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