pornography2

Internet exploitation of children is prompting action in US and abroad.
NEW YORK – Despite highly publicized arrests, law-enforcement officials say that
the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet is growing dramatically. Over
the past four years, the number of reports of child pornography sites to the
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has grown by almost
400 percent. Law-enforcement officials are particularly disturbed by the increased
number of commercial sites that offer photos of exploited children in return for a
credit-card number. Those fighting child porn say it has become a global
multibillion-dollar industry.
"We are encountering staggering proportions of violators or offenders we would
have never imagined years ago," says Ray Smith, who oversees child exploitation
investigations by the United States Postal Inspection Service. "It is an exploding
problem worldwide, and particularly in the US," adds Ernie Allen, president of
NCMEC.
Efforts to stem the upsurge are taking place on multiple fronts. At the G-8 summit
in Scotland last month, officials said that Interpol, an international police
organization, is putting together a global database of offenders and victims. And
this week, 3,000 law-enforcement officials from around the US are meeting in
Dallas to discuss ways to attack Internet crimes against children.
On the state level, New Jersey and Florida are among those enacting
requirements for sexual predators to wear GPS devices that keep track of their
whereabouts.
One of the biggest pushes against the purveyors is aimed at shutting down the
use of credit cards. NCMEC is currently talking to MasterCard about making it
even harder to subscribe to the commercial sites.
"We're trying to mobilize the financial industry to choke off the money," says Mr.
Allen.
At MasterCard, spokeswoman Sharon Gamsin says her organization is "appalled
people are using our systems for illegal transactions involving child
pornography, and finding a way to stop this is a priority."
Two years ago, Visa International began a program to try to identify child porn
sites allowing transactions with its credit cards. It hired a firm that used retired
federal agents to go through the Internet searching for sites, and it says it's still
searching the Web for illicit sites today.
Good marks for effort
Officials generally give the credit-card companies good marks for their efforts.
"The financial industry is made up of real people with children, and they want this
thing ended for society, too," says Mr. Smith, who has been fighting the illegal
merchandise since 1982.
To try to help credit-card companies and law-enforcement officials identify
websites, NCMEC has hired a consultant to search online for illicit sites. "We
provide the information first to law enforcement and then do reviews to see if
they follow up," he says. "Otherwise, we send a cease-and-desist order to the
method-of-payment services [such as a credit-card company] and try to engage
banks and regulators." Allen notes that he recently met with Asian bankers to
seek cooperation.
' We are encountering staggering proportions of violators or offenders we would
have never imagined years ago.'

Ray Smith, United States Postal Inspection Service

Shutting off the money flow could help, agree officials. Jim Plitt, director of the US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Cyber Crime Center, believes that
the growth of the child porn industry is part of what he terms the "illegal business
cycle" - where groups watching the huge profits decide to join in.
"The emphasis is on the money. That's where you focus," says Mr. Plitt, who adds,
"more cases are coming."
When law-enforcement officials have cracked the organizations, they often find
that the organizations have many illegal websites that are collecting money. That
was the case with Regpay, a company in Minsk, Belarus, which provided credit-
card billing services for 50 child porn websites worldwide.
Indeed, the groups are often international in scope. The Regpay investigation
resulted in the initial arrests of 35 people in the United States, France, and Spain.
"The actual businesses themselves are not necessarily large, but they have a
large membership pool," says Plitt.
When Regpay was broken up two years ago, it had 70,000 subscribers - 4,000 in
New Jersey alone. Recently, in fact, 11 more individual subscribers were arrested
in New Jersey, and more arrests are on the way, say officials. [Editor's note: The
original version misstated the number of subscribers.]
Because the membership pool was so large, law-enforcement officials have
broken the prosecutions down into two phases. The first phase was to dismantle
the financial apparatus, including businesses in Florida and California that
processed US credit-card transactions. The second phase, which is ongoing, is to
arrest individuals who subscribed to the sites.
'Prioritized' arrests
"They are prioritized, so we are targeting individuals with access to children,
people of trust in the community, and the most egregious subscribers who had
lots of transactions," says Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for ICE. "What you'll
see in the cases made are schoolteachers, pediatricians, a campus minister, a
Boy Scout leader, and other individuals in those types of positions."
ICE is now arresting individuals who subscribed to the sites multiple times.
Although the arrests themselves get the word out to the pedophile community,
some law-enforcement officials are optimistic that technology may ultimately help
them stem the tide. "I think there will come a time in the not-too-distant future
where, working with the [Internet service provider] community and the financial
community, they will be able to package information and put it into computers that
will not allow people to subscribe to these sites," says Smith.
However, he adds, "We have First Amendment issues so we can't completely shut
down all pornographic sites."