Opinion: MP wants to fine Credit and Debit card providers over online child porn purchases

Posted on 21 Jul 2010 at 11:21

 

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Labour MP Geraint Davies has tabled a motion calling for credit card providers to be fined if their customers use the cards to buy child pornography over the internet.

It's a highly improbable proposal which appears to expect banks to acquire psychic powers to know what the deliberately obfuscated payments actually refer to. After all, the criminals selling this porn are hardly likely to have it set up to appear on your statement as "child rape".

The full text of the Ten Minute Rule Motion, which Davies clearly has no expectation of being passed, reads: "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to impose penalties on credit and debit card providers for the facilitation of the downloading of child pornography from the internet; and for connected purposes".

It's been tabled to draw attention to what Swansea MP Davies claims to be the ease with which anonymous payment cards can be obtained without submitting any ID to prove who you are or where you live. This is actually a fair point. The fact that PAYG cards aren't tied to your main account is part of why I use pre-paid debit cards for online shopping as a precaution against identity theft; they're also useful for travelling, to give teenagers a taste of financial autonomy and as gift cards.

Although I had to provide ID and full registration information for the cards I use, some can simply be bought over the counter at a newsagent already charged with, say, £100 of pre-pay credit. As with some Pay As You Go mobile broadband services, which can be bought in a shop for cash without any ID, there is a small chance that criminals, including paedophiles, will take advantage of this loophole. It can always be argued that this kind of convenience comes at the cost of security, and vice versa.

However, even disregarding the inherently unfair option of forcing all pre-paid services – often used by those at the bottom of the social ladder, some of whom don't even have access to luxuries like a full set of ID or a permanent address - implementing the measure as proposed would require a radical shake-up of financial services regulations.

As it stands, although there is a point to be made here, the motion proposes a basic misplacement of responsibility. Making pre-paid card providers responsible for what their customers buy is somewhat like saying that the provider of an ATM machine should be penalised if money withdrawn from it is used to buy drugs.

Author: Kat Orphanides