POLIS - Policing OnLine Information System
Online child sexual abuse is a global crime and so it is vital that it is policed at a global level. As a global response to this global problem, nine dedicated VGT law enforcement agencies have come together across the digital divide to combat online child sexual abuse worldwide.
The successes of the VGT rely on the strong international partnerships involved. The VGT comprises the following nine members:
The Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) seeks to build an effective, international partnership of law enforcement agencies, non government organisations and industry to help protect children from online child abuse.
The objectives of the VGT are:
The private sector has a vital role to play in tackling online child abuse, and a number of private sector players are working with the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) to help make the internet safer by design.
Private sector partners may include those from industry, academia and non-government organisations:
The aim is to publicly recognise good corporate citizenship, support innovative thinking and, ultimately, to reduce the incidence of child abuse online.
COSPOL (Comprehensive, Operational, Strategic Planning for the Police) was established under the Dutch EU presidency in 2004.
The COSPOL Project, which is a multilateral law enforcement instrument created under the guidance, support and direction of the EPCTF (European Police Chiefs Taskforce) with the aim of achieving tangible operational results in terms of arresting top level criminals and dismantling crime groups and terrorist networks by making use of analytical support of Europol.
CIRCAMP (Cospol Internet Related Child Abusive Material Project) is a COSPOL group that is aimed at combating on line child sexual abuse. Supported by Europol and Interpol 12 countries – Belgium (driver), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Norway, The Netherlands, Spain and Sweden (forerunners) – are working together to combat on line sexual abuse of children. With the former action plan (lead by Norway) the group worked in a project aiming to implement access filtering technology in as many countries as possible. The filtering technology is used to prevent access to Internet sites that are used for distributing child abusive material, on the level of the providers in the different countries. This two year project was funded by the SIP (Safer Internet Program) of the European commission and completed on the 31st October 2010.
Therefore, as a next step in this fight to give the surfers in general and our children in particular a safer Internet, a new action plan was drafted. The new plan has an operational concept in which the members decided to tackle 5 specific fields of activity on the Internet: 1) P2P, 2) Private and secure file exchanging networks, 3) IRC, 4) News groups, 5) Grooming and social networks.
CIRCAMP also keeps on supporting countries that want to use filtering technology, continues to share information on filtering lists and supports the “worst of”-list managed by Interpol.
The EFC is a permanent network formed by public and private stakeholders which aims at becoming the preferential platform, used by EU Member States, for the fight against the commercial distribution of child sexual abuse material through information and communication technologies.
The aim of the EFC is the fight of the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet in all those environments where there is a commercial distribution of child sexual abuse material. It will therefore not only focus on websites redirecting to a payment site, as it was the case with the previous EFC, but also on other Internet environments where such a commercial distribution could take place: hosting services, newsgroups, etc.
Strategic goals
The initiative was launched at Europol’s annual meeting of Child Sexual Exploitation Experts and aims to detect and disrupt European travelling sex offenders that exploit local children in destination countries.
Under Project Haven, Europol will coordinate a common EU effort to address these crimes of child sexual abuse being committed by European citizens outside their countries of origin. This will include the coordination of international operations run by EU law enforcement authorities, as well as supporting the project through awareness events to discourage potential child sex offenders from abusing children abroad. Furthermore, in the long term, preventive measures such as a permanent notification or alert system should be implemented at Europol in order to trace child sex offenders and limit their illegal and deplorable activities.
This annual 8-day course, held every year since 2000, aims to provide training for representatives from EU member States and non-EU States and Interpol. The training is delivered by trainers from Europol, Belgium, Greece, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and New Zealand, all of whom have extensive knowledge and experience in investigating and combating the sexual abuse of children online.
The approach is collegial, with expert trainers and investigators working in the field of child sexual exploitation coming together with prosecutors and judges to network and exchange experience. The main objective of this annual course is to enhance the expertise of those working in this crime area in the EU and beyond, so that they are better able to investigate, dismantle and prosecute child sex offender networks on the internet, whilst safeguarding and respecting the rights of the children involved.
In addition to lectures ranging from perpetrator psychology and the latest online investigation techniques to international cooperation, the course programme includes a wide range of hands-on exercises with the intention of bringing law enforcement investigation standards together. By welcoming prosecutors and judges, the course aims to provide them with a better understanding of this crime, the investigation methods used and the possible constraints investigators are confronted with.
Since the first course took place in 2000, this highly respected Europol course has provided expert training to more than 500 law enforcement officers and members of the judiciary from EU Member States and from countries all over the world.
M.A.R.I.N.A — Moyen Automatisé de Recherche des Images Non Autorisées. (Unlawful Images Automatic search) — is a user-friendly live CD tool for all investigators (not only IT or forensics specialists) that allows to scan suspect's computer for files related to child pornography (child abusing images) and identify them by comparing to hashes of already known files. Currently the database is comprised of 1,154,028 hashes of known files related to child pornography.
MARINA is free (but not open source) for law-enforcement agencies only. A formal agreement has to be signed between the French Gendarmerie Nationale and your organization.
What does MARINA do exactly?
