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Computer-Edited Photos Lead To Child-Porn Locale
Leilah writes "Toronto police have found a new application for computerized photo editing. The police released edited photos on Feb. 3 from a series of child pornography pics in an attempt to locate where the photos may have been taken. Two days later, they have identified the Port Orleans hotel in Disney World as being the location. This seems to be the first time photo editing has been used in law enforcement this way and strikes an interesting line between protecting the victims and being able to get public tips. It looks like it may be used quite heavily in the future given this success."
It's a rather sad commentary on the /. crowd when I read a story about how someone MIGHT be helping sexually abused children by releasing pictures with the children editted out... and the comment board is, in the earliests posts, mostly filled with comments joking about getting the originals.
An interesting question arises though. How did they know that it was all the same scene? What if the kid was abducted, or moved around?
To the guy who blamed all of the jokes on Linux use... you must be new here
I don't think you can dismiss a useful approach just because criminals might eventually get wise and start taking precautions against it. That might be a reasonable argument if the approach required invasive laws to implement, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Also, I imagine the majority of these pictures are not taken with wide distribution in mind.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
I don't know what's creepier, the pictures themselves or the comments joking about the originals and downplaying kiddie porn/statutory rape...
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
That's because you have a conscience. It's distrubing to see the pics, even with the victim removed because you can still sort of see the silhouettes and such, and you can see that things like this are happening at places that aren't some pervert's basement.
I think its pretty sad that some of the first few comments on this article are supposed to be funny. This is a serious issue, and I think even joking about it is bad for the morale of people who are trying to stop this sort of thing from happening. But then again this issue hits closer to home for me... My younger brother was sexually assualted many years ago, and honestly if I found the guy that did it, I would probably take his life.
Closed source investigation proves more secure! The less eyes looking at these modified pictures the better! A small group of policemen and investigators working on a secret case would prove more efficient and better results than to open it to the public!
Am I correct, Mr. Anti-Open-Source Person?
FLR
Editing the kids out of child porn replaces AOL phone support as the worst possible job in technology.
It's like seeing that torture scene in Reservoir Dogs for the first time - nothing you can actually see really compares with what you can imagine is actually happening.
It isn't being used as evidence.
It's being used as a tool to determine a location where the criminal act might have occurred. Now they can look for surveillance tapes, talk with hotel personnel, etc. to determine who was there with the victim.
This is no more "evidence" than a person calling Silent Observer and saying "I saw Mr. X with a little girl at the Acme Hotel" would be. It's a lead. Nothing more. Don't make it out to be something it's not.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
There's a term called "informed consent". Even if a child gives their consent, the developmental stage of the child prevents them from fully understanding what it means to give consent and thus negates any consent they may give, even if it's given quite willingly.
Have you ever spent time relating to a nine-year-old child? They dont know what the hell they're doing. If they did, we'd let them vote, drink and buy property, as well as give their consent to engage in sexual activity. But they don't. Thats why we love them and protect them instead of subjecting them to situations that will give them nightmares as their lives progress.
People who believe like you do want it both ways. You want both to be able to manipulate children into doing things they don't understand, and at the same time you want to call it "consent" because they said "ok" when you asked them if they wanted candy and led them away to your house of pain. Or maybe that's not really you, just the guys you're defending... in either case you seriously need to re-examine what it means to hurt another.... and stay to your own kind until you find the right answer.
TW
And anyone that says sexually assaulting a 9 year old girl (or boy) isn't bad needs to post their home address.... so that that tip can be forwarded onto the appropriate authorities (or anyone else that owns a baseball bat).
You fucking moron. Here's an address for you:
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20520
There you go. I promise a child abuser lives there. Looks a bit like a monkey. Go nuts with your damn baseball bat.
Vigilante justice is WRONG. Vigilante justice is NOT JUSTICE. Suggesting it in response to child abuse just makes you look like yet another flaming THINK OF THE CHILDREN panic attack kneejerker.
I fully support using these measures to track down sex offenders and bring them to justice. But I'd rather they go free than we throw away the right to due process.
This is a great use of technology by government, and I'm suprised many people are commenting against it.
Law enforcement isn't editing people *into* pictures, they are removing the victims so that the public can help determine where the crime took place.
They see the child in the arcade, edit it so the public sees just the arcade. Someone recognizes it, and then they know exactly where to go next. A very elegant solution when public places are shown in the picture set.
If this makes criminals more wary about taking pictures...well...good. If all they can take is sick pictures against a vanilla background, well I think that would cause less people to be interested in them...so good.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The point was to edit out the girl being molested or hide the graphic nature of the photograph, not to win a photo editing contest. If they wanted, they could have spent 3 times as much money editing this, but that would have been a waste of time.
I think that it meets the needs of the police perfectly. You are not trying to show how wonderful those places are. Leaving a 'ghost' reminds people that their was a victim there, allowing people to review the background in a more neutral format while maintining the victim's privacy.
