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FBI "Took Over World's Biggest Child Porn Website" (telegraph.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Telegraph: The FBI took over the world biggest child pornography website in a sting operation intended to catch viewers of sexual images of children sometimes 'barely old enough for kindergarten', it has been revealed. The controversial operation ran for nearly two weeks last year, when the bureau took control of the Playpen website in an effort to weed out users who would normally be hidden because they accessed such sites through encrypted addresses. Agents have defended the dubious of ethics of a government agency running a child porn site by insisting there was no other way to catch offenders.
The ones who actually abuse the children. Are they doing anything about catching them?
I could understand it when it was a crime to cause harm to underage kids, like assaulting them or taking pictures of them. I can also understand how it would be bad to sell pictures of kids even if you haven't produced them yourself, there should not be a market for that.
It starts to go downhill when it is a crime to download or just view (which is pretty much the same thing) an underage pic on your computer (and let's not go into ludicrous things like underage cartoon characters who are also considered verbotten!). Then they tell you the same thing is not a crime if you do it in order to catch other people doing it. So, is it a crime or isn't it? I don't know of another crime that it is OK to "perform" if you're "the good guy"...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Do they mean Tor and such? Because if so, then how did they get addresses even when they were running it?
Also, why not just remove all the images so that the links show errors. You'd achieve the same end results but you wouldn't be hosting or DISTRIBUTING kiddie porn. Claim it was a drive failure or whatever.
Not to mention possibly being able to track the people who complained about the images being broken. Get them to use another, non-Tor, way to check when the images would be fixed.
...To the broken US justice system where they get labelled as sex offenders, are on a public registry and can never again get a decent job or live anywhere close to anyone.
Many of these people were abused themselves as children. I met an Australian who volunteered with troubled youth. He met kids who were angry at their abusers, their families .. the world. And they had a right to be. They were sexually abused in horrible horrible ways. ... any person would see that kid as a victim who has a right to be angry ...and at some point, there is a possibility that kid turns into an abuser -- manipulating children into relationships that those kids have no ability to understand. They are monsters; horrible people with no hope of redemption.
So when does the victim ... become the monster? At 15? 18?
I'm not saying I agree with what they do, but we can't just keep locking them up. I don't know what the solution is, but the current system is broken.
I'm Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC. Why don't you have a seat over there?
I've been abused in my youth. I don't think any photos were taken, but if they were, the idea that the government I elected is distributing them is far more abhorrent to me than the idea that a bunch of creeps is gawping at them. The latter are people who need serious therapy but who pose no threat sweating behind a monitor, while the former are the very model of power imbalance against a helpless child.
If I witness news footage showing someone dying (e.g. war, terrorist attack, police shoot-out, whatever) then I'm not re-murdering them. But there are ethical questions involved in distributing such videos: am I being respectful to the memory of the deceased or survivors? am I glorifying the murder? am I exploiting the murder? am I providing sufficient warning? and so on. Shitlords on the Internet will spam such videos insensitively as "gore", and they remain shitlords, but that's all. Governments, however, are acting on my behalf. They should not just do what is legal, but avoid doing what is not ethical.
In particular, a government's duty is to publicise third parties only when the public interest in the content of the publication outweighs the harm to the third parties. If there is no benefit in the public consuming the content, but instead the content is being used for some further aim, the publication is not occurring in the public interest. Rather, the subjects of the content are being exploited non-consensually.
So, the police might distribute CCTV of a hooligan attack which shows the parts of the victims (probably face blurred out), even if the victims cannot all be identified. This would help make the public aware of an attacker, and give them the opportunity to report sightings to the police: obvious public interest in the content of the publication. But to use the video not to find the perpetrator but, instead, to identify other people who want to watch it - telling the victims that they need to have their attack watched over and over to stop those who want to watch them being attacked - is patently absurd.
I think the only real issue people have with this is that if the FBI can justify such tactics then whats to stop them from doing the same to WikiLeaks
Using hurtz is a n00b mistake. On earth, the proper unit is the hurtz-dontit.
rewriting history since 2109
What about the pedo who doesnt molest cause he can get pictures? Take away his pictures he may go for the real thing. is 1 kid abused better then 2? I mean 1 is 1 to many but 2 is 2 to many. Not to mention we are only talking about 1 pedo vs a whole community of pedos who could go the same route. Yeah i get the fact that pictures may also be the gateway to them building up the courage to go after a real child but wouldnt they of done it eventually anyway?
Once again, Nietzsche knew what he was talking about:
"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...
for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."
In Australia, is it illegal to view obscene, cartoon images depicting child pornography? Not depicting any real life person. Here in the US, it might be. This is a problem because it seems like our politicians want to look like they're getting something done, when in reality they're doing nothing to solve the problem. Or so I think.
The solution? We need psychiastrists or psychologists to help determine what to do so the cycle of abuse stops. The American justice system might be too focused on retribution than reform.
