Interior ministers propose monitoring abuse images online instead of deleting

Depictions of child sexual abuse should disappear from the internet – This has long been the political consensus. However, police practice is "monitoring instead of deleting". The Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK) in Bremerhaven is unlikely to change this.

Three years ago, Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) announced a U-turn in the prosecution of depictions of sexualized violence against children after the IMK. "We have agreed that the deletion of this terrible content must not depend solely on the individual proceedings of the investigating police departments and public prosecutors' offices," he emphasized at the time. "We must remove these crimes from the internet immediately, independently of specific investigative measures."

However, the federal and state interior ministers are probably still shying away from a real change of course. They do emphasize "the need to reduce the availability of abusive images on the internet", ARD quotes from the draft resolution for the IMK's spring meeting, which starts on Wednesday. However, the police authorities should still not be obliged to systematically search for relevant images and videos in darknet forums in order to delete them. This means that a controversial decision from 2023 will remain in place, according to which the much-criticized police practice of "monitoring instead of deleting" will be retained in principle.

In principle, the political maxim in this country has long been "deleting instead of blocking" when it comes to tackling depictions of child sexual abuse. However, it had already become known in 2021 that investigators often leave such images and videos online contrary to this statement. This is said to be due to a lack of personnel resources, among other things. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), for example, announced that it does not collect links, but takes a "perpetrator-oriented" approach. Abuse material remaining online is intended to attract potential buyers and make them traceable.

Abuse commissioner urges proactive search

Those affected have long been calling for investigators to actively and systematically remove abuse recordings on the darknet. Kerstin Claus, the German government's commissioner for abuse, supports this course and demanded a binding requirement from the IMK. She told ARD television that it was a step in the right direction that the interior ministers wanted to help reduce relevant material. However, this is not enough: "In order to better protect those affected from this form of continued sexual exploitation, we must proactively and systematically identify accounts of abuse."

Sabine Andresen, President of the German Child Protection Association, argues similarly: "The knowledge that images of their suffering are still circulating online makes the process of coming to terms with it considerably more difficult."

According to the report, the IMK wants to appeal to the German government to advocate the adoption of a regulation at EU level to better protect children and young people on the internet. The draft provides, for example, for the establishment of an EU center to combat the depiction of abuse. However, it also contains the initiative to expand Internet and messenger monitoring via chat controls, which has been contested for years and is therefore currently more or less on ice because the EU states cannot agree on a line.

(vbr)