Department of Justice: FBI Too Focused On Child Porn 487
itwbennett writes "The Department of Justice has issued a scathing report (PDF) on the ineffectiveness of the FBI in investigating and countering cyber attacks. The shortcomings are partly attributed to lack of training and lack of communication, but the biggest issue is the allocation of effort. From the report: 'Overall, we determined that in FY 2009 the FBI used 19 percent of its cyber agents on national security intrusion investigations, 31 percent to address criminal-based intrusions, and 41 percent to investigate online child pornography matters."
PLEASE!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PLEASE!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeh, they need access to kiddie porn'o too. So they can think of the children of-course.
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Go for what you know.
close (Score:4, Informative)
Not just that. Reno pushed cases to the supreme court to establsh precedent, then the white house started lobbying for more crackdowns on "the coming plague of online child pornography."
There were lots of articles about it at the time, including warnings of the toxic effects this increased focus on child porn would have on our society.
I argue that these laws, intended to protect children from sexual exploitation, threaten to reinforce the very problem they attack. The legal tool that we designed to liberate children from sexual abuse threatens to enslave us all, by constructing a world in which we are enthralled - anguished, enticed, bombarded - by the spectacle of the sexual child.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/Speech/Adler_full.html [harvard.edu]
Of course, those articles were dismissed. Still are today, and yet....
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5516511.ece [timesonline.co.uk]
FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
...instead of focusing on child pornographers.
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I think the point there is that they can't be sure who is producing and who is trading until they investigate, at which point they've typically got the goods to send people to prison for just trading in the stuff.
I've got several other issues with it, they don't seem to care much about getting it correct, there isn't a mens rea requirement covering possession and 41% is unlikely to be justifiable given the other things which FBI is supposed to be dealing with.
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I think the counterpoint is that at the point it's being traded the harm to the child is done.
Re:FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (Score:4, Insightful)
And your point is? By trading it your encouraging it. From what I gather there are definitely places where one would go that operate like the old ratio servers for MP3s.
Even if it is true that no further harm is being done at that point, the person that's been sexually abused is still being used for such purposes, I wouldn't personally want footage or pics of something like that happening to me or a close relation being distributed. There should be consequences of some sort, and I'm not sure that this is really an appropriate area to make civil rather than criminal.
The main issue is why they're spending that much time on that rather than other serious crimes and why we still don't have any mens rea requirements for conviction. Convicting the innocent is hardly something that's going to help the survivors of such abuse.
Re:FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (Score:5, Informative)
By trading it your encouraging it.
By trading it, you are discouraging it.
See, anyone can make illogical and unsupported assertions. Seriously, when some pervs are illegally trading copyrighted (yes, even if the material is illegal, the copies are still copyrighted) material you are asserting that it encourages the production of more. But the media organizations claim that when you illegally copy copyrighted material, you are actively discouraging the producers from making more.
After listening to the MPAA and RIAA, pirating and trading child porn will decrease the number of children harmed. Please, trade child porn for the children. Won't you think of the children?
Seriously, if pirating hurts media, then child porn pirates aren't encouraging anything. If pirating doesn't hurt media (as you asserted), then the regular media sharing should be legal. But no, it's always inconsistently applied because people don't actually care about fixing problems. People only "hate" whatever they hate, and then make up whatever lies they can to justify their personal opinion.
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Your statement quite frankly disgusts me and leads me to question what kind of interest you have in child pornography exactly.
This is the argument of the defeated moralist.
Re:FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point there is that they can't be sure who is producing and who is trading until they investigate
Somehow, I doubt this -- the FBI has agents who search for and patrol pedophile forums, and has a large database of known child pornography images. Someone who is producing or is higher in the distribution chain would stand out like a sore thumb when they start posting new material. What is the point in going after someone who is just collecting the images?
The real problem the FBI faces, as far as I understand it, is that people involved in the production of child pornography are paranoid and technically sophisticated. Unlike the drug trade, which people generally become involved with out of desperation, being a pedophile is a psychological problem that can affect people at various levels of society. Pedophiles actively exchange information on remaining anonymous and avoiding police attention, encrypting evidence, etc. At the higher levels of production and distribution, the paranoia and the operational security measures increase drastically, and it can take many years of work for law enforcement agents to gain access to groups that operate at the highest levels.
In the end, though, someone still has to post new material on pedophile boards. The FBI should not waste time with people who are reposting the same old images, they should go after the new material. The person who has new material is the person who is connected to sources higher in the distribution chain. I doubt that it would take 41% of the FBI's Internet crime resources to track those people down.
