Wednesday

It's everywhere

There's a breaking news story today on a child porn ring that was raided in Austria. You can find out more from CNN here. It's not all that surprising these days to hear about the authorities cracking down on people who are abusing kids, so what's the big deal with nabbing a few sickos in Europe? Well, the big deal is that the police have not only arrested a number of bad guys for creating and distributing the filth, but they have also picked up a whole bunch of consumers, too. There's a couple of things interesting about all this. First, by targeting both the producers and the users, the authorities have tried to eliminate both supply and demand in one fell swoop. As long as there is a demand there will be somebody willing to supply it. So it's about time we did something about both ends of the chain. The other thing to note is that authorities have identified users all over the world - 77 countries - including the US and Canada. They have provided authorities here with the internet addresses of users and we can only hope they follow up with some action here too. What all this shows, in glaring flashing warning lights, is that the internet allows this sort of crime to be quickly and easily spread all over the world. While it's wonderful to see that police are being more cooperative, the reality is that the internet allows people to hide quite effectively. We can't rely on the authorities to be everywhere, so we must all be diligent in protecting ourselves to the best of our ability. Remember, protecting your kids from finding this sort of thing online is a vital link in the chain. Let's hope we see more stories like this one in the very near future.

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