QuickLinks - Computer crime

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Issue no. 221 - 26 January 2002

• España - Detienen a dos personas por vender películas 'porno' en el web infantil de Terra (EFE)
  La policía ha detenido a dos individuos acusados de vender películas pornográficas en la sección infantil del portal de internet Terra, según han informado hoy fuentes policiales. Los detenidos por delitos de exhibicionismo y provocación sexual son José Luis M.P, de 35 años y gerente de la empresa denunciada como promotora de esta actividad, y el responsable de diseño de la página web, Carlos M.O, de 36 años y con antecedentes policiales por injurias a través de internet.

• España - Dos detenidos en Barcelona por corrupción de menores a través de Internet (La Razón)
  La Guardia Civil ha detenido en Barcelona a dos personas presuntamente implicadas en una red de difusión de pornografía infantil a través de Internet. La operación «Nude», en la que se intervino más de un millón de fotografías y abundante material informático, continúa abierta.

• France - Un directeur de Cora peu délicat (Libération)
  Le directeur d'un hypermarché Cora dans l'agglomération de Strasbourg a été mis en examen pour «introduction frauduleuse dans un système informatique», «tentative d'escroquerie» et «faux et usage de faux». Il est soupçonné d'avoir usurpé l'identité de la maire de Strasbourg, Fabienne Keller, dans un e-mail qui donnait une consigne de vote favorable à l'extension dudit hypermarché.

• UK - Jailed paedophile banned from Web (Independent)
  An internet paedophile was jailed for six months at Birmingham Crown Court and banned from all online chatrooms after he was trapped by a policeman posing as a 13-year-old boy.

Issue no. 220 - 19 January 2002

• Italy Investigates, Does Not Indict Infiltrators (Newsbytes)
  Italian authorities identified, but did not arrest, six young hackers who launched attacks on computer systems at the Pentagon and NASA. The Italian Guardia di Finanza has identified the hackers as six boys and men between the ages of 15 and 23.

• UK - England & Wales - Tougher sentences for child porn (This is London)
  New guidelines for judges in child pornography cases would significantly increase jail terms for paedophiles such as Gary Glitter who download thousands of depraved images of children from the internet.

• USA - Criminal Charges Settled In Distributed-Computing Case (Newsbytes)
  A computer technician at Georgia-run college who found himself facing criminal charges will face probation instead of prison. David McOwen, once a systems administrator, faces a year of probation and a $2,100 fine for connecting a number of DeKalb computers to Distributed.net so that the spare computing cycles could assist in a communal code-breaking challenge.

• USA - Stalking the Web Predator (LA Times)
  A Colorado homemaker has won praise - and arrests - for her efforts against kiddie porn. But critics of such online crusaders call it a form of vigilantism.

Issue no. 219 - 13 January 2002

• Norway Cracks Down on DVD Hacker (Wired)
  Jon Johansen, a Norwegian teen hacker, has been indicted for allegedly bypassing DVD anti-copying technology.

• Turkey child porn Internet arrest (CNN)
  Turkish police have arrested a man alleged to have been involved in an international Internet child porn ring.

• UK - Crime Reduction: Protect your Mobile Phone (Crime Reduction)
  Thousands of mobile phones are being stolen by street robbers every month and young people are especially vulnerable. By taking a few simple steps you can reduce your risk of becoming a victim of mobile phone theft. see also Home Office press release and Cell phone crime prompts UK feds to call for help (IDG).

• USA - Child monitoring software used to track sex offenders (AP)
  A probation department is installing Cyber Sentinel monitoring software on computers used by sex offenders on probation.

• France - Réseau de prostitution sur internet démantelé (AP)
  Les policiers de la brigade de répression du proxénétisme du Service régional de police judiciaire (SRPJ) de Marseille ont démantelé un réseau de prostitution sur Internet implanté dans les Alpes-Maritimes, à Monaco, à Paris et dans le Nord de la France.

