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Online Child Sex Offenders: Challenges and Counter-Measures

May 2013
The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice Vol. 52(No. 2):190-215

DOI:10.1111/hojo.12006

Authors:

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The aim of this article is straightforward and practical: by utilising elements of routine activity and rational choice theories, it explains how online child sex offenders use the Internet and what can be done to counter the challenge they pose. The discussion opens with definitions of child pornography, child erotica, child exploitation material and paedophilia. Its main objective is to promote online protection of children. It is explained that online child sex offenders and paedophiles use the Internet to create virtual communities; collect, share and trade images; tempt, seduce and groom children. Then the article explores what hwas been done in the Western world to combat those criminal activities. Successful campaigns against child pornography require shared responsibility and effort by parents, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), legal enforcement and the international community at large.

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Online Child Sex Offenders:

Challenges and Counter-Measures

RAPHAEL COHEN-ALMAGOR

Chair in Politics, Department of Politics and International Studies,

University of Hull

Abstract: The aim of this article is straightforward and practical: by utilising elements of

routine activity and rational choice theories, it explains how online child sex offenders use

the Internet and what can be done to counter the challenge they pose. The discussion

opens with deﬁnitions of child pornography, child erotica, child exploitation material and

paedophilia. Its main objective is to promote online protection of children. It is explained

that online child sex offenders and paedophiles use the Internet to create virtual commu-

nities; collect, share and trade images; tempt, seduce and groom children. Then the article

explores what has been done in the Western world to combat those criminal activities.

Successful campaigns against child pornography require shared responsibility and effort

by parents, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), legal enforcement and the international

community at large.

Keywords: child pornography; child sex offenders; paedophilia; cybercrime;

encryption; grooming; hotline; responsibility; virtual community

Pornographers were always among the ﬁrst to recognise and exploit the

potential of each new wave of communication technology, from the print-

ing press and early photography to ﬁlm and video, and now the Internet

(Johnson 1996). Already by the late 1980s, paedophiles and child pornog-

raphy enthusiasts were among the most experienced and knowledgeable

members of the computerised communication world, so they were well

placed to beneﬁt from the many technological leaps of the next few years

(Jenkins 2001, p.47).

The Internet became a global phenomenon in the early 1990s. Then

the pernicious character of child pornography and the potential connec-

tion between this behaviour and violence was documented (Haas 2000;

Henderson 2005). While the open commercial sale of child pornography

was no longer tolerated in most democracies, the availability of child

pornography became easier and plentiful (Meyer 2007; Gillespie 2008).

The Internet enables the global, speedy, efﬁcient and anonymous dis-

tribution of child pornography. Internet-based collections of child pornog-

raphy are no longer bulky. Digitised images do not make the same storage

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The Howard Journal Vol 52 No 2. May 2013 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12006

ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 190–215

190

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

demands that hard-copy images do, a fact of considerable importance for

collectors, and online child sex offenders tend to collect images. Digital

technology and web cameras allow offenders to produce, transmit and

exchange images of child sexual abuse in seconds and in real-time (Hiber

2009; Wolak 2010; interview with Shawn Henry 2008). Ease of access

means that large collections can be relatively easily acquired, exchanged

and expanded.

Internet processes also enable and drive the production of new mate-

rial. The sheer volume of material available means that in the main,

speciﬁc, and perhaps obscure, fantasies can be met. Newness, therefore,

becomes an attribute of continued sexual interest and arousal (Taylor and

Quayle 2003, p.200). At the same time, the Internet provides new oppor-

tunities for offenders to contact children for sexual pleasure.

This article utilises elements of routine activity and rational choice

theories to explain how online child sex offenders use the Internet and

what can be done to counter the challenge they pose. Its main objective is

to promote online protection of children. The following discussion opens

with deﬁnitions of child pornography, child erotica, child exploitation

material and paedophilia. It goes on to highlight the main uses of the

Internet by online child sex offenders and paedophiles, and suggests ways

to ﬁght child pornography.

The article’s methodology consisted of two tiers: books, peer-reviewed

articles, newspaper articles and reports, governmental and law-

enforcement reports were used to set the agenda for the research and to

inquire about the clandestine aspects of online child sex offenders. Second,

realising the massive challenge and the threat, information about the

counter-activity was sought: What can be done to undermine and stop

online child sex offenders? To ﬁnd an answer to this question I commu-

nicated with law-enforcement ofﬁcers in the USA, England, Canada and

Australia, and conducted extensive interviews with Internet experts and

senior law-enforcement ofﬁcers. The insights of senior law-enforcement

ofﬁcers are truly revealing and shed an important light on the Sisyphean

struggle against online child sex offenders. The interviews were conducted

during 2008–2011 at interviewees’ ofﬁces, at my ofﬁce kindly provided by

the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington,

DC, as well as at restaurants and coffee shops. The interviews were semi-

structured. I began with a list of questions but did not insist on answering

all of them if the interviewee preferred to speak about subjects that were

not included in the original questionnaire. The length of interviews varied

from 1.5 hours to almost 3 hours.

After transcribing each interview I sent the text to the interviewee/s

explaining that this was his/her/their text and that they were welcome to

introduce any changes as they saw ﬁt. Some of my interviewees asked to

use the text without any attribution. Some asked that part of the text

will be without attribution. Given the sensitivity of the matter, I have

respected all requests. The new data were analysed according to themes:

the challenges that the sex offenders pose and the counter-measures in

use.

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Appendix A contains the interviewees’ questionnaire; Appendix B lists,

in alphabetical order, the interviews and communications with senior

law-enforcement ofﬁcers and Internet experts, with their title and the date

of interview/communication.

Deﬁnitions

Adult pornography assumes consent: adults voluntarily engage in sexual

activity and voluntarily agree to be photographed while engaging in that

activity. Conversely, children cannot consent to their abuse – both physical

in engaging them in sexual activity, as well as pictorial in photographing

them in sexual context. Thus child pornography, by deﬁnition, is abusive

and coercive. Every depiction of sexual intercourse with real children is

considered to be molestation, a criminal act. Liberal democracies take it

upon themselves to protect vulnerable third parties, and children are

perceived as worthy of protection against adult abuse.

The age of consent for sexual intercourse differs from one country to

another. In the UK, the age of consent is 16 years. In Canada, it is between

16 and 18 years of age. In Australia, the criminal code speaks of young

people under the age of 16 years. In some US states (Indiana, Iowa), the

speciﬁed age is 14 years (Worldwide Ages of Consent. Available at: http://

www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm).1

The typical legal deﬁnition of child pornography involves sexual depic-

tions of youth. In Europe: ‘audiovisual material which uses children in a

sexual context’ is restricted under the Council of Europe deﬁnition (Healy

2004). The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) deﬁni-

tion of child pornography goes beyond visual representation to include a

‘child’s sexual behaviour or genitals’ (Lipschultz 2008, pp.70–1).

For the purpose of this article, online child sex offenders are people who

watch, download, store and transmit images of children in a sexual

context. Communications with senior police ofﬁcers in Britain, Canada

and Australia revealed that this is the term they use when referring to

people who are interested in child pornography and in engaging with

children for sexual gratiﬁcation (interview with Ruth Allen 2011; discus-

sion with Bruce McFarlane 2011; communication of Kevin Woodley

2008).2They see signiﬁcant connection between watching and engaging,

and consider both as sexual offences. Child sex offenders engage in watching,

downloading, storing and transmitting images of children in a sexual

context and they also produce images of children in a sexual context.

Online child sex offenders utilise the Internet for this purpose.

A further distinction is between child erotica (sometimes termed soft-

core child pornography) and child exploitation material (or child sexual

abuse images, sometimes termed hard-core child pornography). Child

erotica depicts children in the nude, in various positions, some could be

quite innocent, that is, nude children who visit naturalist camps with their

families. You can easily access naturist magazines like Jeunes et Naturels

on the Internet (see http://www.natours.hu/galeria/1995/1995jul_jeunes/

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index.htm). European countries are far more tolerant than the US, if not

lax, in their attitude regarding the showing of child nudity in a non-sexual

context. The context and intentions are of utmost importance. A person

may take photos of his naked children on the beach, store them on his

computer and share them with his close family. There is nothing wrong in

doing it. But the moment he circulates those same pictures on the Internet

for sexual motives they transform from being innocent, private family

photos into sexual, public child pornography.

