back to article Facebook rejects CEOP 'panic button' demands (again)

Facebook has again rejected demands from child abuse investigators to publish a branded "panic button" on its users' profile pages. At a meeting in Washington DC yesterday, the social network told Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) it would make changes to send British …

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  1. hplasm
    Stop

    "If they don't...

    ...adopt the button we are simply not going to go away,"

    Why not? You are not paying them to effectively make your position a 'job for life' - why should they advertise it?

    Shut up and sit down, you've had your say.

  2. davefb
    Thumb Down

    What an odious man

    using the death of a 17yr old to further his quango even though it had nothing to do with child protection issues. What should be happening is that , since they chatted on MSN and MSN has the CEOP button , people should be asking questions of CEOP as to why they didn't do anything, you know, when the girl didnt press the button, or it obviously didn't have the deterrance effect he talks about!

    They(CEOP) also keep talking about the 250 complaints for facebook, have we any idea what , if any , were actual issues? How does this 250 compare to other social networking sites?

    1. NB

      perspective:

      Facebook has over 400,000,000 members and CEOP have ONLY received 250 complaints. Lets think about those numbers for a minute. Gamble is a fuckwit, end of.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      all

      All deaths of juvenilles and children at the hands of strangers are used to further somebodies agenda. That's just the sick kind of society we live in, every murders a photo op and a new platform to launch a career.

  3. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge
    WTF?

    Nonsequitur

    "Putting the button in a safety centre is like putting a burglar alarm inside your house," Gamble said.

    Your analogy is like a custard cream biscuit. See title.

    1. Lionel Baden

      Its safer!!

      Just think if you put the burglar alarm outside your house somebody could nick it !!!!!

  4. Michael Fremlins

    Jim Gamble...

    is a man trying to justify his job.

  5. Skrrp
    Thumb Down

    Fuck off CEOP

    They are a bunch of concern trolls that exist only to push how much they are needed in the face of the public.

    If they really wanted to protect kids then they would be pushing the message that kids need to be supervised on the net - you know, actual parenting.

    Now, if only they would push to get the kids off of the real Internet and off our lawns I for one would be happy.

  6. Stone Fox
    Stop

    i'm getting bored of reading about this.

    wow. For the hundredth time facebook doesn't want his ineffective little button.

    What would be news is if he shut up about it finally or, even better, someone branded an outline of the button on his forehead.

  7. Stef 4

    Damned bullies

    "If they don't adopt the button we are simply not going to go away,"

    Can't they really not see the irony?

  8. NB
    Flame

    Fuck Jim Gamble

    when is this shameless self publicist going to stfu and fuck off? Using the death of Ashleigh Hall for his little PR stunt is nothing short of disgraceful especially when it is so mind-numbingly obvious that the CEOP button would not have prevented it.

    Fuck off, Jim. Just fuck off.

  9. Gordon 10
    Flame

    BBC reporting of this annoying

    The BBC is making no attempt to point out that this guy is the attention seeking chief of a money grabbing quango instead of a more legitimate pressure group with nothing directly to gain.

    1. g e

      Nothing new

      The BBC often 'omit' the counterargument or just don't cover stuff at all, rendering the public conveniently dumb/uninformed/unaware about many things.

      I rarely hear about Mandelson in the news though granted I don't watch much TV ;o)

    2. DPWDC

      BBC reporting at its best

      Yup, BBC radio on Monday angered me too.

      That and this tard insisting that the button is "free" and effective.

      Point me to this free mail sending system that develops it self, filters the real complaints from people stitching up their friends for a laugh and doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the rest of the page.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Oh what a shocker

      You mean the BBC aren't fully reporting the news? What a surprise.

      Try going to Scotland matey where the BBC is staffed and RUN by ex-Labour party stooges.

      The BBC is a joke.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Seriously?

    You really have to wonder about the mentality of Mr Gamble. He obviously lacks the intellect to realise that such a button is not going to deter anyone away from any site. I believe the methods these perpetrators adopt are carefully played out in order to conceal their identity until absolutely necessary.

    Mr Gambles seems to think that sooner or later a perpetrator will say something along the lines of "Hi, I am 39, and I want to see you naked". The receiver of such a message can then push a nice shiny red button and report the incident.

    It reminds me of bloated "security" software with similar buttons such as "Protect me now"

    Unsurprising to see the socialist governments PR machine blow out some more waffle to support their quangos twisted thinking.

    1. Semihere
      Flame

      You had me until...

