Cyber-cops to patrol Internet chatrooms
Wednesday, June 9, 2004 Posted: 10:03 AM EDT (1403 GMT)
CNN
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Police plan to patrol Internet chatrooms as part of a multinational crackdown on pedophile rings.
They will also seize the finances of Web site operators who peddle child pornography and freeze the credit cards of their customers.
"We want to create the equivalent of a beat cop for the Internet," said the UK's National Crime Squad Assistant Chief Constable Jim Gamble.
Police from Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia are to form a global taskforce with the primary aim of stopping pedophiles luring children into offline encounters.
"This should not be viewed as a Big Brother tactic -- this is about police becoming more visible on the Internet," Gamble told Reuters on Wednesday.
Under the plan, an officer would appear in a chat area from time to time to observe conversations and would be identified with a type of "cyber badge" or icon for the "Virtual Global Task Force" to let everyone in the chatroom know, Gamble said.
"We want to give the potential predator the idea that we are present to make them think 'will I loiter here or will I flee from that particular chatroom?"'
The problem of pedophile "grooming" of children in chatrooms has been growing.
Last year, Microsoft's MSN Web portal shut down chatrooms in nearly every country where it operated, saying they had become a haven for pedophiles and spam-peddlers.
The move was greeted with mixed emotions. Child safety groups welcomed it, but others feared that the criminal element would burrow further underground to prey on victims.
Gamble also said the taskforce would begin working with banks, credit card associations and Internet service providers to identify Web sites that sell access to illegal content, notably child pornography.
The aim is to freeze the assets of these Web site operators. "We are looking to strip the money out of organized crime," he said.
Gamble had no timeframe for when he would like to see the initiative begin.
The National Crime Squad is working, among others, with America's Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Australian Federal Police.