The Royal Malaysia Police has set up a new unit to monitor and detect online pornography, especially child porn.
Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division (D11) principal assistant director Assistant Commissioner Ong Chin Lan said that the function of the newly-established Malaysia Internet Crime Against Children Investigation Unit (Micac) was to monitor traffic at pornographic websites.
It would build a “data library” of these individuals - what portals they frequent, how long they spend on the sites, and the files they upload and download - that will help the authorities in prosecuting them.
Ong said Micac had the power to seize handphones, computers or laptops to check for pornographic material.
D11 officers are being sent overseas for training with the support from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The gathering of data will be conducted via special software that shows the porn user’s IP address, location, the name of the website where he uploaded or downloaded pornographic material, the actual time the user surfed the sites and the duration spent.
The software allows the police to identify, locate and track visits to porn sites, especially those involving child porn.
The collected information will be transferred to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and might be used if suspects are arrested and prosecuted.
Ong cited data from a report by the Dutch police as saying that nearly 20,000 IP addresses in Malaysia were identified actively uploading and downloading explicit images and footage of minors.
According to the MCMC, it had blocked 3,781 pornographic websites from 2014 until the end of March 2018.
VNA