Heh, I wonder if someone will gather all the government-distributed child porn and give people copies, with a nice "I got these from the government" notice? Because unlike with other illegal things the government might distribute in its quest to jail people, information can be copied indefinitely.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
ew ew ew that is so freaking wrong. send them all to jail!
Who are we talking about here, the FBI or the pedophiles?
Isn't this just the Feds again telling us that the ends justifies the means? Apparently, it is ok to run a child pornography site, as long as it is being used to catch sex offenders.I have mixed feelings about this. It is clearly good that the FBI is working to put people who would hurt children in jail. It is less clear that people who might be consuming such illegal material are the people who produce it. It seems eerily similar to the failed drug wars where large numbers of people who consume drugs are the people that are being arrested, as opposed to the people who are making and distributing drugs.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
How many producers of child porn were caught in this "sting"?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Believe it.
Don't forget that there are many young, underage kids that are now sex offenders in the glorious United States.
"Throughout the United States, children as young as nine years old who are adjudicated delinquent may be subject to sex offender registration laws"
http://bostonreview.net/blog/y...
http://www.sacurrent.com/sanan...
http://www.justicepolicy.org/n...
I can recall several years ago a story about two young girls, not even in middle school becoming registered sex offenders for sending pictures of themselves to each other. Under current laws, they were "producing child pornography".
Sure, there are a lot of sick fucks out there, but the current method is completely broken.
Cops violate civilian law all the time for the sake of enforcing the law. The main thing that comes to mind is speeding, running red lights, and blocking traffic.
Aren't those specific exceptions to the law granted to police officers? i.e. the law specifically allows emergency vehicles to go through red lights and for them to speed when responding to an emergency. I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty certain there will not be an exemption to the laws about distribution of child pornography to let the police do it.
In similar types of cases involving lures to catch criminals in the act the police stop short of actually committing the crime themselves: if posing as a hitman they don't actually kill people to see if they can get more criminal clients. What I don't understand is why this strategy would not have worked here. If you blurred out the pictures and videos or arrange for the links to just timeout then you would still get the IP addresses without actually distributing the material. You might catch fewer of the criminals before they knew something was wrong but, like the hitman example, surely that's better than actually committing the crime?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
Yeah, right....what could possibly go wrong?
Hey, we're only doing the media keeps telling us, to think of the children.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
It is not about pedophiles in slashdot, bloody idiot. It is about the erosions of our liberties. It is about CSI and TV series brainwashing us the police can do whatever it wants without respecting the constitution and upholding the law. It is about cunts like you not caring a single iota about the rights we gained in the last couple of centuries. It is about unlawful entrapment. It is about doing something morally wrong. It is about a morbid culture and society.
Looking at the news over recent years, it seems there is an explosion in the number of pedophiles - I'm not too sure about that, various historical traces show that it isn't anything new, but it has recently been fount as a very efficient tool to get quite unsavoury laws passed. However, if indeed there is a growth in those numbers, I can't help but think that your kind of attitude fuels it. After all, if you think that, whatever their age, children should be subject to criminal laws intended for adults, why couldn't they be perfectly valid sexual partners?
If someone is using Tor, VPN's or some other IP address obfuscation system, then then odds are that one person is going to be using multiple proxy servers which will themselves be randomized due to machines being switched on or off depending on the time of day. Those users might have multiple systems; (desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones).
So 20000 visits might be 1300 systems making 16 visits/week. Each of those systems is through a different proxy/Tor path which is reduced down to 100 users.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Yeah, or someone who has just turned 18 and their still 17 year old partner... Technically that's breaking the law, but since they're so close in age (likely in the same school year) there's nothing morally wrong about it.
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FBI Took Over World's Biggest Child Porn Website
So they have them all indexed and ranked, but they just decided to go after the biggest one ?
Seems like they are more interested in going after the viewers than the producers.
Name a place in the US where two 17 year olds have sex, and once one of them turns 18, it suddenly becomes illegal.
For one, the age of consent isn't uniformly 18, and most places have restrictions on the law that allow for close-age relationships.
The screwed up thing is that some of the places that don't have the exceptions for close ages can have consensual 14 year olds both raping each other at the same time. And places where the age of consent is 16, you can legally have sex at 16 with a 45 year old if you want, but if anyone takes a photo of it, that's child porn. Is there any other case where taking a photo of something is illegal? Defense installations? Oh my God, she's got a nuclear reactor between her thighs.
Learn to love Alaska
You wont intimidate someone as an AC. If I was hiding something, or was interested in something as sick as pedophilia, I would hide my name. The creeps in this case were the FBI for not closing down, and upholding the law IMMEDIATELY. They did not do their job. I bet you are a teen by your line of thinking.
Which ones? The ones who actually do the molesting or the ones who casually view it? Both need Mental Counseling but only one needs to be in Prison. Regardless of how awful it is, it is a Mental Disorder.