In the late 1990s, the Combating Paedophile Information Networks in

Europe (COPINE) project at the University of Cork, in co-operation with

the Paedophile Unit of the London Metropolitan Police, developed a

typology to categorise child abuse images for use in both research and law

enforcement. The ten-level typology, ranging from non-erotic and non-

sexualised pictures showing children in their underwear or swimming

costumes from either commercial sources or family albums, to pictures

showing children being tied, bound, beaten, whipped or otherwise subject

to something that implies pain, as well as pictures in which children

sexually engage with an animal, was based on analysis of images available

on websites and Internet newsgroups (Copine Scale, see http://chris-

ukorg.org/paedophile-party-members/).

Child exploitation material (CEM) depicts children engaging in sexual

activity. If those images are of real children (to be distinguished from

computer-generated images) then those images show criminal offences. In

most countries in the world, sexual activity with children violates their

respective criminal codes.

The term ‘paedophilia’ is a clinical term and is used to refer to a

psychosexual disorder involving a sexual preference for children. Accord-

ing to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2000), pae-

dophilia involves recurrent, intense sexual urges and fantasies which last

for at least six months and focus on pre-pubescent children (see ‘Child

Protection Tips’, Life Tips. Available at: http://childprotection.lifetips.com/cat/

63575/pedophile-search-and-statistics/). The ICD-10 deﬁnes paedophilia as ‘a

sexual preference for children, boys or girls or both, usually of prepuber-

tal or early pubertal age’ (World Health Organization, The ICD-10 Classi-

ﬁcation of Mental and Behavioural Disorders. Available at: http://www.who.int/

classiﬁcations/icd/en/GRNBOOK.pdf; see also Seto 2009). Under the ICD-10,

a person of 16 years of age or older meets the deﬁnition if he has a

persistent or predominant sexual preference for pre-pubescent children at

least ﬁve years younger than him. Ruth Allen, head of the Specialist

Operational Support Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre

(CEOP), argues that indecent images are used to fuel abuse (interview with

Ruth Allen 2011). Child pornography creates demand for content. Detec-

tive Senior Constable Bruce McFarlane of the Victoria Police Force of

Australia Global Terrorism Research Centre noted in his comments (27

March 2011) that most online child sex offenders who watch, download,

store and transmit CEM images are not paedophiles. They can only obtain

sexual satisfaction via engagement with children. These people carry on

ordinary lives and maintain adult sexual relationships with their wives,

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girlfriends, etc.; however they also use CEM as a means of sexual gratiﬁ-

cation. Hence all offenders who use CEM are online child sex offenders,

but not all online child sex offenders are paedophiles or molesters/

predators. A recent study shows that of the total combined sample of 4,697

online offenders, 17.3% (n =812) were known to have committed a contact

sexual offence, mostly against a child (Seto, Hanson and Babchishin 2011).

In the UK, there are 47,000 registered sex offenders (interview with Ruth

Allen 2011).

For What Purposes do Online Child Sex Offenders Use the Internet?

Creating Virtual Communities

The Internet facilitates online child sex offenders and paedophiles’ net-

working, allowing communication and access to unlimited numbers of

like-minded people. Any concentration of offenders increases the likeli-

hood that a given offender will ﬁnd available co-offenders suitable for joint

or supportive criminal activities (Tremblay 1993, p.20). Indeed, offenders

frequently associate with each other, share information, and recruit each

other to participate in criminal activities (Johnson, Natarajan and Sanabria

1993, p.213). The supportive environment offered by the Internet

involves both social consolidation and validation (Taylor and Quayle 2003,

p.13). These online communities are generally not illegal in most countries

if they are only ‘discussing’ the issue. The Internet has made it possible for

online child sex offenders to ﬁnd entire online fraternities of like-minded

people with whom to share experiences and gain reassurance of a sup-

porting group (interviews and discussions with Ruth Allen 2011, Bruce

McFarlane 2011 and Shawn Henry 2008).

Collecting and Sharing

As already stated, online child sex offenders like to collect images of child

pornography, and they like to share those images. With modern technol-

ogy they are able to transmit child pornography instantly and anony-

mously to one another. Worse still, encryption also makes it possible for all

these transmissions to be hidden in virtually unbreakable code (Berg 2005,

pp.36–7).

Ruth Allen explained that child sex abusers are using TOR which

provides a secure network. TOR is the most popular onion router. It is

called an onion router because it builds a new chain of servers and

encryption keys for each Netuser at frequent intervals. The TOR network

is composed of several hundred nodes, processing trafﬁc from hundreds

of thousands of anonymous Netusers. TOR helps Netusers defend against

a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and

privacy. It is comprised of software that can be downloaded for free, and

a volunteer network of computers that enables the operation of the soft-

ware.3TOR employs cryptography in a multi-layered manner so Netusers

can communicate secretly via different routers. It protects one’s identity by

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bouncing one’s communications around a distributed network of relays

run by volunteers all around the world. It prevents somebody watching

the Internet connection from learning what sites the Netuser visits, and it

protects the Netuser’s physical location. When one uses the TOR software,

one’s real IP address remains hidden.

Thus, TOR enables complete unbreakable anonymity. It is possible to

chat on TOR with assured privacy. There is also a hidden Wikipedia which

provides a list of URLs that primarily deal with child abuse images. People

need to sign up to gain access to the list. Allen maintained that the TOR

network, however, is slow and difﬁcult to share images (interview with

Ruth Allen 2011).

The collections are organised according to ages, gender, ethnic origin,

hair colour and other children’s characteristics, what was done to them

(assault, gross assault, sadism, bestiality), erotic poses, nudism (Quayle and

Taylor 2002; Taylor, Holland and Quayle 2001). When online child sex

offenders complete the series, many make them freely available for others,

as a comradeship service to other members of the community. They pride

themselves by completing series of images (such as KG, KX or Tiny

Americans). KG and Tiny Americans are series of thousands of nude

images of very young girls (in KG, many were aged between three and six

years) (Jenkins 2001, p.62). The KX series depicts these same girls in

hard-core sexual situations with one or more men (interviews with Ruth

Allen 2011, Carolyn Atwell-Davis, Michelle K. Collins and Julie A. Gottlieb

2008).

Some online child sex offenders use servers that host user-generated

photos: GigaTribe,4Google, Yahoo! They create their own web pages, and

interested parties will need a password to enter, but these sites are rela-

tively easy to track. Online child sex offenders take risks by doing this, but

they still do. They want to share and exchange the photos they have. They

do this for sexual gratiﬁcation (interview with Carolyn Atwell-Davis,

Michelle K. Collins and Julie A. Gottlieb 2008). Some of them are getting

caught in the process and pay the price for their lax security standards.

Trade

Prior to the Internet, trade had to be done either through magazines or by

word of mouth, which meant a potential loss of anonymity. Equally, mate-

rials had to be sent through the post, which both restricted quantity and

increased the likelihood of detection. Through the Internet, trade in child

pornography not only becomes easier, but carries with it assumed ano-

nymity (Taylor and Quayle 2003, p.160). The ability to trade images and

to let people have free access to the collection is an important feature of the

Internet. Paedophiles who use Internet Relay Chat (IRC) can make avail-

able the contents of their hard drive to other Netusers via File Transmis-

sion Protocols (FTPs). Peer-to-peer networks such as Limewire, Kazaa and

E-Mule are in use. This remains the best method of transferring large

amounts of material across the Internet and can usually be accessed

anonymously (Taylor and Quayle 2003, p.160; Eneman 2005; Henderson

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2005; Lipschultz 2008; interviews at The National Center for Missing and

Exploited Children 2008 and with Ruth Allen 2011).

