Holistic Wisdom Corporation

Police Sent Out Child Porn

Australian police apologized after inadvertently sending Internet images of child pornography to 1,800 schools while trying to warn principals about children at risk of abuse.

The mistake came during a police crackdown on child pornography that has so far resulted in more than 200 arrests, including police, teachers, clergy and the owner of a child-care center, after more than 400 raids. Police assistant commissioner Graeme Morgan said human error had resulted in "partial images" of child pornography being sent to 1,800 government-run schools across New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.

The photographs sent by police and found during the arrest of a man suspected of possessing child pornography, had been cropped to show only the girls' faces. However, inadequate software had been used in the cropping process and the full images remained embedded in some files, which were later opened by a handful of recipients. This resulted in pornographic material being accidentally sent to the department for distribution to school principals in an effort to identify the children at risk.