that such a notice is worth putting right in their faces as opposed to hidden in sub-pages nobody would ever visit, but it needn't be a clickable button.

> Some might argue such a highly-visible feature could send the wrong message to parents - that the web is a safe, monitored enviroment for children.

I think you've got to be an idiot to think that putting up something like this will make parents MORE apathetic to the risks, some are pretty clueless to begin with otherwise Ashley would never have been murdered. Its the responsibility of the parents to get across that dangerous perverts operate on the Internet, and because they aren't doing it, the next best thing must surely be something presented on their screens!

Some people in the comments have mentioned that this can happen equally on mobile networks or via simple email, or by snailmail letter as if any attack on the Internet was an attack on their person. I ask them how? The point of facebook is to join people together, it does so by presenting people, including pedos, with clear images of their 'targets' and means to contact them. Mobile phones dont, unless pedos go out and guess childrens phone numbers? I don't understand what you mean.

[MadonnaC]

banner ad

or, perhaps ceop, instead of posturing for effect, could actually use some of the govmt money for a reasonable use, and pay facebook for banner ads targeted at UK users under 18. (you know facebook would be able to make this distinction)

[JP19]

A pig and his trough

Of course Gamble wants millions of free advertising hits on his panic button to help convince the public that funding the enormous trough for his snout is a good idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

In case none here know...

...the Law in the UK classes 16 and 17 year olds as children unless married. I remember being really pissed off about this when I was commuting to London daily as a 17 year old, and paying tax, and doing other things legally (including ones the Govt. taxed).

[Colin Guthrie]

Why are there no Facebook groups *against* the button?

There are several pro-button groups but no anti-button, pro-education groups?

It'll take a well worded intro and group description to promote it, but perhaps someone from El Reg should step up to the plate and write such an opening gambit?

[Anonymous Coward]

group

Say no to the button

[PirateSlayer]

:D

Says A/C to the button! I think we may have found your problem and reason for a lack of group!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why are there no Facebook groups *against* the button?

Because people smart enough to know that the button is ineffectual bullshit (hint: everyone with an IQ over 75) are also smart enough to know that Facebook groups are ineffectual bullshit. QED.

[EddieD]

A nice end to the week...

The best summation of the hysterical situation after the tragedy, and how it's being cynically manipulated by both the government and the media, that I've read.

Have a nice weekend

[mrmark1977]

Typical Labour

This is just typical labour goons, reacting to media ideas, instead of using logic.

It's just the same as when the media starts saying 'we need airport scanners', (even though they are useless if a terrorist shoves a bomb up his butt), and then Gordon comes on tv grinning, saying we need these scanners.

Rationality is what labour need, and is what they're seriously short of. Just look at when Alan Johnson sacked Prof. Nutt, claiming he was trying to change policy, when all he was doing, was stating facts that made Labour's opinions on drugs look stupid.

So again, we have another case of government doing something without thinking about it, not using reason. They know there's a problem that kids can be tricked on social network sites...and they've heard about this new 'panic button' - I know - we'll force facebook to have a panic button, problem solved!

No Gordon, not problem solved. If a kid is suspecting someone is not who they say, they don't need a red button to press and run off. They can report the user as per normal.

This service will just be abused if facebook are forced to do it, because people will just log in under a fake profile and press the panic button on people whom aren't a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

not forgetting

"This service will just be abused if facebook are forced to do it, because people will just log in under a fake profile and press the panic button on people whom aren't a problem."

not forgetting to log in via a proxy server first... you know how the gubbermint like to think an ip address is a fingerprint

[The Other Steve]

Darwin

Someone who is stupid enough to go and physically hook up with someone they met over the internet, and in doing so place themselves in a situation where that person can snatch them and do them harm would have found a way to remove themselves from the gene pool sooner or later.

Sad, but true.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Darwin

Such as Internet dating sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Button

I believe that the profile page of every UK member of Facebook should have a prominent Home Office button. Hovering over the button would reveal a "what's this?" link where its purpose is explained:

The Home Office Button located on your Profile Page <insert side-floating screenshot with highlights> is a new feature of Facebook for UK members. It is there for your safety. If you suspect that someone on Facebook is a politician or senior civil servant please click the Home Office Button immediately. The Home Office is an anti-democratic organisation trying to destroy your way of life. Please be vigilant, and remember even friends and family may be Home Office members or sympathisers, or may associate with Home Office members or sympathisers. (That includes you if you know them and don't raise the alert.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Better solution

Everyone friends Alan Johnson (or whichever jerk is left in charge of the Home Office next). Then the Home Secretary can look after them when they go online.

