Chief constable Simon Bailey has said that technology giants are not taking the scale of child abuse on their platforms seriously enough.

According to a report in The Metro, the senior officer warned that social networks are not spending enough money on technology to prevent paedophiles sharing images online.

Bailey, who is retiring from the police after 35 years, said that Facebook was the main cause of concern, partially because of its plans to introduce end-to-end encryption which risks ‘turning the lights off.’

“Unless the tech industry starts to take this really seriously, all that we are going to see is the exponential growth in the numbers of images that we are recording, the continuing abuse of children and unfortunately, and I fear this, an ever-growing number of people that have a sexual interest in children,” said Bailey at the Pier21 conference. “It is my belief that the tech industry, the big tech companies, are continuing to put profit before safeguarding children.”

The now ex-chief constable said that these companies are aware of the scale of what is taking place on their platforms, accusing them of choosing not to do enough about it.

“We know that Facebook, and the evidence is very clear, is already and is identified as the most used platform for the sharing of indecent images and yet we know through their plans to end-to-end encrypt that they are now going to wilfully turn a blind eye to what is taking place on their platforms,” he added.

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