Online child porn a growing problem

Over the past four years, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has seen a 400% increase in reports of child-porn Web sites to its CyberTipline, the Christian Science Monitor reports. "Law-enforcement officials are particularly disturbed by the increased number of commercial sites that offer photos of exploited children in return for a credit-card number," according to the Monitor. So one way law enforcement worldwide is fighting the problem is at the financial "chokepoint" - trying to shut down the use of credit cards in child-porn transactions. Visa International has been helping for two years, Mastercard is reportedly about to jump in. But smaller, illicit credit-card-billing services are another key link in the chain. Police two years ago shut down Regpay, one such company in Minsk, Belarus, with 50 child-porn sites as clients. Those sites had 270,000 subscribers - "4,000 in New Jersey alone," the Monitor says. "Because the membership pool was so large, law-enforcement officials have broken the prosecutions down into two phases. The first phase was to dismantle the financial apparatus…. The second phase, which is ongoing, is to arrest individuals who subscribed to the sites," such as respected members of communities who work with children, the Monitor adds. [Thanks to the NCEMC for pointing this story out. To report child-porn activity, go to CyberTipline.com or call 800.843.5678.]