16 arrested over child porn on computers
Scores of police carried out dawn raids on residential addresses across Hong Kong yesterday and arrested 16 people - including three boys and a girl under 18 - suspected of downloading thousands of images of child pornography.
The raids, codenamed Pinpoint, were the culmination of a four-month-long investigation by police after they received information from overseas law enforcement agencies, including the United States Department of Homeland Security.
More than 4,600 still images, movies and video clips of child pornography stored on 18 computers were seized in the operation, which was continuing last night.
Detectives did not say whether any of the suspects - 13 males and three females, the oldest of whom was 52 - knew each other, but they said the suspects had all downloaded the material individually.
Initial investigations suggested the child pornography was downloaded from overseas websites and saved on the suspects' personal computers, police said.
Despite the huge number of images seized, Superintendent Chiu Sau-mee of the commercial crime bureau's technology crime division said: 'We believe that most of them were doing this out of curiosity. There is no evidence to suggest that they downloaded child pornography for circulation or commercial purposes.'
Police said none of the suspects, who are all Hong Kong residents, was in frequent contact with children in their jobs and none had a record of sex offences.
No charges have been laid. All the suspects were released on bail and ordered to report back to police next month.
Their computers have been seized and are being examined by computer crime experts.
The number of people arrested in connection with child pornography offences rose to 34 last year from 28 in 2009. Twenty-nine people were arrested in 2008.
The four teenagers doubled the number of people under 18 arrested for child pornography-related offences since child pornography laws came into force in 2003.
Possession of child pornography carries a maximum penalty of eight years' imprisonment and a fine of HK$2 million.
Yesterday's operation was not linked to a recent global law enforcement operation in which a child pornography website, which had 70,000 members at its height, was shut down. The Dutch owner of that website was jailed in the Netherlands last week.
