Online 999 Button Will Give Police Hotline To Perverts
By Ben Taylor - Daily Mail, 26th January 2005
Children who fear they have been targeted by paedophiles in internet chatrooms will be able to alert the police using an online '999' service.
The system, which launches today, will allow youngsters to pass on suspect messages with a single click of the mouse.
Developed over the last year by the National Crime Squad and its counterparts in Australia, the US and Canada, the Virtual Global Taskforce will also offer advice on how to use the internet safely.
It is hoped its logo - a blue matchstick child and an eye symbol, which will appear on the launch sites of internet providers Microsoft/MSN, AOL, BT and Vodafone - will become universally recognised.
The launch of the site comes as senior police officers revealed they want the power to strip perverts of their credit cards if they are caught accessing child pornography.
More than 4,500 people have now been questioned by officers working for Operation Ore, the British end of a US investigation into a pay-per-view child pornography website based in Texas.
The Virtual Global Taskforce site - http://www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com - is designed to be the first point of contact for children or parents and will also include links to support agencies such as the NSPCC and Childline.
Emails Checked By Officers
When a child or parents feels worried that the person he or she is talking to is trying to trick them into a meeting, they click on the icon.
They will be told how to copy the incriminating conversation or messages from the chatroom and where to send it. The emails will then be checked by officers in the four countries.
Jim Gamble, deputy director general of the National Crime Squad, said that by clicking on the logo, users would effectively be walking through a "police station front door".
"If you are a child online and you are approached by someone in a chatroom you now have access to law enforcement," he said.
"You will be able to report that activity and we will tell you how to 'cut and paste' it, which means we will be able to deliver a much more effective response.
"It is a reminder the internet is no longer anonymous. For potential offenders this icon is the equivalent of a speed camera, telling them to slow down and think again."
Mr Gamble said the ultimate aim was for the police forces in all four countries to provide a permanent online presence so that officers could 'talk' to worried children at all hours.
He also revealed that talks with the Home Office and major banks were at an 'advanced stage' over proposals to confiscate credit cards from child pornography website users.
"If I were an online paedophile I would not like my credit rating to be damaged because I had been caught using the card in this way," he said.
From:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=335456&in_page_id=1770
My emphasis.
Oh, and what happens if your credit card number has been stolen?
How about targetting the the people who kidnap kids and film them being raped instead of the people who have their credit card details stolen?
Or would that be too much like investing resources into catching the few real dangerous drivers when you can be making money from criminalising loadsa safe drivers creeping over a lowered limit?
