Slashdot Mirror
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."
Will criminals take this as a warning and digitally edit out the background (or replace it with vanila ones)?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Man, the toronto police dept. seriously needs to hire a farker or two. Even the mediocre photoshoppers there do a better job than they did.
Of course, one of those photos would probably end up with Admiral Ackbar, Wil Wheaton or that over-endowed squirel.
They needed information. Rather than blur out the subject (which then becomes the focus) they repaired, to the best of their ability, the scenes and posted them.
Frankly that's no different then sending out 'awards' to criminals and when they show up, arresting them.
There is no 'interesting line' between privacy and law enforcement. Law Enforcementis paid to lie to GET the 'bad guy'. 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).
Privacy of the victim is 100%, assuming they didn't include a 'thumbnail' of the original image embedded in the jpg.
Sometimes. I'm replying to a troll, I know... but.
A lot of statitory rape cases are bullshit. The parents get angry at the 19 year old having sex with the 16 year old or whatever. But then, there's always the cases of older women, in a very real way, sexually abusing younger children. It is a problem, but if some 15 year old gets with a MILF? I don't see a problem.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Hex-editing arcade.jpg (the first of six photos) shows JFIF ... Ducky ... Adobe. Ducky is the code name for Adobe ImageReady.
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
There's a story my boss told me, I don't know if it's true or not.
A 16 year old male is at a party and has sex with a 19 year old female. 3 months later she calls him and tells him she's pregnant, but not to worry about it. A few years down the road, he's about to graduate from college and her lawyer calls him up asking for child support, including back child support. As it turns out, the statutory rape statute of limitations had passed, and she waited until that time to ask for the child support. The guy had to drop out of school and get a job to pay the back child support.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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.
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.
An article in the Montreal Gazette (that I just finished reading -- what a coincidence!) says that if necessary the police might release the photos with the girl's face, the reason being that they believe that it might help the girl escape a "life of abuse"...
Doomie
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.
From the article...
"...prompted his team to alert the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which dispatched investigators to the alleged crime scene."
Um.. why would they have jurisdiction? I thought they were supposed to be protecting us from terrorists? Wouldn't the FBI be the ones working on this?
I sure don't know my legal jurisdiction rules, anyone care to explain?
~Z
Well, seeing as the police are using the photos exactly as you suggest, I guess they get a "two thumbs up.', eh?
More specifically, the police were only using the photos to elicit eye-witness evidence of the location of the crime with the hopes that they could then find further evidence of the assault after the location was identified. This is truly a case were everyone wins (with the hopeful exception of the assailant).
TW
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!
Why does Michael Jackson like twenty nine year olds? ...
Because there are twenty of them!
See, I can make a joke about abusing nine year olds. And it's a pretty funny one. Neener.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I taught a computer forensics class to law enforcement a couple of years ago. Evil is just a four letter word until you listen to a few stories from your local state patrol child endangerment squad.
Child molestation is not something that someone does, it is an indelible part of who they are. They never, ever get better, and the compulsion doesn't go away. Civil commitment after the end of the required prison term is the only way to keep children safe.
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
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.
What they were hoping, and what seems to have happened, is that someone who had been to the location would see it, recognise it, and call them. See any person who would be persuing these kind of pictures in their unedited form is not the kind of person who's going to be calling the police with a tip. So, they go and edit them to remove the illegal and offensive material. The repairs were done rather than just blocking the subject since most people find a black area very distracting, and focus on it rather than the information that is there.
Now it seems to have worked, normal people looked at the photos and some said "Hey! I recognise that place!" and called it in. It reamins to be seen if they are able to get any evidence from this, but it's a place ot start at least. Knowing where something took place gives you a good starting place to look.
The next step perhaps will be to again turn to computer editing (or maybe just old fashion sketch artists) and take the faces of the children in the photos and get them out ot people in the area, and see if anyone recognises them.
The edited photos will never see a court room for a trial, because it would be worthless to do so. "Here's a picture of an empty room", not going to matter. However it does seem to be a useful step in finding the person they need to bring them to trial.
Enlisting the public's help is a powerful tool often. Hence shows like America's Most Wanted. They actually do provide a useful service, in addtion to being entertianment. It's not a panacea, and you can't rely on 100% accurate and useful tips, but it can help police get pointed in the right direction on an investigation.
It's because he has a sense of humor, and you're an attention whore who likes to out-sensitive people in a pathetic attempt to leech off of the outpouring compassion that comes to those who deserve and need it.
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.
Stop thinking that. This isn't a slam at Disney about making money off of kids.