What's even more disturbing is Men and Women who Wax and Shave their parts to mimic prepubescent children. You are not kids anymore, grow up.
The problem, however, is deciding when it's actual abuse or not. If courts decided that on case by case instances, *without* automatic statutory rape principles which currently do not take a nuanced approach, I have no issue with it. However, many laws are currently written that *automatically* makes it an offence, the moment "minor" and "sex" comes together. This becomes very problematic, since minors are not sexual inactive until, at the very moment they turn 18, they suddenly and magically become sexually active. That's silly. That's not reality you're describing.
It has long been established that minors, even young kids, engage in some sexual behaviour, and that is just part of a natural behaviour while growing up. Our society has demonised this, and made laws that are so draconian, one gets situations as described by other posters, where a 15 year old takes a nude picture of herself, and gets convicted as a sex-offender who has created child-porn, and has to be registered as such for the next 25 years. That is crazy, period. Idem with youths who voluntarily have sexual acts with eachother; when caught, they often get crushed by society - especially in prude USA - and got labelled sex-offenders for the rest of their life, with all the dire consequences for their future life. And for what? For engaging in behaviour which is NOT abnormal, but is just part of growing up. And which, btw, the vast majority is doing to some degree long before they turn 18. It's just antithetic to how people actually live and behave, thus. And in most of these cases, there is no victim, in the sense as we normally understand it (and not as statutory rape defines it).
Luckily, at least in Europe, people begin to realise this, and the prudish USA-type of hysteria gets some counter. In many countries in the EU now, one starts to make exemptions in the law for minors that voluntarily engage in sexual acts with other minors (from around the same age). That's because one finally has realised that going the USA way is ridiculous, since the main goal is to protect kids against things they do not want (aka, actual abuse), not 'protect' kids by putting them in jail themselves for things that shouldn't have been criminalised in the first place.
I'm all for a more nuanced approach to it, like in the EU, for the simple reason USA laws are getting to a point where they are defeating their own purpose, and create massive damage to children itself.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Indeed, but that contradiction is the consequence of laws going awry. In some states, sexual 'offences' - even between minors, and even when voluntary - are deemed so grave, one can convict them as adults.
Which, as other posters already pointed out, begs the question:
If they are legally deemed to be able to be sentenced as an adult, why can't they be legally deemed to be allowed having sex as an adult in the first place?
It makes no sense.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
A big part of our world-view is formed at age 6. How we deal with the world we believe exists, is learnt at age 15-16. When childhood trauma is allowed to fester; because the victim is a male, because there is no support, because the crime isn't detected, the damage becomes permanent. The victim becomes mentally unstable to some degree; frequently to a level of permanent violence, making the victim into a criminal in some form or other. This can't be reversed so incarceration is the only alternative.
The break in the system comes from the unwillingness and inability to provide the high level of treatment these children need. Even that has its problems, with many therapies teaching the children they are the permanent victim of a crime they don't understand. Plus, the consequence of abuse is mental illness, so people disconnect the abuse from the symptoms, demanding the victim "stop being sick". That attitude re-inforces the notion the victim must be 'treated' for the abuse suffered.
Or did they donate the profit plus extra to a charity for abused children?
And how many actual children were saved by this? Because to save them, you can't stop the kiddie porn being watched to do that, you have to stop the kiddie porn BEING MADE.
Much like violent games or even violent fantasies, an outlet for some problem you have means you don't have to find other ways to vent. And if one way is only virtual harm, the others actual harm, less harm is done by letting porn go and finding out where the porn came from. Eventually you'll find the source.
However, that is hard work, harder than just catching someone fapping to a teenager, calling it paedophilia (which it isn't), then chalking the ruination of this person's life (it will usually be male, despite being nearly equally represented in either sex, because we can't understand "nurturing women" being bad, whereas we know men can be) to "the good guys". And as long as the source remains, this remains a perpetual motion machine that looks good, gets jobs secure, confirms biases and prejudices, and has no downside for anyone that you are socially allowed to feel sorry for.
As long as you forget the child hasn't been protected, and never will, since you need a perpetual source of KP to find on people or you're out of a job.
Because first of all, paedophilia doesn't cover just 2-4 year old children. Indeed, even pro-rata on age, it's far far less common, though more common for women to kidnap them (this is a misfiring of the maternal instinct caused by a mental problem and is purely female) and then abandon them when they're too old to be mothered (which is what the maternal instinct is driving them to do). Secondly, as with the so-called "paedophile hunter", who has NEVER CAUGHT A PAEDOPHILE (that's right, check it out, all of them were soliciting post pubescent adults under the age of consent), this site probably had no or very little paedophilia informatoin on it and most of the people caught weren't paedophiles.
However, your post indicates precisely what is wrong with the law.
