Internet Watch Foundation

The ISPAs - the UK Internet industry awards are awarded to people and organisations in the industry by their peers and reflect the broad nature of the service provider sector.

The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA UK) has been organising the UK Internet Industry Awards since 1999 to herald the best of the internet industry and to celebrate innovation and best practice. In 2002 the awards were dubbed The ISPAs.

 

One of the Special ISPA Awards is the Internet Watch Foundation Award.

 

This year, the IWF have decided there will be a landmark award to coincide with our tenth anniversary: IWF Anniversary Award for most significant contribution to the fight against child abuse content online during the past decade.

 

We sought nominations from our funding members about any person, initiative, development, group or organisation (commercial, not-for-profit, charity, educational or academic institution, public sector agency and so on) which has most significantly contributed to the fight against child abuse content online during the past decade.

 

The IWF Board short listed the nominations below. The winner will be announced at the 2007 ISPAs  held at 7pm on Thursday 15th February 2007 at the Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square, London. Music and dancing will follow dinner and the award ceremony. For more information, visit: http://www.ispaawards.org.uk/index.htm.

 

 

Annie Mullins is Vodafone’s Global Head of Content Standards. Responsible for protecting users, but with particular emphasis on young users in accessing new content services through mobile.

 

She has been a member of the UK Home Office Child Protection and the Internet Task Force for the past 5 years and is currently chairing the Home Office Social Networking Good Practice Guidance Project Group. Annie has previously chaired Project Groups for Chat, Instant Messaging Service, World Wide Web, Moderation of Interactive Services.

 

Annie is former Head of Social Issues for Yahoo! UK managing social issues, as well as representative on IWF Funding Council. She contributed to IWF governance review and formulation of new policies, particularly staff care and management of exposure to harmful material.

 

She is former policy manager for NCH (children’s charity) responsible for a range of child protection and welfare issues, including child sexual abuse, children and domestic violence, children in care, rural poverty and internet safety.

 

A qualified social worker with over 20 years expertise in child protection and child welfare in statutory services, training, education and social research.

 

For developing and implementing the world’s first internet system to block URLs of child sexual abuse.

 

BT approached the IWF in 2002 with a proposition that they be allowed to incorporate a list of urls of websites that were publishing potentially illegal child abuse content into blocking technology they wished to develop. Following testing and evaluation BT were the first ISP in the UK to announce their intention to proceed with a national blocking project named ‘Cleanfeed’. They were the first company to share the technology freely with ISPs around the globe resulting in similar initiatives being adopted across the UK, Canada, the USA and Europe. The filter has stimulated debate amongst a network of hotlines around the world with the possibility of a sharing URLs and the technological application on a broader front.

 

 

The task force was established in 2001 and in that time has brought together representatives of the Internet industry, mobile phone companies, law enforcement, the children’s charities and others to work together to make the Internet a safer place for children. It assisted the Government in preparing the new offence of meeting a child following sexual grooming which was introduced in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. It has published several models of good practice and guidance for industry which have contributed significantly towards protecting children from inappropriate content in interactive services e.g. chat rooms and when using search. The task force can also claim to have enabled the creation of CEOP which is another huge step forward in facilitating centralised resources for tacking child abuse online. Special mention should go to the secretariat team whose work behind-the-scenes has made all this possible.

                                     

 

 

 

John’s current principal pro bono positions are:

 

Member, Microsoft Advisory Board for Europe, Middle East & Africa

Member, Home Secretary’s Internet Task Force on Child Protection

Member, British Educational Communications Technology Agency SUICT Advisory Board

Member, EU “High Level Working Party” on Mobile Phone Content and Services

Non Exec Director, Horsesmouth Ltd., developing an online mentoring programme

 

John is Chair of the UK’s Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety, comprising all of the UK’s major professional child welfare organizations, for example, NCH, NSPCC, Barnardos, Childline. The focus of his work is on the “digital divide”, seeking to ensure all children and young people can benefit from the wonderful opportunities presented by the new technologies. He gives special attention to the access needs of handicapped children and other disadvantaged groups.

 

He was a member of the Programme Board established to develop the Children’s Exploitation and Online Protection centre, a new police-led multi-agency national initiative.

 

For the first seven years of its life he was a Policy Board Member and a Director of the Internet Watch Foundation, the UK’s hotline for reporting of potentially illegal images that have been found online. 

 

He is an expert adviser charged with evaluating the EU’s Safer Internet Programme in 2003-2004. He presents to or has been consulted by Governments, inter-governmental agencies and NGOs in places as diverse as Iceland, Portugal, India, China, Russia, South Africa, Australia, Poland, Turkey, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, New Zealand, Thailand and Tunisia. In 2004 he presented to the FBI’s Online Victimization Conference in Washington DC. He has also presented to UN sponsored conferences for governments from the Far East, the Pacific, Africa and the Arab world.

 

Nicholas Lansman was centrally involved in the founding of ISPA at the end of 1995 and was appointed Secretary General of ISPA UK in 1997. ISPA has grown from a handful of ISPs to represent now over 90% of the UK market.  www.ispa.org.uk

 

In 1996 Nicholas pursued his idea to establish a European internet trade federation that would represent the interests of ISPs at EU level. EuroISPA was established towards the end of 1996 and now has membership from ISP Associations including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Finland.

 

Nicholas was involved in the process that established the Internet Watch Foundation in 1996 which ISPA supports through its mandatory code of conduct. He continues to sit on the IWF Funding Council.

 

Nicholas is a steering group member of the Internet Crime Forum (ICF) and participates actively in the Home Office Child Protection Task Force established in 2002.

 

On an honorary basis, Nicholas Lansman is secretary to the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) which since 1998 provides an invaluable forum for Parliamentarians to be briefed on internet issues such as spam, data retention, child protection, content liability and internet governance.