SOFIA, May 22 (Xinhua) -- The Bulgarian minister of justice called for a society-wide drive to tackle online crimes against children after a recent report revealed 70,000 alerts for online crimes against children in 2024.
At a roundtable discussion on protecting children from online violence on Thursday, Georgi Georgiev emphasized that such crimes represent a huge challenge, and society had to be involved to tackle it.
Citing the report that the Bulgarian Safer Internet Center (SIC) has reviewed and referred to the relevant authorities, Georgiev said: "This work shows that the challenge is much bigger than it seems to us."
He said the public should have been made aware of this issue because there is no measure in the penal code or any new law to fix the problem, and prevention is necessary.
"Let's talk more about the role of the family, the school, the environment, because the justice system only specifically intervenes when the antisocial act is a fact," he underlined. "We need to think about the reasons."
He also urged a strong and decisive response from law enforcement since the public expects a reaction when alerts are made.
According to Vladimir Dimitrov, head of the Cybercrime Directorate at Bulgaria's General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, who also attended the roundtable organized by the SIC, Bulgaria's specialized unit for combating crimes against children in cyberspace has doubled its staff within the last two years.
The staff at this unit uses specialized software to identify Bulgarian IP addresses that are copying and distributing child sexual exploitation materials in cyberspace. Almost every week, his colleagues travel around Bulgaria to arrest people who download and distribute these materials, Dimitrov said, although it is impossible to catch everyone involved in such activities. ■
