Police hope ISPs will do more to help in fighting child exploitation

"There's a large number that do not and had (the St. Thomas suspect) been with those networks, we'd still be looking for him and that little girl would still be being abused."

Police allege a man was chatting with an undercover officer for nine or 10 months before offering a live feed of a child being sexually abused. Published reports said the victim was the 34-year-old man's preschool-aged daughter.

Police arrested him within two hours and Frizzell said that's because his ISP must have reacted quickly when police sought help finding his home address.

Tom Copeland, head of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, said in most cases ISPs will co-operate if presented with a search warrant or a so-called letter of authority, but acknowledged it's not always the case.

"It's going to be a management decision by each and every ISP but I think the trend, especially when it comes to child exploitation, is to co-operate with law enforcement - subject to them providing some basic lawful authorization," he said.

The industry - which is made up of between 300 to 400 ISPs nationwide - has worked with law enforcement agencies to come up a letter of authority, a form that police can fill out and fax to ISPs to get information. It was developed after coming to a consensus that needing to obtain a search warrant was impractical for a number of reasons.

"The notion that a search warrant is needed for simply a customer's name and address is a little bit far-reaching, it's really overkill based on what Canada's privacy laws dictate," Copeland said.

"There is a general naivety about what Canada's privacy laws will and won't allow us to do, what information is to be kept private subject to more rigorous requests by law enforcement, versus what a reasonable person would expect to be private or not private."

He said a customer's name and address - which can usually be found in the phone book or in an online database - wouldn't normally be considered personal or private information, and often that's all police need.

While there is some co-operation now, the federal government needs to compel all ISPs to help police, said Steve Sullivan, president of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.

"We had heard stories of law enforcement trying to get access to information about subscribers and just not having any luck," he said.

"(The government should) require ISPs to co-operate with law enforcement, as opposed to just having law enforcement calling up and hoping that the ISPs will co-operate."

Another problem police face is that criminals can spoof their Internet address, providing a dead end when ISPs do try to help with an investigation.

"There's a variety of anonymizer software available that does that," Copeland said, adding that many - but not all - of the bad guys cover their tracks.

"There's smart criminals and there's dumb criminals."

Either way, Sullivan said police already face an uphill battle in fighting child predators and any roadblocks that can be removed, should be done so immediately.

"The people who are committing these crimes are so motivated that they are probably ahead of law enforcement as far as adapting themselves to the new technology," he said.

"As wonderful a job as police are doing, they're probably still playing catch up. Unfortunately I don't know that they're even close to winning the war."

A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada said the government is reviewing the issue, including the Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act, which was first introduced in November 2005 by the previous Liberal government.

The act would require ISPs to "build and maintain an interception capability on their networks that allows for the lawful interception of communications by law enforcement agencies and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service."

The Conservatives have promised to revive the act although it has faced some opposition from the likes of privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, who said she was concerned about a "regime that could come in, which would allow for warrantless searches of telecommunications material."

Read the full article here

Broken Link? If the link to the original article is broken or has been altered you can view the article by clicking here.