Just days after its representative to the Council of Europe's conference on fighting cybercrime called for "exchanging know-how" with other countries to fight on and offline child porn, Switzerland arrested at least 10 in an Internet child porn crackdown that's part of a 120-nation probe that started in the United States.
Interpol is reported to have tipped Swiss law enforcement about the 10 suspects earlier this year, and Swiss investigators went to work examining over 100,000 image and video files on 21 Websites, a third of which were discovered to be illegal, according to a published report.
Swiss police started searching 400 homes nationwide beginning earlier this month. Eight of the 10 suspects are also suspected of having sex with children, Swiss federal police coordinator Juerg Schaeublin told reporters.
The COE cybercrime conference September 17 reiterated a push for countries to ratify a cybercrime convention treaty that its writers and supporters believe would put a big cooperative dent in Internet crime, including and especially child porn on and offline.
But while thirty countries including Switzerland have signed the treaty, only eight have ratified it. Switzerland is one of the non-ratifiers so far. Eva Bollmann, Switzerland's representative to the COE, said September 15 that a national referendum on ratifying the treaty could be forced.
The COE conference in Strasbourg saw delegates from governments, law enforcement, and business around the world meeting September 17 to discuss the Cybercrime Convention treaty ratification. But reports from the conference indicated the international scope of the treaty is an obstacle, with some governments believed reluctant to sign something that would bind them to make data on their citizens available to other governments. The U.S. government is one of the wary, saying two years ago they would refuse to follow the protocol because it contravenes the U.S. Constitution.