Issue no. 218 - 6 January 2002

• Deutschland - Kinderpornografie: Polizei vernachlässigt Fahndung im Internet (Die Welt am Sonntag)
  Um die steigende Zahl der Verbrechen nicht nur im Bereich der Kinderpornografie, sondern auch der Wirtschaftskriminalität und des Staatsschutzes wirksam zu bekämpfen, müssten, so fordert Polizeigewerkschafter Wendt, 5000 zusätzliche Stellen geschaffen und entsprechend ausgerüstet werden. Denn bei Internet-Delikten gebe es eine direkte Korrelation zwischen Fahndern und aufgedeckten Verbrechen. siehe auch Polizeigewerkschaft fordert 5000 Internet-Fahnder (Heise)

• New Zealand Govt Looks To Close Net Porn Loophole (Newsbytes)
  The New Zealand government has introduced legislation that aims to plug a gap in the country's laws that prevents customs officers from taking action over imported illegal electronic material such as Internet child pornography.

• Spam advertising child porn is on the rise (Saint Paul Pioneer Press)
  E-mails that advertise child-pornography Web sites have appeared in computer inboxes across the country with increasing frequency, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Much of the child pornography is coming from overseas, particularly Russia and other former Eastern-bloc countries.

• US student arrested over sexual assault and torture of 15-year-old girl (Ananova)
  A US college student is accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl he met on the Internet and carving swastikas on her face. 20-year-old Brian Dance, a student at the University of California, was booked on charges of torture, rape by a foreign object and robbery.

• USA - Washington Teacher Convicted in Child Porn Case (Reuters)
  A teacher at a Washington state high school for at-risk youths was convicted on child pornography charges for taking lewd photographs of girl students and posting them on the Internet.

• Sweden - Fight against child abuse goes high-tech (Reuters)
  Per-Eric Astrom spends his days hunched over a computer in his tiny Stockholm office, measuring out the hours with the click of a mouse. In this way he busted Sweden's biggest child pornography ring. Astrom, manager of an anti-child pornography hotline run by Save the Children Sweden, is one of a growing band of "infiltrators" who use the latest technology to combat computer-savvy child abusers on their own turf.

• UK - Child porn pervert jailed for a year (This is Bristol)
  A man who used a code name while downloading child porn from the internet was yesterday jailed for 12 months at Bristol Crown Court. Scott Ferris was caught when he tried to swap information over the net with a specialist German police officer investigating porn.

• UK - Scotland to get tougher on child porn (Scotsman)
  Longer sentences for people who possess or distribute child pornography were announced today as part of new legislation aimed at increasing protection for women and children. And those found guilty of distributing such material could be sent to prison for ten years instead of the present maximum of three. The maximum sentence for possession of child pornography will go up from six months to five years.

Issue no. 217 - 16 December 2001

• Five charged as police smash Russia child porn gang (Reuters)
  Russian detectives have arrested five men and seized an estimated half a million indecent pictures in an undercover operation to smash an internet child porn gang.

• UK - Internet Child Porn Pervert Trapped By Undercover Police (Ananova)
  A male police officer posed as a 13-year-old boy to infiltrate the chat room of a paedophile. Robert Coleshill, 53, of Uckfield, West Sussex, pleaded guilty to eight charges of gross indecency and attempted gross indecency.

• USA - House Bill Would Toughen Cybercrime Penalties (Newsbytes)
  House lawmakers introduced legislation designed to give federal judges more flexibility in imposing sentences for a range of computer crimes. The bill also would grant a liability exemption to Internet service providers that cooperate with law enforcement agencies.

Issue no. 216 - 8 December 2001

• UK - Internet bank fraudsters jailed (Ananova)
  Five people have been sentenced after using the internet to defraud banks and credit card companies out of £130,000. The four men and a woman were arrested by officers from the National Crime Squad in August last year after a six-month operation. Aylesbury Crown Court was told the gang used the internet to hijack the identities of innocent people to obtain credit cards and loans.

• USA - Hospital Pediatric Intern Under Investigation in Child Porn Case (Fox News)
  FBI officials have confirmed that a pediatric intern at Tripler Medical Center on Honolulu is under investigation for allegedly possessing child pornography. However, a Tripler spokeswoman said she doubts the activity has anything to do with the hospital.

• USA - Judge pleads innocent to child porn charges (AP)
  An Orange County Superior Court judge pleaded innocent to six counts of possession of child pornography.