The laws are made to assuage the "outrage" of idiots like you, who hear "sexual assault of a minor" and think "Fucked a toddler in the mouth" even if it was "grabbed the ass of a 17 year old". And you demand laws to punish people doing the former, but under conditions that include the latter.
You are as sick as the paedo. Just in a different manner. You, like them, don't bother to think and merely insist on what you want to be true (toddler fucking/kid wants sex) rather than what IS true (late teen fondling/kid doesn't want sex). You, like they, want power over others.
A slight problem, though: it completely ignores decades of studies that show and prove that, indeed, although they are not children anymore, adolescent are not yet adults. Are they able to reproduce or, more generally to take some decisions related to themselves? Sure they are. That doesn't mean they're adults. Among a bunch of other things, not being an adult means still having a very high plasticity allowing for quick personal development (in whichever direction). This, adolescent have.
In essence, a child has high plasticity and limited personal assertion. An adolescent retains a great part of the plasticity but asserts their own wishes (but still need guidance in doing so. An adult loses such high degree of plasticity (it doesn't mean there is none), and keeps asserting their own personality and wishes (society allowing.
Now, to answer the specific point you made about forbidden activities. The problem is that, in essence, those activities are seen as evil/dirty etc. Of course, it is impossible to forbid adults to practice them in modern Western societies but, to various degrees, the same society can't but want to protect from them those identified as vulnerable (the non-adults). It is a perfectly valid position, as long as you accept that those activities have negative consequences, which is true to an extent :
- Alcohool, smoking and the like do have negative health consequences
- With the possibility of pregnancy (especially when abortion is seen in an only negative light), sex can bring its own problems. However, this could easily be corrected with proper sexual education. But in most countries, having a scene in a movie with a couple having sex under blankets is considered much worse than some scene of violence such as a gory murder.
So yes, there is a problem with what teens are prevented from doing, but that's not because they're adults but because society is, overall, insane on these things.
If I have to choose between siding with child molesters or siding with a police state, I'm on the side of child molesters. Simple self interest.
Child molesters have no interest to bother me. The same cannot be said about a police state.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If I have to choose between siding with child molesters or siding with a police state, I'm on the side of child molesters. Simple self interest.
Child molesters have no interest to bother me. The same cannot be said about a police state.
I get where you're coming from, but this isn't true if you are a child. Or if you have children. Or actually, if you aren't selfish and don't have children.
Sometimes, when trying to weigh the lesser of two evils, it comes up a tie.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
It seems an awfully small number of arrests compared to the 100,000 accounts. Even assuming that most accounts are probably dead we're talking about roughly 0.1% efficiency.
Was it the usual? You only catch the dumb ones?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Liking things you don't like is only a disorder if you're a Nazi.
> It starts to go downhill when it is a crime to download or just view
You misunderstand the law. If you simply run across it and you either dispose of it or show it to the police (but NOT other random people), you're okay according to federal law. So the police are actually under the same law as the rest of us here, it's just that the average person has never bothered to look up the statutes.
People watching child porn are not a danger to my children.
I like CSI:Cyber for something the writers didn't intend: It shows a realistic example of police abuse of power. The protagonists of the show are not out to be an oppressive, invasive government agency - but they are driven to catch the bad guys. Little things like warrants and due process just get in the way - from the perspective of law enforcement, they are just weasel tricks that the horrible people use to escape justice. The Cyber Squad are constantly intimidating and threatening suspects and routinely carry out acts that are blatantly illegal, or legal only on very NSAish grounds - they outright state at one point that they have a law that grants them the right to hack any computer anywhere so long as they have reasonable suspicion that it contains data important to an investigation, which they use to hack the database from a dating app because it's the quickest way to identify which user is their suspect. The one time a person denies their request for information without a warrant they pull political strings and threaten to have their organisation barred from government contracts if the information isn't handed over 'voluntarily' rather than go to the delay of getting a warrant. But despite this, they maintain the conviction that they are the 'good guys.' The end justifies the means - and when the end is catching murderers, rapists and child molesters*, that enough to justify any means. To themselves, at least.
It's an interesting approach to the program, but the problem is that is leads viewers to the same conclusion: Watch enough super-virtuous cops on TV who routinely break the law to catch a filthy perverted murderer, and the public's attitudes to such things relax in the real world. Where the police are not infallible, and it isn't always clear who the villain is, and sometimes innocent people are accused.
I've noticed Cyber Squad also like to brutalise suspects a bit on arrest, making sure to 'accidentally' slam someone's head against a concrete floor even when they aren't resisting.
*Cyber or not, it's still CSI: Practically every crime has a sex angle. Ratings!
We have something of a similar situation in the UK: Our age of consent is sixteen*, but child pornography is anything below eighteen. I assume people between sixteen and eighteen are supposed to wear a blindfold.
