When a policeman becomes a predator

IT WAS late one Friday afternoon last year when Michelle Adams* took a call on her mobile that would change her life.

Two Australian Federal Police officers wanted to see her urgently. Meet them at 6pm at the domestic terminal at Sydney Airport. No arguments. Bring your husband.

"I felt very, very sick. I had been burning a ballet DVD for my daughter's upcoming dance exams and I thought Big Brother had caught me."

But Adams's life was about to become a dance of a much darker kind. Photos and videos of her 10-year-old daughter, Megan, had been found on international child pornography websites, traded between pedophiles in the United States and discussed in chatrooms.

The nine photos, spread out by the officers, showed Megan, a happy, exuberant year 5 student, washing the car in a bikini, bouncing on a trampoline in her school uniform, and playing at the beach.

The photos had been cropped to focus on her crotch and chest, but Adams recognised the swimming costume and a freckle on Megan's upper thigh.

All of the pictures, plus videos of Megan undressing and showering, had been posted on the internet by one of Adams's most trusted friends, a police officer with a wife and young daughter, who played regularly with Megan.

The general duties constable had been arrested a fortnight earlier and granted bail, Adams was told.

He was charged with three counts of using the internet to transmit child pornography, after police found at his home 4900 photos and 204 videos of children as young as two simulating or performing sexual acts.

A bag of women's clothes, which he used in some of his sexual fantasies, was found in his locker at the police station, the court heard.

The child protection unit at the Sydney Children's Hospital, at Randwick, where Adams and her family were counselled, sees more than 760 children a year, some sexually abused, others neglected, beaten or poisoned.

Only two cases have involved internet pornography, but staff fear this number will rise.

"People have to be vigilant about the photos they post on sites like MySpace and Facebook because the reality is that offenders will often use innocent photos and manipulate them in ways to get sexual gratification," says a social worker, Bernadette Walsh.

Many parents were also unaware that perpetrators were often family members or friends, well known to the child, she said.

"We caution children about stranger danger all the time and yet the vast majority of offenders are people within the family or known to the family and we don't give children the skills to talk about that."

The co-head of the child protection unit at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, Robyn Lamb, said staff had seen a surge in the number of children who were victims of internet pornography, including a recent case where a mother posted sexualised photos of her children on American child porn sites.

"We get quite a few cases where children have been coerced in chatrooms by people who they thought were of a similar age. These [perpetrators] are very clever - they know how to pick the vulnerable ones and gain their trust."

She said her unit had about 1200 referrals a year, and about half were victims of sexual abuse.

In the Adams case, the police officer had been trading explicit images of prepubescent girls for years, but had recently told an undercover FBI agent in a chatroom he had been planning to drug and rape Megan, but lost his nerve at the last moment. He had asked the agent if the act would have given him "a buzz".

"I remember driving home and feeling very numb. [My husband] David and I did not speak a word to each other," Adams says.

"I had seen [the officer] in that fortnight after he was arrested. We'd had coffee and he'd been quiet but he didn't mention anything was wrong. His wife had even been asking to have Megan for a play and a sleepover.

"I used to think what a great husband and father he was. Any time he came to dinner at our place he always made a sweet, and he used to do the cleaning and his own ironing and look after [his daughter] Charlotte all the time, and certainly do some fun things with her. They always invited Megan," Adams says.

"There were times when Megan didn't want to go and play with her and I'd say, 'Don't be mean. She's an only child and she's just looking for a good friend.' "

Adams's eyes fill with tears as she recalls this. "My head is spinning when I think about that."

She now knows that the officer was grooming Megan, buying her gifts and treats, and ingratiating himself with Adams, by regularly asking her out for coffee and involving himself in her family's activities.

The bubbly primary school student has never spoken of being molested by him, and seems oblivious to the sexual agenda of his photo collection, but Adams is still gripped with fear that she may have been assaulted without her knowledge.

"We were very nervous about what may have been done to her but I didn't want to frighten her by asking. She knew nothing about sex and I was worried that he may have told her he had a gun and he'd use it on her or us if she told anyone. It could have terrified her if I probed too much," Adams says.

Megan was never medically assessed for sexual assault because the examination must be done within 72 hours of the encounter and the results are notoriously unreliable, but Department of Community Services officers assured Adams her daughter did not exhibit any behavioural signs indicative of molestation, such as repeatedly touching her genitals or acting in a flirtatious manner.

"Megan told me that he gave her a Panadol once for no reason. I think he was testing the waters. He had some extraordinarily strong painkillers at his house and I think he was seeing if Megan could trust him enough to take a pill from him, and if she could swallow a pill," Adams says.