      "Unsurprising to see the socialist governments PR machine blow out some more waffle to support their quangos twisted thinking."

      Everything else you said was factually correct, but your sign off was wrong on two counts.

      1. Quangos - invention of the Thatcher government to shift oversight away from the democratic process into the private sector (essentially removing accountability to the electorate).

      2. Current government is 'NewLabour', a right wing (anti-socialist) party who have continued the Thatcherite policies of the former Tory governments and in the new doublespeak of political spin, 'NewLabour' actually means 'NewTory'.

      1. Mr Mark V Thomas

        Re: You Had Me Until...

        At the risk of turning this post into something from Airplane !, surely you mean 'ToryLite' with the tagline "all the right wing dogma, but with less new policies...", not "NewTory", for 'New Labour, Semihere'...?

        As for David Cameron's version of the Tory Party, isn't that "New Labour with a hint of Blue, speaking with a Oxford accent"...?

        1. Semihere
          Thumb Up

          All of the above!

          Of course, you're absolutely right. Anyway, I've got my hoodie on - time to hug a Tory! :D

  11. Ben Oldham
    Jobs Horns

    ATTENTION ALL PARENTS

    If you are worried about your kids being contacted by people on the Internet, try a revolutionary technique I have dubbed "Talking to them".

    Teenagers have always thought they know better. I know I did.

    A button is going to make naff all difference, so why this berk from CEOP keeps going on and on about it, I don't know. How many (related) arrests have there been since the button was put on MSN?

    (Does anyone else think Steve J carries a packet of Werthers around i his pocket?)

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Well.

    If they put the button in I'm just gonna report my mates as paedophiles. Just for laughs.

    That is all it will be used for, in the Hall case, the predator posed as a younger person, in that case, why would the button be pressed? This is a total farce.

    1. jnewco81
      Happy

      Required title

      That's exactly why this is such a stupid idea, totally open to abuse

  13. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    And now... Vigilantes

    Considering paedophile targeting is the only online activity (okay maybe after "counter terrorism") the UK police bother with I have to wonder why in the name of bob some barely known, and entirely unregulated organisation, is deciding to step in to the non-gap. The police are barely accountable (both UK and US) without having a self-appointed quango stepping in, and with an accusation being enough to put you on the not-funny-at-all-register in the UK CEOP is taking a lot of power on itself.

    I'd be far happier if the CEOPs of the world spent time educating parents (and by extension their children) about online relationships, i.e., you can fake anything (even web cams) online so be careful IRL. Nothing suggests a panic button would have helped Ashleigh Hall remain safe from the sick bastard that entrapped her.

    Maybe governments could ban kids from Facebook/social-networking instead until they turn 18 or until they are accompanied by an adult, like what pubs do.

  14. Ben Tasker
    Joke

    Facebook Should Include it in their Privacy Settings

    As a compromise, Facebook should display the button, but only if you have specified that you want to see it in your 'privacy' settings.

    I'm betting it'd be the first setting facebook have ever defaulted to OFF!!!

    FWIW, Gamble comes across as a bully time and time again, hardly likely to be appealing to a child that's worried about what might happen if they tell.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Bullying?

    Ironic.

    http://www.bullying.co.uk/index.php/201004131379/blog/uk-news/complaints-about-facebook-quadruple-say-ceop.html

    Definition of bullying:

    "Deliberate action or behaviour directed towards another person which may take many forms and can often occur over a long period of time"

    Now remind me, who is the bully?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    bah

    "Putting the button in a safety centre is like putting a burglar alarm inside your house, people still break in because they don't realise you are in there"

    Yes Gamble, peadophiles operate in exactly the same way as burglars. Always sneaking around at night, breaking into buildings. Making sure they choose ones that don't have alarms on the outside because that means the owners aren't home. It all makes perfect sense.

    Honestly, if peados were anything like burglars, they would be easy to catch. Oh wait, scratch that, this country hasn't caught a burglar in like 20 years.

  17. Owen Carter
    Black Helicopters

    What is it anyway?

    A little image served from Facebook with a link to this 'think of the children'esqe site.

    A image from a third-party site? ..from a state run 'think of the children' website? from the police? Does it have a cookie?

    Does it have some java? is it actually an iframe to a third-party site?

    ???

    I just spent a few mins trying to answer the above, but no joy (searches swamped by current story).

