Fergie's Tech Blog

Germany Checks 22M Credit Cards for Child Porn Payments

John Blau writes on ComputerWorld:

German police have added a new weapon in their fight against child pornography on the Internet -- in addition to scouring IP addresses, they're now collaborating with credit-card companies to search databases for transaction information.

As part of an operation dubbed "Mikado," members of a special child-porn squad in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt have worked with credit-card companies to pour over the transactions of more then 22 million customers. The search uncovered 322 people suspected of purchasing child pornography illegally over the Internet.

The database search was conducted by the credit-card companies, not the German police, which have no direct access to the financial records of people registered in Germany.

posted by Fergie @ 1/09/2007 10:08:00 AM