A red picnic cooler lying on a shelf besides rows of CDs in the house of a suspected paedophile turned out to be a case used to hide a digital camera with “a super zoom lens”.
The police are coming across an increasing amount of self-made porn
The male owner was eventually convicted after the police sifted data and found he had filmed children in pornographic situations, Police Inspector Timothy Zammit, from the cybercrime unit, recalled.
Addressing a seminar, he said that, last year, the unit investigated 11 cases of child pornography. The majority involved downloading child porn from foreign websites, not making the footage.
However, he noted, the police were coming across an increasing amount of self-made porn that included teenagers taking provocative photos of themselves and posting them online without realising the consequences.
In such cases, the police’s priority was to stop images being disseminated further, he said.
He also told the seminar, organised by the Malta Association of Risk Management, that local internet service providers were working in collaboration with the police. They were blocking child pornography sites through the Child Abuse Internet Filter initiative, which had 2,000 listed sites.
Visits to such listed sites averaged 3,000 hits a week. This, Mr Zammit said, did not mean that all visitors were looking for child porn because some were redirected there from adult porn websites.
Last year, the cybercrime unit dealt with 576 cases, a record number since the unit was set up in 2003. The number kept rising: from 50 in 2003, to 170 in 2007 and 372 in 2011.
The majority of reports involved cases of computer misuse such as hacking followed by fraud and insults and threats over the internet.
The unit was manned by seven officers, including Mr Zammit, who, last year, had to go through 4,336 pieces of seized evidence such as CDs, DVDs, computers and hard discs.
The number more than doubled from the previous year when it stood at 1,978.
In one case, officers had to sift through 16,000 gigabytes of child pornographic material, an effort that ended in a conviction.
National Security Minister Emanuel Mallia said the cybercrime unit needed more resources given that its workload had increased sixfold.
“We are taking stock of the situation to upgrade the cybercrime unit, keeping in mind the availability of EU funds,” he said, adding that one of his priorities on becoming a minster had been a law to regulate handling of electronic evidence.
Dr Mallia spoke about the need to further invest in combating “heinous cybercrime against children”. Noting that almost 80 per cent of households had internet access, he said it was essential this was safe.
He added that the Malta IT agency and the Malta Communications Authority were drafting a national ICT strategy. Dr Mallia suggested that the police be involved in the drafting of the strategy to ensure that technology infrastructure security and cybercrime were given priority.
Anyone who was the victim of cybercrime and would like to share their story to help raise awareness can contact ccalleja@timesofmalta.com.