The STOPLight

Internet Crimes Against Children

This article is from an interview of Commander Rick Anderson of the St. Paul Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.

What does the ICAC task force do?

The ICAC task force (there are 30 of them scattered throughout the country) investigates crimes against children that happen via the Internet. We focus on the use and distribution of child pornography as well as predators who try to set up a meeting via chat rooms or e-mails with underage people for sexual purposes.

The ICAC task forces work across jurisdictional lines. For example, if I have a case in St. Paul and the suspect is in California, I can put together a packet of information and transfer all of it to an ICAC task force in California. They will complete the investigation and transfer it back to us or complete it themselves.

Because the Internet is global, this work also has a global dimension. We have had contact with Interpol and agencies in other countries.

We also work with the Innocent Images Initiative (III), which is an FBI version of the ICAC Task Force but on a much larger scale. It is the national clearinghouse for data from the ICAC Task Forces. If I am doing investigation on an individual with a specific e-mail name, I notify the III. They will search their databases to see if anyone else is working on this case or determine if they have any other information which they can provide to me. It keeps undercover operations from working on each other by mistake.

Also, if someone from an ICAC task force in California and I start working on the same individual, the two of us can work together to build the case. I might have the piece of the puzzle that he or she doesn't have.

What are some risks parents should be aware of as their children use the Internet?

People who develop pornographic websites will sometimes purposely purchase domain names that are very close to other domain names. So if someone misspells a word or confuses the .com or .org at the end, that person could end up in a pornographic website instead. One such case is the website for the White House, which is actually whitehouse.gov. If someone puts in whitehouse.com, that person will go to a pornographic site. So parents have to tell children that if they accidently go to a site like this, they must leave the site. Parents should instruct their children to tell them about the site so they can report it to the CyberTipline or make a complaint against the web host.

Predators often hang around in chat rooms frequented by children. They know about the top bands, the "in" clothes, who is popular on MTV, etc., so they can chat with the children and gain their trust. They keep information on their computers about specific children and set up buddy lists to tell when certain children are on the Internet.

A predator might send a child an innocent picture, like a car, then slip in a picture of a naked adult or child and ask the child's opinion of it. If the child responds positively, the predator might send something a little more explicit to determine the child's comfort level with this. Next, he or she might ask for a picture of the child or suggest a meeting at the mall, and "if you don't, I am going to tell your parents about the pictures, and they won't let you use the Internet anymore." The predator basically manipulates the child.

We tell parents that children need to be free to tell them what is happening on the Internet, without the fear of losing their privileges on the Internet. If a child tells a parent, "Someone is sending me naked pictures and I can't stop it. Now that person is threatening to tell you," that child needs to be praised. Then it is up to the parents to determine how the child got to that particular chat room in the first place. The child has done the right thing, and the parent can use the CyberTipline to report the situation and end it.

There is technology now that allows people to see each other while on the computer; each person has a camera in their own room. This will facilitate cybersex. With two consenting adults it is one thing, but this allows a predator to go after a child in a new way. Not only can the predator see the child, but can tell the child what to do while watching the child.

What is the CyberTipline?

The CyberTipline is a way for people to file a complaint about child pornography, on-line enticement, suspicious activity in a chat room, juvenile prostitution, or sex tourism. It is run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a non-profit organization whose goal is to help locate missing children. The CyberTipline can be accessed two ways:

www.ncmec.org

1-800-843-5678

When a tip comes in, the NCMEC does a preliminary investigation in an attempt to locate the source of the pornography or suspicious activity. They do that through the IP address, which they use to locate the region where the e-mail is coming from. Then they contact the local ICAC task force and the local law enforcement agency and pass on as much information as they can to initiate an investigation.

Can a predator find the location of a computer using the e-mail address?

It is possible to track to a specific area, but not a specific street address. The predator gains most information from children revealing their names or other information about themselves on-line. A high school student might talk about her school mascot. The predator can use the Internet to find out which schools have a tiger for a mascot. By asking the child questions about the weather, the town, etc., the predator can eliminate certain areas in order to pinpoint a very specific area. What a child may consider non-information could be the piece that completes the puzzle for the predator.

Is there legislation to control this violation of our children?