"I did take one last phone call from his wife. I was feeling very angry so I was not a very nice person towards her. [I asked her if she had] any idea what he was up to and her answer was no but that about five years earlier she had caught him with a disc of pornography and he promised her he would never do it again."

The police officer was sentenced to three years and three months in jail, to be served in protection at Grafton. He may be out on parole in August 2010, but Adams's face crumbles when she contemplates his release.

"I don't know what we'll do. Part of me wants to write a letter to all his neighbours telling them what he's done but that's because I'm still angry. Really, I think my goal now is to focus on my family. We need to look after ourselves and heal. The person I feel most sorry for is Charlotte. She is a lovely kid, a really nice little girl, and I feel for her because she's just an innocent person in a very mixed-up family."

Stop Looking * Names have been changed.

Quote: The offender should have been named in this article or else others may be targeted by this person without knowing it.

Rudd to raise China Olympic censorship

China's human rights worse: Amnesty

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he will raise concerns with the Chinese Government about internet censorship during the Olympics.

Chinese authorities are blocking sensitive websites used by the international media and are using spyware to monitor internet use in hotels used by journalists and other visitors to the Games.

The chairman of the International Olympic Committee's media commission, Kevan Gosper, has complained that he was not informed of the decision and says his reputation has been damaged over the issue.

Mr Rudd has said he will discuss the issue when he visits Beijing for the Games.

"I'm quite concerned by them, I saw the reports, also the comments by Kevan Gosper," he said.

"My attitude to our friends in China is very simple, they should have nothing to fear by open digital links with the rest of the world during this important international celebration of sport."

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates meanwhile agrees that the controversy has "damaged" Mr Gosper.

"He clearly at some stage has been under the impression, and you showed me the bit of paper saying there would be restrictions," he said.

"He didn't know that, he's apologised.

"Others in the IOC say there are no restrictions. So we'll see. I'm finding it a little confusing."

Related:

China's human rights worse: Amnesty
Human rights group Amnesty International has released a scathing assessment of China's human rights record since it was awarded the right to host next month's Olympic Games seven years ago.

Dalai Lama arrives in Sydney
The president of the NSW Tibetan Community, Tenzin Gaden said he hoped the Dalai Lama's visit would raise awareness of the plight of the Tibetan people, who are under Chinese rule.

Thousands flock to Canberra ahead of torch relay
"Among all the communities, including the Chinese and Tibetan, those who live in Australia, I personally have had to deal with them in many, many years, they are strongly supportive of peace and harmony, because we are a great multicultural nation here."

Hackers get hold of critical Internet flaw

Internet security researchers on Thursday warned that hackers have caught on to a "critical" flaw that lets them control traffic on the Internet.

An elite squad of computer industry engineers that labored in secret to solve the problem released a software "patch" two weeks ago and sought to keep details of the vulnerability hidden at least a month to give people time to protect computers from attacks.

"We are in a lot of trouble," said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.

"This attack is very good. This attack is being weaponized out in the field. Everyone needs to patch, please," Kaminsky said. "This is a big deal."

DNS is used by every computer that links to the Internet and works similar to a telephone system routing calls to proper numbers, in this case the online numerical addresses of websites.

The vulnerability allows "cache poisoning" attacks that tinker with data stored in computer memory caches that relay Internet traffic to its destination.

Attackers could use the vulnerability to route Internet users wherever the hackers wanted, no matter what website address is typed into a web browser.

The threat is greatest for business computers handling online traffic or hosting websites, according to security researchers.

The flaw is a boon for "phishing" cons that involve leading people to imitation web pages of businesses such as bank or credit card companies to trick them into disclosing account numbers, passwords and other information.

"I was not intentionally seeking to cause anything that could break the Internet," Kaminsky said Thursday during a conference call with peers and media. "It's a little weird to talk about it out loud."

Kaminsky built a web page, www.doxpara.com, where people can find out whether their computers have the DNS vulnerability. As of Thursday, slightly more than half the computers tested at the website still needed to be patched.

"People are spending tens of thousands of hours getting this patch out the door," Kaminsky said.

The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT), a joint government-private sector security partnership, is among the chorus urging people to quickly protect computers linked to the Internet.

"Just like you should wear a seat belt going down the road to be safe in a car accident, the same applies here," said Jerry Dixon, a former director of cyber security at the US Department of Homeland Security.

"The patch is your seat belt. The exploit is out there and you definitely need to take precautions. Now is not the time to keep waiting."

Two "exploits," software snippets that take advantage of the vulnerability, have been unleashed on the Internet in the past 24 hours, Securosis analyst Rich Mogul said during the conference call.

