New high-tech advances were making Internet crimes against children easier for pedophiles to commit and more difficult to detect, experts told a conference in Australia, according to an AFP report.
The report said faster broadband, DSL and cable connections had contributed to an increase in pedophile activity on the Internet, the 19th Computer Facilitated Crimes Against Children Conference heard.
'Our caseload in this crime type has gone up 2,000% since we started in images in 1996,' the head of the US FBI's cyber division indecent images unit, Arnold Bell, was quoted as saying.
The increasing use of 3D mobile phones also posed a new threat as the next stage in the march of technology, he said.
'Technology continues to evolve and cell phones are the latest thing that pose some issues for law enforcement,' he added.
About 100 delegates from Interpol, the FBI, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Microsoft are attending the one-week summit.
'Our primary focus, and I think the primary law enforcement focus, is to identify and rescue as many kids as we can,' Bell said. 'I won't sugarcoat what we are talking about "&brkbar; we're not talking about kids posing in their underwear. We're talking about penetration of children, some as small as four or five months old.'
Bell said he remained optimistic about winning the fight against Internet pedophiles, despite a 2,000% increase in the crime in the US alone in the past 10 years.