In the above uses of the Internet there is no actual harm inﬂicted on

minors to participate in such images and ﬁlms. So far, this article has

described the use of images that are already available, not the production

of new ones through the use of real children.5

Tempting, Seducing and Grooming

Online child sex offenders, like other predators (Felson 1993, p.105) use

manipulation and coercion to compel the target to engage in the desired

behaviour. The Internet makes children desirable targets as they are high

in value, low in inertia, visible and accessible. It is estimated that one in ﬁve

children aged 10–17 years have received a sexual solicitation over the

Internet (see http://www.netnanny.com/products/netnanny). Michael J. Heim-

bach of the FBI was asked whether child molesters use child pornography

to seduce children and his answer was undeniably ‘yes’.6

Child pornography is used as a learning instrument in the grooming

process, whereby a child-pornographer befriends a child, gains the child’s

trust, and then presses for sex (Ost 2009). The virtual reality allows

unlimited identity play, and manipulative child pornographers exploit this

capacity aiming to desensitise the child to sexual demands, reduce inhibi-

tion, and encourage the victim to normalise sexual activities.

Indeed, part of the grooming process is the normalisation of sexual

activity with children and breaking down inhibitions. Offenders use child

pornography to teach children how to masturbate, perform oral sex and

engage in sexual intercourse. Sometimes, blackmail is also involved,

usually at the later stage, after the child has been exposed to some sort of

pornography, or after the child has performed sexual favours. The satu-

ration of the Internet with such material may serve to ‘normalise’ this

behaviour and probably makes it easier to objectify children as sexual

artifacts. Child pornography is also thought to reinforce a person’s sexual

attraction to children (Stanley 2005, pp.99–100; Meyer 2007, p.124).

Interactive communication on the Internet, such as chat rooms, offer

child sexual offenders easy ways for accessing children. In chat rooms, a

child is usually alone and therefore susceptible to inﬂuence and persuasion

by the offender. Social-networking sites have been shown to attract sexual

predators (Schonfeld 2009).7

What Can Be Done?

Effective and responsible policy to protect children from online sex

offenders must be comprehensive and integrative in nature, based on

multiple guardians around the child, reducing opportunities for preda-

tors, and convincing them that the anticipated beneﬁts from the offence

are not worth the risks of arrest and conﬁnement. Responsibility starts

with parents, and continues with the education system, the Internet

Service Providers (ISPs) and other business companies. Furthermore,

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responsibility also rests with the State and the international community at

large.

Parental Control

Cohen and Felson (1979) argue that certain changes in the modern

world have provided motivated offenders with a greatly-increased range

of opportunities for committing crime. Their routine activity approach

emphasises how illegal activities feed on routine legal activities. It states

three minimal elements for direct-contact predatory crime that need to

converge in time and space: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the

absence of capable guardians to prevent the crime (Clarke and Felson

1993; Vold, Bernard and Snipes 2002, p.206). Predatory crimes need

targets with guardians absent and, thus, we must ascertain that children

enjoy enough protection.

There is a range of tools speciﬁcally designed to protect children from

online predators. The ﬁrst of these tools delivers long-range protection by

monitoring, analysing and assessing online relationships as they develop

over a period of time. It does this by examining live chat and instant

messenger conversations. It is called the Engine for Relationship Analysis,

or ERA for short. ERA reads between the lines of these conversations,

examining behaviour and providing an insight into what motivations

correspondents really have. In essence, this is an anti-grooming engine

that offers parents a means of protecting their children online, while

letting them retain their freedom.8When ERA uncovers potentially

harmful behaviour, it alerts the parents.

Another tool protects children by scanning message dialogue for key-

words and phrase patterns. It is called the Engine for Content Analysis

(ECA). ECA provides medium-range protection by searching for speciﬁc

content that can be an indicator for the types of harmful behaviour that

ERA uncovers. ECA searches for certain types of sexual and profane

language and also for personal information such as phone numbers and

addresses, the disclosure of which may compromise children’s safety (see

http://www.crispthinking.com).

There is also a system to help virtual communities who host live chat

facilities shield their young users from inappropriate content and enforce

their codes of conduct. This is the Real-time Message Filter (RMF). The

RMF offers short-range protection by either screening out or blocking

completely any inappropriate content before it reaches its intended

recipient (see http://www.crispthinking.com/; see also http://www.tempero.co.uk/

Home.jhtml). At present, however, not many people are aware of these

protective tools and fewer are willing to pay for them. These products

should be widely publicised; as they become more popular their price will

be reduced.

Net Nanny is a better known ﬁlter. It allows a parent or guardian to

monitor everything passing through the computer. Net Nanny offers a

simple, easy-to-use set-up assistance to help parents determine what online

activities (websites, chat, gaming and social networks) are appropriate,

based on the family member’s age (Net Nanny™ 6.5 New Features. Available

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at: http://www.netnanny.com/products/netnanny). Surf Watch is another known

software package that lets parents and educators limit access to sexually-

explicit material on the Internet without restricting the access rights of

other Netusers (Haas 2000, p.139).9Both are powerful, affordable (selling

for under $50) and reliable web content ﬁltering appliances.

Parents have responsibility, but certainly not sole responsibility. Adoles-

cents do not necessarily consult with their parents, or see their parents as

an authority to abide by. Adolescents who are targeted by child predators

tend not to be very receptive to the advice of their parents. Some of them

are estranged from their parents, are victims of familial abuse, or dealing

with sensitive issues such as inner conﬂicts about sexual orientation that

they feel their parents will not understand (Wolak et al. 2008).

Educating Children

Schools have an important part to play in equipping children with the

necessary education. Prevention approaches need to acknowledge the

independence and developmental interests of adolescents, recognising

that adolescents have sexual feelings and urges, and that these are normal.

People, especially young people, have a healthy curiosity about sex, and

information should be supplied about legitimate and illegitimate modes of

behaviour. Youth need candid, direct discussions about seduction and how

some adults can exploit their vulnerabilities. Romantic advances among

peers are one thing; they are very inappropriate when they are expressed

by adults. Prevention messages should focus on online advances preying

on inexperienced and vulnerable youth because Internet-initiated sex

crimes come about through direct communications between predators and

victims. There is a pressing need to educate youth about Internet inter-

actions that are most associated with victimisation, such as talking online

about sex to unknown people (Wolak et al. 2008). Developing in children

and youth an ethic of responsible choice and skills for appropriate behav-

iour is essential for all efforts to protect them.

In the UK, CEOP works to prevent sexual abuse by carrying out

educational campaigns at schools, the Football Association and other

groups for children and youth. These programmes are designed to

promote awareness to the danger of sexual abuse. There are also pro-

grammes to educate parents and carers and programmes to educate

police, social workers and professionals about how to manage and inter-

view sex offenders (interview with Ruth Allen 2011).

ISPs’ Responsibility

A number of Internet servers permit individuals to establish interest

groups, to which people can post images or messages. Since sites can be

accessed without payment or subscription, users are prima facie anony-

mous. Yahoo! owns egroups.com, a collection of many thousands of

groups on virtually every topic imaginable: business and computers,

health and ﬁtness, leisure, shopping, habits, sports, etc. Opening a new

group is free and straightforward, thus, unsurprisingly, we ﬁnd thousands

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of sexually-oriented groups, the vast majority dedicated to legal adult

topics. Some of them, however, are involved with child pornography. Sex

offenders use children and youth sites to get in touch with children, target

them, begin relationships, and push to meet them in real life. In the UK,

primarily social networking sites (Facebook) and gaming sites are used for

this purpose (interview with Ruth Allen 2011). The management of

Yahoo!, MSN, Facebook and other social networking web providers are

well aware of the problem they face (interviews with Daniel Castro 2008

and Jennifer King 2008). Offending groups are closed swiftly by the major

Internet intermediaries when a Netuser informs them of child porn activ-

ity, sometimes within hours (Jenkins 2001, p.63). A web expert who

worked for Yahoo! in monitoring Yahoo! Groups explained that a small

number of experts who specialise in social networking could devise

batches of programs to look for illegal material and remove it. This expert

did this for Yahoo! in its struggle against child pornography (discussion

with Jennifer King 2008).10 Microsoft had created a system to help monitor

and track down online child pornography (Lapin 2009). Marc Rotenberg,

President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that the capa-

bility to monitor the Internet is greater than what most people assume. It

is a question of will, not of ability (interview with Marc Rotenberg 2008).

