PART 4

TAKING ACTION

Beyond technical possibilities and conceivable solutions, and above all in the absence of clear and easy criminal procedures, you can act as an Internet user. Indeed, techniques and laws are nothing if their application is not supported by all users eager to exercise their citizens' responsibilities where they are and within their capabilities.

Far from increasing the Internet's virtual side, MAPI intends to strongly affirm that it is a truly real world and there is no reason why we should allow on the Net what is unacceptable in everyday life.

The following pages give the reader some practical advice to exercise his/her citizen's responsibilities on the Internet more efficiently.

Introduction

If, as an Internet user, you refuse the proliferation of paedophile information on the network, here are several concrete ways of acting:

• Helping to make other users aware by informing them about the issue of paedophilia on the Internet and possible ways of reacting. Some time ago MAPI launched a campaign of information on the matter, but this task has to be a continuous and collective effort (cf. 4.1.);
• Reacting each time you come across paedophile information to make it disappear or prevent its spread in future (cf. 4.2.);
• Contributing to the creation in your country of a Web page containing relevant information to fight against paedophilia on the Net.

4.1. Helping to make other users aware

If you are aware of the problem of paedophilia on the Internet and you want to support MAPI's principles, you can inform your Internet co-users of its existence. To that effect, you can send them a message with the URL of MAPI pages. A standard message has been drawn up and is available on the MAPI's Web page47.

4.2. Reaction

4.2.1. Research

If you are confronted with paedophile information on the Net, you can react. If you want to be efficient, we suggest you analyse the situation and take the measures you find the most appropriate. You should:

• identify the person responsible for the problem: e-mail, name and address; be careful of false identities;
• determine the machine, site or organization from which the information comes or where it is hosted and the identity of the individual who is responsible for its diffusion (e-mail, name and address);
• locate the problem (broadcasting country): the country at the origin of the problem, front sites, etc.;
• the nature and seriousness of the problem (and possibly its frequency).

The identification of persons and sites from which unlawful information comes is not always easy because their identity can be intentionally concealed.

To help you in this research, here is some practical advice (only in the case of e-mail). For an e-mail sent to someone in particular or in a discussion group, the machine and site can be identified by searching, in the heading of the message received, for the name or number of the machine which has delivered the e-mail (not the sender's which is often false). You can possibly make a quick research on the Web to find the access provider's name and address according to the name of his/her machine. The e-mail of the individual responsible for the message often has the machine's name with the prefix postmaster@, www@ or ftp@.

4.2.2. Multi-level action

You can act at several levels, but they are not all adequate. It is up to you to choose the most appropriate action according to the situation. Some have disadvantages. That is why you must try and assess their possible consequences before you undertake them.

Concretely, here are various actions we find pertinent:

• Contact the person at the origin of the problem: although it seems unlikely to be so, he/she may not be totally aware of the seriousness of his/her acts and a warning may be sufficient to prevent him/her from doing it again. However, in the case of serious facts, this possibility can have the disadvantage that the person escapes legal authorities, disappears and reoffends elsewhere, possibly under a false identity.
• Call the person responsible for the site or organization on which the machine used to send litigious information (access or service provider) is dependent. In general, he will be able to act quickly, for instance by having litigious information withdrawn or by blocking access to the incriminated person. He can also determine further actions to be undertaken (warning local legal authorities, etc.). If the provider does not contact the police or legal authorities, this possibility presents the same risk as the previous one.
• Contact your own access provider and inform him about the problem. If the measures proposed by Minister di Rupo are accepted, the provider will have to transmit this complaint to the IBPT which would be a co-ordination and decision centre in the matter. Anyhow, on the basis of the criminal code, it is probable that an informed provider, unable to prove to the judge that he did all he technically could to solve the problem, could have difficulty in defending himself in case of denunciation and prosecution.
• If the message is widely distributed (to a large number of people or many times), you can post a complaint in an adequate discussion group or ask, in the same, for help to locate the culprits. It can be considered that there is abuse of the network. These groups are in the hierarchy news.admin.net-abuse. For example, news.admin.net- abuse.email enables abuses committed to be reported via e-mail only (non-asked for advertising, for instance), but other types of abuse can be denounced. To know if this action is adequate, to which groups to complain or to obtain information notably with a view to cancelling a posted message, you can consult Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to the following URLs:

http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/ tskirvin/home/nana/

• Contact the police or national legal authorities directly (for instance, the point of contact of the criminal police - contact@gpj.be - see annexe 1) if the seriousness of offences make it necessary or if children's safety is at stake. The criminal police's point of contact will inform Interpol which, in its turn, will contact the foreign point of contact where the site's or message's author is. Then the foreign point of contact will lead an investigation. In general, the first sanction is the closing of the illegal site.
• Contact a local or national organization of defence of children's rights (for instance, the ONE or ECPAT in Belgium - see annexe 1). Their experience will certainly help you to solve the problem. Some of these organizations often work in collaboration with the police.
• If the problem is not limited to one country, call an international organization of defence of children's rights able to deal with it (for example, ECPAT International or Save the Children Norway - see annexe 1).
• If the problem is serious and not restricted to one country, co-operation between national police departments is probably needed. If you have contacted local police departments (contact@gpj.be), this co-operation will probably be set up.

When you report such a problem to a particular organization, try to give a maximum of information to facilitate possible research (enclose, for instance, the entire litigious message with its complete heading). Try also to collect precise information on the date and hour of the offence to avoid problems due to the volatility of information existing on the Net.

On the whole, once you have contacted an organization, you have to ask them to follow your request through and ensure that they do so.

4.2.3. Information

Keep in mind that you are probably not the first to be confronted with this sort of problem. Try to act in co-ordination with others, for instance by telling them about your actions and their results (if possible). It will be the case if, for instance, litigious information consists of a message posted in a rubric of the News. In this case, send back a message in the same rubric to inform other subscribers about the actions you have undertaken.