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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'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
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.
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!”
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."