Establishing online trust is of vital importance for a successful business.

The Oxford Dictionary deﬁnes trust as ‘conﬁdence, strong belief, in the

goodness, strength, reliability of something or somebody’.11 Trust is a

social phenomenon that requires acquaintance and some knowledge on

the part of the person who trusts and the person or thing that is trusted.

It is about transparency and expectations from the trusted partner. The

more transparent the relationships, the more expectation a person pos-

sesses regarding the level of trust she can have in the relationships. When

transparency is dubious it is difﬁcult to gain and maintain trust (Cohen-

Almagor 2010).

One study suggests that the social connections that people make on the

Internet do not promote trust – indeed, there is some evidence that chat

rooms may bring together mistrusting people (Uslaner 2004). However,

there is evidence that close and meaningful relationships are formed

online, and many of these relationships involve some degree of trust

(Weckert 2005, p.112). To promote trust and healthy business, some social

networking sites review to some degree their own online spaces for inap-

propriate and illegal content, including child pornography, in addition to

responding to user reports regarding such content. AOL, for instance, ‘has

implemented technologies to identify and remove images of child pornog-

raphy and to help eliminate the sending of known child pornography’,

including blocking transmissions of ‘apparent pornographic images’ (ﬁnal

report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force 2008, p.25). AOL

maintains a library of the signatures. When it identiﬁes the transmission of

one of the images, the transmission is blocked and the image and user

information is referred to the National Center for Missing and Exploited

Children (NCMEC) for investigation. This procedure provides law

enforcement with vital information necessary for the prosecution of child

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pornography purveyors (ﬁnal report of the Internet Safety Technical Task

Force 2008, Appendix E; discussion with Holly Hawkins 2010). Other

social networking sites also take steps to address the challenge posed by

online child sex offenders. Google Orkut, Google’s online social network,

launched image-scanning technology which aims to detect images of

pornography (including child pornography) at the time of upload to the

website, followed quickly by removal.12 Bebo ‘proactively seeks out inap-

propriate content using software and other mechanisms to review such

content’ (ﬁnal report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force 2008).13

Community Connect Inc. uses a ‘photo approval process for all social main

photos to prevent inappropriate photos from appearing as the main photo

on personal pages’ and requires approval for ‘all main photos in Groups’

(ﬁnal report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force 2008).14 MTV

Networks/Viacom screens uploads for inappropriate content using ‘human

moderation and/or identity technologies’. MySpace ‘reviews images and

videos that are uploaded to the MySpace servers and photos deep-linked

from third-party sites’, and Facebook deploys a variety of technology tools,

including easily-available reporting links on photos and videos (ﬁnal report

of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force 2008, p.25).15

American ISPs are required to make a report of child pornography to

www.cybertipline.com, a hotline at NCMEC. The CyberTipLine then for-

wards the report involving the child pornography-related incident to a

law-enforcement agency designated by the Attorney General. An initial

failure to report by an ISP could result in a ﬁne of up to $50,000, and any

subsequent failures could result in a ﬁne of up to $100,000.16 I am told that

there is dual-way co-operation between NCMEC and ISPs. NCMEC pro-

vides queries and information to ISPs, and they to NCMEC. There is no

need to resort to coercive measures with ISPs for co-operation. They are

willing to co-operate as it is good for their business. After all, they do not

wish to serve online child sex offenders, or to have the reputation of

helping spread child pornography (interview with Carolyn Atwell-Davis,

Michelle K. Collins and Julie A. Gottlieb 2008).

In the UK, CEOP co-operates with 80–90% of ISPs, including British

Telecom, Sky, O2, Virgin, TalkTalk, Orange and Plusnet (interview with

Ruth Allen 2011). In both the USA and the UK, however, the problem lies

with small ISPs that do not report to NCMEC. Senior ofﬁcers at NCMEC

cannot say how many such small servers are out there (interview with

Carolyn Atwell-Davis, Michelle K. Collins and Julie A. Gottlieb 2008).

According to a 2005 press release, only 142 of more than 3,000 electronic

communications service providers in the USA comply with Federal law and

report to NCMEC (Akdeniz 2008, p.262). This predicament should be

addressed and rectiﬁed. It is also possible for online child sex offenders to

establish their own servers. Interestingly, NCMEC people said that this was

not a major problem, whereas FBI ofﬁcials asserted that fairly regularly,

online child sex offenders are setting their own providers, trying to cir-

cumvent the need for subscribing to a large provider. Moreover, only US

companies are mandated to report to NCMEC (interviews with Shawn

Henry 2008 and Philip Mudd 2008).

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Protecting Children from Reckless Distribution

The Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS), developed by a con-

sortium of web publishers, allows tags that provide electronic ratings to be

attached to Internet addresses (Lessig 1999, p.177).17 The architecture of

PICS divides the problem of ﬁltering into two parts – labelling (rating

content) and then ﬁltering the content according to those labels. This

means that ﬁrst, websites self-rate their content. They, for instance, could

attach labels indicating if content contained nudity or violence. This is very

similar to the ratings system that exists for ﬁlms shown in cinemas. Second,

PICS supports the establishment of third-party labelling bureaus to ﬁlter

content. This separates the labelling of a web page from the publishing of

a web page (PICS HOWTO – using PICS headers in HTML. Available at:

http://vancouver-webpages.com/PICS/HOWTO.html). The labels identify sites’

content by measuring decency level through a rating system, implement-

ing privacy vocabulary which describes a website’s information practices,

or other similar techniques (Burch 2001, p.191).18 Governments could

require that all browser software and all mail and newsgroup reader

software contain PICS-sensitive technology. Once PICS is mandated, a

defence to the distribution to minors of obscene material would be the

inclusion of a PICS signal. Thus technology can be utilised to decrease

opportunities for criminals and better protect children. As rationally-

calculating offenders respond to opportunities to commit crimes, limiting

criminal opportunities would limit criminal activity (Cohen and Felson

1979; Trasler 1993; Felson and Clarke 1998). Opportunities are viewed as

being greatly inﬂuenced by the behaviour of the potential victims, by the

behaviour of predators and by the availability of technology. Each pub-

lisher of Internet material would be liable for the purposeful, knowing or

reckless distribution of such material (Saunders 2003, pp.173–4).

This PICS-based approach puts the onus on the sender or publisher. It

eliminates the massive, perhaps undoable, task of the government or an

independent board examining and providing ratings for millions of web-

sites. It also brings e-mail and newsgroups within the scope of regulation

(Saunders 2003, p.176).

Co-operation between Law Enforcement and Business

In the ﬁght against illegal activity, it is advisable to follow the money in

order to stiﬂe the operation of its oxygen, that is, the necessary funding. In

2006, NCMEC brought together the major credit card companies, includ-

ing MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover to co-operate with

its activities. These companies do not wish to make money by facilitating

child pornography. The Center has built the Financial Coalition Against

Child Pornography to bridge the gap between law enforcement and com-

mercial companies to decrease monitory transactions online. The compa-

nies also block these transactions or possibly help track sellers and buyers

if an investigation by law enforcement results. The group shares informa-

tion and takes collective action against child pornography merchants iden-

tiﬁed by complaints to the NCMEC hotline or resulting from Internet

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searches. This effort has produced some positive results in terms of dis-

ruption of online child sex offenders’ activities and has caused some

movement away from recognised payment brands and towards less

traditional payment mechanisms (interview with Carolyn Atwell-Davis,

Michelle K. Collins and Julie A. Gottlieb 2008; communication of Kevin

Woodley 2008).19

Co-operation and Co-ordination between Law-enforcement Agencies

As child offenders operate in the global cyber arena, it is critical that

law-enforcement ofﬁcers co-ordinate their activities. One ofﬁcer said that

when he started to work on the investigation of one child abuse network,

he did not know that other law-enforcement agencies from other countries

were working in the same online space (discussion with Bruce McFarlane

2011). Consequently, potentially UK law-enforcement ofﬁcers investigate

US law-enforcement ofﬁcers who pose as child sex offender, thus waste

time and resources. When it comes to arrest child offenders in different

countries, co-ordination is absolutely essential; otherwise some offenders

might be duly alerted by their friends and escape arrest.