Realistically, I don't think there is any legislation that is going to be the answer to all these problems. Technology changes rapidly, while legislation moves at a cumbersome pace because every angle of it must be researched.

There are laws against soliciting children for sex. There are laws against child pornography There are laws against possession of child pornography. I think those laws need to be fine-tuned to incorporate the Internet, which has not been included before. I also think some of the penalties may be a little lax and should be more severe.

We need to educate judges and the court system, as well as the world in general, that although child pornography is "just a picture," it is a picture of a child being raped. If we can get the courts and the public to understand that, I think there is enough overwhelming hatred of that behavior for the courts and the public to stand with us.

Suppose someone sends Grandma a picture of her grandchild in the bathtub. Would that be considered child pornography?

The picture you describe is not child pornography. If a family goes to a nude beach and takes pictures of their children playing on the beach, playing volleyball, or just lying in the sun, that is not child pornography. That could be named child erotica, but it is definitely not child pornography.

Child pornography depicts an obviously underage child in a sex act or a very sexually explicit photo. That's the differentiation. We also look at the volume of pictures that people have. Typically a family might have several pictures of a baby in a bathtub or lying on a blanket when they are young. The people who are into child pornography are going to have a large volume of those pictures, and they are going to have some that are sexually explicit.

What should a person do if he or she accidentally gets into a porn website?

The prominent thing that everybody needs to understand is that the responsibility for safe computer use stands with the user. When someone is doing legitimate research and using the correct spelling of website addresses (like whitehouse.gov versus whitehouse.com), he or she is not going to run across this stuff.

That said, if something she doesn't like comes up on the screen, the best thing to do is simply close that window. If the site keeps popping up after she closes it (because there may be a hidden link in there), she may want to make a complaint to the web master. Usually that information is on the bottom of the page. She can contact the webmaster by e-mail and say, "This is what I was doing, here is the path that I was following, and this site popped up. I resent that happening." I don't know if that action will stop the link, but I think if enough people complained to web masters, they might start considering getting rid of some of those sites.

How do you sustain yourself in this difficult work?

This is a very demanding profession. I was raised in a very religious family, and we went to church every Sunday. I continue to do that in my adult life. I find a great deal of refreshment in my faith.

I am here for a reason, and that gives me the strength to do the things I have to do. In my job I see that I can make a difference in peoples' lives. I find great comfort in the fact that I'm doing it in this manner.

Although I see the seedier side of life, I know that if I'm not doing it, someone else has to. I find I have the skills to do this work, and I utilize those skills to accomplish the work at hand.

How can churches or other civic organizations help protect children from on-line predators?

I think churches and organizations of any kind should tell their people, "This is what is going on in the world, and if you do these things you are going to be safe." If they are willing to tackle those issues and talk to the children in a matter-of-fact manner, allowing them to discuss and ask questions, we are going to have street-smart and safe children.

Interviewed by Rev. Owen Christianson

Commander Rick's Internet Safety Tips

Parents have a responsibility to talk to their children about what is going on. I have found with own my children that if we are open with them and not dictatorial, but just talk with them about what is going on out there, they have good heads on their shoulders. They can handle a lot of the issues that we traditionally didn't think kids could handle. The worst thing we can do is to ignore what's going on.

In addition, I suggest the following safety tips for computer use:

• Keep the computer in the main room in the house, such as a family room, not in the kids' rooms.

• Establish a rule that kids will only be on-line at certain times of the day. There's no need for kids to be on-line at 1:00am. You wouldn't want them walking on the street of a major city at that time, so why would you let them on the Internet?

• If your child is in a chat room, the conversation must be such that you, as a parent, can stand behind and watch what is being said. If your child doesn't want you to see the conversation, she shouldn't be having it.

• If your child comes upon something like pornography or someone he thinks is a predator, let him know you expect him to tell you about it. He need not hide what is going on.

• Never give out any personal information such as address, phone number, birth date.

• Never agree to meet someone, unless the parents give permission. Kids can have friendships on-line and they can meet those friends, but it needs to be done in a very controlled environment with the parents participating in the first meeting to make sure everything is on the up and up.

An FBI brochure entitled "A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety" is available on-line at www.fbi.gov or by calling your local FBI office.