The Online Smut Patrol

U.S. Customs agent Del Richburg sits in a darkened computer room in suburban Washington every day, pretending to be a 14-year-old girl. What he's discovered on the Internet would make even a pervert blush, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

When he logs on under his fake ID, a bell sounds on his computer. "Someone wants to talk to me," Richburg explains, as another bell goes off. "Now someone else wants to talk."

And as soon as he answers, the pedophiles pounce. "They always get to the age right away," he says, typing a response. "He wants to know what I look like. It's like sharks trying to talk to you."

With an estimated 10,000 Internet sites now maintained by pedophiles, U.S. investigators are ratcheting up their counterattack and going global. Today Congress was asked to triple U.S. Custom's cyberporn budget, because Director Ray Kelly says 96% of the material they are seeing now comes from overseas.

"Other countries don't see it as a problem," Kelly says. "Other countries don't have laws on their books to address this, but I can tell you that's changing."

In fact, it was only last week that Japan -- where photos of nearly nude girls are newsstand staples -- moved for the first time to ban child pornography.

Many foreign sites are still so cleverly camouflaged that web-surfing teens often don't know they've entered. Which is why Customs is anxious to try out its new tracing system.

According to Kelly, pedophiles "leave footprints" on the World Wide Web. They're not all that easy to trace, however. Many Web sites now overlap globally, allowing suspects to essentially hide in an electronic thicket - which, if you're not careful, you or your children could accidentally stumble into.