Germany Searches Credit Cards For Child Porn Payments

narramissic writes "According to an ITworld article, police in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt have teamed with credit card companies to sift through the transactions of over 22 million customers looking for those who may have purchased child pornography online. To date they have identified 322 suspects." From the article: "German data privacy laws allow police to ask financial institutions to provide data about individuals but only if the investigators meet certain conditions, including a concrete suspicion of illegal behavior and narrowly defined search criteria, according to Johann Bizer, deputy director of the Independent Center for Privacy Protection... In the case under investigation, police were aware of a child pornography Web site outside of Germany that was attracting users inside the country. And they asked the credit-card companies to conduct a database search narrowed to three criteria: a specific amount of money, a specific time period and a specific receiver account."

Comments

Now, by "sift through" ...

[Mateo_LeFou]

Do they mean "grep"?

Re:Now, by "sift through" ...

[NineNine]

Another person who thinks that databases are the same as flat files... Really, that just makes me want to stab you in the eyeball with a rusty spoon. "Grep" is to an RDBMS as orange juice is to an M-1 Abrahams tank. Completely and utterly unrelated.

Re:Now, by "sift through" ...

[neuro.slug]

Of course they don't use flat text... they've moved on to using one big XML file.

Re:Now, by "sift through" ...

[darkstar949]

To be fair, you can make orange juice with an M-1 Abrahams, although the technique is a bit of overkill.

Re:Now, by "sift through" ...

[serialdogma]

Wow, is there a new W3C standard for flagging XML-logged credit card transactions as child porn related?

Godwin's Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to check, would mentioning parallels to the Nazi era be considered invoking Goodwin's Law?

Scheisse!

[Anonymous Coward]

POLIZE) Sir, ve haff found zis gepayment vot is obviously for die kidipornen. Ve vill haff to ask you to commen mit us to die polizestation.

MANN) Nein, nein, das ist nicht ein kidipornen! Dis ist die regular wholesome scheisse videos mit conzenting aldulten gefichen mit die turdenpoopen.

POLIZE) Ach! Ve are mischtaken. Zo zorry for gewasten du timen, proud zitizen. Gutenhaben, unt enjoy die turdenpoopen!

Thanks, you did society a service.

[flaming error]

Let's do it again. Now please grep for donations to the ACLU...

I don't think they'll buy that.

[User 956]

I wonder how many cards will now be reported stolen

That excuse only works on your wife, or your girlfriend.

I know it works on my wife, and my girlfriend.

Re:WHY?! - DOH!

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I meant that I "hear" that about free porn on the net, not kiddie porn...

::headdesk::

Re:Doesn't even prove that...

[El Torico]

if you were trying to get your kink on with tranny-love...

Is this a good site for that?

Re:I have paid for porn

[__aajfby9338]

Why, well first is convenience. I am busy and would rather be able to go to one website, enter in my search (usually redhead, teen and anal) and get the movies they have right there without having to sift through the results to see what is good.

I really wish there was a "-1 Too Informative" mod. :-)

Re:I have paid for porn

[Cervantes]

As a fellow redhead/teen/anal enthusiast, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for subsidizing the redhead/teen/anal porn market with your hard-earned money, so cheap bastards like me can continue to choose our time over our money, and download it for free.