If anyone gets hurt in any way, it will be Alan's fault and no one will want to play Farmville with him ever again.

More seriously - what is it with this country and self-appointed net guardians who seem to exist completely outside of the legal framework? We've already got the Internet Watch Foundation which appear to have unlimited powers to come over all Mary Whitehouse without the inconvenience of being restrained by any laws, now there's CEOP (which I'd never heard of) trying to nanny us back to the stone age.

[Anonymous Coward]

What else can you expect?

The child 'protection' racket is really to blame here. It puts out the message that *every* stranger, *every* adult, or at least every *man* is a potential danger. That *something* will happen if an adult even looks at a child.

Children can easily see, though, that most adults are not dangerous. That man in the shop just takes the money and turns to the next customer. That man in the restaurant just wants to take their order. That man over there is just walking down the street. And so it goes. The danger message has, in their eyes, been wrong every other time, so why shouldn't they trust that stranger? Nothing has ever happened in the past.

If people wanted to really protect children, they would have them get out and meet adults. Have them put in all sorts of situations with adults. That way children would get to know what is and isn't normal when it comes to adults. As it is now, adults, outside of family members and frightened teachers, might as well be creatures from another planet.

But that would be too scary for the nervous ninny 'it could be a dangerous in theory' types. Yes, anything could be dangerous in theory, but that doesn't mean it is. They, however, have elevated a theory to an actuality. If it could happen, it will happen. The fact that this means that someone will give them money and power is, of course, incidental...

[Llanfair]

What about the parents?

Something that is often overlooked is what makes a teenager. Teenagers are people who just discovered puberty and feel all funny about it. They want to see what this new experience is. So, what way than meeting up with the opposite sex? Also at this stage, their brain says "Don't let parents know about it." They go off and then get into trouble. The parents have absolutely no idea on what's going on.

What I would say is, from about 11 years old, teach then how to be safe on the Internet. Maybe let them find out that the people they "know online" is not who the person really is. CBBC had a decent attempt at getting children to understand the dangers of the Internet with their Newsround special "Caught in the Web".

The moral of the story is, teach them before they are teenagers about the dangers and what to do. Maybe the only way is to have a friend who you trust to act as a teenage of the opposite sex and get them to chat with the child in question. They will then find out they cannot trust anyone on the Internet and it's better to join the local sports club instead. :)

[Poor Coco]

Um, no.

"Maybe the only way is to have a friend who you trust to act as a teenage of the opposite sex and get them to chat with the child in question. They will then find out they cannot trust anyone on the Internet and it's better to join the local sports club instead. :)"

...or, they could have your friend busted for being a paedo.

[Daniel B.]

Panic button?

Really? This sounds as retarded as the "emergency email system" that the Virginia Tech staff toted as a "state-of-the-art" emergency announcement system that saves lives. I wouldn't trust a "webcast" or an e-mail to send life-threatening alerts like "SHOOTER ALERT!"; I wouldn't even think of a crappy 'panic button' to save me from fugly predator pedophiles. The real danger is in frickin' REAL LIFE, which is why you should meet people from the 'net in public places. Ashleigh Hall should've met this "kid" in a public place, and verify he was really the guy she thought he was before accepting to "go home with him".

It seems like Stupidity was what killed this teen. Big Red buttons are useless unless they're actually there when you're being assaulted.

[John Smith 19]

Handy the way her death gets the police off the hook?

And even handier how it has helped Gamble further his case.

We see a personal tragedy and a policing failure. He sees an *opportunity* to grow his business.

I've had managers spend a hell of a lot of time on Facebook, but just this once I agree with them. It's total BS.

[Big-nosed Pengie]

WTF is a CEOP?

That is all.

[Stuart Halliday]

Wake up and smell Reality.

It's a sad fact but over and over again we see in history that we don't prepare ourselves for the worse side of reality making an appearance.

It took the sinking of the Titanic with the lose of all those people to get the Law changed so that ships would thereafter have to carry enough lifeboats for all the passengers.

It took the sinking of a Ferry and more loss of life to get £50 of equipment to be fitted to all ferries to tell the Captain that the Bow doors were in fact closed.