Re:FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point there is that they can't be sure who is producing and who is trading until they investigate
The real problem the FBI faces, as far as I understand it, is that people involved in the production of child pornography are paranoid and technically sophisticated.
Attention whoring teens who take pictures of themselves and upload them to the internet are "technically sophisticated"?
I think there is a disconnect between the popular idea of the criminal charge and what it actually is:
Assault - can be touching someone, spitting on someone Vs. the common idea of beating the snot out of someone
Sex offender - can be pissing on side of road Vs. rapist
Child porn - can child abused by captor Vs. 17 year olds sexting
"A new survey from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 4% of cell-owning teens ages 12-17 say they have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images or videos of themselves to someone else via text messaging, a practice also known as “sexting”; 15% say they have received such images of someone they know via text message."
- http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Teens-and-Sexting.aspx [pewinternet.org]
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Possession of nude photos of kids or teens is not a crime ignorant. If it were, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon executives would now be in prison (they sell nude photo books of minors). It's called free speech, free expression, and freedom of lifestyle (nudism). Read Amendments 1, 9, 10, and 14 of the Union Constitution, as well as your local Member State's constitution, which provides additional liberties.
I'm sure that these people [google.com] are reassured by your arguments.
Re:FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>I'm sure that these people are reassured by your arguments.
Last I heard they were freed, and all charges dropped, since sharing nude photos of your own body (which you own) is not a crime.
The prosecutors didn't think that when they charged these kids with the production and possession of CP. And if sharing nude photos of your own body is not a crime, why are states now amending their laws to make sexting a misdemeanor instead of the felony that so many prosecutors were willing to treat it as.
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"Possession of nude photos of kids or teens is not a crime"
You don't understand how it works in reality.
Possession of nude photos of kids or teens is not a crime for teleiophiles.
Possession of photos of kids - whether nude or clothed - is considered a crime if the possessor is considered by law enforcement to be attracted to children. I am familiar with too many cases to believe otherwise, including men who were convicted of possessing photos in which the children were wearing clothing, and men who w
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Meh it's just like the war on drugs for you guys. You go after the people smoking it, or selling it to a few buddies instead of going after the major growers/sellers. Yeah it's harder, but it has much larger results. That's the general way we deal with both problems in Canada. Much better results.
Sadly this type of prosecution is the result of crowns and DA's wanting to get their name in lights for 'doing something'.
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Re:FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (Score:4, Interesting)
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Someone's math is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The subhead of TFA: "Cyberattacks are at an all time high; FBI spends twice as much effort fighting porn."
According to the report, though, 41 percent of its effort was spent on child pornography, leaving 59 percent for cyber-attacks. "Twice as much"?
Also, would you prefer the FBI not go after child porn? I personally think it's a pretty odious thing, and the Internet is making it easier for pedophiles to indulge (where, for example, in the past they might have had to order magazines or videos from shady overseas sources or something). 41 percent of the FBI's effort sounds like a lot -- I'm not sure there's that much child porn out there -- but it's definitely within the FBI's bailiwick.
TFA seems to argue that the FBI should be doing more to conduct "cyber-warfare" and combat attacks by the Chinese military. But last I heard, the FBI was a law enforcement organization, not a military one. If the CIA wants to run a cyber-war, let it. I'd rather my federal police do what it was created to do: Lock up criminals.
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I'd rather my federal police do what it was created to do: Lock up criminals.
Shit.. There goes at least half of your politicians and CEOs.. and police officers
Re:Someone's math is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI should go after producers of child porn. The ones actually harming the children, not the spectators. Sure, bust the spectators if you happen to catch one anyway. But actively setting up stings to catch people who aren't actively going out and harming children is a bit of a waste.
I'd really rather have the FBI collecting evidence against Goldman Sachs.
Re:Someone's math is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Tho I agree, playing devil's advocate I'd have to point out they are trying to remove the market for the kiddie porn. Remove the market and the producers will dramatically drop off. Only a minor percentage are paying for it, but there are also a lot more that are funding the producers/distributors indirectly with banner impressions and clicks, and with zip files of KP with botnet/spyware sprinkled in.
Re:Someone's math is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Tho I agree, playing devil's advocate I'd have to point out they are trying to remove the market for the kiddie porn. Remove the market and the producers will dramatically drop off. Only a minor percentage are paying for it, but there are also a lot more that are funding the producers/distributors indirectly with banner impressions and clicks, and with zip files of KP with botnet/spyware sprinkled in.
Why not? It's been working so well to shut down the drug trade.
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And prostitution. I think they've just about gotten that one all wrapped up.
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If you execute all the Drug Makers/Kiddie Porn producers and put that on TV for all to HAVE to watch. You will see that shit drop off faster.
