Dutch politicians are set to enter discussions in relation to a new bill which would enable police to have greater power in their attempts to crackdown on Cybercrime in the country. Senators will meet later this week to discuss plans to implement the proposed bill named 'Computer Crime III' into its legislation as a new law.
The new law will give police the authority to hack into computers, tablets and mobile phones in a bid to tackle the on-going issue of Cybercrime in the Netherlands. One facet of the new law that has garnered support is it will allow police to entrap suspected pedophiles. Police can use the so-called 'lure teenagers' and virtually-generated children in order to catch the sexual predators.
'Lure Teenagers' are police agents who pose as minors to entice cyber-sex crime, police in Holland have previously utilized such tactics but have subsequently been unable to prosecute perpetrators because according to Dutch law no minor was actually involved. Local newspapers in Holland are reporting that the bill was approved by parliament in December.
In 2013, a Dutch rights group established that over 1,000 pedophiles around the world are offering online sex with a computer-generated 10-year-old Filipina girl called 'Sweetie'. However, the new law will make attempting grooming, where an adult chats to a child on the internet with the eventual aim to get the child to engage in sexual acts, a criminal offence.
The new legislation comes on the back of attempts by Dutch prosecutors to seek a sentence of 11 years for a man accused of coaxing young girls to pose naked online for him before blackmailing them. The defendant is accused of blackmailing young girls from the UK, Canada, Norway and the US. He is wanted on trial in Canada in relation to the case of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide in October 2012, after being the victim of an anonymous cyberbully.