Hotline
PROTEGELES is a NGO working on Child Protection on the ICT. Since 2001 it has been operating as a hotline. In the first month of operation (Oct. 2001) the PROTEGELES’ Hotline against Child Pornography received 529 reports on alleged child pornography content. One year later, it was registering more than 900 reports and it reached a peak of 1,925 reports in July 2004. During first months of 2007, we received between 1,300 and 1,700 reports per month.
Between 2001 and 2006, has received 65,000 reports. After analysing the their content, sufficient proof of crime was found in more than 7,000 pages and communities from all around the world. In these cases, the exact placement of these pages was communicated to the different police units dedicated to combating child pornography around the globe and, fundamentally to the Spanish Technology Investigation Squad, Brigada de Investigación Tecnológica –BIT and to the Guardia Civil Group of Cybercrime (Grupo de Delitos Telemáticos).
According to the annual reports provided by the Spanish police, in the last three years, the BIT has opened more than 150 police cases thanks to the reports sent by PROTEGELES, and in tune, notified through the INTERPOL more than 3,000 connections in foreign countries. Resulting from these actions, criminals from nearly all Spanish regions have been arrested. Besides all these actions, PROTEGELES reports have allowed many police units abroad to carry out many operations and investigations. For instance, in September 2003, the German police was able to carry out one the most important operations against child pornography on the international level, Operation Marcy, thanks to the information provided by PROTEGELES. As a consequence of this, the Interior Authorities of the State of Saxony-Anhalt (East Germany) dismantled an enormous child pornography network. Just in Germany Operation Marcy against child pornography involved more than 1500 police officers, leaded to hundreds of police raids and resulted in more than 745 confiscated computers. The operation spread to many countries and around 26.500 people were involved.
