Facebook fails to alert police on child porn

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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

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

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