I work with people who investigate the child sex trade. It's not a surprise that those pictures showed a Disney hotel, as Disney resorts used to be a popular place for child peddlers to hand over the kids they were selling. There are so many kids running around there, who's going to notice that a little girl in a yellow dress comes in with one person and leaves with another?
Disney knew nothing of this at the time, though they're aware of it now. They have a great security team, but they're focused on pickpockets and and the garden variety perverts who want to cop a feel on Snow White, not child traders.
Child porn is a dirty business, perhaps the dirtiest. The people responsible probably get some perverse pleasure from trading their sex toys at a place like Disneyland.
Then again, one thing DHS has done right over the last 18 months is arrest and dispose of over 3,000 of the bastards who trade in kids. It's just too bad disposal only consists of deportation or detention. If any crime deserves the death penalty, sexual abuse of children is it.
(Yeah, I take it personally. I have a nine-year old daughter. If you'd seen what these bastards do with kids, you'd scratch their names on a few bullets, too.)
Sorry about the rant. But this subject touched a nerve or two.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
They tried this in Australia, editing child porn to get public leads. Unfortunately they sent out the wrong copies. The AFP (Australian Federal Police) sent thousands of school principles a collection of child porn your average pornogapher would be jealous of. Here's the link to the news articals: Police send porn to schools.
This sig is false.
Although I'm almost afraid to hear the answer...where in the hell have you seen these photos?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't see any children...
16 year olds find 16 year olds attractive because there are attractive 16 year olds, people are not uglier at 16 because they were born in a later year.
:)
If you are born in say 1980, and somebody is born in 1984, then when you are 20, there is a good chance that other person (at 16) is sexually attractive, just as they would have been if you were born in 1984 too. It doesn't matter if you fancy him/her, it doesn't matter if you kiss each other. Just don't fucking fuck, abuse, assault or harrass them.
'course ages of consent are different in different countries. Whether a 16-year old is capable of entering a meaningful sexual relationship with, say, a 20 year old seems to be a matter of debate. There could be a difference between intent to shag for fun for one partner, and normal teenage experimentation for the other. That can cause problems, but then two 16 year olds can have very different attitudes towards sex, and somebody is going to feel hurt then too. Its really a matter of whether a persons actions could be considered to be torture or likely to cause distress and unreasonable feelings of self shame in the other. I say unreasonable because I could feel ashamed if I pull an ugly bird in a nightclub but that is my own fault
But laws tend to be black and white so just act according to the most limited of the letter of the law and your own moral values.
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.
It's all fine and dandy doing this sort of thing but theres also many sites which sell themselvs as "Child super model" sites and feature little girls (preteen) in bikinis and panties. Quite often with camel toes and such, right now they are legal (as is buying a nudist video filmed at a 9 year old girl's birthday party!), as long as it isn't sexual then you can have any number of naked children in a photo.
Now I'm not trying to go "OMG KILL IT WITH FIRE!" here, but I think the law needs to be refined a bit to take this exploit out of it. I don't want it to become illegal to have a picture of your family nude (Hell my aunt has some of me and my cousin in the bath completely naked she brings out at "big" birthdays to embrass us both), but these sites are clearly ment to whack off too, it's plain disturbing yet totally legal.
I like muppets.
Now they can compare these (and possibly several more pictures that we haven't seen) and narrow it down. The police (who frequent internet child porn rings to help keep tabs on things) may have first seen these pictures turn up around 2001, so they know it would be before 2001. Perhaps that fountain was recently renovated? If it shows the "old fountain" in the pic, then they know it was taken before X date. They go on from there. Then they can take a list of all the people that visited the hotel from records and cross it with a database of known offenders from the area they think the guy is from. They may get lucky. They may even catch the guy for a separate offense and link him back to this. Maybe the hotel archives it's security tapes (unlikely, but you never know) and they can sift through until they see somebody take a picture at the fountain or in the elevator. Hell, this is generating a LOT of publicity, the girl may even phone in and say "OH MY GOD THAT'S ME, IT WAS MY BASTARD UNCLE". Anyways, THAT is what police work is.
Either way, it's still better than doing nothing.
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
The hard part is figuring out at what age to draw the line. Most cultures agree that 9 is too young, but the age of consent where I live is 14. Many other places set it at 16, 18, or somewhere between.
The odd thing is that although a 14 year old can consent to sex in this country, taking pictures of that act would be illegal.
If two people under 18 videotape themselves having sex, they could be considered guilty of creating child pornography. A very strange world we live in.
Anyone who has ever composited photos can tell you that this is improbable in the extreme. Transferring a subject to a new background is an incredibly difficult process, if you have any prayer of making it convincing.
