Computer-generated 'Sweetie' catches online predators

[Yasojack]

BBC News - Computer-generated 'Sweetie' catches online predators

Computer-generated 'Sweetie' catches online predators
Angus Crawford
By Angus Crawford
BBC News

Sweetie, the computer avatar catching online predators
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More than 100 Britons were among 1,000 men caught trying to pay a computer-generated child to perform sex acts online, after a Dutch children's charity set up a fake profile.

Terre des Hommes carried out a 10-week sting near Amsterdam, posing on video chat rooms as "Sweetie", a 10-year-old Filipina girl.

Some 20,000 men contacted her, with 1,000 found to have offered her money.

The names of these men - including 110 Britons - were passed to police.

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We did not solicit anything unless it was offered to us”

Hans Guyt, Terre des Hommes
When I visited the charity's operations room - in a warehouse on the outskirts of Amsterdam - I watched as a researcher logged on to a chat room as Sweetie - incredibly life-like but created by a computer.

Within seconds, like sharks, men were circling.

Of the 1,000 men who were willing to pay Sweetie to take off her clothes in front of a webcam, 254 were from the US, followed by 110 from the UK and 103 from India.

Researchers used evidence including profiles on Skype and social media to identify the suspects.

Project director Hans Guyt told a news conference in the Hague on Monday that the crime "requires a new way of policing".

"The predator won't come forward. The victim won't come forward," he said.

"We identified ourselves as 10-year-old Filipino girls.

"We did not solicit anything unless it was offered to us."

Worst-case scenario
Terre des Hommes has launched a global campaign to stop "webcam sex tourism".

Computer-generated girl
The charity identified 1,000 adults from 71 countries who solicited Sweetie
Managing director, Albert Jaap van Santbrink, said: "Our worst-case scenario is that the same will happen with this phenomenon as with child pornography, which is now a multi-billion industry in the hands of criminal gangs."

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Working with our international law enforcement partners, we will now look at the information being passed on by Terre des Hommes”

Andy Baker, National Crime Agency
The charity has now handed over its findings to police and has said it will provide authorities with the technology it has developed.

But European policing agency Europol has expressed reservations about the findings.

"We believe that criminal investigations using intrusive surveillance measures should be the exclusive responsibility of law enforcement agencies," spokesman Soren Pedersen told the Reuters news agency.

Andy Baker, of the UK's National Crime Agency, also said that "tackling child sex abusers is best left to specialist law enforcement agencies".

But he praised the campaign, saying it had "widened awareness of a global child sex abuse threat".

"Working with our international law enforcement partners, we will now look at the information being passed on by Terre des Hommes," he added.

Sweetie will not be used again. She has done her job - showing the predators that they can easily become prey.

[Yasojack]

[Gerbil]

Of the 1,000 men who were willing to pay Sweetie to take off her clothes in front of a webcam, 254 were from the US, followed by 110 from the UK and 103 from India.

So what is the actual crime, considering there was no actual child involved?

or are we talking about "pre-crime" here? That these men should be put on a watch list 'just in case'?

Could we be arrested for talking dirty to Karen in the TD chat room? After all, TD started in 2005, so that makes 'her' only 8 years old.

[Rainfall]

Sick. I'm not talking about the 1,000 out of 3,500,000,000 men who promised payment to Sweetie, but the corrupt charity and the tulip fukcer project director Hans Guyt. Opportunity makes thieves. Offer cheap cocaine for sale and some people who never did drugs or dealt will buy it. The same goes for AK47s, stolen BMWs or genuine Rolexes for half the price, anything to satisfy a desire that seemed beyond reach. It's the sick world of capitalism, where everything can be offered and sold legally, but the consumption might be illegal.

What the article doesn't say is how many of the 20,000 men who contacted Sweetie asked her to quit what she was alledgedly wanted to do.

[wasabi]

Sweetie was not real, she was an animation.

[Yasojack]

Anyone that contacts a child,in whatever circumstance for his sexual perversion,in any situation deserves what he gets.

Rainfall i would normally agree, set ups are pathetic.