Hotlines

The use of hotlines can establish new routes of communication between

Netusers, in particular, parents, media-industry initiatives, and law

enforcement. A hotline enables Netusers to respond to illegal Internet

content by drawing attention to where it is to be found. The hotline

receives the report and, if necessary, sets in motion a process of response.

The response includes processing the report, providing the user with

feedback and a decision about whether to forward the report to a law-

enforcement or a self-regulatory authority (Waltermann and Machill 2000,

p.17).

The Netherlands has established a telephone hotline and a website

permitting people to complain about Internet child porn sites. Complaints

are relayed to the provider, which is required to withdraw the sites in

order to forestall police intervention (Jenkins 2001, p.191).

In the USA, NCMEC’s toll-free hotline has received, since its inception

in 1984, more than 2.5 million calls. The CyberTipline has received more

than 628,000 reports since it was established in March 1998 (see http://

www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PublicHomeServlet?LanguageCountry=

en_US). In 2007 alone, the Center received nearly 100,000 reports, more

than 75% of them for online child pornography (Markon 2007; interview

with Carolyn Atwell-Davis, Michelle K. Collins and Julie A. Gottlieb

2008). In the last quarter of 2010, the hotline handled an average of 262

service-related calls per day (National Center for Missing and Exploited

Children, Statistics. Available at: http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/

servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2810#3).

In Canada, Cybertip.ca is the National Tipline for reporting online

sexual exploitation of children (see http://www.cybertip.ca/app/en/about). It

was established in September 2002, ﬁrst as a pilot project and then ofﬁ-

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cially launched in January 2005. Cybertip.ca was created in partnership

with the private and public sectors and law-enforcement agencies to

combat the online victimisation of children. It receives reports from the

public regarding child pornography, luring (grooming), child sex tourism,

child prostitution and exploited children (Akdeniz 2008, p.262). Since its

launch, Cybertip has received approximately 21,000 reports from the

public (communication of Kevin Woodley 2008).

In the UK, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) was established in

September 1996. The Home Ofﬁce, the Department for Trade and Indus-

try, the Metropolitan Police and ISPs, all played a crucial role in the

establishment of IWF. The government, industry and law-enforcement

agencies pledged to work together. The result was a Safety-Net proposal

that required UK ISPs to implement reasonable, practicable and propor-

tionate measures to hinder the use of the Internet for illegal purposes, and

to provide a response mechanism in cases where illegal material or activity

is identiﬁed (see http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/labeling/r3.htm). This led to

the formation of the IWF Hotline (http://www.iwf.org.uk/; Akdeniz 2008,

pp.252–3). The Hotline provides Netusers with a means of reporting

potentially illegal contents that are located on websites, newsgroups and

online groups (see http://www.iwf.org.uk/hotline). The IWF undertook to

inform all British ISPs once they had located allegedly illegal content. The

ISPs then have no excuse that they are unaware of the allegedly illegal

content, and the UK police would be entitled to take action against any ISP

which does not remove the relevant content. The Hotline is mainly con-

cerned with child pornography (see http://www.iwf.org.uk/; Akdeniz 2008,

p.254). People in the UK may also report to charities such as the NSPCC,

ChildLine and crime stoppers (see http://www.nspcc.org.uk/help-and-advice/

help_and_advice_hub_wdh71748.html;http://www.nspcc.org.uk/help-and-advice/

worried-about-a-child/the-nspcc-helpline/using-the-nspcc-helpline-hub_wdh72253.

html;http://www.childline.org.uk/Pages/Home.aspx;http://www.crimestoppers-uk.

org/?gclid=CKPzruOSt6gCFYEc4QodexkLCQ).

Some of the existing hotlines are associated in a global organisation

named INHOPE (The International Association of Internet Hotlines) (see

https://www.inhope.org/) which enjoys the support of law-enforcement agen-

cies, local governments and child welfare organisations. As sites can be

accessed by anyone anywhere, illegal content may be reported by a person

in one country, while the site can be hosted somewhere else. Once the

source is traced, hotlines pass reports over to the relevant country.

INHOPE has set processes for exchanging reports, to ensure that a rapid

response is taken. These hotlines deal mainly with three sorts of illegal

contents: child pornography, illegal activity in chat rooms and hate

speech20 as well as with paedophiles’ online grooming.

State Responsibility

In the USA, the aforementioned NCMEC was founded by the American

Congress in 1984. It receives funding from the Ministry of Justice and also

from private sources. It was decided to found the Center because many

law-enforcement ofﬁcers are not trained to deal with issues of missing and

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exploited children. The Center prepares reports, analyses information

received from different sources, mainly from the public and from major

ISPs (Yahoo!, Google, AOL). The Center serves as a clearing house of leads

on crimes against children, identifying jurisdiction for law enforcement

(interview with Carolyn Atwell-Davis, Michelle K. Collins and Julie A.

Gottlieb 2008). Crime investigation remains in the hands of the police and

the FBI.

In Canada, the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre

(NCECC) was established in 2004 as part of Canada’s National Strategy

to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet and in

response to the recognition of the growing and disturbing crime of

Internet-facilitated child sexual exploitation. The Centre’s mandate has

been reﬁned to reduce the vulnerability of children to Internet-facilitated

sexual exploitation by identifying victimised children; investigating and

assisting in the prosecution of sexual offenders; and strengthening the

capacity of municipal, territorial, provincial, federal, and international

police agencies through training and investigative support. Since its incep-

tion, the Centre has been a valuable part of the Canadian response to

Internet-facilitated child sexual exploitation. It has contributed signiﬁ-

cantly to Canadian law enforcement’s ability to investigate these offences

and co-ordinate investigative ﬁles nationally and internationally. The

NCECC is a partner of the Canadian Coalition Against Internet Child

Exploitation (CCAISE). This committee is comprised of ISPs, their indus-

try associations, Justice Canada, Industry Canada, Cybertip.ca, and Cana-

dian law enforcement (personal communication, NCECC, 22 July 2008).

The mandate of CCAISE is to provide solutions to reduce the sexual

exploitation of children on the Internet. Working with industry leaders

has led to the development of the Child Exploitation Tracking System

(CETS), assisting in the sharing of intelligence among Canadian law

enforcement (see Royal Canadian Mounted Police website at: http://

www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ncecc-cncee/cets-eng.htm).

CETS is a software tool developed by NCECC, international law-

enforcement ofﬁcials, and Microsoft to help battle online child abuse. This

tool helps law-enforcement ofﬁcials collaborate and share information with

other police services. CETS was created to increase the effectiveness of

investigators by providing them with software to store, search, share, and

analyse large volumes of evidence and match cases across police agencies.

CETS has played a part in several international investigations; creating

links that have helped apprehend offenders and, more importantly, led to

the rescue of children in different countries (see http://www.microsoft.com/

industry/publicsector/government/programs/CETsabout.mspx). CETS helped law-

enforcement agencies follow hundreds of suspects at a time and eliminate

duplicated work, making it easier for them to follow up on leads, collect

evidence, and apprehend online child sex offenders. Since 2004, Toronto

police ofﬁcers have used CETS in their investigations, resulting in 64

arrests and the identiﬁcation of 43 victims worldwide.21

In 2008, Cybertip.ca designed a campaign to raise awareness about the

techniques used by offenders to keep child sexual abuse a secret. Research

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has shown that only 30% of child sexual abuse victims disclose when they

are children. Children avoid telling because they are often afraid of a

negative reaction from parents or of being harmed by the abuser.22 The

campaign aimed to educate children that some secrets should not be kept

forever. Emphasis was put on the length of time children were required to

keep a secret. Some secrets, that do not have a concrete time limit, should

be disclosed. Indeed, we need to educate children more about how to

protect themselves from strangers and how to protect themselves from

people they know who make sexual advances and wish to extort or exploit

them.