Right, because public executions and dismemberment have stopped crime in Saudi Arabia. Oh wait...
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I suspect the following is true: People surfing the net looking for regular porn find a lot of very diverse stuff. There's a huge supply of teen and 'barely legal' stuff and sometimes the difference with real kiddie porn stuff is very small (in the Max Hardcore films, young looking actresses behave like childish school girls, these films are popular). It's unlikely that (many) men's preferences for young girls suddenly stop at 18. They may continue looking for even younger stuff in the illegal channels. The
Re:Someone's math is wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
So, do pictures of shirt girls turn people into midget fetishists?
Re:Someone's math is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Your totally unfounded and unsupported suspicion is a very good reason to try to get kiddie porn off the internet and a specious "if x then y" train of thought? Really? No wonder our country is in the toilet.
You don't "create" a pedophile with pornography. You create one by having someone subjected to an abnormal childhood and distorted understanding of sexuality and growth *cough*childpageants*cough*, or various other developmental issues. Just as you can't make a straight man gay by having him look at pictures of naked men, you cannot make a non-pedophile a pedophile.
Young porn is arousing to most men because that's the age the girls were when they started having sexual feelings, and attach those feelings to women around that age. Almost all of the young porn I've seen has still been of sexually mature girls who just look young. Pedophilia is not just liking young models that are sexually mature (regardless of the law), pedophilia is being sexually attracted to the pre-pubescent.
Re:Someone's math is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the identify theft and other breakins as well at the botting of innocent peoples computers for illegal or just monitary purposes is a far larger area of crime. If you look at the statistics of how many child pornographers there are vs, say the theft from Sony of tens of thousands of credit cards. It is not a size nor a severity issue but someones decision that this crime is worse than say stealing all of someones money, or killing them, or kidnapping them. I think this is an ideological aberation from those in the FBI. Methinks they protest too much.
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I'm sure you'd be horribly wrong.
When you see some of these news stories about some of these people having hundreds of thousands of images, if not millions, it really must be on a rather large scale.
About a 15+ years or so ago, back when we all used the alt.binaries.pictures* tree in usenet I stumbled on some. This was before people were largely aware of it, so it was less known and publicized. I reported it, and then felt the need to rinse my brain out w
Re:Someone's math is wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
When you see some of these news stories about some of these people having hundreds of thousands of images, if not millions, it really must be on a rather large scale.
You can see the math at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2115012&cid=35979298 [slashdot.org], but basicly 134,000 images are produced per year by teens sexting each other. True, not all of them get posted to the internet, but it's quite possible for some people to have hundreds of thousands of images produced by underage teens of themselves.
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It's a problem, but I
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Also, would you prefer the FBI not go after child porn?
No, we'd prefer they not spend nearly half their time going after it.
The math is right. (Score:5, Informative)
41% devoted to online child porn, 59% for EVERYTHING else. Cyber attacks are not the primary mission of the FBI. As a matter of fact, they are supposed to be the counter-intelligence arm of the US security apparatus, which would mean that I would expect that to be the largest part of their effort. Instead, it is a mediocre 19%.
Also, would you prefer the FBI not go after child porn? I personally think it's a pretty odious thing, and the Internet is making it easier for pedophiles to indulge (where, for example, in the past they might have had to order magazines or videos from shady overseas sources or something).
Bullshit. Sorry, but you drank the Koolaid that online pervs are the biggest risk to kids. Never mind that the biggest risk of plain old abuse comes from parents and family members, the biggest risk of abduction comes from parents and the biggest risk of abuse comes from family members and friends of the family. Online pervs are a drop in the bucket in that list. Online posting of child porn is a) just proof of a crime that has happened in the past, and b) catching the posters or downloaders does little to nothing to help solve that particular crime. So yes, it is part of their mission, but it's not 41% of their mission. If anything, I'd peg it at about 1%-2%.
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the Internet is making it easier for potential pedophiles to indulge their deranged fantasies... in the past they might have left the house to actually molest children.
Fixed that for you.
Conclusion? (Score:3)
Jello Biafra said it best (Score:4, Funny)
If you want to see child porn, join the vice squad!
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'kiddie' porn is a political crime (Score:3, Insightful)
Very easy to falsify, prosecute, and get convictions. People count conviction rates. They don't care what 'crime' it is. It's like the cops spending time issuing speeding tickets, while just up the street somebody's being shot. These people don't serve justice, they serve their department or boss.