"The threat is there," Mogul said.

Suicide taunt to suspects

A DAY after one of the men arrested in a national pedophile crackdown tried to kill himself, a politician has sparked outrage by encouraging people accused of child pornography to commit suicide.

The comment was made as eight more men were charged and a former police officer pleaded guilty to accessing child pornography, saying he was addicted to using the internet and found it a challenge to locate difficult sites.

By late yesterday 98 men were facing charges, a figure expected to rise as many suspects are questioned over coming weeks.

Queensland's Opposition police spokesman, the Nationals MP Vaughan Johnson, told State Parliament: "I hope they bring these grubs to justice.

"One of them committed suicide yesterday, and another one had a big go, but he must not have had the courage to do it properly. If they all went and did it first up, we wouldn't have this problem. They must be guilty if they commit suicide."

A 59-year-old Sunshine Coast teacher charged with possessing child pornography killed himself on May 5, police said, while a 48-year-old teacher from Brisbane's southern outskirts attempted suicide on Thursday.

"As far as I'm concerned, they can all top themselves," Mr Johnson said. "If they are there, interfering with children, they are the lowest form of life on the planet."

A spokesman for Queensland's Opposition Leader, Lawrence Springborg, had no comment on Mr Johnson's views, but the state's police commissioner, Bob Atkinson, said suicide was a "huge concern" in child pornography cases.

Terry O'Gorman, vice-president of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, said: "Politicians are supposed to provide some leadership. He is happy to lead from the gutter and he should be seen in that light."

As an experienced politician, Mr Johnson was "a disgrace to engage in that sort of mindless comment", Mr O'Gorman said.

A former federal police officer charged with accessing child porn images, Michael Edward Hatch, 38, said he did it as "a challenge", and was not sexually interested in young girls.

Hatch told ACT Magistrates Court he had become obsessed with internet porn while depressed and had gradually moved from viewing adult women to pubescent girls.

"I feel absolute disgust at myself with what I did," he said. "It was vile … To me it was a challenge. That is what I got my excitement from."

Breaking down in court, Hatch said he had not seen the children as victims but now realised that his actions were "despicable".

Hatch's partner, whose name cannot be published under an order by the court, said she did not believe he was a threat to her four teenage children. A psychologist, Marshall O'Brien, said he did not believe Hatch was a pedophile. The case has been adjourned until Thursday.

Meanwhile, the AFP has denied it jeopardised the operation by revealing details before it was finished, saying it was important the public learnt of the danger.

It said it had an electronic record of all those who accessed the European site that sparked the global investigation. It also claimed three people had come forward since the operation was made public on Thursday to confess to accessing the images.

Queensland's Police Minister, Judy Spence, said many Queensland police were "puzzled" by the AFP decision to go public.

The child protection units of the AFP and Queensland police have been at loggerheads for years. Informed sources said there was considerable animosity and jealousy between them.

Net starts to overtake TV

A new survey of internet consumer trends has revealed that people with broadband connections spend more time on the net than watching television.

The survey compared the entertainment and information consumption patterns of 864 Australian broadband users with those of more than 3,600 users worldwide.

It found that Australians with broadband spend an average of 22 hours per week on the web. They spend 14 hours in front of the TV and only three hours playing computer games.

The survey was conducted for technology company Cisco and the report was written by Jay Shutter, managing director of research firm Illuminas.

Mr Shutter said the figures show the increasing importance of the net to get access to entertainment and information content, even if some of this access is at work.

"Twenty-two hours on the internet, if somebody's doing online gaming, if they're downloading, I mean whatever they're doing, they're spending a lot of time," Mr Shutter said.

"That really doesn't surprise me.

"When you add it up, it seems like 47 hours doing all this stuff during the week, that seems like a lot of time.

"But you know what, we are, globally, a media-driven society; we spend time watching news."

Mr Shutter also said multi-tasking adds to the amount of time people spend on the web and using technology.

"People will always have a web browser open at the same time that they're in their email application," he said.

"People definitely do multi-task, if they happen to be writing in a word processing document or spreadsheet or whatever they might to be doing, they're most definitely also probably surfing the web at the same time."

The survey also revealed that online videos (whether that be feature length movies or user-generated clips) and music were the two most popular types of content on the net, with nearly half of Australian broadband users surveyed using this type of content.

However, the survey did not ask respondents whether they were using web mail, social networking sites or written content.

According to the survey, the two main reasons people gave for using online content were that it was free and available when they want it.

Web still 'in its infancy' on 15th birthday

Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the world wide web, says the web is still only in its infancy on the 15th anniversary of its effective launch.