*With a close-in-age-exception, and it becomes eighteen if there exists a relationship that gives one party a position of power over the other.
If I have to choose between siding with child molesters or siding with a police state, I'm on the side of child molesters. Simple self interest.
Child molesters have no interest to bother me. The same cannot be said about a police state.
That's a false choice*. There is nothing about law enforcement action against child molesters that either implies or requires a police state.
Now let's just make it child molesters or the police (not police state). Where are you siding now? Does your answer change? I'm betting not.
*Did any of the moderators notice that? Really?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Why does it seem like the system spends all of the effort going after the small problem. I would argue that people viewing the pictures are causing less harm than the people making the pictures in the first place. Yes they should have shut down the site but found out where the pictures were uploaded from and gone after the content creators. And not the people who write fictional stories and the cartoons. Those aren't the high priority. While disgusting children weren't harmed in it's creation. Go after the sick f*cks that are hurting kids to create pictures to distribute. They should be the top priority. Stop them and you stop more kids from being hurt by them in the future.
It's the same thing with drugs. Law enforcement seems to be targeting users and the lowest level dealers. But they rarely cause trouble for the higher levels. You may never stop the flow of drugs but you can make it a lot more difficult for them. Start taking out their middle-men and a few higher-ups along with the distribution system and while not eliminating the problem you make drugs more expensive on the street.
That phrase implies "think of their welfare," not "fantasize about their destruction for self-gratification."
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Starting with you, no doubt. ;-)
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So when does the victim ... become the monster? At 15? 18?
When they're no longer small and cute enough to trigger parental instincts.
Name a place in the US where two 17 year olds have sex, and once one of them turns 18, it suddenly becomes illegal.
Well, if Wikipedia's summary of age of consent laws is accurate, your scenario would likely apply in North Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin. It seems in all cases that these would be misdemeanors, not felonies.
For one, the age of consent isn't uniformly 18, and most places have restrictions on the law that allow for close-age relationships.
Yes, but not all do. And by perusing Wikipedia's summary list, you can see how convoluted the laws are in various places. The "close in age" exceptions can vary from a couple years difference to decades.
In fairness, CSI:Miami had Horatio going his ass down to Brazil to shoot some motherfuckers to death extrajudicially. NCIS has Jethro Gibbs that sniped the cartel leader that had his wife and child killed, extrajudicially. Every show like that does the take the law into your own hands sooner or later. Its entertainment, but its also unusually accurate b/c all these agencies do in fact skirt the law, all the time. We only accept it because we don't actually know about it.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Haha, I had already started to write a reply to the first half of your comment, then read the second half and realized you're probably just a weird fascist religious nutjob that is completely disconnected from reality and it wasn't worth the effort.
People watching child porn are not a danger to my children.
They may not be a direct danger, but to the extent that their viewing the stuff makes your "friendly neighborhood wanna-be child porn producer" think there is a demand for it, he may decide to start producing.
There is also the issue of "porn isn't enough any more" - your local child-porn viewer may decide just watching kids on-screen isn't enough and he may start acting out what he sees.
While your children are probably safe just because of the extremely low percentage of kids who are victimized in this way, the odds are > zero.
On the flip side, your neighborhood would-be child molester may be one of those who, if child porn were legal outright or at least available in a rherapeutic setting, would satisfy himself with those images while he and his therapist work out his issues and/or work on teaching him that lusting after people (besides your spouse or someone you have a realistic chance of dating) is at a minimum just plain disrespectful.
Bottom line: On balance, the wide availablility of child porn raises the risk that your kids will be sexually abused, but the increase in risk is probably so close to zero that it's probably statistical noise to you. BUT, worldwide, the harm done to children through sexual abuse would go down significantly if child porn were extremely difficult to obtain and if those who wanted to make or view it were identified and force-marched into some kind of therapy and/or convinced that if they ever tried to abuse a child or seek or such images, they would almost certainly be caught and punished.
The tricky or impossible task is doing that without creating a police state. If I had to choose between the current state of the world and a Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque world free of child sexual abuse, I would take the world as it is today.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Gah, where's mikeeusa when you need him?
Now that the battle to normalize homosexuality is largely won there are a growing number of voices in society (including academicians) working to normalize pedophilia.
No there aren't.
There was a time (which had its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s) when there was a push to abolish ages of consent and recognize the possible validity of sexual relationships between all ages, and it had some significant academic support (particularly in Europe).
But that was 30-40 years ago. Support for that sort of thing has been declining ever since.
There is some growing interest (though only in a small minority of researchers) in trying to sort out more details concerning the behavior of pedophiles -- for example, how many viewers of child pornography actually also commit offenses with children? How often does the "escalation" you refer to actually occur? Are there differences in the recidivism rates and possibilities for rehabilitation in those who merely view child pornography vs. those who actually sexually assault children?