If a quick 5 minute clone does the job, I don't see a need to perfect the image.
I can't believe how bent everyone is getting over the quality. If you think you can do a better job, go ahead and volunteer. I for one would not want to look at the originals.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
That sounds useful. I know if I were an young girl I would want all of my friends knowing that I was molesting at Disney World.
I bet her parents would love it too.
Even if they found her, not only would it make her life a nightmare, she probably wouldn't be able to help them anyway.
Even if she hadn't repressed the memory completely, she still wouldn't be able to give them enough useful information to find the person that did it.
A good friend of mine, and her little sister were molested by their father. The older one had repressed the memory and believed it had never happened to her (This is true, I know what her reaction was when she found out that it did happen, and she's still screwed up now). Her little sister told their mother, and while charges were being filed, etc. the local newspaper decided to print a nice story about the man that molested his daughter. Not only did it (more than likely) screw her up for life, they had to move 120 miles away to get rid of the embarassment of her peers.
Cases like these are *very* sensitive and have to be handled with a lot of foresight. The privacy of that poor little girl is much more important than catching the guy that did this to her.
You can bitch and moan all you want about it, but I've witnessed what this does to people firsthand, and it isn't right.
I'm not trying to defend kiddy fiddlers here but..
Bein attracted to children ISN'T a problem. The girl next door to me is 14 and VERY hot (I'm in the UK she's legal in two years). I'll freely admit (on Slashdot), I've looked at her chest as she walked past, didn't get caught and got a little giggle out of it at best. Is this a problem? Does that make me a child molester?
Alot of people are attracted to underage girls (usually catholic school girls is the best example), this is perfectly acceptable and does no one ANY harm. They wank thinking of a little girl rather than some 18 year old bomb shell air brushed to fuck.
The problem comes when they act upon it against the consent of the child. The same applies to everything sexual. If you don't act upon it, it's not a problem. Hell you could go as far as to steal a pair of her panties and it still wouldn't be a major problem(as long as it didnt go any further and you weren't caught ( I know in my time I've nabbed a few pairs of panties from very hot friends/friends mothers, it's nothing too bad).
The problem comes when you add together the mindset of a rapist and an attraction to children.
I like muppets.
( I know in my time I've nabbed a few pairs of panties from very hot friends/friends mothers, it's nothing too bad).
Ah, yes. The "I've done it, and I'm not bad, so it must not be a bad thing" theory of ethics.
Or is it simply, "It's ok, because I didn't get caught." ?
Because it's actually kind of sick. If you had been caught, I'm sure the women would have been pretty upset by it.
Molestation is the objectification and probable physical harm of someone nowhere near old enough to willing participate in consensual sex. I say harm because this isn't a sexual act exactly, its more the molester going through some ritual meant to undo some childhood harm they suffered - the fear and suffering of the victim is often the goal.
When I type evil I was thinking of the case described to me by the state patrol guys - a nine year old girl bound, suspended from the ceiling, and penetrated orally, analy, and vaginally.
Take a minute and imagine how that girl is going to feel when she is eighteen and wanting a normal relationship. She'll either be completely unable to interact with a man in any fashion, or she'll have no boundaries at all. She has been robbed of something that can never be replaced and the harm will never, ever be undone.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
You can't punish someone for being mentaly ill. It doesn't make sence.
When the authorities get involved with shutting down piracy rings, everyone here bitches and complains that they're focusing their resources on that while "rapists and molesters run free." As though it's a one-tier organization with 100% focused on one task at a time.
Yet here we that is clearly not the case, and in fact they are employing advanced technologies to enforce the law and protect people all over, even using the public to help them. I wonder if those sort of complaints mentioned above will cease, or will this article quickly get forgotten in the next round of timothy-posted pro-piracy articles?
Just askin'.
I'm sure that's what they, your students in your computer forensics class from your local state patrol child endangerment squad, believed. However, they would probably also tell you if you asked that people go crazy at the full moon. It's a well-cherished myth that still gets trotted out but the problem is that actual examination of the evidence dispels it.
And that is a myth that persists even though they (the law enforcement personnel) get no particular benefit from believing it. From having seen the way my local law enforcement handled their suspicions of child endangerment, I can tell you how they benefit from believing myths such as "no child abuser can ever be cured" and "you can always tell an abuser because they're in denial about being abusers" -- it removes a lot of the painful ambiguity from the job. They don't have to try and distinguish the guilty from the innocent -- everyone who comes under suspicion must be guilty. They don't have to preserve the rights of the innocent -- only the victim is innocent; everyone else is guilty. They don't have to try and sort out the redeemable from the scum -- everyone who's guilty is scum, and everyone is guilty.
You're telling us what you think is the whole truth, but you got it from only one source, and a source with a heavily vested interest. I think if you checked actual statistics on recidivism of child sexual abusers you'd find contradiction for your assertion that only locking up all offenders forever can make children safe.