Sir Tim said that the web, which started life in the CERN physics laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border in the early 1990s, could develop in unimaginable directions but above all should be a force for good.

"What's exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance," he said.

"My hope is that those will produce... new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet."

The comments come on the anniversary of the announcement by CERN on April 30, 1993 that the world wide web could be used by everyone, after Sir Tim and a colleague persuaded their bosses to provide the program code for free.

The web is now the most commonly used network via which information is shared on the internet.

An estimated 165 million websites now exist.

"The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there," said Sir Tim, adding that one day the web will put "all the data in the world" at the fingertips of every user.

But "we have only started to explore the possibilities," he said, adding that it was "still in its infancy".

Robert Cailliau, who worked with Sir Tim to open up the web, stressed that not all the bosses at CERN were in favour of making the web universally accessible.

"We had to convince them that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore CERN couldn't hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away," he said.

He says competing technologies - such as Gopher developed at the University of Minnesota in the United States - were also offering a way of connecting documents on the internet.

"If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now," said Mr Cailliau.

"We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened the world."

Planned ASIO surveillance laws under fire

A Senate Inquiry has been told proposed amendments to electronic surveillance laws will allow ASIO and police to further intrude on people's privacy.

The inquiry sitting in Sydney today is looking at proposed changes to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Bill.

This morning the secretary of the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, Stephen Blanks, said the changes would allow police and security agencies to monitor communication equipment that had not been identified in a warrant.

"The police will be able to add devices to warrants without any independent scrutiny so that they can intercept telephone calls and other telecommunications without any independent oversight," he said.

Greens leader Bob Brown has slammed the proposed electronic surveillance laws.

Senator Brown says the bill allows surveillance authorities to spy on people who are not even being investigated.

"There shouldn't be a blank cheque which allows the agency to pick and choose which devices it's going to listen in to, and inevitably the surveillance of completely innocent people," he said.

Related:

Email spy powers 'a licence for witch hunts'
Mr O'Gorman says the existing legal framework provides enough protection against terrorism."We have passed so many laws in the name of fighting terrorism that we're at ... serious risk of losing the balance between giving the intelligence services sufficient powers to fight terrorism while at the same time keeping longstanding and cherished civil liberties," he said.

Push for overhaul of laws on terrorism
Anti-terrorism laws are just 'state sanctioned terrorism' aimed at 'innocent people' and using them as 'scapegoats' for Australia's 'alleged war on terror'. These laws were meant to project 'fear' in the community that we somehow need to be protected so that the government can wage war on innocent people for resources around the world unchallenged.

Email spy powers 'a licence for witch hunts'

Employers would be able to read their staff's emails under proposed new national security laws being considered by the Federal Government.

The new laws would give companies extra powers to monitor their computer networks to prevent cyber-attacks.

They would be allowed to check their staff's emails and internet communications without their consent.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the proposed changes would step up national security of Australia's computer networks.

"We want to make sure that they are safe from terrorist attack," she said.

"Part of doing that is making sure we've got the right powers to ensure that we can tell if there's something unusual going on in the system.

"So it's a national security move, not a move about an unseemly interest in people's private emails."

A spokesman for the Attorney-General says cyber-threats are growing and that privacy experts and unions will be consulted about the proposed laws.

Dale Clapperton, from the internet-rights watchdog Electronic Frontiers Australia, says it is an over-reaction.

"Our concern is, that if given these powers, they're more likely to be used for eavesdropping and corporate witch hunts rather than protecting Australia from some kind of cyber attack."

The head of the Australian Council of Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman, says tighter laws to protect Australia against cyber terrorism threats are not needed.

Mr O'Gorman says the existing legal framework provides enough protection against terrorism.

"We have passed so many laws in the name of fighting terrorism that we're at ... serious risk of losing the balance between giving the intelligence services sufficient powers to fight terrorism while at the same time keeping longstanding and cherished civil liberties," he said.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis says he is concerned about giving companies the power "to act in effect as a quasi-law enforcement or investigative authority."

Quote: This is definitely a move about an unseemly interest in people's private emails. Any person who wants to look at another persons mail is invading that persons personal privacy. Any law that intends to give another person that right is draconian and an invasion of that persons privacy. Shame on you Gillard.

Push for overhaul of laws on terrorism
[However anti-terrorism laws are just 'state sanctioned terrorism' aimed at 'innocent people' and using them as 'scapegoats' for Australia's 'alleged war on terror'. These laws were meant to project 'fear' in the community that we somehow need to be protected so that the government can wage war on innocent people for resources around the world unchallenged.]