Content area
Full text
The enormous task of keeping track of paedophiles online has fallen on Jim Gamble of the CEOP. He tells Jane Wakefield that partnerships with portals is key to success
As head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), Jim Gamble spearheads efforts to keep track of paedophiles as they turn to the web. It's a problem the whole industry has to face up to, but he says that partnerships with internet firms have been key to what the CEOP has achieved since it was set up a year ago.
"While we were pausing to consider in isolation how we might combat this crime, the criminal was leaping ahead with new technology. We've now jumped ahead of them because we're partnered with people in the industry, such as Microsoft and AOL," he says.
Gamble is a copper through and through. Born in Northern Ireland but living the nomadic life of a child with a father in the forces, he first served as a military policeman in the British Army. Back in Northern Ireland, he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary, where he rose quickly through the ranks, ticking off detective inspector, chief inspector and ACPO status before moving to the National Crime Squad, where he became deputy director general.
It was here that the police began seriously to tackle hi-tech criminals and online paedophiles. Gamble was closely involved in Operation Ore, the international police operation that linked 250,000 suspected paedophiles worldwide to a US website carrying images of children being abused. The operation led to thousands of arrests in the UK but, more recently, has courted huge controversy over whether some of the people arrested by the police were in fact innocent...