    I wonder if someone here knows; and why the desperation to get this on the biggest social networking site out there? Just pre-election grandstanding? Other agendas?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Have a very good point

      It should just be a URL or form and a submit button... to the CEOP website...

      Does Facebook stop it because they won't let them look at the source code? Who knows. I know if someone said - just put X on your website - son't worry about what it does - they'd get a big fat NO from me too.

      This man sounds like a bully - not going away until they do what he wants....

    2. Basic

      Ani Gif

      It's an animated gif which should link to a specific URL: on CEOP (/Reporting.html or similar? Can't remember)

      No issues with FB hosting the image themselves (actually,. I'd love to see what happens to CEOP if it tries to keep up with serving an image every time FB shows a page.)

      1. Rattus Rattus
        Pint

        "serving an image every time FB shows a page"

        Now that I like! Put the damn button (served by CEOP's servers of course) on every single facebook page, flag it as something not to be cached, and wait for CEOP to declare bankruptcy. Maybe help it along a bit by making sure the image is refreshed every time the display is updated in Farmville.

  18. A. Lewis
    Thumb Down

    Or...

    How about instead of putting faith in a magic button that would likely be ignored by kids and adults. Encourage parents to take responsibility for their children's internet usage, and for educating their kids about the dangers of the online world.

    1. James 139

      Exactly!

      Governments, and anyone reliant on public money, almost never want to state the obvious and say that parents should do more, its just not a vote winner.

      Hows about we "take a gamble" on Mr Gamble, sell his organs on the black market and get back the £5million and spend it on something useful, like 20million copies of a pamplet called "Caring for your children, a guide for parents".

  19. Dave Bell

    And who will be next?

    Looking at what Facebook are doing, Gamble is looking like a bit of a plonker. It almost looks as if he doesn't trust the National LEO Agencies which Facebook already talks to.

    And I glad that Facebook are willing to stand up to him. I am not at all sure what the services I use would do if he came after them. But who will be next?

  20. Tieger
    Badgers

    more CEOP stuff? really?

    gotta love that CEOPs overall stance is basically 'if you dont agree with us and do everything we tell you to, then clearly you support child molesting rapists' - oh yes, and they'll be happy to tell that to the bbc and everyone else that'll listen.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    I hate saying "well done Facebook"

    but I have too, as they have bought the reality of the internet slap-bang into these whiffle-coated busybodies.

    Profit above all else (why do you think the Daily Mail will happily run pictures of teenager girls in underwear opposite articles on the horror of child porn ?).

    Facebook have rightly deduced that allowing themselves to be bossed around - in particular by a pressure group - is the thin end of a wedge that could reduce their profit margin. Hopefully there willnow be a few more high profile refuseniks, and Jim Gamble will FOAD

  22. Owen Carter
    Badgers

    News Corporation.

    Lots of stories in News Corps papers about this.. It's everywhere, but certainly being pushed through Murdoc's orifaces with some force (*). This is the News Corporation who own myspace, which does not seem to be mentioned at all.. Last I heard they did not have this button either, but I guess things have changed since they'd never be that hypocritical right?

    (*) Curiously, there is a cactus in the corner of my office that evokes the same thought..

  23. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Twat

    Jim Gamble is making waves to both advance is own career and ensure he has somewhere to go when he eventually gets fired. The first leave to appeal in the ore "class action" has already been granted and a large part of the evidence is the lies to both parliament and courts that Jim Gamble uttered, when the extremely large compensation bill starts rolling in it is extremely obvious who will be scapegoated.

    In the meantime FB should add the button, route the emails to his blackberry (you know a ponce like him has one attached to his hand 24 hours a day) and route all calls to the hotline to both his mobile and landline numbers. Let the fucker deal with the nonsense shite he wants to create.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who is behind CEOP?

    I'd like to know how I could get the same level of ready access to government money and influence that CEOP and the Internet Watch Foundation appear to have.

    They've not been elected or placed on a statutory basis and yet they appear to think they can tell us what to say, what to do and what to think. For the first time in my life can I say 'well done Facebook'.

    1. Alien Doctor 1.1

      wiki-paedoia

      Says this about CEOP:

      "The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), formed in April 2006, is a UK cross agency and cross business department of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which is tasked to work both nationally and internationally to bring online child sex offenders, including those involved in the production, distribution and viewing of child pornography, to the UK courts.

