> Backgrounder: ‘Good virus’ to fight child porn
Backgrounder: ‘Good virus’ to fight child porn
Contact:
Robert Gordon, 604.418.6640 (cell), robert_gordon@sfu.ca (note: is on leave and away from July 9 on)
Bill Glackman, 778.782.4041; glackman@sfu.ca
Robert Gordon, 604.418.6640 (cell), robert_gordon@sfu.ca (note: is on leave and away from July 9 on)
Bill Glackman, 778.782.4041; glackman@sfu.ca
July 8, 2008
SFU Surrey campus to house International Cybercrime Research Centre
A ‘good virus’ to combat child pornography on the internet could be one of the first products of the new International Cybercrime Research Centre at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus.
The centre will facilitate research related to Internet economic crimes, social networking related crimes and analyses of ongoing trends.
As one of its initial projects the centre will focus on developing virus scanner-like tools to detect child-exploitation images.
The intent is that such tools could be widely shared and would be of tremendous benefit in the fight against child-porn and child-exploitation images worldwide, says Robert Gordon, director of SFU’s School of Criminology.
The centre will help fill a significant gap in global efforts at fighting criminal activity on the internet, he adds.
The centre's director is Bill Glackman, associate professor in SFU Criminology and director of the SFU Criminology Research Centre. It is a joint venture of SFU, the B.C. government, and the International Society for the Policing of Cyberspace (POLCYB), a B.C.-based non-profit organization established to prevent and combat crimes on the internet.
Cybercrime is a huge and mostly unreported problem. Child pornography and identity theft are the most serious issues.
“Even when it is reported there are significant law enforcement and prosecutorial problems, principally because of the global nature of the phenomenon,” says Gordon, a former police officer himself.
“For example, a fraud aimed at Canadian seniors can be triggered by individuals in another country on behalf of individuals in a third country and be passed through a server in a fourth country.”
SFU will bring to the new centre expertise in engineering, computing science and criminology.
“It will lead to significant growth in a largely under-serviced area (globally). I expect huge demand for courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels, including international students, as well as professional studies certificate courses through Continuing Studies.”
The centre will be located at SFU’s Surrey campus in the award-winning Central City complex in downtown Surrey. Currently more than 2,000 students attend classes at the campus, with that number expected to grow to over 5,500 in the next 10 years.
SFU Surrey offers a focus on interdisciplinary applied science programs, with cutting-edge research in areas such as information networking and multimedia, technology-mediated learning, computer games, e-business, knowledge management, bioinformatics, intelligent systems and optimization, visualization, digital audio signal processing, computer music, physical modeling, and musical acoustics.
The School of Criminology began its program of teaching and research at SFU in September 1975. From the outset it has provided a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to criminology. It has over 800 undergraduate and 120 graduate students.
A ‘good virus’ to combat child pornography on the internet could be one of the first products of the new International Cybercrime Research Centre at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus.
The centre will facilitate research related to Internet economic crimes, social networking related crimes and analyses of ongoing trends.
As one of its initial projects the centre will focus on developing virus scanner-like tools to detect child-exploitation images.
The intent is that such tools could be widely shared and would be of tremendous benefit in the fight against child-porn and child-exploitation images worldwide, says Robert Gordon, director of SFU’s School of Criminology.
The centre will help fill a significant gap in global efforts at fighting criminal activity on the internet, he adds.
The centre's director is Bill Glackman, associate professor in SFU Criminology and director of the SFU Criminology Research Centre. It is a joint venture of SFU, the B.C. government, and the International Society for the Policing of Cyberspace (POLCYB), a B.C.-based non-profit organization established to prevent and combat crimes on the internet.
Cybercrime is a huge and mostly unreported problem. Child pornography and identity theft are the most serious issues.
“Even when it is reported there are significant law enforcement and prosecutorial problems, principally because of the global nature of the phenomenon,” says Gordon, a former police officer himself.
“For example, a fraud aimed at Canadian seniors can be triggered by individuals in another country on behalf of individuals in a third country and be passed through a server in a fourth country.”
SFU will bring to the new centre expertise in engineering, computing science and criminology.
“It will lead to significant growth in a largely under-serviced area (globally). I expect huge demand for courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels, including international students, as well as professional studies certificate courses through Continuing Studies.”
The centre will be located at SFU’s Surrey campus in the award-winning Central City complex in downtown Surrey. Currently more than 2,000 students attend classes at the campus, with that number expected to grow to over 5,500 in the next 10 years.
SFU Surrey offers a focus on interdisciplinary applied science programs, with cutting-edge research in areas such as information networking and multimedia, technology-mediated learning, computer games, e-business, knowledge management, bioinformatics, intelligent systems and optimization, visualization, digital audio signal processing, computer music, physical modeling, and musical acoustics.
The School of Criminology began its program of teaching and research at SFU in September 1975. From the outset it has provided a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to criminology. It has over 800 undergraduate and 120 graduate students.