Darci L. Van Buren’s blog

Children have always been vulnerable to victimization. Their trusting natures and naivete make them perfect targets for perpetrators—both people they know and those they don’t. As children grow into adolescents, they remain vulnerable to victimization.Youth are often curious and eager to try new things. Many youth struggle with issues of rebellion and independence and seek attention and affection from people outside the home, often by using computers. Today, an estimated 10 million children are using the Internet. By 2005, approximately 77 million kids will be online. With so many children online, today’s predators can easily find and exploit them. For predators, the Internet is a new, effective, and more anonymous way to seek out and groom children for criminal purposes such as producing and distributing child pornography, contacting and stalking children for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts, and exploiting children for sexual tourism for personal and commercial purposes.

Dpt of Justice CyberCrime Website CyberCrime (www.cybercrime.gov) A section of this website, "How to Report Internet-Related Crime," directs victims to the right agency to report incidents of child pornography, hacking, piracy, Internet fraud and Internet harassment. Cybercrime covers a range of topics, from the right way to seize and search computers to explaining the legislative history behind laws used in the prosecution of computer crimes such as hacking. This site contains government documents, testimony, press releases and speeches on various computer crimes, including specific cases such as last year's Melissa virus -- which caused an estimated $80 million in damages after appearing on the Internet -- to cyber issues such as the government's ability to pursue those using the Web to deliver bomb-making instructions. It even links to the Department of Justice's children's page, which lists do's and don'ts for Internet use. "We think it's going to be of interest to many audiences," said David Goldstone, a trial attorney for the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Division within the Justice Department who helped oversee the site's development.

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