70 Child porn arrests in Australia
Pastor Dale Morgan
*70 Child porn arrests in Australia*
By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney
Seventy people have been arrested in Australia in a nationwide operation
to crack down on the use of child pornography on the web.
Police have investigated how paedophiles trade images that show child
sex abuse over the internet and have secret communities online.
They found that explicit images left on a respectable European website
were seen by people in 170 countries.
The men arrested include a federal policeman and a primary school teacher.
New technology
This is the biggest operation that Australian police have ever mounted
against such abuse, and it has thrown fresh light on how exploitative
images of children are shared and traded on the internet.
It has shown how paedophiles briefly post pornographic images on
legitimate websites, then alert each other to their presence in child
porn chat rooms, which suddenly appear and then close almost as quickly.
It has also provided evidence of how the latest technology, such as
web-enabled devices like the Sony Playstation and new generation mobile
phones are being used to download these images.
Operation Centurion was launched after 99 explicit pictures were posted
by a hacker on a respectable European website.
Within 76 hours, the site had received staggering 12 million hits.
Word had quickly got round online paedophile networks that the images
had appeared on this previously obscure website.
They attracted 150,000 different computer users from 170 countries.
The 70 suspects arrested in Australia include a federal policeman, a
junior sports coach and a youth worker.
A primary school teacher is accused of taking pictures of members of his
class, and then putting their heads on exploitative images.