Crime In Australia: International Connections Conference
Keynote address by
Commissioner Mick Keelty APM
The Dark Side of Technology
29 November, 2004
Hilton on the Park, Melbourne
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Senator Marise Payne, Chair of the Board of the Australian Institute of Criminology, Professor Richard Fox; Dr Jay Albanese from the National Institute of Justice in Washington DC; Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, Dr Toni Makkai; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.
I'd also like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri and the Boonwurung groups, who are the traditional owners of this land.
I thank the Australian Institute of Criminology for the opportunity to participate in this conference alongside colleagues from so many fields working to better understand and improve responses to crime.
As we all know, the Institute is at the forefront of international crime research and I value being able to contribute to this process.
Originally, I was asked to come and talk about strategic responses to transnational crime - an important topic that Senator Payne has touched on this morning and which some of you may have heard me talk about at other public fora.
But I thought, rather than try and cover the AFP's extensive involvement in transnational crime responses - a large part of our business today - I'd focus on one area in particular: online crime.
The evolution of online crime
Online or high-tech crime poses some of the most significant and complex transnational crime challenges, and has considerable implications for policing and the community as a whole.
Amid vast advances in information communication technologies, we have seen two distinct types of high-tech crime emerge:
- Crimes committed with or against computers or communications systems; and
- Traditional crimes which are largely facilitated by technology.
Just the evolution of the Internet alone, has created major new opportunities for crime.
It has provided criminals with greater geographic reach than ever before; a platform to commit crime on a grand and rapid scale; and it poses many difficulties in terms of reporting, recording and even understanding the sorts of crimes involved.
It now seems that the sort of change that occurred with the Industrial Revolution over more than a century, now occurs within years - or even months - thanks to the speed and capacity of modern technology. Just think about the change our grandparents experienced in their lifetime, compared with what the youth of today experience…
So, one of the biggest challenges for law enforcement is ensuring our investigative tools and laws keep pace with these developments and the way criminals are applying the technology.
Many of you would know that the AFP hosts the Australian High Tech Crime Centre at our headquarters in Canberra.
The Centre was set up about 18 months ago to address some of these problems and to provide a coordinated national response to high-tech crime. It is growing at a phenomenal rate, with more than 15 agencies now involved.
Already the Centre has achieved considerable success investigating offences ranging from online fraud, to computer hacking, denial of service attacks, and the trade of online child abuse images.
The Centre was recently in the national spotlight with its involvement coordinating Operation Auxin - the Australian arm of Operation Falcon (the worldwide investigation into the trafficking of online child sex images).
As of today, 708 Australian suspects have been positively identified in relation to Auxin. 469 warrants have been executed Australia-wide, leading to 228 arrests and summonses involving 2260 charges (AHTCC Auxin Stats as of 27/10/04).
While the size and scope of the Operation worldwide deeply shocked the community, I believe it served as a sobering reminder that we need to gain a better understanding of what is going on over the Internet and how to deal with it.
Understanding online child sex crimes
The Internet has been accessible to the general community now for over 10 years, but I think we still struggle to comprehend how it is being used to commit crime.
There are some who think breaking the law online, is somehow less serious than doing it in the 'physical world'. But online offending carries the same gravity as offline offending.
If we look at the crime of online child sex abuse, the bottom line is that any involvement is a most serious offence.
Every time images are viewed, purchased and transmitted, victims captured in the photographs are re-abused and demand for the material increases and victims suffer knowing that the images are endlessly recirculating. The end result is a whole new generation of victims, with far-reaching and adverse social consequences.
Some of the key issues we need to address as a community if we are to successfully combat this crime, were highlighted by Auxin.
Issues like:
- Has the Internet allowed more people to view this sort of material than ever before?
- Why are so many with previously unblemished records involved and how can we better predict and identify those most likely to offend?
- Is viewing online material a first step toward other types of offences being committed?
- Is the trade in such material linked to more organised forms of crime and industries such as child sex tourism?
- Do we need comprehensive supply and demand reduction strategies and how would they work?
- How do we better protect those who are vulnerable?
- What is the likelihood of recidivism and how do we rehabilitate offenders?
- And what priority should be placed on investigating this sort of crime in a complex criminal environment? ….to name but a few!
A great deal of research is required to help answer some of these questions in this evolving crime area. Thankfully we are making advances in this regard, as more evidence is gathered and as studies are being undertaken.
For instance, valuable new information has been obtained on the structure of the industry.
Researchers have found that the obsessive nature of collecting child sex images has led to the building of 'internet-facilitated communities', which are allowing offenders to build and expand on collections of material.
These networks are also encouraging the perception of children as objects rather than people and are 'normalising' offender behaviour in terms of both collecting images and physical abuse.