      "CEOP is made up of police officers with specialist experience of tracking and prosecuting sex offenders working with dedicated professionals from organisations including the NSPCC and Childnet, Microsoft and AOL. Partnerships have been set up across non-government bodies, including: NCH, NSPCC, Barnardos; business (Microsoft, AOL, Serco, Vodafone etc) and UK Government departments (Children, Schools and Families; Home Office; Foreign and Commonwealth Office etc). CEOP works with organisations such as the Football Association, the England and Wales Cricket Board, British Telecom, and Lycos to widen the scope of safeguarding the online environment.

      "Jim Gamble is Chief Executive of CEOP. A senior police officer of 25 years, he was head of the Northern Ireland anti-terrorist intelligence unit in Belfast, then most recently tackled organised crime as the Deputy Director of the National Crime Squad. Gamble became an Internet laughingstock in March 2010 after calling for a "panic button" - for the public to report suspected paedophiles - to be installed on the main profile page of every Facebook user, a policy which would be rife for abuse."

  25. JP19
    FAIL

    But they already have this

    There is a panic button for kids already (well kind of):

    * You can shout to your parent

    * You can phone your parent

    I'm not sure what implementing a panic button inside every website will achieve. If anything this should be done a the browser level..

  26. Scott 19
    Thumb Down

    As many seem to think

    This guy is more about the PR and keeping his ineffective job than actually doing any good because if he did what to help the children i'm sure theres a hundred more ways to go about it rather then having meetings around the world with Facebook execs every five minutes. I also thought that charities like child line who have been doing this for years would be in a better placed position, is this another quango for the boys?

  27. Graham Marsden
    FAIL

    "like putting a burglar alarm inside your house"

    And then not telling your children to lock the front door when they go out...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      and..

      You forgot the bit about "putting a little wooden barrel of Rohypnol on a chain around their necks".

  28. g e

    I would just...

    ... like to "use the recent deaths of some British troops" (or fill your terrible occurrence in here) to highlight the fact that Jim Gamble is a self-aggrandising, mendacious, publicity-seeking, arrogant, tasteless see-you-next-tuesday who is a carcinoma on British society.

    Oh, maybe if he advocated panic buttons for UK troops then if they ever pushed them he could go stand between the soldiers and the bullets. I'd pay the airfare for him too, at least he'd be performing a useful function if only briefly.

  29. Anonymous John

    The Internet is actually a very safe place.

    Internet criminals, paedos, scammers, etc, are miles,even thousands of miles away from potential victims. As long as you know and understand the risks, you aren't at risk. It isn't like burglary or mugging, where criminals come after you physically.

    Education is the only real defence.

    1. Pete 40

      Swimming against the tide as usual...

      ... but I have to say that I like Ben Tasker's idea. Have the button as an option, default "off" but included as part of an overall awareness programme, including highlighting its availability to anyone under a specified age creating an account. Misuse, mostly for the sake of amusement, could be a problem though so I would like to see a well thought-out, "common-sense"-managed approach taken by the CEOP as regards any "alarms" sent its way. Knowing human nature though, especially nowadays where over-reaction, continuous red-alert status and "zero tolerance" seem to be the menu du jour and, as a result, society is increasingly unable to distinguish between true threats and false alarms (and all the grey areas in-between), such a system may well not work in real life.

  30. Ally J
    Joke

    A Facebook group

    ...saying 'Fnck off Jim Gambles' would probably be too subtle an irony for the humourless knob.

    Shame.

  31. lglethal Silver badge
    Dead Vulture

    Attention The Register

    Can you please go out and interview Jim Gamble and ask him how EXACTLY this would have helped that girl... That way we can see if he really does believe the bollocks he spouts, or if hes just trying to push his own agenda in the most disgusting way!

    Get out there and do your job of exposing this odious little turd for the bastard he is!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Can you please go out and interview Jim Gamble

      I second Iglethals suggestion. Give this troll gamble the rope he needs to hang himself..... Go to it Vultures.....

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Yes Please Do

      Please, please, please.

      Interview him and ask him what proof he has that this button would have stopped this girl being murdered. They chatted on MSN which has the button and she didn't use it there.

      It is horrific that a young girl lost her life to a sick pervert like that. Its as sick that Mr Gamble is using this girls death to promote his own organisation and making wild, unproven statements about things.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      And while you're at it....

      ....ask him why he refuses to accept that a goodly number of Operation Ore victims did not purchase any child porn as their credit cards were cloned and used in Brazil and Pakistan when they were in the UK. Also ask why these people should still have cautions or worse on their records when it's been proven that much of the Ore hysteria was based on lies and stupidity from the US LEAs.

