Police have noticed in practice that some paedophiles work in the IT sector and know ways to hide their location, said Latvian State Police Cyber Crimes Prevention Office’s deputy chief Jānis Markuns during a meeting of Saeima’s Social and Employment Matters Committee on Tuesday, the 17th of January.
The committee had invited representatives of state institutions and NGOs to discuss digital risks and their prevention to keep children safe from sexual abuse. Markuns said during the meeting that,
when compared with the past three years the number of active criminal procedures is slightly up.
But not every received report results in a criminal procedure. The reason is that no criminal act is found therein.
In 2020 there were 53 criminal procedures over adultery. The same number was in 2021. Last year there were 60 such criminal procedures. 111 criminal procedures were launched over downloads of child pornography in 2020, 124 in 2021, and 137 criminal procedures in 2022. Most of those initiated criminal procedures were as a result of focused efforts from the police.
«We identified persons who downloaded child pornography from platforms known to us. We then found these people and brought them to justice. Some of them cannot be called exactly paedophiles, as most of them stop at merely downloading child pornography. This is why our objective is addressing and warning criminal liability for such acts,» stressed Markuns.
Police have noticed a specific problem:
minors often send each other nude photos, which is a criminally punishable offence.
At the same time, police have not noticed any cases when children would earn money from sending nude pictures to other people. Markuns did point out, however, that the Cyber Crime Prevention Department was composed just last year.
He also told Saeima deputies that there are some paedophiles who are employed in the IT sector. This means they know ways to keep their location secret by hiding their IP address. He stressed: police do all they can to identify and locate such perpetrators.
The representative of Latvian State Police said that because of the diversity of communication platforms, parents should also take responsibility for their children and remember that users have to be at least 13 years old to create a profile on Snapchat and at least 16 years to use Whatsapp. This means that before letting their children to download and use these platforms, parents should tell them the risks. Parents should not be afraid of turning to the police upon discovering suspicious activity or content.
Markuns also said he would like to receive more staff and equipment for his department in order to battle cyber crimes more effectively.
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