Preliminary research in this area, has also shown growing evidence of a nexus between viewing sexually abusive images and the physical abuse of children.
For example, a study conducted in the United States found that of more than 1200 people arrested for the possession of abusive images, 36 per cent had physically abused children themselves (United States Postal Inspection Service survey).
In Europe, a study (The University of Cork Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe project) by the University of Cork (COPINE) found 78 per cent of offenders charged with possessing abusive images had abused children prior to, or post, viewing the images. It also found that, on average, each offender abused up to 30 different children.
And a small study conducted here in Australia by Smallbone and Wortle for the Queensland Crime Commission in 2000, found that 10 per cent of the male prison population serving sentences for sexual offences against children had viewed child pornography (Research by Dr Tony Krone commissioned for the AHTCC (DocA)).
While more comprehensive and up-to-date research is required on this subject, these findings - suggesting a correlation between viewing images and subsequent physical abuse - have also been clearly supported by those involved in child sex offender treatment.
From a crime-fighting perspective, importantly Operation Falcon uncovered strong links to organised crime groups, particularly those operating out of Eastern Europe.
Material seized in the Operation is known to have been sold online through a United States company called Connections. Connections was a subsidiary of a Russian based company called Regpay, which was known to US authorities as a major facilitator of child pornography.
Groups like these are finding child pornography to be a very lucrative and low-risk source of income, and they are fully exploiting its potential over the Internet.
Just the activity discovered as part of Operation Falcon is believed to have netted Regpay in excess of US$2.5 million in sales.
Meanwhile, Canadian estimates place the number of child pornography websites operating globally at over 100,000, generating around US$3 billion per annum (AFP Policy Group: Issues Surrounding Child Sexual Assault - 25 June 2004 ).
And a European analysis of a university-sponsored database of Internet-based child pornography - called COPINE - found a 300 per cent increase in the number of new children seen in abusive images posted on the Internet between 1999 and 2002 (AFP Policy Group; ibid).
Additionally, law enforcement authorities are starting to see organised crime groups involved in online child sex crimes, branching out into other offences such as extortion, denial of service and elaborate financial scams as they provide another lucrative income stream.
But despite these important advances in our knowledge-base, much more work needs to be done to understand the complex social and legal dimensions to online child sex abuse, particularly in relation to the long-term effects and activities here in Australia.
Understanding the Australian situation
On this front, the Australian High-Tech Crime Centre has recently engaged the Australian Institute of Criminology to help research areas such as offender typologies, local impacts, law enforcement implications and lessons learnt from international policing operations of this nature.
The AFP is also collaborating with agencies around the world to exchange information and explore new advances in dealing with the problem. A number of our Federal Agents have just returned from discussions with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the National High-Tech Crime Unit in the United Kingdom, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, Interpol, the National Police Agency in the Netherlands and Europol.
The consensus internationally is that if we are to successfully combat this crime, we need to improve mechanisms for the rapid transferral of information between agencies, so images can be quickly analysed, and victims and suspects identified to tackle the ongoing commercialisation of the trade.
One of the key tools we now have to rely on in this regard, is the Virtual Global Taskforce. This taskforce was formed last year by the AFP (or AHTCC), the National Crime Squad in the United Kingdom, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the FBI, the US Customs Service and Interpol.
As well as its communications potential, the Taskforce is undertaking a range of online crime reduction initiatives such as Operation Pin, and the development of online policing initiatives to monitor the Internet for child abuse activities.
Some of you may remember the launch of Operation Pin in December last year. It involved the creation of a website purportedly containing images of child abuse.
Anyone who attempts to enter the site and to download images is confronted with an online law enforcement presence.
The aim has been to deter individuals from searching for images and there is evidence to suggest that Pin is undermining the confidence of some who believe the Internet is an anonymous place.
Significantly in the UK, they have reported a considerable number of offenders seeking rehabilitation directly as a result of Operation Pin.
Building on this success, the Taskforce is now moving towards establishing a 24/7 policing presence on the Internet. This includes manning chartrooms in an overt capacity, to provide support and advice to concerned members of the public.
But despite these initiatives, there is still a lot more work to be done. I'd now like to just mention a couple of areas where I believe we need to focus.
Issues to be addressed
In the past, the tendency has been for law enforcement to focus on offenders when investigating this sort of crime.
While this work should remain a priority, I believe we also need to improve our capacity to identify and support the victims of this crime.
The impact on victims, their families and the flow-on effects to the broader community are very severe.
As such, I believe we need to undertake concerted prevention and education programs. These should aim to raise awareness in the community about issues such as the many different levels of criminality involved in this crime as well as the devastating mental, physical and social consequences imposed on victims.
