Child Pornography and Technology

A couple weeks ago while browsing facebook on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I came accross a video documentary (the video can be seen at the bottom of the article). It was about a company, Terre des Hommes, that created a computer generated model of a 10 year old Indonesian girl, to help catch sexual predators around the world.

Watching that documentary came as sort of a shock to me. I didn't realize that child cybersex chat porn had become such a problem. Reading into it further, I learned that children in third world countries, were being exploited sexually by men in "richer" countries who would pay these children small amounts of untraceable money, for a few minutes of video chat time. As unsettling as this is to think about, it's a huge problem that is only getting worse.

I came accross this article that spoke of the growing issues of child cybersex born in the Phillipines. A country that has high poverty rates and a population that speaks basic english is prone to such exploitation. Many girls are traffiked and/or lured into the business with the incentive of money. There are many "cybersex dens" where children perform shows in front of cameras. Even when police bust these dens, they seldom catch the owners. The source of the child pornogrpahy is very difficult to trace and the heads of these operations are rarely convicted.

Thus, Terre des Hommes decided to tackle this issue from the other end--catch those who pay for the child pornography. Terre des Hommes is a charity organization and did all the work for free. They started by developing an interactive animated girl named "Sweetie". They made her to appear about 10 years old. They send her out on various cybersex chat forums, where she is contacted by several customers. As the chats are going on, various information is collected--enough so that Terre des Hommes is able to catch the people at the other end. They have tracked down over 1000 people through Sweetie.

It really amazes me that a company was able to develop the technology to track down sexual predators for free. Technology is what started the entire child cybersex porn market, and technology is what needs to be used to stop it. Terre des Hommes believes that tools such as Sweetie should be used by government law enforcement agencies everywhere in order to track down predators and stop this multi-billion dollar industry.