Contribution
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 295BA and the other amendments in this group in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron, Lady Coffey and Lady Gohir. I am grateful for the wise legal counsel of Professor Clare McGlynn KC and the support of the Revenge Porn Helpline, My Image, My Choice, Not Your Porn and Jodie Campaigns.
Amendment 295BA is based on the precedent set in the Take It Down Act in the USA. It compels the Secretary of State to implement a 48-hour time limit for online platforms to remove non-consensually shared intimate content. It is important to note that there is also a clause that allows for sanctions for malicious actors. In this way, we seek to protect those who may consensually share content from being targeted by people who may wish to silence them.
Sophie Mortimer from the Revenge Porn Helpline said that while we have an excellent track record on removal, the reality in most cases is that it takes hours, days, or months. There are a number of clients who have been reporting content for over five years. Sophie has emphasised that the handful of responsible and responsive platforms should not be the yardstick for all, when the majority are painfully slow to respond or entirely non-compliant.
One Cornell University study found that violations of copyright are acted upon quicker than the reporting of NCII content. The amendment would ensure, vitally, that online services remove duplicates of the content. It is designed to complement the Online Safety Act, under which tech companies have to proactively ensure that this priority illegal content is removed from their sites. At present, however, there is no system in place for individuals to report directly to Ofcom. This amendment would ensure a reporting and removal mechanism for victims or any other person who believes a breach of Section 66(b) of the Sexual Offences Act has been committed, and it would provide a maximum time frame.
Amendment 295BB would strengthen the law on deletion orders. While I am pleased to see the Government’s clarification in the Bill that intimate images used to commit an offence, and anything containing them, should be seen as being used to commit an offence under Section 153 of the 2020 Sentencing Act, I believe we must go further.
Research by journalist Shanti Das published in February this year found that, of the 98 intimate image abuse cases prosecuted in magistrates’ courts in England and Wales in the preceding six months, only three resulted in deprivation orders. No one should have to live in the knowledge that their convicted abuser is allowed to retain content used to commit the crime. This amendment would direct the prosecutor to lodge a deletion verification report within 28 days, verifying the destruction of the content and ordering the defendant to hand over the passwords and authenticators needed to access the material. There is still too much ambiguity in the law around this, and the victims of intimate image abuse are paying the price.
Amendments 295BC and 295BD would compel the Secretary of State to implement a hash registry for non-consensual intimate content, which providers must use to prevent the re-upload or distribution of NCII material. The amendment implements a hash-sharing system that offers survivors the peace of mind that their non-consensual content will remain offline. A hash is a unique value assigned to an image. Importantly, duplicates have the same hash value. Hashing preserves the victim’s privacy, as only the hash and not the content itself would be stored in the register.
This system means that victims can use two options to ensure that their content stays offline: prosecuting and going through a criminal court or privately hashing the content without prosecuting. Some survivors may use both options, but hashing is an important option for those who feel unable to face criminal proceedings. We already have a precedent for how this would work, as CSAM content is hashed in the same way. These amendments are a vital step to assure victims that their content will no longer trend online.