The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Center is designed to work with other child-protection groups to track down online purveyors and groomers, with powers to confiscate the assets of child porn traders.
“The CEOP Center is the most significant development in child protection in recent years and is a direct response to the explosion in online child abuse,” Executive Director Jim Gamble said. “Behind every online chat there is the potential that your child may be speaking to a sex offender. That is a harsh reality.”
Gamble said that his organization, funded partly by Microsoft and AOL, is in talks with U.K. police chiefs to also publish mug shots of the perpetrators in local newspapers.
“If the risk is high, we need to consider new and perhaps constructively aggressive measures before they harm a child in the community,” he said.
CEOP is affiliated with the new FBI-style Serious Organized Crime Agency, launched earlier this month by Tony Blair.
The new agency includes a 24/7 hotline to report incidents and constant monitoring of chat rooms to catch groomers in the act. CEOP also works with other forces internationally to track down child porn purveyors.
ASACP Executive Director Joan Irvine said that the U.K.’s new initiative will help the battle against child porn.
“So much child pornography originates overseas, and of course that’s often where the money trail leads,” Irvine told XBIZ. “The U.S. can’t tackle this problem alone.”
Irvine said that she first heard of CEOP while a conference in Belfast last November.
“Jim Gamble was there, as were many other U.K. law enforcement and government personnel,” she said. “A consistent theme was the need for an international approach to protecting children online, so it’s encouraging that CEOP seems to be making that a priority.”