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
Beg pardon, but it sounds like what you're saying is "Oh, posh and nonsense, there's no 'thought crime' here! There's just a clear realization of the obvious laboratoryfact that certain thoughts inevitably lead to crimes! Therefore, it's okay to turn people in to the police for their thoughts!"
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
One of the problems with very high penalties for rape (and I assume with child molestation this is the same) is that your chances of getting caught go down considerably if you murder the victim. Lets assume that killing the eye witness cuts your chances of being caught / convicted by 50%. Then you don't want the penalty for rape / molestation to be any higher than twice the penalty for rape / molestation + a murder otherwise the criminal logically should commit the murder once they have decided to commit the sex crime.
In reality the number is much larger than 50%. We have a unpleasant choice between sex criminals repeat offending and turning lots of our sex criminals into murders.
Okay. Here's the problem I have with the tactics the Toronto police used here. Nobody's going to want to stay in the hotel room where these indiscretions took place. Who would want to sleep on a bed where a 9 year old girl was raped? The hotel owner's not to blame, so why should they be penelized?
This argument is stupid. If a murder took place in your hotel, then by golly your hotel will be all over the papers the next day. If a crazy man goes balistic with a gun in your store, then by golly your store will be all over the papers the next day. Similary, if shifty things like this occurs in your establishment and it gets found out, the press will know. Thats how the cookie crumbles, it's not your fault at all, but it's part of the many risks of running a business.
Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
There's a term called "informed consent". Even if a child gives their consent, the developmental stage of the child prevents them from fully understanding what it means to give consent and thus negates any consent they may give, even if it's given quite willingly.
Have you ever spent time relating to a nine-year-old child? They dont know what the hell they're doing. If they did, we'd let them vote, drink and buy property, as well as give their consent to engage in sexual activity. But they don't. Thats why we love them and protect them instead of subjecting them to situations that will give them nightmares as their lives progress.
Now I agree with you and the intentions of the law against statutory rape (which is what covers informed consent) and the like. Now I don't believe that something magical happens on someone's 18th birthday in the US or 16th birthday in the UK. The maturity required to give informed consent is gradual, and occurs at different times for different people. But the law requires an age to be set, so it quasi-arbitrarily sets an age. The fact that different countries draw the line at different places, but in roughly the same age range is a testament to the well-natured, but arbitrariness of any law drawing line between when someone is mature enough to make adult decisions, and when they are not.
Now here's where the fun begins.
In the United States we had a juvenile justice system. When a minor committed a crime, they were tried under a juvenile justice system. The idea was that kids aren't mature enough to make decisions, and as you said "Don't know what the hell they're doing." Also the kids are still young, so society can still "fix" them before they become an adult. Sentences were much lighter in the juvenile system, since society was dealing with kids and not adults. Another key component of the juvenile system was that all records were sealed on a kid-criminal's 18th birthday. The idea is that someone shouldn't be stigmatized and punished their entire lives for something they did when they were 12.
Then in the 80s, conservatives began to complain that the juvenile justice system was joke, and let repeat offenders out into society too early, and the sealed records harmed society and police. So under the guise of "We're only going to apply this to the hardest of the hard. We're only going to apply this to those that are almost 18," laws were passed that allowed kid defendents to be "tried as an adult". Upon conviction, these minors would be given adult prison sentences in adult jail. Society was scared of 16-17 year old black gang banging crack dealers, so the law was changed.
After the law was changed, the "adult trials" were few and far between. Were they in and out of juvenile hall most of their short lives? Yeah. Was it likely they were going to commit another crime in the future? Yeah. Did the defendents know what they were doing? Eh....maybe. They were going to be 18 in a year anyway. So society didn't have much qualms about trying these minors as adults.
Over the years since, society has pretty much gutted the juvenile justice system. Lots of kids are now being tried as adults. Lots of kids who never before committed a crime are being tried as adults. 10-12 year old kids are being tried as adults. In some states, kids can even be executed.
Right now there's a case being tried in Florida where a boy killed his grandparents when he was 12. He's now 15. If convicted, he will spend the rest of his life in jail. By all accounts, this kids was pretty messed up when he was 12. The kid was on Zoloft, for crying out loud. (I can't imagine how messed up he is now after being in police custody for 3 years.) The prosecution has been saying the 12 year old knew what he was doing, and killed his grandparents in cold blood. Furthermore, he knew it was wrong, and tha
Ann Landers (her daughter) had that same dilemna- someone wrote in asking about urges for a child.
She turned that person into the police.
That person hadn't abused anyone. But recognizing a deviate behavior and 'correcting' it before irreparable harm comes to a child is more important than fixing it after the fact. (and even then, can you really fix it?)
Attention molesters, the message is clear:
If you have impure thoughts about a minor, do not look for help before it's too late. No, just go ahead and act on these impulses, because you're gonna get punished wether you do them or not. So if you're gonna do the time anyway, might as well do the crime.
You can't take the sky from me...