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.
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
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!
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.
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
That's only partly true. There are two types of child molesters. One does it due to a stressor as a way of coping. In that sense its like drinking or what not to get away from the pain of a divorce loss of job or what not. These people very rarely reoffend because once the stressor is gone and they get counseling to deal with the stressor they have no urge to do it again.
The other is the classical child molestor in the sense that they have a constant sexual urge towards children and this in all likelihood will not go away. It is effectively a form of sexuality (albeit an incredibly destructive one). The only real treatment is counseling and some form of castration. Even with treatment, reoccurance is possible; without treatment its almost absolute.
Even though its incredibly unpopular to say so, I do have compassion for these people. The vast majority know that they are causing hurt but are unable to stop. I don't think they're evil, just very mentally ill.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
[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.
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
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...