Canadians investigated in
global child porn ring
Updated Wed. Feb. 7 2007 11:07 AM ET
CTV.ca News StaffAuthorities in Austria have uncovered a major international child pornography
ring that stretches across 77 countries and involves more than 2,360 Internet
addresses -- including at least 19 from Canada.
"The RCMP is saying that they've identified 19 IP addresses in Canada," CTV's
Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife said Wednesday.
"That does not mean that there are 19 suspects -- it could be one individual or
several individuals using these addresses."
Fife said the RCMP believes the addresses are being used by people in Canada and
that they have not been looped here by people outside the country.
The Canadians are suspected of paying to access videos on a website of young
children, aged 14 and under, being sexually abused.
The numbers are significantly lower than what Austrian Police Col. Gerrard
Hesztera confirmed to CTV Newsnet earlier Wednesday.
"We have 103 hits (Canadian IP addresses) from Canada and of course we gave the
information back to the Canadian authorities," said Hesztera.
Interior Minister Guenther Platter said the FBI was investigating about 600
Internet addresses in the United States, German authorities were looking at 400
addresses, France at 100 while his country was looking at 23.
Platter said the videos contained "the worst kind of child sexual abuse."
Austrian police are calling the case "a strike against child pornography
unprecedented in Austrian criminal history."
"Girls could be seen being raped, and you could also hear screams,'' said Harald
Gremel, an Austrian police expert on Internet crime who headed the
investigation.
Gremel said no infants were seen in any of the videos and that authorities moved
quickly to share their information with other countries to help apprehend
suspects abroad.
He said the investigation was launched in July after a man working for a
Vienna-based Internet file hosting service alerted authorities at the Interior
Ministry to pornographic material he had discovered during a routine check.
In the span of 24 hours, the man recorded 8,000 hits from 2,361 computer IP
addresses in 77 countries, confirmed Gremel. The man managed to record the IP
addresses of those trying to access the material and gave the information to
authorities.
In Austria, the youngest person implicated in the case is 17 and the oldest is
69.
Gremel said the videos were all posted on a Russian website that is now defunct.
To access the material, users had to pay US$89.
Investigators believe most of the videos were made in Eastern Europe and
uploaded somewhere in Britain.
Austrian authorities have so far seized 31 PCs, seven laptops, 1,232 DVDs and
CDs, 1,428 diskettes and 213 video cassettes.
With files from The Associated Press
