Illegal and Offensive Material - Computer Crime - Crime Prevention - Surrey Police

What do we mean by illegal images on the web?

This means images and in some cases text, which you see or may be inadvertently exposed to on a website, which contains any of the following:

• Child abuse images (also known as ‘child pornography’).
• Criminally obscene content which means images featuring acts of extreme and violent sexual activity.
• Criminally racist content which may provoke racial hatred by reference to skin colour, race, nationality, or ethnic origin.

External links you might find useful include those listed below (all open in a separate window):

• The Internet Watch Foundation (www.iwf.org.uk)
• Internet Hotline Providers in Europe (INHOPE). This is an organisation, which is supported by the European Union. It co-ordinates the work of Internet Service Providers across Europe against Child Pornography and similar threats (www.inhope.org)
• Safer Internet Action Plan. This is a European Commission site that gives details of all the EU's various plans to make the Internet a safer place to be. This site also contains information on world-related issues.

Uncovering Illegal or Offensive Material

Police Officers within Surrey and indeed within the UK can only take direct action where the material happens to fall within the jurisdiction of Surrey Police.

In Surrey Police's case, this is within the Surrey County Boundaries. It often happens that people report matters to us that turn out to have the offenders and offence committed in another country. However, you should be mindful if:

• the persons who created this material are in the UK;
• the material is downloaded onto computers in the UK;
• it is possible that it could be evidence of criminal offences committed in the UK;
• it is possible that it could be evidence of crimes committed by a UK citizen travelling abroad.

Then it could be a matter for a Police Force within the UK, although not necessarily the Surrey Police.

If you want to report offensive material then you should follow the procedure we have set out for you.

The law in the UK states that individuals and enterprises are responsible for their own conscious acts and omissions and this also applies ONLINE. The primary responsibility for any illegal material on the World Wide Web lies with the individual or entity posting it.

However, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which has been notified of illegal material and fails to take reasonable steps to remove the material from a given site can also, under UK law, be liable to prosecution as an accessory to a crime.

In 1996, all the major Internet firms came together with Police in the UK to establish and set-up the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

The idea of the foundation was to act and focus on removing illegal material from the Internet. It provides a hotline to enable all Internet users to report any instances where they feel material freely available may be illegal.

It is the job of IWF to assess the material and then notify the service provider and the police.

Data Recovery Unit

The last ten years have seen a tidal wave of technological advance, which in turn has had an unprecedented affect on our daily lives. Personal computers are commonplace. We have access to an almost unlimited supply of information, just as we are able to supply information for others to view. Mobile phones make communication with the rest of the world easier than ever.

Sadly - because of its inevitability - a new form of exploitation has come with this hi-tech surge. Modern technology has changed the way society and people function on an every day basis, and that includes the criminal fraternity.

The use of a computer to assist in committing an offence does not change the essence of criminal activity. Causing damage to or via a computer (such as hacking or deliberately spreading a virus), storing illegal information (such as child pornography), sending threatening or malicious messages, theft of data or components, infringing copyrights (piracy). All of these are simply other forms of crime.

Because of the nature of these machines and devices, however, computers and related data storage media can be used to provide valuable evidence. The Data Recovery Unit is able to analyze and extract critical evidence, whether it has been hidden, forgotten about or 'destroyed'.

Using various techniques we can, for example, restore deleted or password-protected files, and can frequently recreate an event or chain of events. Even with just a few bits of data, we are able to create a whole picture.

In the information age, very little remains a secret. Criminals know this to use it to their advantage. We, on the other hand, also know it and use it against the criminals.