The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

2009. This conference, attended by online child exploitation experts from around the world, isscheduled to occur again this year on September 28, 2010 in Madrid, Spain. Further, CEOSroutinely presents on the subject of online child exploitation at other international conferencesheld annually by Europol, Interpol, and the European Commission.In the area of child sex tourism, CEOS and ICE partner in ICE’s sex tourism initiative to identify“hot spot” locations and send a team of investigators and prosecutors to those locations to partnerwith the foreign government and develop a proactive strategy to identify and prosecuteoffenders.a. Department of Justice’s International EffortsThrough various components of the Department of Justice, the United States has trained foreignlaw enforcement officials in numerous countries on investigating and prosecuting child sextrafficking and has worked with governments to develop model anti-trafficking legislation andhas fostered international cooperation in hundreds of cases.The FBI’s Innocent Images International Task Force (IIITF) became operational on October 6,2004, and includes law enforcement officers from countries such as: United Kingdom, Norway,Finland, Ukraine, Belarus, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Croatia, Latvia, Germany, theNetherlands, New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, Fiji, Cyprus, Iceland, Denmark, Panama, andEuropol. To date, more than 70 international officers have traveled to the United States from 33different countries and worked side-by-side with Special Agents of the FBI at the InnocentImages Operations Unit. IIITF has allowed for the real-time transfer of information from and tothe FBI, and between task force members and their countries. Task Force Officers stay in theUnited States for several weeks and they remain an integral part of the task force once theyreturn to their home countries. The FBI’s IIITF successfully brings together law enforcementfrom around the world to address the global crime problem of online child exploitation.The FBI has implemented joint operations overseas with governments in two major child sextourism (CST) destinations, Thailand and Cambodia. These operations target child sex touristswho do not plan their illegal activities from the United States, but rather seek to procure childrenonce they arrive at their destination. The purpose of these operations is to coordinate with hostcountry law enforcement to gather evidence against American offenders that is admissible inAmerican courts, with the goal of extraditing those offenders back to the United States forprosecution. The FBI coordinates all efforts through its Legal Attachés in those countries toprovide, training, equipment and logistical support to these joint operations.FBI’s CST Initiative employs a proactive investigative strategy to identify and disrupt theactivities of sexual predators before they are able to victimize additional children. In conjunctionwith those country authorities, as well as interested NGOs, the CST Initiative employs the use ofboth undercover employees and confidential human sources to identify predatory individuals andgroups operating in high threat areas for child sexual exploitation. Furthermore, its purpose is tocollect evidence against these predicated targets and facilitate their arrest/prosecution by hostcountry authorities as well as the United States.103