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Former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has voiced her support for campaigners urging the government to adopt new technology designed to block the live-streaming of child sexual abuse. Highlighting the severity of the issue, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) has identified the UK as the third largest market worldwide for live-streamed child abuse, where children are exploited in real-time on camera.
At a policy report launch in Parliament, Phillips emphasized the potential of device-level blocking technology to stop such abuse from being recorded and viewed on smartphones, tablets, and laptops. This approach is favored by anti-abuse advocates because it preserves privacy and encryption by operating directly on users’ devices, although civil liberties group Big Brother Watch has expressed reservations. While the government has already mandated tech companies like Apple and Google to prevent under-18s from taking or sharing nude images on their devices, research from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) suggests that 75% of child sexual abuse (CSA) material is not self-generated but mostly recorded on adult devices.
Additional research from the child safety organization Childlight indicates that 1.8 million men in the UK admitted to some form of online sexual offences against children. Phillips, who stepped down as safeguarding minister citing delays in addressing CSA, is calling for urgent action to target the root causes and reduce British offenders. She said, “This should be a source of national shame, and we must stop it.” She also expressed the desire to collaborate with ministers to expand the use of on-device blocking for CSA material on all devices sold in the UK, thereby enhancing safety both domestically and internationally.
The proposed software uses artificial intelligence to recognize known child abuse images stored within a phone’s operating system, blocking access to such content the moment it is created or viewed, regardless of the application used. Importantly, this technology operates without logging, storing, or transmitting any data, thus functioning alongside encryption. AI classifiers have been trained on databases of verified CSA images to distinguish abusive content from innocent images, such as pictures of children at the beach. Phillips stressed that online child sexual abuse is a problem legislators failed to control initially but must now prioritize. Survivors shared their experiences, highlighting the trauma of having to campaign repeatedly for the removal of abuse images online.
Phil Eccles of the NCA described the scale of the issue as “at crisis point,” emphasizing the importance of preventive measures. He remarked, “This would cut off at source somebody on the UK their ability to direct a live stream for a child to be abused,” adding, “To me, safeguarding children will always supersede the ability to prosecute. If we can stop that abuse we must.” Eccles further called on technology companies to cooperate, noting that law enforcement alone cannot resolve this crisis.
The parliamentary briefing also included input from former minister Lord Nash, who has campaigned for banning social media use by under-16s. He underscored the need for blocking harmful material directly on devices to prevent abuse before police intervention is possible, stating, “By the time the police are involved, a child has already been abused and the images and videos have gone round the globe.” Nash praised government efforts to implement such technology on children’s phones and urged extending this commitment to every device sold in the UK, particularly targeting CSA content.
Furthermore, communications regulator Ofcom revealed that searches for CSA content on commonplace apps on the open internet nearly rival those on the dark web, highlighting the growing prevalence of abuse. John Tanagho from the International Justice Mission pointed to the exploitation of children in poorer countries, citing research that found one in every 100 Filipino children fall victim to sexual abuse. He called for legislation that limits content scanning exclusively to CSA material, ensuring no data is shared with governmental or private entities to safeguard privacy.
Responding to these concerns, a government spokesperson stated, “We are putting in place the strongest online safety laws in the world.” The spokesperson added that new legislation aims to compel major tech companies to make it impossible for children to take, share, or view nude images. Alongside this, the government intends to equip the police with the powers necessary to keep pace with emerging technologies used by criminals, reinforcing efforts to protect children
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