Singapore Banks Fight Child Pornography
The Association of Banks in Singapore announced last month that 9 of its member banks had come together to fight the spread of child pornography on the internet.
What do banks have to do with kiddy porn? When all that separates a wacko from his stash is a credit card purchase… why, everything.
Banks and credit card companies in Singapore already implement certain procedures to identify and shut off the flow of funds to commercial sources of pornography. In addition, the new initiative by ABS will establish a public hotline (62342210) for anyone to report child pornography websites. I assume this will facilitate the maintenance of a blacklist against which payments can be checked against. Useful for those who accidentally stumble upon what they should not be seeing.. I wonder if such bounty hunting will be a valid defence against offences under the Undesirable Publications Act.
The 9 participating banks in Singapore are:
- Standard Chartered
- ABN Amro
- Bank of China
- Citibank
- DBS Bank
- HSBC
- Maybank
- OCBC
- UOB
Such efforts only apply to commercial sources of pornography, though. That leaves out P2P distribution methods and the amateur productions posted on online forums — both of which appear to be increasing as growing regulation pushes purveyors to more informal networks. Yet, stamping down on commercial child pornography will at least remove the monetary incentive to produce and distribute such content, and, with the eradication of a ready market, hopefully reduce the value of a child to a buyer or intermediary.
As for non credit-card purchases? PayPal has already put a stop to the use of its services on adult content websites (yes, child porn is adult content).
Also see:
+ Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography
+ ECPAT
