Facebook fails to alert police on child porn
also:
Mothers' group outraged after their Facebook campaign to expose
paedophiles is removed from the internet
Facebook fails to alert police on child porn Dylan Welch August 27, 2010
THE management of Facebook repeatedly failed to reveal the activity of an
international child pornography syndicate operating on the social networking
site and ignored continuing admissions by one of the ring's Australian
members. The failure was uncovered during an Australian Federal Police-led
international investigation of the syndicate, which had operated via fake
identities on the site.
''We are aware that Facebook knew of the existence of these pages and even
went so far as to remove the profiles,'' said the director of the AFP High
Tech Crime Centre, Neil Gaughan. But despite closing down the men's pages
after finding illegal material, Facebook did not contact police, Mr Gaughan
said. ''Facebook deactivated the online accounts of the initial suspects
but there were indications that, within hours, the groups were re-forming
again under new accounts,'' he said. The taskforce, codenamed Project Ocean,
was created by the AFP in March but quickly expanded to overseas agencies.
By June it included the FBI, the Child Exploitation Online Protection
Centre in Britain, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and police in Germany,
South Africa and Switzerland.
Officers believe there may have been dozens of people involved in the
ring....All 11 are accused of creating Facebook pages under false identities
and using the pages to distribute and view graphic sexual images of children.
After federal police arrested one of the Australian men, he stunned them
by describing how he had sent up to 10 messages to Facebook, but the company
failed to pass on the information to police.....
Facebook has been criticised in the past for failing to address privacy
and safety concerns held by its hundreds of millions of users....The latest
scandal comes three months after the Facebook-associated murder of Sydney
teenager Nona Belomesoff. Ms Belomesoff was allegedly murdered by a
20-year-old man who had befriended her on the site.
_http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-fails-to-alert
-police-on-child-porn-20100826-13u5l.html_
(http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-fails-to-alert-police-on-child-porn-20100826-13
u5l.html)
Charges against B.C. teacher linked to global child-porn network By
Allison Cross, Postmedia News August 27, 2010 One of the men arrested in
Canada
in relation to an international online child-exploitation network that used
Facebook is a former Vancouver private school teacher, police say.
Christopher Charles Ingvaldson was arrested in June and has been charged with
four
counts related to child exploitation, said Sgt. Tony Cavezza of the
Vancouver Police Department....
The Australian Federal Police announced Thursday a total of 11 people have
been arrested as part of a co-ordinated operation across Australia, the
United Kingdom and Canada...."(This kind of) activity is quite prolific. It
also ties in with other websites, like Craigslist," Cavezza said. "The
number of people engaged in this activity is quite substantial. Sometimes we
have trouble keeping up because there's so much of it."....
The RCMP partnered with the Australian Federal Police and the FBI in March
to begin the investigation, Australian Federal Police said in a news
release. A member of the Australian police created an online identity on
Facebook and was approached by a member of the network. Upon further
investigation, the officer realized the network spanned several continents.
"One of our
most effective strategies against Internet-facilitated child sexual abuse
is co-operation," said RCMP Supt. John Bilinski, who heads the Canadian
Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
_http://www.canada.com/news/arrests+Canada+international+child+porn+network/3449854/story.html_
(http://www.canada.com/news/arrests+Canada+international+child+porn+network/3449854/sto
ry.html)
Mothers' group outraged after their Facebook campaign to expose
paedophiles is removed from the internet By Daily Mail Reporter 26th August
2010
_http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1306286/Mothers-Facebook-campaign-expose
-paedophiles-removed-internet.html_
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1306286/Mothers-Facebook-campaign-expose-paedophiles-removed-internet.html)
