The Hindu Business Line : Net ends chase

“It is never too early to start giving children ‘safety first’ messages.” — Jim Gamble, Chief Executive, Child Exploitation and Online Protection (COPE), UK Police.

R.K.Raghavan

The International Criminal Police Organisation (ICPO), popularly known to us as the Interpol, has registered a major success in its offensive against paedophilia, a menace to society everywhere on the globe. The arrest of Wayne Nelson Corliss (58), a US national, at Union City, New Jersey, recently, marked the end of a two-year manhunt for the criminal after he had come to notice for sexually abusing young children.

The police stumbled on him following the arrest and conviction of a paedophile in Norway when they examined the latter’s computer hard disk. Corliss had remained unidentified for nearly two years. He was described by investigators in their communications merely as a grey-haired white man wearing glasses. Significantly, he was seen making no effort to hide his identity, contrary to the usual precaution of all such offenders.

Corliss’s photograph was run through the huge database of images that the Interpol commands. According to one report, the database has 5,20,000 images! To the Interpol’s frustration, no match was found. It was only after this that the Interpol took the momentous decision to put it on the Net, even if it meant alerting the criminal.

Success came within two days after six pictures of Corliss had been released. Three US citizens quickly identified Corliss and fed the Interpol with the basic information that led to his arrest. The Customs officials who raided his apartment recovered hundreds of child images as also children’s innerwear. Corliss was described by his neighbours as a normal individual who eked out his livelihood painting children’s faces and by playing Santa Claus on the stage. And it seems he was one of the most affable and clever Santa Clauses that the children in the area ever knew!

Interestingly, this was only the second time that the Interpol had publicised the pictures of a paedophilia suspect. In the first instance, in October 2007, a 32-year-old teacher from Canada, Christopher Paul Neil, was arrested in Thailand for child abuse. The difference was that Neil’s photograph that was available to the Interpol had been distorted deliberately by the offender with a ‘digital swirl’, a tactic to prevent easy identification. The police successfully reversed the process and publicised the clear face that made the arrest possible.

This triumph of law enforcement should send fear down the spine of every paedophile on earth and force him to mend his ways or at least hide himself for a while.

The Interpol has always been criticised as a mere post office, one that serves only to exchange information, without the clout needed in modern times for containing transborder crime. It is because of this that the latest success against a confirmed paedophile is a shot in the arm for the international organisation, although it came in an area in which there are hardly any political differences, and nations are only too willing to help one another.

All these facts should not cloud one fundamental assurance, if at all one were needed, that the Net is a powerful medium that is available to the criminal as well as the law enforcement agency out there to nab him.

Also to be remembered is that it is the Net where the offender and the victim meet and establish a contact that strengthens over a period of time, preparing the stage for a face-to-face meeting. This scenario, now too well known in most parts of the world to Net users, highlights the need for strict security precautionsfor the younger netizen.

‘Towards safety’ moves

It is this backdrop that has persuaded some so-called social networking sites to strengthen their arrangements for protecting younger visitors to their sites. First it was MySpace which, after two years of hard bargaining with the Attorneys-General of States, agreed to introduce 60 new features or design changes to make its site safer for young users against online predators’ attempts to lure them.

More recently, in the past few weeks, Facebook, another popular networking site, followed suit after talking to 49 State Attorneys-General. Under the newly agreed to condition, Facebook will make sure that those under 18 will be allowed access only after an assurance that they had read the elaborate safety tips. Also, no user will be allowed to change his or her age without a basic check. As to whether a user is as old as he or she claims to be, Facebook will use a so-called behavioral technology that will flag out the liar. (Only time will tell us how effective this technology can identify the compulsive liar who takes all precautions to hide falsehood.) Facebook has also agreed to take off any inappropriate material within 24 hours of its appearance on its site, besides identifying and removing the profiles of all registered sex offenders.

Most gratifying, however, is the decision to set up an Internet safety technical task force in which all social networking sites will be members. This task force’s efforts should normally complement those of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) that keeps a hawk eye on abuse sites. (The UK-based IWF is a consortium of ISPs and content providers.)

In the IWF’s estimate, there are currently more than 2,700 such sites, most of which peddle objectionable child images. It is disconcerting that some such images originate from domestic sources. Is this not serious enough for many parents in India to wake up from their slumber and ask themselves the question: Are our children safe on the Net? They should go even beyond, and organise themselves to weed out predators in cyberspace who pose a great threat to child safety in the country.

While an organisation such as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (COPE) of the UK Police is well worth the experiment, depending merely on government and law enforcement agencies is fraught with serious consequences, because the latter’s priorities are sometimes skewed. Incidentally, the COPE, housed in London, is launching an animation-based programme called Hector’s World that will target five-year olds to tell them of the perils of unsupervised and unrestrained surfing.

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

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