ANALYSIS: Bad credit record

By Paul Trotter

Posted on 3 Mar 2003 at 12:20

It's both the Internet's biggest burden and its biggest source of unwanted publicity, but attitudes towards the Web's role in supporting networks of paedophiles could be changing. High-profile arrests of well-known celebrities linked with paedophilic material are no longer followed by media witch-hunts blaming new technology for the spread of these abhorrent crimes. Rather, the police's investigating practices send out a message to anyone misusing the Web - if their credit card details have been passed across the Net, the cops could come knocking.

But could more be done to target paedophiles lurking on the Net? It appears to be a bigger problem than we think, and some question whether law-enforcement agencies have the resources to punish those involved with paedophilia on the Web.

The UK police's biggest source of information relating to possible suspects is the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). The IWF works in partnership with ISPs, telcos, mobile operators, software providers, the police and government to minimise the availability of illegal Internet content, particularly images of child abuse. Its Internet Hotline deals with reports of potentially illegal Internet content, and the group has been very successful in getting web pages taken down.

Britain also has its own dedicated law-enforcement agency to handle technology-based crime, but the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) wasn't established to deal with every criminal activity on the Internet. In fact, paedophilia is currently the responsibility of the National Crime Squad, although there's inevitably some crossover.

The crackdown was cemented last year, when an FBI investigation into a US-based child pornography Web site found credit card details of 7,000 people in the UK. This triggered the establishment of Operation Ore, the UK authorities' latest effort to close in on those supporting the business of child abuse. Over 1,600 people have been arrested so far as a result of the FBI's tip-off, and most of the suspects were new names to the UK police.

This evidence was welcomed by UK forces, but critics claim it could be directing investigators along the wrong path. The publicity received by the operation is likely to achieve initial results in scaring people away from visiting illegal sites and paying for such content on the Web. Aside from this, it's questionable whether resources should be spent chasing the purchasers of the material rather than those making and distributing it.

Catching the latter is a harder task, but with so much illegal business conducted using credit cards, it begs the question: is the system that supports transactions doing enough to stamp out such activity?
A spokesperson for the NHTCU told PC Pro that credit card companies aren't obliged to tell anyone what's currently being purchased via credit cards, adding that the whole process of investigating credit card transactions can be extremely complex.

But critics take issue with this standoffish approach. 'Someone has to give these companies credit card facilities in the first place. However, the banks take the view that they aren't moral guardians, but some of them must be, because they won't invest in certain third-world countries, for example,' said Tony Dearsley, computer investigations manager at IT forensics specialist Vogon.

But despite calls for other parties in the chain to take a more proactive approach, there's concern that any additional leads could bring further strains on the resources to press charges against suspects. The sudden influx of evidence from overseas is already pushing the criminal justice system to its limit. The sheer number of people involved has seen police forces countrywide struggling to cope with the investigation, and Vogon is concerned that as delays build up, more children will be vulnerable to abuse.