      Grrrr!

  32. bluest.one
    Big Brother

    Empire Building

    by a trumped-up tinpot dictator wannabe.

  33. HollyX
    Badgers

    Hmmm

    This Jim Gamble character sounds like a nasty bully, if only there were some sort of internet organisation which I could report him to so that he could be locked away ...

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Methods

    So having failed to convince Facebook through the usual methods of reasoned argument, discussion and argument, Gamble is trying to use the 4th Estate.

    In other words, because he couldn't get his own way, he's yelling his head off. Grown up behavour.

  35. Semihere
    Megaphone

    How about this Mr Gamble?

    You're a not a government agency, you're a private entity. How about you do what every other private entity who want a presence on Facebook do - PAY FOR THE ADVERTISING SPACE!!!

    That way you'd get your button and Facebook would still be happy.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kids shouldn't be on facebook

    ....and parents who let them should be investigated for neglect.

    Facebook are only guilty of allowing under 21's from creating a profile.

    Why is it always parents who do not look after their spawn who shout the loudest.

    And I dont see CEOP (or the like) protesting the same!

  37. PerfectBlue

    The Point?

    Let me get this straight, this guy is bagging on Facebook for not putting a panic button for children on a site that was designed for adults, is predominantly used by adults, and which actually prohibits most children from having accounts?

    That's great, isn't it.

    Maybe he'd do better putting up panic buttons in butcher's shops so that vegetarians can press it if they get upset by the site of meat. Or maybe a vertigo panic button at the to of Blackpool tower.

    This guy is an attention seeking nobody seeking to hijack a popularist cause for their own promotion. If this were the 1980s he'd be trying to get World of Warcraft to put up a panic button for kids who thought that they were being lured into the occult by D&D playing nerds. If it were the 1960s, he'd probably be out there warning kids of the dangers of communism and free love.

    People like this need a governemtn health warning tattooed on to their heads.

    Better yet, let's all put up a panic button to alert the police about him. He's a threat to the rest of us leading a normal life.

  38. Fibbles

    Sigh...

    The man's an idiot.

    /thread

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How does anyone think this would help?

    I cannot see how a button on a webpage helps? The victim goes out and meets the person who isn't who they claimed. What does he/she do? Tell them to wait there while they nip home, log in to Facebook and click a button to report them? By the time they've gone out to meet them, it's a little late. And if they had suspicions that all was not as it seemed while they were chatting and could click the button, surely they wouldn't have gone to meet them in the first place?

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Daft idea

    Also, what happens when user A gets upset with user B over some other reason and decides to press the button in revenge. Or someone just decides to click the button to see what it does or by accident.

    Again, what exactly is the point of this button. Or is it just another example of the magic do everything button that some people think can just be added to a system to make everything work as they want...?

  41. Hairy
    FAIL

    Classic business issue

    With a stakeholder (however marginally) trying to force through one technical solution (which everyone with half a brain can see won't really work very well) rather than engaging in open discussion to find what would actually be the best way to solve the problem...

  42. Doshu

    *sigh*

    As stated, other sites -- that cater more specifically to the young -- have the button and their users still get roped in by (unfortunately) clever miscreants. The fool's wasting everyone's time and risks making the whole issue unpopular by bullying people for no good reason -- perhaps he thinks that the old adage of no publicity is bad publicity applies here.

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Reverend Jim Ain't Done Yet...

    And he probably isn't going to let this go, just as he's suggested. When you run a branch of the UK Police Service uniquely gifted with the kind of powers witnessed only in a service like Customs & Excise I suppose you might be forgiven a touch of hubris. Mr Gamble, despite becoming a self-parody at times - is a prime example of absolute power at work.

    CEOP is now a quango, a branch of the UK Police Service, taxpayer funded to the tune of at least £5million per annum, enjoys large donations of cash and expertise from private corporations (VISA, Microsoft, etc) tailgating his moral crusade and - again, uniquely - enjoys Government connections at the very highest levels, able to influence directly the creation of new law (you can read all this - specifically CEOP's direct contributions - in freely available Parliamentary Reports, such as those released dealing with the recent 'cartoon porn' laws introduced in the UK and reported widely here on The Reg courtesy of Jon Ozimek who has done a sterling job of reporting this most recent travesty of justice). As such, CEOP is one of the most powerful - and deadly - branches of law enforcement in the UK, if not Europe, able to wreak havoc and absolute ruin on anyone unfortunate enough to fall under its baleful gaze.

