New legal tools to fight the online commercial sexual exploitation of children

An old but interesting article.
Especially remembering that the Madeleine McCann Fund is an NGO.

Allen & Overy

New legal tools to fight the online commercial sexual exploitation of children

9 November 2008

The commercial sexual exploitation of children on the internet is large and growing, but shutting down the illegal websites is extremely difficult. Allen & Overy lawyers recently conducted research across 11 European countries (together with White & Case lawyers in Moscow) for the charity Missing Children Europe. This research showed for the first time how payments to these websites can be legally blocked or traced back to the criminals operating them.

Until Allen & Overy’s work on this, the many stakeholders - banks, credit card companies, internet service providers and law enforcement agencies - faced a legal minefield in disclosing information to the authorities. It was not known whether tracing or blocking the payments would breach the complex web of contract law, data protection law, privacy law and banking secrecy rules in different countries across Europe.

Allen & Overy’s work has shown that there is a legal basis for doing this, so Missing Children Europe are taking the first steps towards creating a European Financial Coalition of stakeholders against the online sexual exploitation of children. A Steering Group of financial companies, police authorities and NGOs is now in place and is expected to be supported by funding from the European Commission. Members of the Steering Group include Visa Europe, Mastercard Europe, PayPal Europe, Microsoft and Europol.

http://www.allenovery.com/AOWEB/Knowledge/Editorial.aspx?contentTypeID=1&contentSubTypeID=7944&prefLangID=410&itemID=48822&langID=410