Porn ring extends to Canada
RCMP hunting for the users of 19 Net addresses
News Services
Published: Thursday, February 08, 2007

VIENNA -- Austrian authorities have uncovered a major child-pornography ring involving at least 2,360 suspects from 77 countries who viewed videos of young children being sexually abused. They say users of up to 103 computers in Canada are among those implicated.

Cracking the case is "a strike against child pornography unprecedented in Austrian criminal history," federal police said yesterday.

Describing the videos, Chief Insp. Harald Gremel said: "Girls could be seen being raped, and you could also hear screams."

Gremel is the Austrian police expert on Internet crime who headed the investigation. He said the children depicted were aged 14 and under, but no infants were seen in the videos.

Gremel said 103 Internet addresses in Canada were among more than 2,360 worldwide seen connecting with the child-porn provider. The information has been turned over to Canadian authorities through Interpol, the international police agency, he said.

Asked how authorities traced the connection to Canada, Gremel said: "We get the IP [Internet protocol] address from the owner of the file-hosting service and we check the IP address. So we can see that it's Canadian IP addresses."

Like a phone number or a street address, an IP address identifies a specific computer on a network. A computer can have one or more users, and one person can operate one or more computers. Thus the exact number of people involved is not immediately clear.

"It's yet to be confirmed if any offences have been committed in Canada," RCMP Sgt. Martin Blais said in Ottawa. No arrests have been made.

Media reports indicate that between 19 and 103 attempts were made in Canada to access the porn websites in question, Blais said. "But they cannot be confirmed by us at this time."

Police with the National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre, which fields international tips in such cases, are tracking attempts made within Canada to view the pornography online.

RCMP Supt. Earla-Kim McColl, the officer in charge of the centre, said the Canadian investigation is so far focused on 19 Internet protocol addresses. "It's not as large as what's being reported from the Austrian authorities," she said in an interview. "We may receive additional information."

McColl stressed that such horrific abuses captured on video and posted on the Internet are coming to the attention of Canadian police at a growing pace.

"I think it's important for Canadians to understand that we get a file like this about every two weeks now," she said.

© The Vancouver Province 2007