Everything from lighting to perspective, in-scene reflections, and even the quality of the photos being combined has to be carefully taken into account and expertly matched. Unless you're starting with similar photographs, it's a nearly hopeless proposition. Your average nitwit with a copy of MS Paint has no hope of pulling this off, and, in any case, the vast majority of people lack access to huge quantities of child porn to use as source photos.
In other words, the odds of this becoming a serious problem are virtually nil. I think it's a great idea, and a wonderful use of technology. It's the cops actually doing some work, instead of trying to pass retarded, technophobic laws.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Yeah, that must be right because in real life kids don't get camel toe or even wear panties or swimsuits.
Dude, take your thought crimes and shove'em up your lily white self-rightcheous ass.
The thing is that it is completely biologically normal to be attacted to a sexually mature person. If someone had gone through puberty, even if they are only 14 you are not a freak for being attracted to them. Its what nature intended. These laws are a throwback from a society that didn't want their children having kids of their own untill they were good and ready. Before that people had sex at exactly the same age as people these days, the only difference is that due to poor birth control people were married a lot younger.
My great grandmother was 14 when she was married, to a guy who was in his mid 30's no less, however this wasn't frowned upon, basically because there was an elegable 18 year old batchelor drought around the time with pesky wars thinning out the numbers and because my great grandfather had a stable job and could provide for her.
Child molestors are differnent in that they are attracted to prepubescent girls (or boys). Child porn laws are a crock and need revising, if not to avoid stupid situations where boyfriends are charged for taking photos of their girlfriends.
-
So the question is, if a child is being held as a sex slave, would they really care if their rights are being trampled while being rescued?
Not to dismiss the usefullness of what has been done with the photos released, but you're asking the wrong question here. The right question is: do we want to release those photos to the mass public so the girl's forever recognized as the victim of a sex crime? If she's been abused as a sex slave we want to rescue her and give her a normal life, not one where she knows she can never go out in public because she'll be recognized and humiliated because of her past.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
I took my son to Chucky Cheese (a pizza/arcade place), and on entering they stamped the three of us (my wife, son and I) with a hand stamp with an identical picture. At first I had no idea why they did this, but on exit they checked the stamps on our hands to see if they matched. Then I understood why, it would be really easy to take a kid away from there.
Isn't it a crime to look at child pornography? If this is the case, are cops comitting a felony by looking at these pics to edit them? It's also a crime to possess cocaine, but police are allowed to confiscate it and store it for evidence.
Sigs are for the weak.
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'.
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?
You might say the hotel owner should take some responsibility to police its guests. Fine, but do you want hidden security cameras in the hotel rooms you stay in? Would you mind if the midnight desk clerk sat in the back room secretly looking in on you to make sure you're not doing something illegal? The technology to do this is very inexpensive nowadays, and video cameras can be made incredibly small and easily hideable. We don't want to give hotel owners any incentive to do this, but if this kind of police work becomes routine, I fear it will be inevitable. So much for any privacy in your hotel room.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
It's also a crime to rape people, steal, view child porn using government property, armed robbery, and thousands more.
you're 100% right. they certainly do it all the time.
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.
[i]I'm saying this is very close to child porn to the point where it's softcore porn in some cases.[/i]
Thanks for illustrating my point on a very personal level.
As I said: there are people who wank to pictures of kids in catalogs. There are people who don't even care about the stuff you're demonizing, they want kids wearing Bratz and Powerpuff Girls playing on swings and climbing on monkey bars. So when do we outlaw ALL pictures of children because some pervs want to wank to them?
It's not a fucking "loophole" you moron. It's called freedom of thought. I realize that's a challenge to folks like you, so think of it like this: you just admitted you found these pics akin to "softcore porn." So when do we call the thought police to come haul you in for re-education?
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.
4 of the six of the pictures that were posted on the linked website were in public places. Only two were from the inside of a hotel room. Those pics were undoubtedly the more "normal" pictures, i.e., just the girl by herself in public. The more graphic pictures would not have been modified since they would not have shown as much of the identifiable background scenery.
My other first post is car post.
I hate how this subject is being trivialized by this thread. I am but a whisker away from have tears running down my face.
/ 13 313.html#cutid1
I think what the Toronto polic is trying to do is a good thing - BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH. These children are scarred for life. A life that's is incomprehensible especially for the average geek until you got to know someone who was abused and traumatized. Then the pain is REAL because the pain that the person faced is so deep and scarring that he or she cannot but help radiate that pain and misery. I felt the pain from a close friend of mine first hand. Just 6 months ago she committed suicide because she can't live with the pain and how it has scarred her anymore.
