i am strongly committed to the fight against child abuse and specifically child sexual abuse
on twenty-nine march twenty ten the commission adopted a proposal for a directive on child sexual abuse and exploitation and child pornography
this ambitious text covers prosecution of offenders protection of victims and prevention of offences
to take account of risks brought about by technological developments the proposal introduces in particular new criminal offences such as grooming viewing child pornography without downloading files online sexual abuse or advertising the possibility to abuse children for example through internet forums
special investigative tools should be made available such as undercover operations for the police to infiltrate sex offender circles and special investigative units should analyse child pornography material to identify child victims
member states should also put in place national systems to block access to internet pages containing child pornography and undertake actions to remove the content at source
we have looked carefully at the european parliament declaration of twenty-three june twenty ten and i would be interested to know about the honourable member's proposal for an early warning system
i have also taken note of the proposal to extend the scope of the data retention directive in order to retain data about searches made by users for child pornography material and child sex abuse content uploaded on the internet or messages used to groom children online
the data retention directive obliges communication and network service providers to retain traffic and location data and data about subscribers
it does not extend to information about content
content can be obtained and stored in the context of criminal investigations by means of the instrument known as lawful interception
lawful interception is solely governed by national law and differs across member states but in general it can be used only if a law enforcement authority has indications that a specific criminal activity is being committed and requires further investigation
this investigative tool lies outside of the scope of the data retention directive
lawful interception occurs in the context of a criminal investigation which supposes the existence of a suspect
the data retention directive on the contrary obliges operators to retain certain categories of data irrespective of whether the data holders are suspect or not
extending the data retention directive to huge volumes of personal and content-related data such as internet searches for different key words in different languages content uploaded messages exchanged and the elements necessary to identify all users would have to withstand a necessity and proportionality case which has not yet been made
such an extension would apply to content uploaded by everyone on every platform at any given time and on every topic
the proposal put forward by the honourable member raises serious concerns about its compliance with the principle of proportionality even if its purpose is legitimate and deserves our full attention
the commission believes that its recent proposal for a directive would be a more suitable instrument to achieve our common objective of protecting children from child sex offenders