• USA - Student jailed after internet porn sting (Scotmad Online)
  An American student at Aberdeen University has been jailed for more than seven years for child sexual exploitation. David Steinheimer was sentenced to seven years and three months at the US District Court in Houston, Texas. He pleaded guilty to trying to befriend a 13-year-old boy on the internet so he could abuse him. The student travelled from Aberdeen to Houston in October 2000 to meet who he thought was the boy, only to discover it he was an undercover FBI agent.

Issue no. 215 - 2 December 2001

• European Union Holds Cybercrime Conference (Newsbytes)
  The European Union has taken several steps to combat cybercrime, notably heading up initiatives to confront "harmful and illegal content" on the Internet, while protecting copyrights and personal data, Erkki Liikanen, the E.U.'s commissioner for the information society, said. The E.U. Forum on Cybercrime's Brussels conference was organized as a first plenary session. Organizers invited industry members, law enforcement authorities, privacy protection groups and other parties to comment on E.U. policymaking in the online crime arena. see also Network Security - Policy Development in the European Union (RAPID) Speech by Mr Erkki Liikanen, and Inside EU-Cybercrime Hearing (q/depesche)A reasonably balanced view from the civil liberties' perspective of the first plenary session of the EU Cybercrime Forum.

• Global raids target child porn (CNN)
  Police have arrested seven people in the UK and carried out 130 raids in 19 countries in a global sweep against Internet child pornography. "Operation Landmark" targeted people who downloaded and distributed child pornography from the Internet. Police in 18 other countries - Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey and the United States - also executed search and arrest warrants, acting on information supplied by Interpol. In one instance, the UK's National Crime Squad said, a newsgroup was used to seek help with the 'grooming' of a young child for abuse. see also Nine held in net child porn raids (Guardian) and Police examine paedophile evidence (BBC).

• Thirty Nations Sign Global Cybercrime Treaty (Newsbytes)
  On Nov. 23, foreign ministers from the United States, Canada, Japan and South Africa joined their counterparts in 26 other countries in signing the Council of Europe’s "Convention on Cybercrime", an international treaty designed to harmonize laws and penalties for crimes committed via the Internet.

• UK - Latest tech puts a face to porn victims (ZDNet UK)
  The National Crime Squad (NCS) has confirmed that it will be using sophisticated facial-mapping software to identify the children depicted in 60,000 pornographic images obtained through dawn raids on suspected Internet pedophiles. The raids were part of the biggest-ever international crackdown on Internet pedophiles.

• USA - Teenager helps task force crack child-porn ring (Detroit Free Press)
  17-year-old Will Luker's work as an unpaid intern on the ayne County Sheriff's Internet Crimes Task Force has led to the shutdown of one of the largest child-pornography Internet operations in the state. In two days, Luker wrote a script to modify a software program that enabled him to monitor the trading of underage sexual material in nine chat rooms.

Issue no. 214 - 23 November 2001

• Bekämpfung gefährlicher Angriffe auf Informationssysteme (Heise)
  Während der Konferenz des European Forum on Cybercrime am 27. November wird das Thema "Aufbewahrung von Verbindungsdaten" im Zentrum stehen. Aufgefordert sind Experten, aber auch Bürgerrechtsorganisationen, Meinungen und Vorschläge einzureichen. Angestrebt wird offensichtlich eine Verlängerung der Speicherungspflicht.

• Child porn raids in 14 countries (BBC)
  Police in 14 countries across the world have carried out what has been described as the biggest ever operation to tackle child pornography. In Germany alone, 93 properties were searched and about 2,200 people are now under investigation for the possession and dissemination of pornography. The raids, which were co-ordinated by the German federal police, netted a mass of computer, video and documentary evidence. As well as Germany, police in Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ireland the USA, Australia and Canada carried out raids. In addition, 23 countries took measures to secure information from internet providers as evidence. see also Weltweiter Schlag gegen Kinderpornografie im Internet (Heise)

• Child Pornography - Theme paper for Yokohama (John Carr for ECPAT)
  Theme paper for the 2nd World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. The Congress will be held in Yokohama, Japan, from 17 to 20 December 2001.

• Cybercrime Treaty Finally Ready (Reuters)
  A European convention will unite countries in the fight against computer criminals, who have moved on from "innocent" hacking to fraud, embezzlement and life-threatening felonies. Interior ministers and law enforcement officials from Europe, South Africa, Canada, the United States and Japan will sign the milestone cybercrime convention, which has taken four years to draft, in the Hungarian capital.

