By Ernest Gill
Berlin - Generally they show up in mid-afternoon when Berlin's many Internet cafés are full of young after-school patrons. Men in black berets and heavy boots march in, with a couple of them manning the exits lest anyone escape.
"Hands off the keyboards," an officer shouts. And then his men fan out to check what websites the customers have been surfing.
The scene is repeated throughout Berlin these days amid a crackdown by authorities on Internet cafés - many of which in fact fronts for drug dealing, money-laundering operations and other illicit activities.
'They can download worse filth on the Internet' In some cases, these supposed Internet cafés do not even have functioning Internet access.
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"We have initiated 20 investigations and have uncovered some 200 offences," Berlin police investigator Gitta Huwe said in an interview. Scores of computer systems have been confiscated and several cafés have been shut down in recent weeks.
Not one of the cafés investigated so far has been found to be blameless, she added. Even above-board operations were found to be providing customers with access to pornographic websites and in some cases to neo-Nazi websites - which are banned under German law.
"Just a couple of clicks on the Google search engine and, presto, you've reached an illicit website," Lorenz Weser, a local Christian Democratic Union (CDU) official, told a public hearing on the issue in suburban Reinickendorf recently.
"And that is not just a problem for Internet cafés or neighbourhood youth centres," he added. "I can go to the local community Little City hall here in Reinickendorf and click on Google and gain access to the same sites."
'The youngest we've caught was just six' Juvenile authorities in Berlin have attempted for months now, mostly in vain, to draw up standards for Internet cafés. The goal is to prevent youth from having access to pornographic material or banned Nazi websites or to other illicit offerings.
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