The UK government has launched a crackdown on paedophiles operating online. A new agency shall be created, known as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre, which will be the first permanently staffed unit charged with dealing with the Internet paedophilia problem. Headed up by Jim Gamble, former deputy director general of the National Crime Squad, the centre will provide a 24-hour resource to report online child abuse images, and will keep tabs on paedophiles across the world.
The Ceop centre will also start discussions with the technology industry on how to build child protection features into new hardware and will provide education materials for children to help them avoid becoming victims of paedophiles using the internet.
Officers from the centre will pose as children online in order to catch such paedophiles, while investigations by the centre will also tackle the financial side of child sex crime by attempting to capture the credit card details of offenders and seize assets of those who distribute illegal material.