Deadline: 15-Mar-23
UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £700,000 for projects that help protect children by identifying and disrupting the sharing of links to child sexual abuse material online. This funding is from the UKST challenge fund.
The aim of this competition is to enhance UK capabilities in protecting all users online, but in particular preventing harm of children online.
The fund will focus on:
- Content moderation of the sharing of links to child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
- Detecting and disrupting the modification of links to CSAM
- Locations facilitating CSAM access, including gateway and torrent sites.
Specific Themes
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Your project must focus on one or more of the following:
- identifying CSAM links shared in public spaces, particularly on social media, forums and gaming platforms
- identifying CSAM links in private spaces, including those within an end-to-end encryption (E2EE) environment, particularly text-based chat or messaging platforms for 1 to 1 or group communications
- detecting and disrupting CSAM link shortening or modification
- onwards reporting and action to block access to CSAM links
Funding Information
- Your project’s grant funding request must be between £70,000 and £120,000
Eligibility Criteria
- Your Project
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All projects must develop new approaches, adapt existing technologies or scale up tools to identify and take further action on CSAM links.
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Your project must:
- have a grant funding request between £70,000 and £120,000
- start by 1 June 2023
- end by 29 February 2024
- last between 6 months and 9 months
- carry out its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
- demonstrate transparency, data protection and protect user privacy
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Your project must:
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Lead Organisation
- To lead a project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not-for-profit, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO).
Ineligible
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They will not fund projects which:
- focus on direct sharing of child sexual abuse content or media
- focus on sharing of offender tech advice or tradecraft
- focus on sharing of links to child accounts
- focus on dark web child sexual abuse activity
- focus on hosting of child sexual abuse content
- are not allowed under De minimis regulation restrictions
- are not eligible to receive Minimal Financial Assistance
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They cannot fund projects that are:
- dependent on export performance, for example giving an award to a baker on the condition that they export a certain quantity of bread to another country
- dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example if they give an award to a baker on the condition that they use 50% UK flour in their product
For more information, visit Innovate UK.