_____ Record: 1 Title: Microsoft Works with San Diego Agencies to Make Internet Safer for Children Source: San Diego Union-Tribune, The, 06/01/2003 Author(s): Jonathan Sidener AN: 2W60576879050 Database: Newspaper Source Microsoft Works with San Diego Agencies to Make Internet Safer for Children Jun. 1--In 1998, the FBI received a tip about a graphic photo on a Web site showing the rape of a young girl. Investigation pointed to a San Diego Internet address. At the same time, the San Diego Police Department and the District Attorney's Office were forming the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children task force, in part to better coordinate Internet-related investigations. The FBI turned to the fledgling task force for assistance. The joint law enforcement effort pinpointed a suspect and ultimately uncovered a videotape showing several sexual assaults of the girl. As a result, Mac David Cochran was convicted of 39 counts of child sexual abuse and was sentenced to 141 years to life in prison. The investigation and prosecution, and other San Diego task force work led the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to recently name San Diego as one of six "cyber safe" cities in the country. "We wanted to highlight six cities we felt were examples of cyber safety," said Lisa Cullen, spokeswoman for the national center. "We wanted to present a challenge to other cities and increase the public awareness of cyber safety." The award is more than honorary for San Diego; New York; Dallas; Seattle; Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Naperville, Ill. Each city will have access to training tools and its choice of either a $10,000 grant or a $5,000 grant plus $10,000 worth of software to be used in improving online safety efforts. Microsoft's Internet service, MSN, is co-sponsor of the Cyber Safe Cities program. MSN, the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, sponsored the program. MSN product manager Larry Grothaus said the company takes cyber safety very seriously. The Internet provider has fortified the parental control software in the latest version of MSN software, Grothaus said. America Online, the nation's largest Internet service provider, has taken similar steps. The Cyber Safe Cities program only considered communities that have Internet Crimes Against Children task forces. More than 30 groups have been set up through the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. As Internet connections become mainstream fixtures in American homes -- 58 percent of San Diego families are online -- keeping young Net surfers safe gets more difficult each year: --Nineteen percent of young Internet users in a survey by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported receiving an unwanted sexual solicitation in the past year. --Three percent of the youths received an aggressive solicitation involving requests for personal meetings or other types of direct contact. --Seventy percent of the unwanted solicitations happened when the youths were using a computer at home. Most of the remaining contacts came at the homes of friends. "We've done a good job teaching kids about stranger danger," said San Diego police Sgt. David Jones, a task force founder. "Kids are good about that. If a stranger drives up and approaches them, they know to run away and to report it. But put them in a chat room and they'll tell people all kinds of things. And every one of those people is a stranger." To combat the dangers, the San Diego task force uses enforcement and education. It provides local law enforcement officers and prosecutors with information about child exploitation and high-tech crime. It also has a speakers bureau and cyber-safety materials for schools and parents. Part of the education for parents is to let them know the strengths and weaknesses of parental controls such as filters or spyware that can record children's online activities. "Most children are more savvy than their parents," Jones said. "They know ways around parental controls. One of the most important things a parent can do is to maintain a relationship with open lines of communication. Talk to their kids about their online activities. "There are also adult computer education classes they can take or they can have their kids teach them." The task force also has developed an Internet child-safety curriculum for parents, teachers and community groups. The coalition, which initially consisted of two San Diego police officers and a prosecutor from the District Attorney's Office, has grown. Its members now include the Sheriff's Department, the FBI, U.S. Customs, U.S. Postal inspectors and the San Diego Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory. Jones and deputy district attorney Jeffrey Dort say pedophiles turn to the Internet because of the perception of anonymity. It's a false sense of secrecy, Dort said. "It can be complicated to figure out where something came from," the prosecutor said. "But it's not so complicated that we sit around throwing our hands in the air. The tough part is connecting the offender to the keyboard. If someone else uses the computer, (the offender) can say, 'It must have been my son.' " As computing becomes more complex, it becomes more challenging to enforce the law online, Dort said. "It used to be you'd go into someone's house and they had one computer, one hard drive," he said. "Now you go in and they have six computers networked together. And each one has a 80-gigabyte hard drive. That's 480 gigs of material to go through." The key to the task force's success lies in strong cooperation between agencies, Dort said. The regional computer lab in particular helps to crack cases involving huge amounts of data, or files that a suspect has attempted to erase, he said. With Internet crimes often involving residents of two or more states, interstate work between agencies can make or break a case, he said. "Digital evidence is so fragile," he said. "If a predator is from Arizona and we arrest him here, the first phone call is going to be to a friend or relative to have them take care of his computer. It's important that someone in the other state seize the computer at the same time we seize the offender." WHERE TO LEARN ABOUT SAFE SURFING: San Diego's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force http://www.sdicac.org The Online Safety Project http://www.safekids.com MSN Cyber Safe page http://www.staysafeonline.com S.D. County District Attorney Protecting Children Web Page http://www.co.san-diego.ca.us/cnty/ cntydepts/safety/da/ protecting/index.html GetNetWise http://www.getnetwise.org Federal Trade Commission http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/ conline/edcams/ infosecurity/forkids.html National Center for Missing & Exploited Children http://www.ncmec.org TIPS FOR PARENTS --Place your computer in a common area of the house. --Educate yourself about computers and the Internet. --Do not allow your child to go into private chat rooms. --Do not let your child give out any personal information of any kind on the Internet. --Review the use histories or logs of your computer to see where your child has been on the Net. --Put accounts in your name and know your child's passwords. --Spend time with your child online. --Be aware of other computers your child could be using. --Never allow your child to arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone they met online without your permission. ----- To see more of The San Diego Union-Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.uniontrib.com (c) 2003, The San Diego Union-Tribune. 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