In the UK, British Telecom, in partnership with IWF, developed the

CleanFeed Project in late 2003 (CleanFeed – The Facts. Available at:

https://publicaffairs.linx.net/news/?p=154). The CleanFeed Project is aimed

towards blocking access to any images or websites that contain child por-

nography within the IWF database. Customers of BT are prevented from

accessing the blocked content and websites. In July 2004, BT claimed that

within the ﬁrst three weeks of its launch of the CleanFeed system, it had

blocked 230,000 attempts to access child abuse websites (Akdeniz 2008,

p.258). The Project attempts to prevent people from deliberately or acci-

dentally accessing illegal sites in the UK and abroad. UK security ofﬁcials

believe that CleanFeed is able to block access to the majority of child

pornography (McIntyre 2012). At the same time, online child sex offend-

ers and paedophiles are making great strides at circumventing regulation.

Often they have their own obscure providers. But at least tools like Clean-

Feed are able to stop new seekers of child pornography, those who still did

not ﬁnd their way into the paedophile rings. A relevant distinction is

between the professional criminal, who is searching for, or creating, the

opportunity to commit crime, and the occasional criminal, who is taking

advantage of a criminal opportunity that presents itself (Fattah 1993,

p.247). Focused opportunity reduction can produce wider declines in

crime.

Finally, the work of CEOP is of signiﬁcant importance. This law-

enforcement agency, established in 2006, is dedicated to eradicating the

sexual abuse of children. It does research and intelligence as to how

offenders operate and think, how children and youth behave, and how

technological advances are developing. Specialist policing focus is placed

on organised crime proﬁteering from the publishing or distribution of

images, support for local forces in computer forensics and covert investi-

gations, and bolstering international co-operation. CEOP also incorpo-

rates the UK’s national victim identiﬁcation programme which is

employed to identify child victims by using a sophisticated database

and cutting-edge software (see http://www.ceop.gov.uk/about/index.asp). The

problem, however, is that only 120 people work in CEOP and double that

number is needed to address the challenge. Due to its limited resources,

CEOP primarily works to detect the most risky individuals who might

abuse children (interview with Ruth Allen 2011). A further problem to be

addressed relates to the abuse of social networking sites. More research

needs to be carried out on social networking and the connection between

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harmful speech and harmful action. In the UK, the conceptual stage of

research in this sphere started only in 2010 (interview with Rosa Beer and

Nisha Patel 2010).

Law-enforcement Trap Sites

Law enforcement can take advantage of the same Internet tools available

to sex offenders in order to catch them. My assumption is that offending

is purposive behaviour, designed to beneﬁt the offenders in some way

(Felson and Clarke 1998). If the risk is substantive and harm outweighs

beneﬁt, potential offenders might reconsider their behaviour. Trap sites

increase the predator’s perceived risk and may dissuade him from pursu-

ing criminal activity. R. Stephanie Good (2007) tells the story of an agent

who works with the FBI to tempt sex predators via the Internet, set time

and place, and seize them. As a 50-year-old can pose as a young boy to lure

youth, so can law-enforcement ofﬁcers assume false persona to catch

online child sex offenders (discussion with Bruce McFarlane 2011). The

FBI surfs suspected chat rooms and the like to arrest sex offenders (inter-

view with Shawn Henry 2008).

One study shows that most investigators met their targets in chat rooms

or through Internet Relay Chat (56%) or through instant messages (31%).

Nearly half of all investigations began in sex-oriented chat rooms. Inves-

tigators communicate with online child sex offenders mainly via chat

rooms (55%), instant messaging (79%) and e-mail (82%) (Mitchell, Wolak

and Finkelhor 2005, p.252). Experience shows that chats designed to gain

the sex offender’s trust may lead him to disclose enough information that

could reveal his true identity (McLaughlin 2004).

From time to time, the FBI or Interpol has established a trap site, a

website or bulletin board that either presented quite genuine child porn

material or allowed contributors to supply information about authentic

sites and URLs (Jenkins 2001, p.159). In 2005, in the USA alone, it was

estimated that proactive investigations represented a signiﬁcant propor-

tion (25%) of all arrests for Internet crimes against minors (Mitchell, Wolak

and Finkelhor 2005, p.241).

In 2002, US law-enforcement agencies received a tip about a child

pornography site. With the co-operation of the server operator, investiga-

tors said they determined that the site contained images of ‘clearly pre-

pubescent’ boys along with advertising describing the site’s content and

images. It charged a membership fee of $19.99 (‘Operation Web Sweep

targets porn’ 2002). In February 2002, authorities disabled the site and

then created a replacement at the same domain address. The website,

which contained no illegal content, resembled the original. Previous sub-

scribers were informed that the site was rebuilding its collection of images.

They could upload or transmit pictures to the site. Operation Web Sweep

identiﬁed nearly 200 potential suspects in 16 nations, including 29 states in

the USA (‘Sting Operations’, Adultlegalservices.com).

In the UK, Kids the Light of Our Lives is said to be Britain’s biggest-ever

Internet paedophile ring. The victims, who were babies and teenagers,

were often sexually assaulted live on the web while hundreds were watch-

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ing, after they booked paid appointments to view the abuse. There were at

least 700 users from 35 countries. Some of them had published ﬁlms and

photographs showing themselves abusing their own children. The opera-

tion was master-minded by 28-year-old Timothy Cox (aka ‘Son of God’),

who set up his site in December 2005 after a similar American chat room

called Kiddypics was shut down. Cox sent out more than 11,000 images of

the 76,000 images he had gathered. He also had 1,100 videos containing

316 hours of footage (London Evening Standard 2007; Doran 2007).

The ten-month probe began in the spring of 2005, when CEOP

received a tip-off from its Canadian counterparts. Undercover ofﬁcers

inﬁltrated the chat room, posing as online child sex offenders, and lured

Cox to provide them with vital evidence. After his arrest on 28 September

2006, police ofﬁcers assumed Cox’s identity and continued to operate his

site for another ten days before closing it down. Meanwhile they gathered

information about the dozens of abusers who ﬂocked to the site. Agencies

from all 35 countries, including Australia and the US, were involved in the

crackdown. Thirty-one children, some only a few months old, among

them 15 from the UK, were rescued worldwide (BBC News 2007). A few

months after Cox’s arrest, police ofﬁcers saw that the chat room was

resurrected by Gordon MacIntosh, a 33-year-old manager of a video

streaming company. After his arrest in January 2007, police found over

5,000 images on his computer and nearly 400 videos. Ofﬁcers assumed

MacIntosh’s identity online and ran his chat room for three days while

collecting information on offenders who traded images (Associated Press

2007).

International Responsibility

Because the Internet is international in character, and because sex offend-

ers co-operate notwithstanding national borders, there is a need for

international co-operation to crack down international rings of child

pornography. Without such co-operation, the rings will remain active.

Only effective international co-operation will increase the perceived effort

to commit crime, increase the perceived risks, and reduce the perceived

beneﬁts (Clarke 1997).

In 1989, the United Nations created the Convention on the Rights of the

Child, which is a signiﬁcant tool in the development of a co-ordinated

approach to controlling and combating child pornography. Among other

things, the Convention provides that: ‘States Parties shall take all appropri-

ate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect

the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse,

neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including

sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other

person who has the care of the child’ (Article 19.1), and States Parties

undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and

sexual abuse (Convention on the Rights of the Child. Available at: http://

www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm).

