Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Pentagon Workers Tied To Child Porn

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

finalcutmonstar tips a Boston Globe report on details released today of Operation Flicker (PDF), an investigation of subscribers to child porn websites, which seems to have implicated a number of government employees in sensitive positions. Quoting: "Federal investigators have identified several dozen Pentagon officials and contractors with high-level security clearances who allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography, including an undisclosed number who used their government computers to obtain the illegal material, according to investigative reports. The investigations have included employees of the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — which deal with some of the most sensitive work in intelligence and defense — among other organizations within the Defense Department. The number of offenders is a small percentage of the thousands of people working for sensitive Pentagon-related agencies. But the fact that offenders include people with access to government secrets puts national security agencies 'at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military installations,' according to one report by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service from late 2009."

8 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. No Story here by bobwrit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, the ones who are looking for child porn all day are keeping it/are attracted to it. Who would have thought...

    --
    -- (this is a sig) My Computer Programming Forumhttp://www.programers.co.nr/
    1. Re:No Story here by erroneus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Probably quite right in some ways, but it is interesting because just yesterday I was reflecting on the "Peewee Herman" incident where he was identified at an adult theater. Now whether or not he was touching himself was a detail I care little about... or even the fact that he was watching legal adult porn in a theater properly designated as such. What I found most astounding was that people were all over the fact that much of his work is for the entertainment of children.

      How ODD is it that people who work with children or for children are somehow supposed to not have any sexual interests of their own? I guess we should all freak out if someone has more than one child! After all, after having a child they engaged in SEX! What perverts!

      No, the realities here are still not quite sorted out because people don't know how to put them into perspective or rank them in terms of severity. So we see crimes where none exist and little to nothing where it does. We have contextual bubbles of stupidity all over... yet another point I was meditating over the other day. (How people can be very sensible and logical in their every day lives except when certain context comes into play... say their religion for example. Then exceptions galore come into play... no critical thinking, no questioning for truth.)

      And yes, it is most definitely easier to condemn someone you don't know than it is to do it to someone you do. It's all relative... friends and relatives.

  2. What percentage of the workforace? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only way that this would really be interesting is if the number of people caught, as a percentage of those employed at said facilities, was greater than that for the greater population of the country.

  3. Re:Wow by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem isn't that people with security clearances are disgusting perverts, the problem is that people with security clearances are security risks. As an example, you'll find it difficult to get a clearance if you've declared bankruptcy or even just have a lot of unsecured debt because it makes you more susceptible to bribes. The same thing is true here. If a foreign interest were to find out you were downloading child porn, an offense where just being accused can cause your life to crumble around you, it would be trivial for them to blackmail you into revealing secrets.

  4. Not that I want the gory details but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...anything from a glamour shot of a naked 17-year-old girl to a child being sexually abused could be classified as "child porn".

    And whilst I don't consider either to be particularly healthy in a civilised society (if it's consenting adults doing stuff to each other that other adults look at then let them get on with it), there's clearly a great difference between the two extremes.

  5. Re:What surprises me by Hadery · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The population of the USA is roughly 300,000,000. You thought that only 1 in 300,000 would look at cp?

  6. Re:Summary snipping by SydShamino · · Score: 4, Insightful

    2) The next thing - is Contractors with high level security. I know they meant officials included in that, but why on Earth would you give a Contractor high level security clearance? I wouldn't trust them further than broom closet.

    So you propose nationalizing Boeing, Bell, Lockheed Martin or indeed every one of the 200+ companies on this list?:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors

    Any and every one of them likely has high level clearance for some employees for some field.

    --
    It doesn't hurt to be nice.
  7. Re:Wow by N0Man74 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even with no evidence? Even when the accusations are false?

    Are you one of the masses that keeps their head up their ass, only to pop it out long enough to watch highly sensationalized news stories warnings us about all the pedophiles and terrorists out to get you and your children.

    Maybe it's time that you actually become informed and apply some critical thinking. The person who said that it's the equivalent of yelling "fire" is dead wrong. It's more like yelling "witch!" Terrorists and pedophiles are our new boogeymen. The US has a long tradition of making "witches", whether they were legitimate concerns or not. Communists, homosexuals, socialists, satanists, drugs, illegal aliens, rock 'n' roll, and now the sex criminals and terrorists.

    I hate to say it about my fellow Americans, but we're a bunch of paranoid, over-judgmental, overreacting, intolerant, lynch-mob forming loonies sometimes. In the names of protecting freedom and protecting our children, we're on a path of insanity.

    Don't get me wrong here, I believe in protecting the children from abuse, but what I don't believe in is making this issue so emotionally charged that it becomes absolutely devastating for someone to even become *falsely* charged with it.

    It's like "sex criminals" in general. Whenever you hear stories about sex offenders, the media always tries to blow it up to be that sex offenders are a bunch of child rapists. It's bullshit. They completely gloss over the fact that the whole sex criminal registry system is broken, and does not make any distinction between the real dangers and those guilty of minor offenses that should have never gotten them on the registry! Where are the sympathetic news reports about what a rough time sex offenders have in today's society? Nowhere, because people would revolt at such an idea. They'd have a hissy fit about sympathizing with the offenders, even when these are sex offenders who were put on the list for things like mooning someone during an argument, public urination when they were drunk, being nude in a place that they believed they were not being observed, having consensual sex with a minor who had misled them into believing they were older than they were, having consensual teen sex with someone 2 years younger than them or sexting eachother. We don't want to believe that though. We want to believe that they are a real danger that we've on the a leash. Now we can sleep soundly.

    Sadly, similar things happen in the realm of child pornography. I've read of a grandmother who was prosecuted for creating child pornography when she took what she thought was a cute picture of her grandchild who happened to have been nude at the time. People have been prosecuted for having works that courts previously had determined was legal, based not on the legality of the work, but what the court *believed* the person was a pervert based on other legal behavior such as owning a copy of the novel Lolita.

    And don't get me started with the fear of terrorists and prosecuting prankster kids for making "bottle bombs" now....

    So, yes, some things are so horrible they deserve a stigma, but not everyone that has been a victim of this stigmatization has done something horrible. Did the people in this story do anything horrible, or could these cases be exaggerated and essentially be a witchhunt. Honestly, I suspect it's a little of each, but that really doesn't matter because our justice system likes to apply as much punishment as we can to people.

    We seem to be stuck in the mindset that all of our problems can be solved if we just cast a bigger net.