Facebook gives way after child porn bust

Facebook gives way after child porn bust Dylan Welch and Paola Totaro August 28, 2010
FACEBOOK has agreed to pass information about criminal activity on its site to Australian police, after revelations it had ignored repeated warnings about an international child pornography ring operating among its pages.
The Herald yesterday revealed the web company's management had repeatedly failed to disclose to police the activity of an international child pornography syndicate operating on its site and had ignored continuing admissions by one of the ring's Australian members.

Facebook spent yesterday trying to contain the public damage caused by the revelations. It issued several statements, one from a Californian spokeswoman and another from its chief of security, Joe Sullivan. Mr Sullivan's statement acknowledged Facebook could have responded to police requests faster.
"Facebook and the AFP are … working on protocols that will ensure activity of this nature is more rapidly reported to Australian law enforcement," he said....
Ian Green, 45, was jailed for four years on Thursday after he admitted 24 charges of making, possessing and distributing images of abused children.

Chichester Crown Court was told that the ring had swapped more than 100,000 pictures and videos of children being abused, and Green used 11 different Facebook accounts to distribute the images, along with indecent videos of children.
He also shared the photographs, 724 of which were rated at the most extreme level of ''five'', using email and MSN.
He was arrested in May after investigators infiltrated the network and found that Green had enabled selected contacts to access the groups....

"The fact that we have to send an email to get a hold of them, instead of a liaison officer who we can have direct contact with to explain the urgency or particular nature of our requests, is frustrating," one senior NSW police officer said.
"Instead [of the liaison officer] we have to take a number and line up in a queue.''
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-gives-way-after-child-porn-bust-20100827-13vz4.html


B.C. child porn suspect linked to global ring
By QMI Agency August 28, 2010 A Vancouver high school teacher arrested in June for child pornography charges has been linked to an alleged international child porn ring that was operating on popular social networking site Facebook....The investigation, dubbed Project Ocean, was launched by Australian Federal Police (AFP) in March, when an officer created a Facebook account and was approached by "numerous" users to become friends, Australian Federal Police said in a release.

By engaging with these Facebook users, police identified the network whose members they allege were exchanging "child exploiting material."
Police say the network used Facebook to host the images and shared images and videos through the use of private groups.
AFP worked with the RCMP, the FBI and the U.K.'s Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre in the investigation.
AFP assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan, who heads the force's High Tech Crime Centre said in a release that Facebook took action immediately once it was alerted to the offensive activity.

"Facebook deactivated the online accounts of the initial suspects but there were indications that, within hours, the groups were re-forming again,'' he said in a release.
In a joint statement, Facebook and the AFP said they are working on "protocols that will ensure activity of this nature is more rapidly reported to Australian law enforcement."....
Convicted sex offender Ian Green, 45, the alleged head of the network, has been sentenced in British court to four years in prison.

The West Sussex man pleaded guilty to six counts of making, one count of possessing, seven counts of distributing and 10 counts view to distributing child porn.
Court heard that Green used 11 different Facebook accounts to distribute indecent images of children, the BBC reported.
Green was granting selected contacts access to private Facebook groups that contained the images.
Five more suspects were arrested in the U.K. and three men were arrested in Australia, police said.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/08/27/15159556.html