For anyone who think of this as a trivial manner, please read this entry of hers. She is dead now, but hopefully her words here will help people understand how important it is that we face up to these criminals and PREVENT them from ever committing them in the first place.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/comedotparvuli
Child molesters are generally NOT pedophiles - they are teleiophiles with little self control, who, given the right situation, do whatever they feel like doing - which sometimes involves hurting children. Most crimes are committed by this type of person - those with little self-control.
p df
On the contrary, most pedophiles are not child molesters. They have normal or heightened levels of self-control (heightened from having to control what they say all their lives).
In both cases, recidivism rates are much lower than normal. One also has to ask about the nature of the crimes - there are plenty of cases where the child gave consent in their own mind, if not in the mind of the law, and in these cases the evidence suggests that they are worse off if they are found out. If they did not feel raped in the first case, they often feel raped by the investigators who barge into their life.
Even in the question of Child Pornography itself, we have to ask what we mean by Child Pornography. When mere possession is outlawed, it is impossible even to determine what the police are talking about - "sexual assault" sounds violent and unwanted to us, but this is not necessarily so.
Consider this quote by former FBI child abuse expert Kenneth Lanning, "It confuses us to see the victims in child pornography giggling and laughing."
http://www.sexcriminals.com/library/doc-1076-1.
p. 16.
Baldur of Asgard
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!
Many have alleged that child pornography is a huge, multi-billion dollar international business. None have proven it.
Fortunately for the police, they don't have to. By making even possession of CP illegal, and in the minds of the sheep worthy of death, they not only do not have to show any evidence, but the more evidence they don't show, the more the public believes them!
The same goes for the international child sex slave rings - very little evidence, almost none in the United States, and when a little evidence IS found, most of those child slaves are 17 years old.
Yes, the enemy is so sneaky one can't even find them! Very dangerous, indeed. Better give the police some more money to work on the problem.
Baldur of Asgard
Child porn law's are absurd. The only necessary law regarding sexual activity should be a ban on rape. I agree that adults that have sex with young children are sick. (Adults that knowingly lie to children or force them to do useless or harmfull physical or mental activity....as many public school teachers do....are sick as well) I should be able to own any pictures I want. Teenagers have sex with each other. They always have; they always will. Defining an adult as one over 18 when humans generally become sexually mature at a much younger age is wrong. If teenagers (not 18 or 19 year olds like legit porn sites define teen, but real teenagers: 13-17) have consensual sex with each other and decide to take some pictures and upload them to the net, anyone who wants should be able to download them. I wonder what would happen if some minor took pictures of themselves and a parterner engaging in consentual sexual activity, and years later is caught with the images? There are all kinds of cases where noone is harmed by so called "child" pron. Safe trusting consentual sex is a fun and socially benificial activity. Excessive conservatism is just going to turn us into a more regressive backward god fearing people. Yes....many teens are not ready and do stupid things. Often this is because conservatives have sheltered them from pron, education, and frank discusions about fucking. Many "legal adults" are also too immature to have safe sex. When society arbritrarily sets 18 as the age of consent, we are just encouraging both minors and adults to not take the law serously.
(even on slashdot its hard to speak out on free speech...when I defended the right to send any email your bandwidth would allow, I was accused of being a spammer...I would not be surprised if I were labeled a rapeist for defending "child" pronography)
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
I'm not arguing that it's right or wrong, but I'd just like to raise the point that Vigilantes appoint themselves. They are not chosen by "the people".
Oh, and by the way, Batman is not super-normal. He is just highly trained, highly motivated, and very rich 'ordinary bloke'. No radioactive spider bites, not from another planet, nothing. (Sorry, bit of a pet peeve of mine, this calling Batman a superhero.)
