Predators Are Children Catchers

Group Name

P.A.C.C

Group Members

Courtney Mueller, Candace Wu, Phyllis Wong, Adrian Chan

Technology

CETS and other monitoring systems

Initial Statement

The very present issue of internet predators taking advantage of girls and boys all over the world. We will be reviewing past crimes that have been committed by predators and focussing on the government and what it is doing as prevention.

Argument

An online predator is an internet user who choses to take advantage of vulnerable people. Usually, a younger child or teen is preyed upon, and in our case, for sexual means. Every year children are reminded how to safely protect themselves from becoming victims but still there are countless cases today of children being taken advantage of. Here we will look into past crimes that have been commited. Statistics will also be included, as well as prevention for the future. With technology advancing so quickly, not only will predators become smarter and harder to catch but society must also adapt and better protect children using the internet.However, with our research we have found that contrary to popular belief, the number of cases of society's children becoming victims is decreasing. Even though, our fears are increasing with the help of the media.

History

Currently the Canadian law enforcement agencies such as the RCMP and the Toronto Police Service, the Canadian government and Microsoft Canada are working together to help prevent further exploitation. These two groups have created the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS). It is a very powerful tool created by law enforcement for investigators to effectively fight against the constantly changing ways of online predators. In the past, police would have to sort through hundreds of files and photos to search for a predator, making it extremely difficult to share information. However,CETS is a database housed within the RCMP's National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre (NCECC) that will serve as an information repository and an investigative tool in law enforcement's fight against the online sexual exploitation of children. The concept for CETS originated in January 2003, when an officer from the Toronto Police Service, frustrated by the lack of technology available to help solve these crimes, emailed Bill Gates asking for help. In response, Microsoft Canada began working with the Toronto Police Service and the RCMP to explore how it could meet the needs of law enforcement. Total investment by Mircosoft in this project has reached $4.5 Million.

Stats

Incidents involving sexual abuse over the internet has been steadily declining as much as 40% since the early 1990's. Today only about 4% of all youth internet users has stated that they have received requests for nude or sexual explicit pictures of themselves (The pulse). The number of cases involving sexual abuse in the united states have dropped from a staggering 150,000 to around 90,000 from the years 1990 to 2000. It is expected to drop even more by 2008 but stats are unavailable at time of writing.

Currently, there are over 600,000 Registered Sex Offenders in the United States; an estimated 150,000 have been lost in the system (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2006).

The predominant sex crime scenario doesn't involve violence or stranger molesters posing online as children; only 5 percent of offenders concealed the fact they were adults from their victims. Almost 80 percent of offenders were explicit about their intentions with youth. In 73 percent of crimes, youth go to meet the offender on multiple occasions for multiple sexual encounters (NJOV Study, 2007).

Teens are willing to meet with strangers: 16 percent of teens considered meeting someone they've only talked to online and 8 percent have actually met someone they only knew online (Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later. 2006).

Four percent of all youth Internet users received aggressive sexual solicitations, which threatened to spill over into "real life". These solicitors asked to meet the youth in person, called them on the telephone, or sent offline mail, money, or gifts. Also 4 percent of youth Internet users had distressing sexual solicitations that left them feeling upset of extremely afraid (Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later, 2006).

A majority of teens (58 percent) don't think posting photos or other personal info on social networking sites is unsafe. (National teen Internet survey was funded by Cox Communications in partnership with NCMEC and John Walsh and was conducted in March 2007 among 1,070 teens age 13 to 17. The research was conducted online by TRU. http://www.cox.com/TakeCharge/...ocs/survey_results_2007.ppt).

20 percent of students in middle school as well as high school admit that they have met face-to-face with someone they first met on the Internet (Market Wire. November 6, 2006. i-SAFE Inc. December 12, 2006 http://www.marketwire.com/mw/r...e_html_b1?release_id=180330).

Past Cases

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_kADup_wZw

The link above is a Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator Clip. Where Chris Hansen attempts to expose a predator under the belief that the predator is there to meet up with a young girl.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2003-01-29-baig-safety_x.htm

The link above is an example of past cases on internet predators. The 13 year old was strangled to death. It is believed that she met her killer online.

http://www.pcsndreams.com/Pages/Archives_05.htm

The link above shows several examples of young children meeting internet predators online, and their consequences.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?k=90509&id=137dcf74-d82f-4508-9f50-2bc5d0125371

The link above is an article on an internet predator, Mark Bedford who tricked numerous girls into performing sexual acts in front of the internet cameras for his own sexual pleasure. He apoligized to his victims in the courtroom where he was sentenced to three years in a federal penitentiary.

Prevention

Some ways to prevent yourself from an internet predator:

keep all your personal information secured. Do not tell strangers your address, phone number, name of school etc.

always keep your parents updated on who you are communicating with

do not agree to meet with someone that you've "met" from the internet unless you have permission from your parents or guardian and make sure they are there with you

do not send strangers pictures of yourself

set up rules with parents when going online (time, length, allowable sites)

Find out what information about you is available online (Searching your name, address etc.)

Make sure there is no information about you online that can allow strangers to find you while you are offline (address etc.)
Know how to block people/messages online when they start to make you feel uneasy

Make sure your contact list are people that you know in real life, if they are not, becareful of what you say when you chat with them
inform your parents if you have given strangers your personal information

What should you do to keep your child(ren) safe?

Keep the computer in a family room where you can see your child's online activities

Tell your children that rules you set are to protect them and not to control them

Create a password to log on to the computer so you can control and set everything

Tell your children to let you know if a stranger tries to contact them

Keep track of the length of time your children are spending on the computer each day

Do not allow your children to use webcam, digital camera, or video camera without your permission

Search the internet "history" regularly

Government Intervention

Another explanation as to why sexual abuse of the internet has been decreasing as of late should be credited to increasing government involvement and legislation in this area. New laws have been legislated by the government that ban past sex offenders form the internet. New Jersey for example has enacted legislation on December 27, 2008 banning some convicted sex offenders from using the Internet (NY Times). Under these new laws previous sex offenders must let the state parole board know about their access to the internet and access to any computers, sex offenders must also submit periodic and unannounced examinations to their computer equipment and must allow the installation of monitoring systems on their computer so their use and activities can be monitored by the government (NY Times). Many of the sex offenders that have been convicted of sex abuse crimes are subjected to lifetime of supervision.

Also, Canadian law enforcement agencies such as the RCMP and the Canadian government has been actively involved in working with Microsoft Canada to prevent further cases of sexual abuse of the internet; more information can be found in the previous heading