The new rules go into effect July 26.
The law now gives British police the ability to freely communicate with credit card issuers if it believes a card has been used to access illegal material on the Internet. Banks and credit card companies now have the authority to cancel accounts or cards used to access the material in violation of its terms and conditions.
The amendment comes in the wake of an alliance between U.K. payments industry organization Apacs Administration, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Home Office and various children’s charities.
“No card provider wants to be associated with those who commit these crimes,” said Sandra Quinn, director of corporate communications at Apacs. “With this change in the law, our members will have the information they need to remove offenders’ cards.”
According to a new report from the Internet Watch Foundation, reports of child pornography to its hotline increased 49 percent during the same period from the previous year.
However, the number of websites displaying child abuse that were hosted in England fell sharply to 0.2 percent of all such images worldwide.
“It’s important for the credit card companies and banks to be informed if one of its customers is involved in such illegal activity, so they can stop the flow of money for the commercial distribution of child pornography,” ASACP Executive Director Joan Irvine told XBIZ. “If these criminals don’t make money off of child pornography, they will go elsewhere.”
While the new law doesn’t address the actual production and dissemination of child abuse, it attempts to effectively address the means by which people purchase this illegal content. By taking away their buying power, child porn purchasers are hampered in their quest to access content.
“When ASACP determines that a report to its hotline is a site with actual child pornography, the compliance director does research to find out what hosting, billing and domain company is being misused by the site,” Irvine said. “In addition to reporting this information to the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we report to these companies.”