Countless times when aircraft crash and kill people do we then and only then, fit safety equipment or improve it.

It took the death of this young girl to alert us to the ever present vulnerability that young stupid kids can get themselves in to but think can never happen to them.

You can't stop bad things happening, but you can reduce the risk.

Sadly it seems to take our culture several serious wake up calls to do something about any problem we've know about for decades.

Parents of the present generation need to wake up and learn about the Internet and how it has good points and bad points. I think free classes should be given to parents to inform them.

The next generation of parents won't have this ignorance problem.

[Ben Tasker]

A title is required

The next generation of parents won't have this ignorance problem

I hope you're right, but I'm really not that optimistic!

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously?

Sorry you sound like a Sun reader, the modern media is brilliant at presenting tiny tiny minority problems as all encompassing evil that lurks around every corner... The people who call for this kind of thing are the people who buy into the media and their way of spinning a scary story.

Lets use an example, in 2008, there were around 800 murders in England and Wales. Yup 800 people is a lot and very sad... but wait...

Our population is around 60 million people, thats 0.0013333333%, tiny miniscule. Sad true, the cases like this poor girl I wager are even lower than that, far far lower... Yet we seem to want to change the world because of it.

The media and the government need to stop spinning scare tactics to progress themselves, cos sadly too many people buy it. All it does is give more beaurocrats work, and stop people trusting one another. We are responsibie for educating our children, for keeping them safe, there is enough legal backing and systems in place already. Just use some common sense.

1000 people a year die of diabetes, yet 1 flesh eating bug effects 6 people becomes a "world ending event". Anyone remember that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Panic buttons

A fucking huge one on the Home Office site would be a good start. It should be used to alert people every time whichever reactionary tit is Home Secretary this week or one of the myriad Home Office titettes like Meg Hillier says something stupid.

[JohnG]

Ashleigh Hall case proves the red button is useless

As I understand it, Ashleigh Hall and Peter Chapman chatted using MSN. MSN has the red button, so this case proves just how utterly useless the red button really is. It is just self promotion for a useless organisation to acquire more budget.

Note: CEOP is a good candidate to be disbanded following the election as part of measures to get the public spending deficit down.

[Anonymous Coward]

What we more urgently need ......

is a panic button that we can all press to Zap 200000 Volts into Gormless Gordon's big fat arse so he might actually wake up and realise the ship (uk) is sinking !.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake the -F- up, people!

God-Dammit... I'm beginning to think that EVERYONE really needs to be forced to read Orwell's "1984"... again... and, again... and, again. Especially the part where everyone in the totalitarian police-state of "Oceana" is required, by law, to have a two-way information-device in their home... that simply can not be turned-off... so that, everything, that anyone says or does, may be monitored, at absolutely any time... by the "thought-police" ... imposing a constant atmosphere of fear and doubt, and thereby obedience to conformity, in every citizen.

Does any of this sound familiar..?

[Badbob]

In the immortal words of Helen Lovejoy....

Won't somebody please, think of the children!

Yep, getting my coat as we speak....

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the button!

I demand the button on this site - there's far too many dodgy people around here and I'd much rather they were dealt with by the police rather than some namby pamby Reg dude.

A few of you far too shifty and the easier it is for me to make frivolous allegations the better for all the children. Click and burn, click and burn, oh the hours of fan I could have.

[Andy Enderby 1]

rules....

WTF are those parents allowing under 13's doing allowing their brood access to Facebook ? In any event. FB already has rules in place banning such users.

Then again they also have rules regarding convicted sex offenders using FB....

So with both potential victims and perps both ignoring the rules perhaps the result is predictable.

[A B 3]

Stranger Danger

I put the biggest blame on the schools. They obviously earn points by teaching kids to use the internet from an early age, but clearly net safety is of no importance.

You can't blame the internet for a lack of wisdom, it's usually a good idea to take a friend when you are meeting someone you don't know.

[tallywhacker]

@Marty

I work for a police high tech crime unit, and I'd like to offer a few words. We're inundated with complaints about Facebook harassment and it's only very recently that Facebook even pretended to give a shit. Up until a few months ago people would complain using FB's own reporting system and nothing would happen. No response, no acknowledgement and certainly no resolution. They've got better recently, but we still know of offensive groups (as in they're committing a criminal offence, and they're also plain offensive) that were complained about months ago and are still up.