Signiﬁcant co-operative steps to ﬁght global Internet child pornogra-

phy were taken only during the last ten years or so. In December 2003, the

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Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) was established to ﬁght child abuse online.

The aims of the VGT are to build an effective, international partnership of

law-enforcement agencies that would help to protect children from online

child abuse: ‘to make the Internet a safer place; to identify, locate and help

children at risk; and to hold perpetrators appropriately to account’ (see

http://www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com).

The VGT is comprised of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre, the

British CEOP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the US

Department of Homeland Security, Interpol, and the Italian Postal and

Communication Police Service. The VGT has established a comprehen-

sive initiative that allows police from member countries to immediately

review and respond to online reports of child sexual exploitation that

have been submitted through the VGT tip line/website (communication of

Kevin Woodley 2008; interviews with Shawn Henry 2008 and Ruth Allen

2011).

In 2004, the Comprehensive Operational Strategic Planning for the

Police (COSPOL) Internet Related Child Abusive Material Project

(CIRCAMP) was set up. It is a multilateral law-enforcement instrument

under the guidance, support and direction of the European Police Chiefs

Taskforce (EPCTF). COSPOL working groups aim at achieving opera-

tional results in police investigations across EU Member States and at

dismantling criminal networks whilst ensuring that the EU Member States’

authorities make use of Europol’s analytical support. CIRCAMP focuses

on the commercial sexual exploitation of children, in removing or limiting

the customer base of commercial sites distributing child sexual abusive

material (see https://www.europol.europa.eu/).

In July 2007, the Council of Europe adopted the Convention on the

Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. Article

20 on child pornography accentuates Article 9 of the Convention on

Cybercrime (Convention on Cybercrime, CETS No. 185. Available at: http://

conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=185&CL=ENG). It

states that Each Party shall take the necessary legislative or other measures

to ensure that the production, distribution, transmission, procurement

and possession of child pornography are criminalised (Council of Europe,

Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual

Abuse, CETS No. 201. Available at: http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/

QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=201&CL=ENG).

Youth protection and the ﬁght against illegal and harmful contents are

vital. Proposals for solutions and initiatives are being discussed in the

European Union and other international bodies within their scope of

responsibility (OECD, G8 States, Council of Europe and UNESCO). Worth

mentioning in this context are the guiding activities of the European

Union, in particular the ‘Action Plan for the Promotion of the Safe Use

of the Internet’ (see http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=

OJ:C:1999:092:0012:0012:EN:PDF). The Action Plan serves to ﬁght illegal

and harmful contents, especially Internet contents, throughout the com-

munity. The document addresses the EU Member States as well as service

providers and user organisations.

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Conclusion

The Internet has made it easier for adults to commit crimes against

children. Predators no longer have to look for potential victims in public

places such as schoolyards, where they themselves might be spotted.

Instead, they can disguise their identity online, pretending to be children

or teens. Via the Internet, predators enter into the child’s safe haven, his

or her home, and abuse innocence and trust to build twisted relationships.

Growing Internet use among young people (Lenhart et al. 2010) puts

more and more of them at risk of such victimisation.

The Internet provides online child sex offenders with convenient ways

to communicate. It enables an international community, brings people

together, facilitates information, solicits support, and embodies desires.

People connect with each other, acquire information, encourage and reas-

sure one another, plan activities, and create a virtual community. Child

pornography and paedophilia become, for the interested parties, credible,

legitimate, and justiﬁed. Via the Internet, members of this community

help conﬁrm what they do.

Predators use the Internet for the production, manufacture and distri-

bution of child pornography. They also use the Internet to expose youth

to child pornography and encourage them to exchange pornography.

Predators entice and exploit children for the purpose of personal gratiﬁ-

cation, for commercial gains and for sexual tourism (interview with Shawn

Henry 2008). Modern encryption technology makes it possible for all these

activities to be hidden in virtually unbreakable code.

The ﬁght against child pornography is hard. It can be quite frustrating.

To quote one of the gurus of the electronic child porn world, ‘Godfather

Corleone’:

Looking at the enormous amount of lolita-lovers out there, very, very few get

arrested, the opposite of what most newbies [novices] seem to believe is the case,

those that actually do get arrested, do not get arrested for downloading or upload-

ing to abpep-t or visiting sites. Most people that get arrested do so for the following

reasons: 1. they had to repair their PC when those repairing the PC discovered pics

on the harddrive. 2. they have been trading thru e-mail. 3. They have been using

ICQ / IRC [chat-lines] for lolita business. (Jenkins 2006)

Indeed, a study that interviewed law-enforcement ofﬁcers shows that the

offenders under investigations used Internet communications such as

instant messages, e-mail, and chat rooms to meet and develop intimate

relationships with victims (Wolak et al. 2008; Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitch-

ell 2011).

Child pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses on the

Internet,23 and online child sex offenders use numerous tactics to evade law

enforcement’s efforts to capture them. Attempts to identify administrators

of these complex websites can prove exasperating for investigators. Law-

enforcement agencies must be aware of the techniques that online child sex

offenders use to further their illegal activities. Such knowledge is essential in

order to combat this critical international problem. And law-enforcement

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209

agencies need to bolster intra-state co-operation to crack the international

rings of child abuse. It will take some signiﬁcant effort to address the

challenge presented by online child sex offenders and paedophiles but the

effort is fully warranted. It is necessary to ascertain that children have

security for their development and growth, both ofﬂine and online.24

Appendix A

Interviewees’ Questionnaire

• What are your goals?

• How do you refer to those people? Terminology.

• What is the role of private parties (commercial organisations) in

addressing the problems?

• Should Internet Service Providers and hosting companies be held

accountable for content on their networks and web pages?

• What measures were taken by your country in order to combat

paedophilia?

• What can we learn from the experiences of other democratic societies

in addressing this problem?

• Level of co-operation with other countries?

• International co-operation between police forces around the globe to

stop those activities and to ﬁght against them.

• What strategies should be employed in ﬁghting down problematic

expressions in general, and on the Internet in particular:

education,

oversight,

liability of providers,

imposing business ban,

ﬁltering,

international co-operation (e.g., Working Group on Internet

Governance),

censorship,

prohibition,

shutting down websites.

• Do you monitor the Internet?

• Law-enforcement measures that were taken – what is done to curtail

the activities of people involved in those activities?

• What manpower is devoted to ﬁght down those activities?

• Police co-operation with legislators to ﬁght down those phenomena.

• How many paedophiles and child pornographers are there in your

country? In the world?

Appendix B

Interviews and Communications

Allen, Ruth, Head of Specialist Operational Support Child Exploitation

and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), London (18 April 2011).

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210

Atwell-Davis, Carolyn, Director of Legislative Affairs; Collins, Michelle

K., Director, Exploited Child Division; and Gottlieb, Julie A., Legislative

Affairs Manager, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,

Alexandria, VA. (2 April 2008).

Beer, Rosa, Policy Advisor and Patel, Nisha, Senior Research Ofﬁcer,

Home Ofﬁce, London (19 April 2010).

Castro, Daniel, Senior Analyst, Information Technology and Innova-

tion Foundation, Washington, DC. (9 May 2008).

Hawkins, Holly, Director, AOL Consumer Policy and Child Safety, New

York (25 March 2010).

Henry, Shawn, Deputy Assistant Director, Cyber Division, Federal

Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC. (26 March 2008).

King, Jennifer, Internet Research Specialist, Washington, DC. (13 June

2008).

McFarlane, Bruce, Detective Senior Constable, Victoria Police Force of

Australia Global Terrorism Research Centre, Wilton Park (1 February

2011).

Mudd, Philip, Associate Executive Assistant Director, National Security

Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC. (25 March

2008).

Rotenberg, Marc, President of the Electronic Privacy Information

Center, Washington, DC. (2 May 2008).

Woodley, Kevin, Public Affairs and Communication Services Directo-

rate, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (22 July 2008).

