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Good one for a change!
Thanks to John at TheShout:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/02...-ussc.html
"Visa draws a hard line on child porn
By Ron Scherer | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK The giant credit-card company Visa sponsors the Olympics, the
National Football League, and NASCAR. "It's everywhere you want to be,"
proclaims its ads.
But now, Visa has taken an unpublicized stance on where it doesn't want to
be: on Internet sites selling child pornography and other depictions of
sexually deviant behavior.
Over the past year, Visa has set up a system to identify purveyors who use
Visa to sell illegal pornography. This means the card issuer is reporting
sites with illegal photos and videos to the global police forces responsible
for enforcing child-porn laws.
Visa is also requiring the 7,000 US financial institutions that are members
of the Visa association to register "high-risk merchants" who process adult
content and use the Visa card. If the institutions don't comply, they risk
losing their Visa relationship - a threat already facing a Russian bank.
After searching more than 1 million Web pages a day for the past year, Visa
estimates that 80 percent of the 400 websites it has identified as child
porn have either been shut down by law enforcement or have had their Visa
privileges terminated. In fact, the company says pedophiles in chat rooms
are complaining that it is increasingly difficult to find websites oriented
toward them.
"This is a powerful new tool to assist law enforcement in these crimes, to
eliminate a resource for individuals to use, download, and purchase
pornography," says Reuben Rodriguez, director of the exploited-child unit at
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The use of credit cards to buy child porn is relatively new. At first, many
pedophiles traded images over the Internet in chat rooms. However, more
recently, websites have sprung up selling access for a fee. Only last month,
rock star Pete Townshend admitted he had used a credit card to join a
child-porn site. He was questioned and released by British police. In
addition, police forces around the world are still combing the files of a
Dallas couple who sold hundreds of thousands of subscriptions to child-porn
websites. According to people involved in tracking child porn, officials
will soon begin another round of arrests.
Visa and MasterCard, the two leading credit-card companies, have long
cooperated with the FBI and US Customs to make cases against buyers and
sellers of child porn. "Whether money laundering or child porn, our rules
absolutely require our cards to be used legally," says Sharon Gamsin, a vice
president of MasterCard in Purchase, N.Y. "If we find a site is doing
something illegal, that site gets thrown off our system."
However, if MasterCard is conducting any programs similar to Visa's in
searching for illegal sites, it won't discuss them.
Visa's own approach began in late 2001. It realized the use of adult
entertainment on the Internet was growing and wanted to make sure its card
was not being used for criminal activities. It hired a Chicago-based
consultant, InteCap, which was familiar with new technologies to search the
Internet. InteCap, which has former law-enforcement officers on its staff,
suggested a meeting with the FBI and Mr. Rodriguez's organization.
Visa quickly realized it was impossible for the company itself to monitor
the 5 billion Web pages on the Internet. Thus, Visa asked InteCap to search
the Internet for it. The firm monitors 1 million pages a day.
"We have a website profile and run sophisticated Web crawlers and spidering
techniques to search for child pornography and someone using the Visa
network," says Michael Stannard, a managing director in the London offices
of InteCap.
The information is turned over to Mr. Rodriguez's group, which runs a
cybertip line. The tips are turned over to the FBI, US Customs, and postal
authorities.
"Yes, we get a lot of cooperation from companies like that," says Barry
Maddox, a spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore office, where an Innocent Images
unit works to catch child pornographers.
Other targets
Child porn isn't the only thing Visa is targeting. The company has also
decided it does not want its brand to be used to purchase Internet photos
and videos involving rape and bestiality. And it has banned the use of Visa
on a hate site.
"We look at it on a case-by-case basis," says Casey Watson, director of
global corporate relations for Visa International.
Then there's the high-risk merchant program, which is designed to protect
the payment system from disputes, fraud, and illegal transactions, says
Martin Elliot, director of corporate risk at Visa USA. The program requires
every US financial institution to register these merchants - such as adult
websites - and identify their physical locations. It's now thinking of
expanding this program globally to all its 21,000 member institutions. "We
tell them, 'Know your merchants,' " says Mr. Elliot.
First Amendment lawyers say this is a relatively new area of law - that is,
when censorship involves private individuals or companies. "It's evolving
how the First Amendment applies to private companies," says Lee Tien, a
lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization in
San Francisco. "I think it's fair to say what Visa is doing is not violating
the First Amendment."
But he also says there is some "murkiness" about Visa's activity. He worries
that Visa or other financial organizations will have the power to influence
what appears on the Internet under the guise of protecting their trademark.
"The laws were never intended to permit this," he says. Visa's Watson,
however, says the company checks any gray areas with its legal staff.
So far, Watson thinks Visa's plan has been successful. "We just want to put
these people out of business permanently," she says. But she's also a
realist, noting that criminals are always trying something new."
"Never doubt that a small number of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret
Mead.
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