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Okay, I've been affected somewhat by child abuse, so I don't really like to joke about it. But the brainless knee-jerk reactions some people have is ridiculous. Murder, that's nothing...Prison rape, they get what they deserve. But children being sexually abused is somehow the worse possible thing, and anyone who makes jokes about it is automatically a sick fucking paedo?!? There are alot of horrible and grotesque things that happen, but child rape is somehow exponentially worse? I do agree it's an awful and tragic thing...it ruins people's emotions forever. But do you think kids in Libya seeing there parents mutilated in front of them is any better. Or what about the poor SOB in prison, who get's raped every day and now will never know a day without fear, even when he is released. I hear people talk about children with no soul...but this isn't uncommon. Children in forced labor, bullied mercilessly at school, with a perfectionist family, severe depression, in a family where the parents abuse each other...in an extreme of any of these a child can be souless and scarred beyond repair for life. Also, I really hate to see the laws going psychotic on child nudity. There is a huge difference between nudity and pornography, there is nothing wrong with the human form, especially that of early youth, but obviously there is something wrong with a 9 year old having intercourse. Again, it makes me sad that people can be arrested for taking pictures of their children playing in the tub, just because sexually repressed, moral nazis, say it's sexual. By this logic, eventually it will be illegal for women to breast feed, since she's obviously coercing the child into a sexual position to satiate her own carnal desires. With all that said, I see where people with children or people who were severly abused are coming from. It would be strange for them not to hate paedophiles...but it still wouldn't make it okay to torture paedos.
Official DOJ reports show that recidivism amongst preferential child sexual abusers (ie pedophiles) is actually one of the LOWEST in all of the prison system.
It's an order of magnitude lower than those convicted for robbery and assault and lower than "other" types of sexual assault.
What you say is absurd.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Yeah, I had a relative die in a concentration camp. He fell out of a guard tower. Pretty sad.
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
I pretty much agree with everything you said and will clarify it further if I may. Attraction to Pre-Pubescents (pre puberty, i.e., usually under 10 or 11 years or so) is classified as "Paedophilia," and is considered a mental illness.
What the parent post described is called Ephebophilia, an attraction to post pubescent adolescents, this has never been and never will be considered an illness. 70% of the world's population can be classified as ephebophiles, we're wired that way. Only the relatively recent concept of Age of Consent has attached any stigma to this. Also, it'd be worth checking out your local age of consent (I'm NOT saying this to advocate anything inappropriate, just to educate yourself.) Turns out in a majority of countries and US states, the age of consent is below 18. I'm still curious to know how 18 has become the age below which it's unthinkable to sexualize someone...
Yup...
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...
I travel a lot on business. I've learned a few things:
1. Most hotel rooms are architected the same.
2. Furniture and electrical fittings in almost all hotel rooms seems to come from the same small handful of suppliers.
3. Same goes for bed linens.
Since the US is so huge, this means that there are potentially hundreds or thousands of matches for any set of hotel-room pictures.
So yeah, it may narrow the search space a little, and in this case maybe it's evident that it was Disney, but in the general case you won't learn much unless there are some exterior shots in the photo series. Therefore such information should be treated as far from conclusive.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
> In order to make these photos someone has to be, possibly irreparably, harmed.
> That's why child pornography is illegal whereas simulated child pornography
> (animation, fiction, etc) is not.
Wrong.
In most jurisdictions your so called "simulated child pornography" is just as illegal as the "real" kind.
Quoted from the Canadian Criminal code, Part V, Section 163.1:
163.1 (1) In this section, "child pornography" means
(a) a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, whether or not it was made by electronic or mechanical means,
(i) that shows a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of eighteen years and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, or
(ii) the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under the age of eighteen years; or
(b) any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years that would be an offence under this Act.
The question or comments he asked was a cry for help. He got help. I have no idea if he was charged or what the outcome was, but verbalization is a call for assistance.
Trump it as a thought crime, fine. May you never experience your children being molested under the guise of 'free speech'.
Just a small nitpick here, but Franklin at least, exhausted all due process available to the Crown of England before the revolution.
The American Revolution only happend because Colonists were treated like second class citizens who were not given the same rights, nor were their grievances addressed like other subjects of the Crown.
It wasn't a matter of "England sucks, but let's not bother trying to fix it by ASKING. Let's just revolt!"
Franklin was not the only prominent American to bring grievences to the Crown through due process, but I'm not aware if Washington himself did too.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
I agree, though this is much less about the arguments over "child porn" & more about the definition of "child." IMHO it should be obvious that making pictures of 17 year olds illegal just muddies the water. The best argument seems to be that it's a "slippery slope"-- well yes, it's a slippery slope towards having to actually examine the issue, instead of being a reactionary prude & averting your eyes. Whenever you try to have this sort of discussion, the age of the theoretical "child porn" goes down as far as is necessary for the opposite side to feel like they're at liberty to ignore the substance of what you said: "Are you saying it's OK to have sex with EIGHT year olds?? THREE year olds??? You're a sicko & I win!! Nyah nyah!" As long as 16 is legal in the Netherlands, of course, even those who remain stubbornly unaware of the fact that information is in fact free can't help but realize that it's hardly a matter of whether 16-17 will be available-- just of what proportion will moan in English.
If you were my sig, you'd be reading yourself right now.