• EU Forum on Cybercrime (European Commission)
  Plenary session, Brussels, 27 November 2001 Main topic: Retention of traffic data. On 27 November 2001, a plenary session will take place of the EU Forum on Cybercrime, organised by the European Commission. The meeting will take place from 9:30 to 17:30 h. in the Charlemagne Building, 170 rue de la Loi, 1040 Brussels (Metro: Schuman). The European Commission services have written an informal discussion paper on the issue of traffic data retention, which gives a background introduction and lists questions that you may want to address in you written or oral contributions.

• EU Moves To Ratify Cybercrime Terms, Penalties (Newsbytes)
  The European Union has working to fast-track a proposal that would harmonize definitions and penalties for a range computer crimes. The proposal - to be introduced at an EU Commission meeting in Brussels on Nov. 27 - would establish common definitions and criminal penalties among the 15 EU member states for cybercrimes such as unauthorized computer intrusion, denial-of-service attacks, and the dissemination of destructive computer viruses and worms. The proposal will dovetail with the planned Nov. 27 launch of another EU Commission effort dubbed the "E-Forum," an initiative designed to foster public-private sector cooperation in combating cyber crime.

• Brazil - Doctor caught publishing child porn (Reuters)
  Brazilian police have arrested a doctor in the act of publishing child pornography on the Internet and are investigating him for links to an international paedophile ring.

• South Africa - Biggest child porn bust in SA (News24)
  An astonishing chain of events has led to the discovery of the biggest collection of child pornography in the East Rand and the subsequent arrest of a 51-year-old East Rand hospital archive clerk who has been evading police for some time.

• UK - Child porn suspect freed on technicality (BBC)
  A man accused of being a member of the world's biggest known internet paedophile ring has walked free from court on a technicality. see also Police raid caused porn case collapse by Alistair Bonnington, Professor of Glasgow University School of Law.

• USA - Calif. Judge Arrested for Child Porn (AP)
  An Orange County Superior Court judge was arrested at his courthouse and charged in federal court with possessing child pornography. See also Republican activist sentenced for child porn (The Virginian-Pilot)

• USA - Doctor pleads innocent to pornography charge (Tenessean)
  A Seymour, Tenn., doctor was released on $50,000 bond after pleading innocent to a federal charge of downloading child pornography from the Internet.

Issue no. 213 - 11 November 2001

• Area of Freedom, Security and Justice in the EU (European Parliament)
  This site is under the responsibility of the EP Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs and has three parts: Work in progress on the creation of an area of Freedom, Security and Justice in the EU (Scoreboard), Newsletter and Fundamental Rights.

• Conclusions from the EU Expert Seminar "Fighting child pornography on the internet - forensic aspects" (Consilium)
  Stockholm, 26-28 March 2001.

• Council Of Europe Adopts Global Cyber-Crime Treaty (Newsbytes)
  The Council of Europe approved the so-called Convention on Cyber-crime, an international treaty designed to harmonize laws against crimes committed via the Internet. The treaty will go into effect when five states, at least three of which are members of the Council of Europe, have ratified it. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the United States are expected to be among the first signatories to the convention, which will be open for signature at an international conference on cyber-crime in Budapest on November 23rd.

• UK - Doctor fined over child porn (BBC)
  A Devon hospital consultant who was given a suspended jail term for downloading child pornography from the internet has successfully appealed against the sentence.

• UK - Fourteen arrested after Internet child porn investigation (Yahoo UK)
  Scotland Yard has said that 14 people were arrested across the UK and Ireland on suspicion of distributing child pornography across the Internet. The operation, which was code-named "Barcela", followed a seven-month investigation by the Metropolitan Police. Fifteen search warrants were executed in the action, which involved 11 different police forces.

• USA - All Charges Dismissed by Judge in Columbia Sex Torture Case (New York Times)
  A Manhattan judge dismissed all charges against Oliver Jovanovic, a Columbia University doctoral student accused five years ago of the sexual torture of a woman he met on the Internet. The highly publicized case was at first seen as a symbol of the dangers of arranging social encounters on the Internet.

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