The Hindu Business Line : Spread the message

I am again on the subject of child victimisation in cyberspace. If I dwell on this rather morbid topic so often, it is because I believe that this column should try to promote the social objective of securing the Internet from the mentally sick and the rapacious.It is also necessary to convince parents that children should have only restricted Web access at home and they should ensure schools that permit use of computers adopt a similar drill.

There is fortunately consensus the world over that those who exploit children in cyberspace deserve the strongest legal action. I am pleased to hear that a court in Virginia (US) recently imposed a sentence of 150 years on one Gregory John Mitchel (39) for the sexual exploitation of minors and production, distribution, sale and possession of child pornography.

Mitchel was learnt to have operated many Web sites that featured minors performing sex acts. The main witness against him was one Berry (19) of Bakersfield, California, who had his own Web cam pornography business.

Berry testified a few weeks ago also against one Ken Gourlay of Detroit who stands trial for sexual abuse against the former and for distributing abusive material. On his own admission, Berry had sought friends on the Internet and ended up attracting paedophiles.

In the process, he made a lot of money. Berry's career highlights the vulnerability of a modern youth lured by the negative features of the Web.

Operating with impunity

There is a strong feeling in the US administration that the country provides opportunities for international paedophiles to operate with impunity. This assessment flows from an episode in March 2006 in which 27 persons were arrested in the US, Canada, Australia and England following a probe into the activities in a chat room called Kiddypics & Kiddyvids.

The investigation revealed that there was no central server here that dished out the prurient material. What was seen was more of a peer-to-peer technology in which participants exchanged and broadcast objectionable content. This modus operandus makes such illegal activity very difficult to lay hands on.

Scene in UK

The UK scene is not very different. According to one report, courts in the country see at least one case of child abuse every month that is traceable to chat room contacts. Two years ago, there was a sensational case in which Toby Studabaker (31), a US Marine, kidnapped a twelve year-old girl from Manchester to Paris after getting to know her over chat room and later abused her sexually.A global operation had to be launched before the pair could be traced. Studabaker was subsequently convicted to four-and-a-half years. It was following this incident that Microsoft closed its chat rooms.

Last month, there was another incident in which 21-year old Lee Costi of Haslemere was trapped when he was about to kidnap a girl of 12. He was a known paedophile with at least two earlier victims. Incidentally, he was nabbed through the Virtual Global Taskforce, an Internet site run by the UK police, which encourages children to report abuse.

The scare in the UK is so much that every time a teenager is missing from home all of a sudden, the presumption is that he or she has been lured by an acquaintance made at a chat room. There were two recent incidents in which girls who had disappeared from their homes were eventually found to be safe, allaying initial fears.

In the case of Hannah Rodrigues (15) of Hertfordshire, the police, while scanning her computer, found that she had been in touch with a stranger whose picture was found in the system. One person has been arrested in this connection.

In the second case, Zeanne Maughan Smith (14) of Wiltshire was known to have engaged in chat room conversations with some men. Following this she had been prevented by her parents from using the computer. She had also been caught sending inappropriate text messages over the mobile phone to a man aged 28. Hannah has since been traced and enquiries are still on.

LSE findings

Interesting in this context are the findings of a study by the London School of Economics (LSE). It surveyed about 1,500 teenagers and found that at least half of them had viewed explicit material on the Web. A substantial number had also received spam that carried pornography. Significantly, 50 per cent had used a chat room, where they gave personal information to total strangers.

Encouraging alliance

What is heart warming, however, is the recognition by policymakers in some parts of the world that drastic legislative and administrative action is called for to protect our children.

For instance, the US has a brand new Child Protection and Safety Act that penalises webmasters who use deceptive labels (`Barbie', `Furby', etc) to mask the real content of sites designed by them.

Still, even well-conceived stringent laws need dedicated enforcement, and policing standards are erratic and unpredictable in some regions. What we, therefore, need on a priority basis is sound technology to detect child-offensive smut that finds its way into the Net.

Encouraging is the recent alliance of AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, EarthLink and United Online with the objective of creating a database of child pornography images that would assign a unique mathematical signature to each image.

Also contemplated are tools that would help network operators to keep images in the database from being distributed online.

Perhaps the most interesting move of banks is to cancel the credit cards of those who use them to access Web sites that peddle child abuse images. Public opinion needs to assert itself to usher in similar measures in India.

In a lighter vein...

To provide some relief from the above distressing account of a serious problem, here is a snippet. Recently, London Times listed a few instances of how errors in e-mail transmission could lead to disasters. The Secretary to a top company executive is believed to have inadvertently marked to her boss a copy of her invitation to a party meant only for her close friends. The faux pas would not have been costly but for the fact that the occasion was a porn party!

I presume the girl either lost her job or had to go without her annual raise!

(The writer is a former CBI Director who is currently Adviser (Security) to TCS Ltd.)

More Stories on : Security | Internet | Children & Parenting | Security Musings

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Playing the coverage card

Grappling for that edge

Price tag alone won't sell

This one is for follow-up

Connecting, with Learning eBay

Beat the grind

SP2 for Win XP

Spread the message

Quiz

Technology control is about compliance, not commitment

Cartoon

Moving light

Hear it better