Indonesian Police on Track for Paedophiles

The police in Australia have recently been using a new computer system to hunt down paedophiles and with great success. Now Indonesian police are going online in search for paedophiles using a software system that tracks down the offenders digital signature.

There is nothing more disgusting or vile or abhorrent that these animals that prey on children using the internet. The National Police are now equipped with a powerful new computer system to hunt paedophiles who use the Internet to swap child porn and information about exploited minors in Indonesia

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.

A police spokesman said "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."

The system is currently in use in the major cities of Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Medan, Bali, Surabaya and Batam as well as Lombok.

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 emails and chat sessions. The latter are often used to exchange information among paedophiles or to prey on unsuspecting children using the Web.

"They would be able to share the information across the provincial centres in Indonesia and law enforcement authorities in different countries across the world" Moore said.

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.