It wasn't just their public that they were contemptuous of either though - any law enforcement request from outside the US got pretty much ignored unless it was threat-to-life and you were very lucky. Even now, a lot of the time when people contact us to get stuff taken down we advise them to go through Facebook's own reporting procedure. This isn't because we're lazy, it's because the channels we have to go through are so torturous that it's simply unworkable to do it for every item that someone has good reason to want taking down.

If your friend was getting no joy reporting the offences against her then she might want to phone the force's High Tech unit directly through the switchboard. She'll need to have kept copies of the postings along with the dates etc (there'd be no point in the police approaching FB for them because they'd need to subpoena through the US courts. That'd be a major international operation. Other US-based companies in Facebook's league are much more helpful with this sort of thing, Facebook just seem to enjoy being pricks).

About the CEOP button, I dunno. Grooming does happen over Facebook - I've seen it. As other people have pointed out here though, the Peter Chapman affair seems to have been a shameful failure to manage a dangerous sex offender, and no number of buttons would have helped. As I've pointed out above though, Facebook don't seem overly-eager to face up to their responsibilities. The button isn't going to do any harm (and would barely be seen amongst all the crap that most teenagers have on their walls), and if it's used by even one teen who's getting groomed then it'll be worth it.

Having said this, the whole Alan Johnson visit was a distasteful, cynical ploy to grab some headlines by a government that needs to crawl into its grave and stop twitching.

[Marty]

@ tallywhacker

Thank you for your comments and helpful advice and i will advise them to contact the high tech unit direct.

My friend does have copies of all the messages and comments. They were printed out as they were recived in his daughters inbox and as they appeared online.

What the main issue they had was that the police wo came out to talk to them regarding the abuse wanted to take her laptop away as evidence. This also happend last year when she reported abuseive messages on msn and facebook. It took 3 months before she got her computer back and NFA was taken. Its not a pritty sight telling a 17 year old girl to give up her computer for another 3 months and proberbly nothing will hapen again.

The threats that were made were of a very serious nature and along with the background of the trial that had just ended shold have been taken a lot more serious from the start. A bit of name calling is one thing but this was way beyond this.

[E-Victims.org]

reduce visability

We are seeing more predators approaching people on all the Social Networks. The is issue is they are visible because of their user settings. We need higher default privacy settings.

Many of these predators become friends of kids online - so the kids aren't panicked. Miss Hall was never panicked she thought she was talking to and meeting her new boyfriend. The CEOP button would not have changed the outcome of this case.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good! Enough of this "won't someone think of the children" hysteria

About bloody time the UK, its Govt & everyone there stopped seeing a paedo on every street corner. As my schoolteacher sister will confirm (or at least if it wouldn't cost her her career), most abuse is carried out by those close to the child anyhow.

Kids in her class regularly freak out at the propect at having to spend a weekend at daddy's or mummy & stepdaddy's for the fear of what they'll have to endure.

Perhaps UK Govt would be better focusing their attentions there, as it seems the police/schools/social services pretty much have their hands tied when trying to intervene.

[Winkypop]

The Internet is like real life...

It can be great

It can be bad

You can learn interesting things

You can learn things you'd rather not know

Don't like it?

Tough.

Like real life.

You can opt out of using the Internet

[John 61]

Continuing the nonsense...

What did they expect? I've made this point on this site and others too, so I'll keep it short, but it is pertinent to the thread. After years of plugging the internet (and Mr Brown has another re-announced 50p BB campaign starting today to get *everyone* online), it's all gone horribly wrong. I agree with a lot of the other posters on here and what they say. Next up I suppose will be www.yourisp.com/index-big-panic-button.html legisliation. Out of curiosity though, maybe there is a story here that El Reg could pursue. The effectiveness of the CEOP button and its use, such as people "protected" from harm or how many false alarms. The BBC is running a get online campaign too, but these "taster courses" are too simplistic. It takes more than this to educate users - as they don't cover virus scanning/removal, updating drivers, software patches, registry editing to fix broken entries, etc etc. When I did voluntary work showing senior citizens how to use a computer it only went as far as using the mouse, keyboard and the internet. A lot wanted tech support, which was something I was capable of, but unable to demonstrate. New users, more problems.

[Craig 12]

Panic!

If you're panicked enough to press a panic button, you wouldn't meet a stranger offline.

The murdered girl wouldn't have pressed the button, even if it was there.