Private sector to help Japanese police monitor Internet in cyber patrols

The Mainichi Shimbun
September 4, 2007
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070904p2a00m0na024000c.html

The National Police Agency (NPA) has decided to enlist private companies to help monitor Web sites and online bulletin boards for illegal or harmful content in a crackdown on cyber crime, agency officials said.

The private companies will not be able to clamp down on illegal content itself, but they will provide information they obtain through cyber patrols to police, and this will be used in investigations. NPA officials aim to have the system in operation sometime after April next year.

NPA officials said that the number of cyber crimes has been increasing each year since 2000, when they started collecting figures. In 2006, the reported number of incidents rose 40 percent from the year before to reach 4,425. This year, the reported number of incidents in the first half of the year hit 1,808, slightly higher than the figure for the corresponding period last year.

Police said that there were large numbers of fraud cases in which people swindled net auction users out of products, and child prostitution cases in which children were lured through matchmaking sites.

Law enforcers already perform cyber patrols, but there had been calls for more workers as some police headquarters did not have the resources to provide specialist monitors. It was subsequently decided to enlist private companies that were well equipped to collect information from the Internet. Police have included 27 million yen for the project in the budget demand for next fiscal year.

"We want to use specialist knowledge from the private sector to enrich our patrols," a police representative said.

About 10 people from the private sector will be enlisted. If they need to access pay sites during their monitoring activities, they will pay the fee, and look for any illegal or harmful material on those sites. Police cyber patrols will continue as normal. (Mainichi)

September 4, 2007

Sexual cyber crimes involving minors soars

The Mainichi Shimbun
August 23, 2007
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070823p2a00m0na011000c.html

The number of children sexually abused after meeting their offenders through Internet dating sites increased in the first half of 2007 from last year, the National Police Agency (NPA) said on Thursday.

A record 1,808 cases of "cyber crimes" -- illegal activities committed through Internet sites -- were handled by police in the first six months of 2007. The number of such crimes investigated by officers or those sent to prosecutors in the first half of 2006 stood at 1,802. The total number in 2006 was a record 4,425 cases.

Of the crimes during the first six months of 2007, 385 cases involved criminals who mostly paid minors for sexual services or who victimized children in other ways.

Of the 385 cases, some 275 involved violating the anti-child prostitution law, a 62.7 percent increase, while there were 110 cases of other crimes victimizing minors.

By types of cyber crimes, 490 were cases of fraud in which victims were swindled out of money through Internet auctions, a 33.2 percent drop from the same period last year. There were 156 cases of illegal access to Internet sites using false identities or passwords. (Mainichi)

August 23, 2007