The research on a lot of these questions is in its infancy, partly because it's a very icky topic, and we all want to believe the worst about anyone who would ever view a naked picture of a child. But such research is trying to sort out whether our criminal penalties make sense, whether they are actually effective in reducing further abuse, etc.
That's not "normalizing pedophilia" -- it's trying to focus effort on places where it can prevent the most harm, and trying to help people who may actually be able to be helped vs. just demonizing everyone who we can corral into the category of "dangerous pedophile."
their fueled passions and arousal may overcome their restraint to seek out your kids,
There is not much to support this. Many also argue that pornography give a alleviates the desire. Who knows, probably both depending the individual. Would the Columbine shooters come up with the fantasy that became reality without playing Doom (or whatever game it was) obsessively, probably not. Would many here go into a nerdrage and kill people at work because of extreme dissatisfaction with their mediocre jobs without the outlet gaming provides them, probably.
I'm not for passing laws because we did a sociology 'study' and 'calculated' the net benefit to be on one side.
Are child porn producers harming children? Yes. That should be illegal.
Does purchasing child porn directly support the production of more porn and harm more children? Yes. That should be illegal.
Does a creepy guy possessing images on his hard drive because he is likely a product of abuse himself, harm anyone else? No. Or at best, we don't know and suspect that it might lead to eventually harm children. It should not be illegal.
The "age of consent" is different in various countries so some of you will not understand how absurd this is .. but here is the situation:
- You can legally have sex with anyone who is 15 years or older (this varies by country).
- You can legally take a picture or record a video of anyone who is nude/doing something even remotely sexual if they are 18 years or older. It is a serious crime to take such a picture of anyone who is not 18 years old.
So.. you can get a girlfriend when you're 15 and have sex with her for years and when she's a month from her 18th birthday she sends you a naughty picture and someone finds out and now you're in jail and a sexual offender.
Is this very logical?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Except, the porn has to be produced somewhere, and actors have to be acquired or abducted to perform in it.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
"because there was no other way" is arguably the worst excuse for violating someone's rights.
"You were doing something, we didn't like it, and this was the best response we could think up. And so that's our justification for doing what we did. We did it because it was the only way we could find that got results."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
So if there's no other way for me to do something than to break federal laws, it's OK to break them?! Neat!
Twinstiq, game news
we should put them all on a special island then use it for target practice.
The argument against distributing, as opposed to producing, child porn is that people seeing the images harm the victims. That harm is believed to be very great, resulting in long jail sentences for people who distribute or view child porn.
If that is true, then the FBI did great harm to those innocent victims by distributing the pictures.
If that is not true, then we need to re-evaluate why viewing child porn is such a serious felony.
It is NOT OK for the the FBI to do a few contract murders to try to catch criminals in the mob. I don't see this as any different.
Are you actually quoting a fictional TV show in support of some real-life viewpoint? You know those shows are made up from whole cloth, right? Your anecdote doesn't prove anything because it didn't happen. Damn, people quoting TV is getting really scary, people can't tell the difference from reality any more. :(
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Whoosh
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
"Dubious ethics?" Let's be clear here: the FBI committed a crime, the same crime that the owners of the website committed.
It's time we started insisting that law enforcement obey the law.
So uhm, that's a weird job.
-How was work honey?
-Oh we were hosting child porn today.
-... Why?
-So that we catch anyone looking at it.
-That makes sense.
Dateline NBC had no trouble catching offenders, without creating a child porn website.
From my understanding, online sex offenders are very easy to catch. Just use standard "honeypot" methods: pretend to be child online, place phony ads, etc.
You do not have to actually provide child porn, or subject children to prostitution, just make that promise, and the child molesters will jump all over it.
Of course, people who appear to be in the latter group are probably much more likely than average to actually be in the first group. It is certainly useful, therefore, for legal authorities to find out who the people in the latter group are, so that they can be subject to increased scrutiny (in a non-public way). And to the extent that some of them upload new content that hasn't been previously catalogued (and thus was probably produced by the uploader), taking over a site like this could be very effective at bringing to justice people who are actually harming children.
But you're right that locking up people for mere possession (as opposed to creation) is rather pointless unless those people can somehow identify the original source of some of that porn (which seems very unlikely unless the porn was exchanged in person). Basically, it's the war on drugs, if drug sales had moved entirely into the realm of the Silk Road....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I've had a lot of sex with "teens", one while I was in high school(she "rocked" my "world", and by "world", I mean "cock"), and a few more after I graduated high school and went off to college. After graduating college, there were even a few more "teens" I had sex with. It was nice, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Of course, you being an idiot, I don't expect that you understand that 18 and 19 year old individuals are also "teens", nor that in many states, the age of consent isn't 18, it is either 14, 15, and 16 years old(depending on each state's law, though there are more that have the age of consent at 16). I bet you also believe that, because so many people have called others under the age of 18 "children", that you also believe they are children; the real issue is, they aren't. Children start becoming adults around 14, 15, and 16 years old, hence the reason 16 year old individuals are given driver's licenses. Before the creation of the idea of "adolescence", men as young as 14 were allowed into military and militia service(the group of "states"/territories that became the United States used men 14 years old and up to staff military positions, and all other men, 14 to 45, were a part of the area's perspective militias). Now, the "goal posts" have been shifted, so whatever.
