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The National Police are now equipped with a powerful new
computer system to hunt pedophiles who use the Internet to swap child
porn and information about exploited minors.
Indonesia is the first country in Asia, and only the second in the
world after Canada, to utilize the Child Exploitation Tracking System
(CETS), a software system aimed to combat online child exploitation
globally.
"In the world in general, there are at least 50,000 child exploitation
crimes discovered through the Internet. But only 500 have been solved,"
National Police chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Makbul Padmanegara said
at Wednesday's launch of the system.
"Taking this kind of integrated approach allows each player to bring
their expertise and contribution to the table, producing a more
effective response to the heinous crimes. We are now equipped with
tools to better protect children around the world from online
predators."
Representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Australian
Federal Police, the Canadian Embassy and Microsoft also attended the
event.
The system is currently in use in the major cities of Jakarta, Bandung,
Yogyakarta, Medan, Bali, Surabaya and Batam, as well as Lombok.
According to Sr. Comr. Petrus Reinhard Golose of the police information
technology and cyber crime unit, the CETS system works to detect all
digital signatures made by offenders on the Internet.
Microsoft's Asia Pacific director Peter Moore explained that the police
search for offenders would be expedited by knowing how to search
different databases for e-mails and chat sessions. The latter are often
used to exchange information among pedophiles, or to prey on
unsuspecting children using the Web.
"They would be able to share the information across the provincial
centers in Indonesia and law enforcement authorities in different
countries across the world," Moore said.
Four police officers visited the Toronto Police Force Headquarters in
February 2006 as part of its Instructor Development Program to
understand how CETS is being deployed and used to track online child
predators in North America and across the world.
Upon their return, the four officers trained 29 other fellow officers
on the CETS system operation and were scheduled to start a new training
class in July.
The U.S. Department of Justice has played a leading role in the
capacity-building efforts of the National Police by providing technical
assistance in the form of training and education. This has helped
National Police investigators to further develop the skills necessary
to investigate instances of computer facilitated crimes such as child
exploitation, identity theft and credit card fraud.
The fight to curb sexual exploitation of children through the Internet
is bound to become more complicated, with the convergence between the
Internet and mobile phone making access to cyberspace more open.
A report by ECPAT International released in September 2005 states that
Asia is leading the way in connectivity and that it estimated 1 billion
people would be mobile phone subscribers by 2010.
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