We also need to explore the possibility of supply and demand reduction strategies, which include concrete mechanisms for raising the barriers of production, distribution and consumption.
While I don't believe we can ever hope to cut-off supplies of child sex images entirely, we can limit the flow. There is great potential to reduce this crime, through initiatives such as the Virtual Global Taskforce and Operation Pin, as well as through smarter use of technology, such as web crawling software that searches the internet for child abuse sites or by blocking access through ISPs.
On this note, I believe there is also much that could be learnt from the success of crime reduction campaigns in other areas, such as that which targeted the heroin trade in 2000.
This campaign involved strong collaboration between Australian and international law enforcement agencies and targeted weaknesses in criminal syndicates - particularly in South East Asia - that were known to be importing the drugs to Australia. It led to a major heroin shortage here. In fact Australia is recognised by the United Nations as the only country to have experienced a drought in heroin over the last couple of years. As a result, we have also seen a subsequent decline in the number of heroin-related deaths, dropping by about two-thirds over this time period.
I have already spoken of how Operation Pin has started to raise the perceived cost of accessing child sex images - just imagine if we could go further.
To achieve similar results with online child sex abuse as we did with heroin, law enforcement agencies and governments need to work closely with child protection agencies, search engines and the Internet industry, electronics manufacturers and the finance sector, as well as academia, to develop appropriate strategies.
A key part of this is working together to learn more about the typology of offenders, including indicators that may help predict involvement in such activity.
During Operation Auxin, a categorisation survey was conducted by law enforcement agencies that produced some valuable preliminary insights into the nature of Australian offenders. The survey helped us to group suspects in terms of risk and access to children, prior sexual convictions, their travel movements to high-risk countries and their family background.
As a result, a number of high-risk suspects were identified, including some who held positions of influence and trust such as teachers, doctors, police, child welfare and healthcare workers. During the police operation, these people were treated as a priority for action.
As a community, I believe we also need to continually monitor the legislative and policy environments to ensure the law keeps pace with the crime.
While technological enhancements continually improve our communications capacity, at the same time they are providing new avenues for criminal activity that may not be effectively addressed by existing laws. Therefore, there is an ongoing need to constantly monitor the effectiveness of our approach in reducing and combating this form of crime.
At present, we are dealing with some inconsistencies between Australian jurisdictions in relation to definitions of child pornography, offence provisions, and requirements for classification of images and penalties - all of which can create complications for prosecutorial processes.
It is pleasing to see that as a result of Auxin, some jurisdictions have already promised to - or are - redressing the imbalances.
In addition, recent Commonwealth amendments to the Criminal Code (which pre-date Auxin) are an important step in the right direction. These relate to the possession and production of child pornography as well as the online grooming and procurement of children for the purpose of sex - and are due to come into effect next year.
Furthermore, there are important new provisions requiring Internet Service Providers to report the accessing of online child pornography through their services.
These are good first steps, which put us on a par with other leading nations, but they are just that - first steps.
Recently, I've held talks with the Office of Film and Literature Classification to work out how we might expedite the process of classifying the millions of images and publications that are being seized in relation to this form of crime.
A silver lining in a dark cloud?
Despite the shocking range of offences pinpointed by Auxin, I believe the Operation has helped open the eyes of many in our community to some of the more sinister aspects of the Internet and has provided a reference point for concerted action.
In addition, Auxin has demonstrated how offline justice can - and is - being applied to offenders who seek to hide in the virtual world. Although the Internet has created challenges for policing, at the end of the day it is just an extension of the physical world and is being policed as such.
I believe we can look at the Internet as both "devil" and "saviour" when it comes to crime today. While it lowers the barrier to entry for offenders, at the same time it leaves an indelible trail for investigators.
Regardless of the perception, there is no anonymity online. Just going on to the Internet leaves a detailed fingerprint. If you visit an illegal site - or perform an illegal action online - you leave valuable electronic 'DNA' on your own computer, the computers that you visit and the servers in-between.
So, in some ways the Internet has actually enabled us to expose offenders in a way they've never been exposed before.
So, with this very dark cloud…perhaps there is a silver lining?
As a community, we need to think about the issues that have been raised by Auxin and pool our collective resources to address them.
From an academic perspective, this includes keeping a close eye on developments in technology and continually monitoring the wide-ranging implications for society.
Today I have spoken about only one of many facets to online crime. But it is an area that has serious and far-reaching social consequences.
Hopefully, in years to come we will look back on Auxin as the operation that encouraged us to really start soul-searching as a community and to grasp the nettle of the Internet for all its good and bad.
If we save even one child in this process, then it will have been more than worthwhile.
Thank you.