Now, before anyone goes calling me a "pedophile", "child molester", etc., understand that: Firstly, fuck you, I don't care. You are some faceless, nobody on "the Internet". Even if you were, I couldn't possibly care less what your opinion of me is, and I never have. Secondly and, really, lastly, I am married to a women six and one half years my senior(in other words, she is six and one half years older than me, for the less intelligent), and we have no children. I say that so others, who don't devolve to "childish" acts, such as "name calling", or other, related acts, know that I'm not some mouth-breathing pederast or pedophile(well, my statements don't actually "prove" anything, but I added them regardless).
The show exists in and reflects mainstream culture.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So we're back to "People watching child porn are not a danger to my children."
Despite what some crazy movie terror plot may have taught you people don't go around kidnapping school children to make porn videos to sell online. Well they may but not in civilised western countries.
It comes down to people caring. If no one calls the cops or the DA, then it usually goes by fine. If one parent suddenly hates the boy and/or girl enough that they get the cops invovled, and if the DA is a dick head and the judge is an idiot (or "follows the strict letter of the law"), then a consenting 17 and 18 year old in states that don't have the 4-year gap or existing relationship built into their laws, could end up in prison and on a sex offender list.
It takes a whole system of people who either don't care, can't think or don't know anybody to fuck up kids lives.
Is 'Fast Times At Ridgemont High' still legal in Australia? It, and just about every other teen comedy, is virtual child porn.
Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh were both of legal age when they made the movie. But their characters where HS kids. One was a 'freshman'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nice fly-by Jor-El. Good thing we've got a yellow sun.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
No. I'm using the characters of a fictional TV show as an example of a real-life viewpoint because, surprisingly enough, writers like to have their characters act in a plausible manner most of the time. Also because these shows may be fictional, but their presence does still affect public perception. Do you propose instead that the management of the NSA one say say down in their darkened secret room and discussed how best to spy on the entire country just for the fun of it, or because they really love the idea of a police state? No, it is more reasonable to compare them to the CSI fictional parallel: People who happily circumvent the law because they believe their mission is of vital importance, and petty things like due process could allow a dangerous person to walk free.
That may be so, but just consider:
The FBI was not only holding one of the largest collections of child porn in the world, they were selling copies to people. (I assume they were selling rather than just giving away.)
If anyone who wasn't a "law enforcement" person did that, they could expect a long term in prison. These "FBI agents" not only did it "under the cover of law", they expect you to believe that they didn't take home a profit.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ermm...
Yes...well... thank you for your thoughtful contribution.
If that really was in response to my post, that would mean you would put up kids on an island and use it for target practise...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
It depends... Which nation are wa in?
Now that the battle to normalize homosexuality is largely won there are a growing number of voices in society (including academicians) working to normalize pedophilia.
I'm not seeing this, at least not among respected mainstream academics.
I am seeing some movement in the legal community to restore sanity for "young offenders" through things like close-in-age exceptions for consensual sex, youthful-offender-diversion programs for teenagers (including very young adults), and the like, but (IMHO) we still have along way to go here. In a perfect world, ex-offenders who were no longer dangerous thanks to intervention/therapy/whatever or simply because they "grew up" wouldn't be treated as if they were still dangerous upon release (i.e. non-dangerous ex-sex-offenders shouldn't be cluttering up a public sex offender registry - leave the public registry for those who are demonstrably still "dangerous enough" that the public needs to be notified but the person is not "so dangerous" that a dangerously-mentally-ill detention-hearing is warranted).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
We have something of a similar situation in the UK: Our age of consent is sixteen*...
*With a close-in-age-exception, and it becomes eighteen if there exists a relationship that gives one party a position of power over the other.
I'm not aware of any close-in-age exception under UK law. Just the hard limit of 16 with, as you say, that going up to 18 if there's a power relationship (e.g. teacher, carer, etc.) We all know that the police & CPS may choose to turn a blind-eye in the case of under-16 shenanigans if they're close in age, but I'm not aware of anything in writing. Care to elucidate?
Now that the battle to normalize homosexuality is largely won there are a growing number of voices in society (including academicians) working to normalize pedophilia.
No there aren't.
Yes, there are. And I'll note that there are social scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists among them. Some of them aren't simply trying to "better understand" something "icky" but are trying to move policy and social acceptance. There are others working for it to gain acceptance.
And this isn't something that was just going on 30-40 years ago, it is sill going on.
