Cooper has pushed for the change in the law to help investigators catch criminals who pursue children online.
“Child predators are on the prowl online and we want to stop them before they hurt our children,” Cooper said. “Now we’ve given law enforcement another tool they can use against these criminals who think they’re protected by the anonymity of the Internet.”
The Senate voted unanimously to approve the Child Exploitation Prevention Act (Senate Bill 472), sponsored by Senator Scott Thomas. The measure, which had previously earned Senate approval and returned to the Senate for concurrence, was unanimously approved by the House on June 8 and now goes to Gov. Michael Easley for his signature.
Beginning Dec. 1, 2005, the new law will make it a felony for an Internet predator to solicit anyone, including an undercover officer, he or she believes to be a child.
The measure will also require convicted online predators to be added to the state's Sex Offender Registry and to provide DNA samples for the state’s convicted offender database.
The SBI’s Computer Crimes Unit works to track Internet predators who try to exploit children. The SBI is a part of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, a nationwide network of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors dedicated to protecting children from online dangers.
Cooper previously announced that the SBI led the North Carolina ICAC Task Force in a statewide operation to fight the spread of child pornography, serving 58 search warrants on suspects that have already resulted in more than a dozen arrests with more arrests anticipated.
Cooper is asking legislators to expand the SBI Computer Crimes Unit that he helped create by adding four new field agents and three more computer forensic experts to recover and analyze information from computers submitted as evidence to the SBI Crime Lab
The attorney general’s office has shared tools to protect children online with local PTAs. The video and tips are also available online at www.ncdoj.com (select “Internet Safety” from the Jump To menu at the top of the page).