Notes

1 All websites in this article were accessed 12–14 November 2012.

2 For legal discussion of sex offences in the UK, speciﬁcally on the Crime and Disorder

Act 1998, see Knock (2002).

3 ‘What is a Tor Relay?’, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Available at: https://www.eff.org/

torchallenge/what-is-tor

4 GigaTribe was originally set up to support adult pornography but became a playing

ﬁeld for child sex abusers. Available at: http://www.gigatribe.com/en/home

5 Discussion of virtual child pornography, that is, computer-generated child pornog-

raphy that does not involve real children, is beyond the scope of this article. Accord-

ing to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (interview in 2008),

99.9% of the images deal with real children. Virtual pornography is not a serious

problem. On this issue, see Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (535 U.S. 234 (2002)).

6 Testimony of Michael J. Heimbach, ‘Internet child pornography’, Crimes Against

Children Unit, FBI, Before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland

Security (1 May 2002).

7 ‘Information on child monitoring software’, WebWatcher. Available at: http://www.

awarenesstech.com/Parental/Articles/

8 Founded in 2005 by Adam Hildreth and Peter Maude, Crisp helps the world’s largest

brands moderate User Generated Content and analyse online behaviour. NetMod-

erator comprises three technological components: the Engine for Content Analysis

(ECA) and the Engine for Relationship Analysis (ERA) seek out inappropriate behav-

ior; the Real-time Message Filter (RMF) enables censorship or blocking of inappro-

priate content before it has reached its intended recipient. ECA, ERA and RMF were

all developed by Crisp, the online child protection specialist. Apparently, however,

Crisp resorted to unethical methods, pretending to be children. CEOP spoke to its

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211

managers who put a stop to the unethical behaviour. I thank Ruth Allen for this

information.

9SurfWatch Software Receives Patent for Web Filtering Technology; Products and Solutions

Continue to Set Leadership Trend. Available at: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/SurfWatch+

Software+Receives+Patent+for+We b +Filtering+Technology;. . .-a053219910

10 See http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/kidporn.html

11 ‘Trust’, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. For further discussion,

see Fukuyama (1995) and Richards (2011).

12 Google Orkut. Available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/ﬁles/

Google_orkut%20feedback%202.pdf

13 See also Internet Safety Technical Taskforce – Request for Input – Bebo and AOL.

Available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/ﬁles/Bebo-AOL%20

feedback.pdf

14 See also Statement to the Technical Advisory Board from Community Connect.

Available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/ﬁles/Community_

Connect%20feedback.pdf

15 Implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU: Testing of 20

Social Networks in Europe (February 2010). Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/

information_society/activities/social_networking/docs/individ_reports/facebook.pdf

16 42 United States Code, section 13032(b)(4). See http://www.cybertelecom.org/cda/

cppa.htm

17 See also World Wide Web Consortium, Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS).

Available at: http://www.w3.org/PICS/

18 Internet expert, Vint Cerf, commented that up until now, PICS has not been

implemented well.

19 See also Ernie Allen’s (2006) testimony for the United States House of Representa-

tives Committee on Energy and Commerce.

20 ‘Anti-semitism on the Internet, an overview’, 28–29 April 2004. Available at: http://

www.inach.net/content/INACH%20-%20Antisemitism%20on%20the%20Internet.pdf

21 ‘Microsoft technology helps in ﬁght against child pornography’. See http://www.

microsoft.com/industry/publicsector/government/cetsnews.mspx (accessed June 2011, no

longer available); ‘Child exploitation tracking system’, Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Available at: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ncecc-cncee/cets-eng.htm

22 Let’s Keep This Our Little Secret,Cybertip.ca (2008). Available at: http://www.cybertip.ca/

app/en/our_little_secret For other Canadian educational campaigns, see http://www.

cybertip.ca/app/en/public_education

23 Top Ten Reviews ™ ‘Internet Filter Review’, an online resource that reviews Internet

Safety, reported that child pornography generates $3 billion annually. See http://

www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/NewsEventServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&

PageId=2064

24 I am grateful to Peter Young, Brenda McWilliams and the referees of The Howard

Journal of Criminal Justice for their constructive and instructive comments.

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Child Sexual Exploitation: Introduction to a Global Problem

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Jan 2005

Marie Eneman

Introduction Sexual abuse is one of the most heinous acts to which a child can be subjected. Child pornography, which is the documentation of such an act, is an extension of this abuse, causing continuing harm to the victim. Even in cases where the perpetrator is caught, the victim identified and the criminal case successfully prosecuted, the harm to the child involved continues as the documentary material remains accessible and distributable. This chapter takes as its foundation that child pornography is always an infringement of the rights of the child.2 Even though sexual exploitation of children and child pornography are considered serious social and legal issues in almost every state, the international community’s efforts to protect the rights of children in relation to this problem have not moved ahead in the manner that is needed. In particular, their efforts in relation to information and communications technology (ICT) have been particularly weak. ICT is today the most common medium for dissemination and consumption of child pornography.

Predatory and Dispute-related Violence: A Social Interactionist Approach: Advances in Criminological Theory

Chapter

Oct 2017

Richard B. Felson

"Successful" Criminal Careers: Toward an Ethnography within the Rational Choice Perspective: Advances in Criminological Theory

Chapter

Oct 2017

Searching for suitable co-offenders

Article

Jan 1993

P. Tremblay

Pornography drives technology: Why not censor the Internet

Article

Jan 1996

P. Johnson

The Dilemma of Trust

Article

Apr 2011

Ian Richards

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Child Pornography and Sexual Grooming: Legal and Societal Responses

Book

Jan 2009

Suzanne Ost

Child pornography and sexual grooming provide case study exemplars of problems that society and law have sought to tackle to avoid both actual and potential harm to children. Yet despite the considerable legal, political and societal concern that these critical phenomena attract, they have not, thus far, been subjected to detailed socio-legal and theoretical scrutiny. How do society and law construct the harms of child pornography and grooming? What impact do constructions of the child have upon legal and societal responses to these phenomena? What has been the impetus behind the expanding criminalisation of behaviour in these areas? Suzanne Ost addresses these and other important questions, exploring the critical tensions within legal and social discourses which must be tackled to discourage moral panic reactions towards child pornography and grooming, and advocating a new, more rational approach towards combating these forms of exploitation.

Broadcast and Internet Indecency: Defining Free Speech

Article

Jan 2007

Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

Indecency-arguably among the most provocative and incendiary issues in today's media--is speech at the edge of social tolerance. This timely volume examines broadcast and Internet indecency from legal and social perspectives, utilizing current cases and well-publicized examples. In exploring the issues associated with this highly controversial area, author Jeremy Harris Lipschultz makes headway toward an understanding of how indecency, as communication on the fringes of social norms, functions in defining free expression through specific types of speech. He contrasts conceptualizations of indecency and obscenity, synthesizes case law and social research, and develops theoretical generalizations for future research and study. His work provides a comprehensive examination of broadcast and Internet indecency issues and cases that serve to test generalizations about freedom of expression and one's ability to define free speech.

Saving our children from the first amendment

Article

Jan 2003

K. Saunders

The First Amendment is vital to our political system, our cultural institutions, and our routine social interactions with others. In this provocative book, Kevin Saunders asserts that freedom of expression can be very harmful to our children, making it more likely that they will be the perpetrators or victims of violence, will grow up as racists, or will use alcohol or tobacco. Saving Our Children from the First Amendment examines both the value and cost of free expression in America, demonstrating how an unregulated flow of information can be detrimental to youth. While the great value of the First Amendment is found in its protection of our most important political freedoms, this is far more significant for adults, who can fully grasp and benefit from the freedom of expression, than for children. Constitutional prohibitions on distributing sexual materials to children, Saunders proposes, should be expanded to include violent, vulgar, or profane materials, as well as music that contains hate speech. Saunders offers an insightful meditation on the problem of protecting our children from the negative effects of freedom of expression without curtailing First Amendment rights for adults.

Online Child Sex Offenders: Challenges and Counter-Measures

Abstract

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