GSMA forms alliance against child abuse content on mobile

By Mickey Alam Khan

February 12, 2008

The goal is to make mobile a safer environment for all users

The GSM Association, a leading international trade lobby for wireless carriers, partnered with key members to launch the Mobile Alliance Against Child Abuse Content.

The global alliance seeks to stop individuals or organizations from consuming or profiting from child sexual abuse content over the mobile channel. The alliance went public yesterday at the GSMA Mobile World Congress organized in Barcelona, Spain by the GSMA.

“As our industry rolls out mobile broadband networks that provide quick and easy access to multimedia Web sites, we must put safeguards in place to obstruct criminals looking to use mobile services as a means of accessing or hosting pictures and videos of children being sexually abused,” said Craig Ehrlich, chairman of the GSMA, in a statement.

In addition to the GSMA, the alliance includes Hutchison 3G Europe, mobilkom Austria, Orange FT Group, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile Group, Vodafone Group, dotMobi, Telefonica/02 and Telecom Italia.

These wireless carriers and organizations will create barriers to prevent the misuse of mobile networks and services for hosting, accessing or profiting from child sexual abuse content.

In particular, the alliance will use technical mechanisms to block access to Web sites on mobile phones that have been identified by an appropriate agency as hosting child sexual abuse content.

Alliance members will also use Notice and Take Down processes to help with the removal of child sexual abuse content posted on their own services. They will support and promote hotlines or other mechanisms for customers to report such offensive mobile or Internet content, too.

The goal is to make mobile a safer environment for all users.

“We call on governments across the world to support this initiative by providing the necessary legal clarity to ensure that mobile operators can act effectively against child sexual abuse content and to step up international enforcement against known sources,” Mr. Ehrlich said in the statement.