Children's rights organization Terre des Homme creates a computer-generated 10-year-old girl in hopes of identifying adults willing to way for Webcam sex. Mission accomplished. November 5, 2013 4:52 PM PST (Credit: Terre de Homme) They thought they were chatting online with a 10-year-old girl in the Philippines. In truth, they were talking to an incredibly realistic-looking computer-generated child. Now, that fake girl could help authorities identify very real child predators. "Sweetie" is the creation of Dutch children's rights organization Terre des Hommes. Over the course of a 2.5-month sting operation, the group says Sweetie helped it identify more than 1,000 adults from 65-plus countries willing to pay children in developing countries to perform sex acts in front of a Webcam. On Monday, it announced that it would hand over video footage of the interactions to international police organization Interpol. Sweetie in the making. (Credit: Video screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET) Sweetie first interacted with the potential predators in public chat rooms. "As soon as I go online, they come to me," Sweetie says in a short video documentary about Terre des Homme's campaign against Webcam child sex tourism. "Ten, hundred, every hour. So many. But what they don't know: I'm not real." To show them she is, Terre de Homme turns on a Webcam in an Amsterdam warehouse and controls the CG girl's conversation and movements with software. While the fake girl is chatting with the real men, the activists track the potential criminals down not by hacking their computers, but by using information they volunteer -- Facebook and other social-media profiles, phone numbers, pictures, and video footage. For the (PDF of detailed report), Terre de Homme paired with Avaaz.org, an activist group that campaigns on issues from corruption to poverty to climate change. The group says Webcam sex with minors is a phenomenon that's proliferating fast as access to cheap Internet in developing countries grows. The practice, it says, generally involves men from wealthy Western countries paying children from poor countries for online sex shows. "These children are usually forced to do this by adults or by extreme poverty," Hans Guyt, director of campaigns at Terre des Hommes Netherlands, said in a statement. "Sometimes they have to testify against their own family, which is almost an impossible thing to do for a child." At any given moment, there are 750,000 child predators connected to the Internet, according to the United Nations and the FBI. The adults identified in the Sweetie sting mostly came from the United States, Britain, and India. In a demonstration for the Associated Press, Terre de Homme researchers logged in to a chat room as Sweetie and identified himself as a 10-year-old girl from the Philippines. Multiple chat windows popped up immediately. An example: Sweetie: "What you want see?" User: "U." Sweetie: "What u pay for?" User: "Naked." Sweetie and her chat partner agreed on a $20 fee to be paid by a wire transfer and Sweetie asked for the person's Skype address, but took the chat no further, the AP reports. "We want governments to adopt proactive investigation policies that give law enforcement agencies the mandate to actively patrol public Internet hot spots where this child abuse is taking place every day," Guyt says. "The child predators doing this now feel that the law doesn't apply to them. The Internet is free, but not lawless."
Children's rights organization Terre des Homme creates a computer-generated 10-year-old girl in hopes of identifying adults willing to way for Webcam sex. Mission accomplished.
They thought they were chatting online with a 10-year-old girl in the Philippines. In truth, they were talking to an incredibly realistic-looking computer-generated child. Now, that fake girl could help authorities identify very real child predators.
"Sweetie" is the creation of Dutch children's rights organization Terre des Hommes.
Over the course of a 2.5-month sting operation, the group says Sweetie helped it identify more than 1,000 adults from 65-plus countries willing to pay children in developing countries to perform sex acts in front of a Webcam. On Monday, it announced that it would hand over video footage of the interactions to international police organization Interpol.
Sweetie in the making.
(Credit: Video screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)
Sweetie first interacted with the potential predators in public chat rooms.
"As soon as I go online, they come to me," Sweetie says in a short video documentary about Terre des Homme's campaign against Webcam child sex tourism. "Ten, hundred, every hour. So many. But what they don't know: I'm not real."
To show them she is, Terre de Homme turns on a Webcam in an Amsterdam warehouse and controls the CG girl's conversation and movements with software. While the fake girl is chatting with the real men, the activists track the potential criminals down not by hacking their computers, but by using information they volunteer -- Facebook and other social-media profiles, phone numbers, pictures, and video footage.
For the (PDF of detailed report), Terre de Homme paired with Avaaz.org, an activist group that campaigns on issues from corruption to poverty to climate change.
The group says Webcam sex with minors is a phenomenon that's proliferating fast as access to cheap Internet in developing countries grows. The practice, it says, generally involves men from wealthy Western countries paying children from poor countries for online sex shows.
"These children are usually forced to do this by adults or by extreme poverty," Hans Guyt, director of campaigns at Terre des Hommes Netherlands, said in a statement. "Sometimes they have to testify against their own family, which is almost an impossible thing to do for a child."
At any given moment, there are 750,000 child predators connected to the Internet, according to the United Nations and the FBI.
The adults identified in the Sweetie sting mostly came from the United States, Britain, and India.
In a demonstration for the Associated Press, Terre de Homme researchers logged in to a chat room as Sweetie and identified himself as a 10-year-old girl from the Philippines. Multiple chat windows popped up immediately. An example:
Sweetie: "What you want see?"
User: "U."
Sweetie: "What u pay for?"
User: "Naked."
Sweetie and her chat partner agreed on a $20 fee to be paid by a wire transfer and Sweetie asked for the person's Skype address, but took the chat no further, the AP reports.
"We want governments to adopt proactive investigation policies that give law enforcement agencies the mandate to actively patrol public Internet hot spots where this child abuse is taking place every day," Guyt says. "The child predators doing this now feel that the law doesn't apply to them. The Internet is free, but not lawless."