One other thing, if the research is truly in its "infancy" as you claim, then why the advocacy for normalization and decriminalization? Wouldn't a prudent, ethical researcher adopt the principle of "do no harm"? I would think they would adopt that outlook until far more is known, but that doesn't seem to be the universal stand.
'Paedophilia is natural and normal for males' - How some university academics make the case for paedophiles at summer conferences
"Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children Normal males are aroused by children.”
Some yellowing tract from the Seventies or early Eighties, era of abusive celebrities and the infamous PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange? No. Anonymous commenters on some underground website? No again.
The statement that paedophilia is “natural and normal” was made not three decades ago but last July. It was made not in private but as one of the central claims of an academic presentation delivered, at the invitation of the organisers, to many of the key experts in the field at a conference held by the University of Cambridge.
Other presentations included “Liberating the paedophile: a discursive analysis,” and “Danger and difference: the stakes of hebephilia.”
Hebephilia is the sexual preference for children in early puberty, typically 11 to 14-year-olds.
Another attendee, and enthusiastic participant from the floor, was one Tom O’Carroll, a multiple child sex offender, long-time campaigner for the legalisation of sex with children and former head of the Paedophile Information Exchange. “Wonderful!” he wrote on his blog afterwards. “It was a rare few days when I could feel relatively popular!”
"Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered - The taboo against sex with children continues to erode
UNTIL VERY, VERY RECENTLY, public questioning of the social prohibition against pedophilia--to say nothing of positive celebration of child molestation--was practically non-existent in American life. The reasons why are not opaque. To most people, the very word "pedophilia" summons forth a preternatural degree of horror and revulsion; and the criminal law that reflects those reactions has consistently treated the sexual molestation of minors as a serious and eminently punishable offense. So it is small wonder that, historically speaking, the taboo against using legal minors for sex was no more publicly controversial in the United States than the prohibitions against, say, cannibalism or bestiality. Those few partisans of the idea who did sometimes sally forth customarily found themselves regarded as the lowest of the social low, even by the criminal class.
This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, however--unlike those against, say, animal sex or incest--is apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the vast majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sex
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's out there if you look.
'Paedophilia is natural and normal for males' - How some university academics make the case for paedophiles at summer conferences
Conference aims to normalize pedophilia
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I am quite happily dating a young lady who's nearly 40 years my junior. She's damned cute, too. A few Slashdotters got to meet her at my NYE bash. I'm 58, however. It's perfectly legal but the looks the ladies give me, it's awesome. I don't really give two shits if they don't like it. If they saw the looks their husbands gave me, they'd be even more pissed.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I looked it up. You're right - there is no close-in-age exemption in law, but there is a statement from the Home Office - they have issued open but non-binding guidance not to prosecute in those circumstances. That's what I was thinking of - I just wasn't aware it was only guidance, not law.
Citeation: http://www.fpa.org.uk/factshee...
and when she's a month from her 18th birthday she sends you a naughty picture and someone finds out and now you're in jail and a sexual offender. Is this very logical?
No, which is why it doesn't happen outside your imagination..
Don't know of any case in the US where the only minor involved was 17 and 11 months, but in a broader sense it appears that it does happen.
@xiando's explanation of the laws is essentially correct; although age of consent varies by state (not nation) in the USA, sexual pictures of anybody under 18, even if voluntarily generated and only shared privately with other minors who are already in a (legal!) relationship with the minor pictured, are legally child porn and have led to child porn prosecutions and even convictions.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
if you have to facilitate ANY part of a crime, then you suck at police work.
...
Of course, people who appear to be in the latter group are probably much more likely than average to actually be in the first group. It is certainly useful, therefore, for legal authorities to find out who the people in the latter group are, so that they can be subject to increased scrutiny (in a non-public way).
I guess we should scrutinize all the men who look at porn as they're more likely to rape a woman or in some cases, a man. They're also much more likely to be abusers as most rapists have looked at porn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
To me it sounds like committing crimes in order to potentially secure a conviction. I.e., they are definitely committing the crimes, and any conviction is only potential.
You don't rob a store to convict someone else of purchasing stolen merchandise.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, people who look at adult porn are more likely than average to have sex with adults, not more likely to rape adults. In much the same way, people who look at child porn are more likely than average to have sex with children, which is statutory rape, but not necessarily forcible rape. Terminology is important here.
Most people have looked at porn. It is only a relevant predictor if the odds are significantly different from the norm.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is where a citation that supports your assertion that the Constitution has been violated by this investigation would come in handy! Pray tell, sir, how has this operation violated the Fourth Amendment? First Amendment? Any section or Amendment?
That word does not mean what you think it means. To whit:
Now then, if you have evidence to support the assertion that those arrested in this sting would have otherwise never viewed child pr0n, by all means, I'm sure their defense attorneys would love to hear it.
Arresting pedophiles is morally wrong? You appear to have a strange sense of morality.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for