Visa is taking the hard line on child porn, quietly setting up a system to identify child porn makers and providers who use Visa to sell child porn. That system includes reporting Websites with child porn to international law enforcement agencies who enforce child porn laws, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Visa also introduced a new requirement to make the seven thousand American financial institutions who are Visa members to register what they call "high risk merchants" processing adult content and using Visa. If these institutions don't comply, the Monitor said, they risk being dropped from the Visa loop.
Visa reportedly searched over a million Web pages a day for the past year, determining 80 percent of the 400 Websites it identified as child porn sites were either shut down or had Visa privileges terminated. In fact, the Monitor continued, Visa reported pedophiles in Internet chat rooms complained it was getting a lot more difficult to find Websites oriented toward them.
Which absolutely thrills the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "This," said exploited-child unit director Reuben Rodriguez, "is a powerful new tool to assist law enforcement in these crimes, to eliminate a resource for individuals to use, download, and purchase pornography."
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