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List:       isn
Subject:    [ISN] Old Laws Work against New Crime
From:       mea culpa <jericho () dimensional ! com>
Date:       1998-10-30 4:29:05
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Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au>

28-10-1998 USA: OLD LAWS WORK AGAINST NET PORN.

There are several widely held notions about Internet-related crime.  One
holds that law enforcement cannot deal with quick-hit criminals whose
global computer transactions can be accomplished in seconds. Another is
that the police forces of many nations will never close ranks to share
information and coordinate investigations. Still another holds that
Washington must have the means to decode computer encryption if law
enforcement is to do its job. As Times staff writers Mark Fritz and
Solomon Moore showed last Friday in an article about a child pornography
investigation, none are necessarily true. 

U.S. Customs Service computer experts worked closely with local law
enforcement and several foreign police agencies to conduct, over the
course of two days, 100 raids in California and 21 other states and in
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Their target was the
largest Internet child pornography ring discovered to date, known as
Wonderland. 

"I'm unaware of another police operation that has ever pulled together so
many law enforcement agencies worldwide," Bob Packham, the deputy director
general of Britain's National Crime Squad, told a reporter. 
 
Wonderland was a tight-knit group that freely traded 100,000 images of
child pornography. Its members had production studios for live child sex
shows that they transmitted over the Net. The operation had a
computer-security designer and programming and hardware specialists who
built a daunting array of codes and powerful encryption to maintain
secrecy. 

Encryption employs complicated algorithms to scramble documents until they
can be decoded by the intended receiver. Although encryption surely will
be a backbone of trust and security in the electronic communications and
business transactions of the future, U.S. federal law enforcement agencies
presently maintain that they need access and eavesdropping ability to
prevent criminals from plying their trade in secrecy. But in the child
pornography case, traditional law enforcement means like wiretaps, search
warrants and message tracing proved sufficient. In other words,
traditional methods were applied to a new medium. 

Some privacy advocates are unnerved by what they see as entrapment in this
case, but that's preposterous. Depravity has been brought to light. Some
of the children depicted have been identified as relatives and neighbors
of accused Wonderland members. 

This case exposes vile secrets. But more important, it shows how an
electronically well-defended crime ring can be broken without overarching
laws and assaults on privacy. 

LOS ANGELES TIMES 28/10/1998 P6 

-o-
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