    Reverend Jim's little sojourn to Washington might well have ended in abject failure for his much-vaunted 'panic button' but Jim will find many friends across the pond who share his passion for a particularly rough kind of justice. The USA, indeed, must seem like some kind of paradise compared to Britain when one considers the totally surreal measures currently being meted out to 'sex offenders' there; if you think things are getting even a little out of hand here in the UK, take some time to look up some of the cruelties of the US justice system when applied to anyone even suspected of looking at something 'indecent' on their computer. It really does beggar belief that such an allegedly 'civilized' society as the US could behave in such a wretchedly medieval way towards its own citizens, including it's children.

    Here in the UK there might be some hope that Mr Gamble could soon be asked to explain himself (and that would indeed be a first, since successive Home Secretarys have singularly failed to do so). The brave, determined people behind the 'Operation Ore' UK class action (due to reach the Courts very soon) claim to have strong evidence of a very grave miscarriage of justice. If British Law has even one good eye the Reverend (who led Op Ore) and his congregation should be squirming in their pews just about now.

    In the end it's reassuring to remember that every empire falls, every jumped-up little Napoleon eventually meets his Waterloo. One of life's little certainties, Jim.

  44. Harry Stottle

    Facebook Members Have The Solution In Their Own Hands

    If I were an active facebook member (which thank the lord I'm not sir) I would start a facebook campaign in which every member, at least once a day, pressed the panic button "accidentally" and flooded the CEOP twats with a manual DDoS, until they beg facebook to take the button off...

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook Group

    Does someone want to start a facebook group with clear cohessive points as to why this button makes little sense. I'd join up straight away.

    CEOP need to focus on making a difference through education.

    1. Mike Cardwell

      The group

      http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113492878674477

      There are lots of pro panic button groups, so I just created this anti panic button group.

  46. Pablo

    Amazingly Patient

    The only good thing about putting a link in their security center is that now they can threaten to remove it if CEOP keep harassing them. Facebook has been amazingly patient with this idiot. If I would have told him to f*** off it a long time ago.

  47. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    CEOP

    Why wont CEOP just fuck off and die

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time to ban facebook

    If it is such an issue why don't they put facebook on the banned list. Then millions of teenagers can spend time behind the bike sheds or getting pissed on cheap cider (ok maybe not so cheap now) and as a result millions of wasted hours could be spent more productively

  49. Craigness

    17?

    CEOP is using the death of a 17 year old to bully Facebook in this matter. CEOP's website "thinkuknow.co.uk" has sections for kids of 5-7, 1-10 and 11-16. It's no wonder 17 year olds are vulnerable, with no help directed at them.

    The CEOP main site has an "Information for..." section, with info for parents, young people, education professionals (do they mean teachers?) etc. There's no help there for paedophiles! That would be a good place to start.

  50. Armus Squelprom

    Jim Gamble = J Edgar Hoover

    Power-mad, skeletons in closet.

  51. jon 72

    Let's cut to the quick here..

    Filling out an online report is akin to sending the fire brigade a postcard..

    House Burning - Wish You Were Here

    It's a good idea but has several fundamental flaws that need to be addressed.

  52. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Oh Exploitable

    I already know one, shall we say "Anonymous" source who is just itching to see this panic button installed, so they can be as scary as possible as see how many times they can get it pressed.

    ..And I can just imagine what would happen when the /b/tards get a load of it.

    Anonymous because, well.. greenface icon request please.

  53. Number6

    Well done FB

    If they don't resist the call then at some point, every website will be required to have a panic button on it, just in case.

    It's not the government's responsibility, nor a private agency, but the parents'. Teach your children about the dangers of the internet, how to use it responsibly and encourage them to talk to you about how they use it.

  54. Ozzy

    If I may quote . . .

    Martin Luther-King: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity"

  55. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    Wibble

    Come on guys, you are clearly missing the point here. Haven't you worked out yet that this is a "Magic Button (TM)"??

    It works completely different to any plain old button-on-website you have ever come across before. Pressing it instantaneously alerts everyone who needs to know (I've seen the code behind it - it's awesome!) and less than 60 seconds later the helicopters swoop out of the sky, pick up the miscreant and before you can say "Fuck off Jim you dangerous, lunatic prick!" they are hauled off for summary stringing up from lamposts (saves a bundle on lawyers fees you see).

    I for one love CEOP and would gladly sell my house and all my possessions to fund it ;-)

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