Too much money involved? (Score:2)
Low hanging fruit (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do all the hard work tracking down serious fraud when you can link a honeypot image on some pervy website, do a reverse DNS lookup, call the ISP, get a warrant, and bust the perp? Easy way to boost your conviction rate, with very little man power, and the people will love you for protecting the children. Plus, you get all the kiddie porn you want... you know, for the investigation.
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The reverse DNS lookup is unnecessary; you can identify the ISP just by IP address.
Also, this isn't nearly as efficient as the preferred method. Fire up a modified copy of LimeWire, search for CP, find people that have CP files, download and verify that it's illicit, log IP addresses, call up the ISPs, get some warrants, make some arrests. The whole first couple of steps can be almost entirely automated so that your system churns out a list of IPs that are sharing CP every day.
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Easy way to boost your conviction rate, with very little man power, and the people will love you for protecting the children.
That's the real reason. Real online fraud investigations are hard. The trail may lead through multiple countries, and serious investigative work is required. Even then, the investigation may dead-end.
Still, devoting 41% of FBI computer resources to kiddie porn, compared to 4% on online fraud, is way out of line. That's probably contributed to the growth in online fraud.
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Emotional Impact (Score:2)
By safeguarding children, one may indirectly feel they are safeguarding their own children. When taking down these offenders, the officers involved can easily sense a direct impact they've had in rescuing someone from emotionally intense and distressing situations.
Let's look at the other two categories. National Security Intrusions. OK, some Chinese hackers got through and stole some anti-missle plans. The ramifications won't be felt for years, if ever, even though it has the potential to deliver much more
Re:Emotional Impact (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is a red herring, The child pornography industry, while heinous is relatively small, say compared to the forgein woman transported here for prostitution, or identity theft or bank robbery or White Collar crime. It pains me to see people being sold this fear which is way out of proportion to the problem. Case in point, the way Halloween used to be vs what it is today. Parents have to escort their kids and only during daylight, and all because of urban ledgends and maybe one or two incedents in the country. Again an over reaction. Trying to live in a riskless world. It ain't goina happen.
Now I wonder what the effect on your kids are going to be if your identity is stolen and all your money taken and you loose your home and maybe your job and have to live homeless. That would have an sever impact on your children as well, and probably long term and far reaching.
Indeed, spend time hunting down real criminals (Score:2)
I'm okay with that (Score:2)
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I love this argument, "just cut defense spending!" You do realize we're the World Police, right? All the other countries come to us for help when shit goes down, we keep the entire world in line, without us their would be a constant world war. And do we buy tanks or fighter jets from other countries? No, but the entire world turns to us to buy our jets and tanks.
It's easy to say cut defense when we haven't had a war on our soil in 150 years, and even that was us fight
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Screw the DoJ (Score:3)
Target the REAL criminals (Score:2, Insightful)
>would you prefer the FBI not go after child porn?
I'm responding as a parent with two young children of my own...
That depends. if a load of tax payers' dollars are going to be wasted on someone who looks at a picture of child porn - then no, don't waste tax payers' money on it. If you're talking about targeting perpetrators or sellers of child porn, then go your hardest.
AC
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Part of the goal of going after the people who watch it, is to get them to turn over on the places where they got their CP from.
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The problem there is that you can't typically locate the provider without finding the people possessing. At that point, you've got the goods to prosecute people for possession and trading the materials, ignoring it at that point would be silly.
Now, if you've got some way of just getting straight to the source, I'm sure the FBI is open to suggestions.
The only issue I have with possession charges in all this is that there is no legal distinction between those that knowingly possess the stuff and those that ac
child porn...or sexting? (Score:4, Interesting)
"...and 41 percent to investigate online child pornography matters."
Something tells me with all the bullshit hype in the media with underage teenagers sending dirty pics to their 18-year old boyfriend/girlfriend, sexting is what is getting the main focus right now, and not going after true pedophiles.
Easy kills (Score:3)
The FBI found something they can easily win, inexpensively, and remain extremely relevant. Thanks to the witch hunt, they've been given the role of thought police and it is a very easy thing for the fearful public to back up. I look back at that and think for a moment I'm being ridiculous, but am I really?
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
ORRRRRR
someone @ te DoJ realizes that 41% of the resources being used on theoretical pedobears was a waste of money compared to people who could actually hurt the underlying infrastructure and cause millions if not billions of dollars in damage.
I know its not popular, but pedophiles dont do much harm in the big picture.
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the FBI has released official statements in the past that promote the idea that, in fact, just by looking at images of child abuse, a person is harming children, even if the children have been rescued and their abusers have been put in prison (unless, one is looking at those images as part of their job as an FBI agent, in which case it is not harmful).
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If you CONSUME child porn (no matter if it's images that are a hundred years old) you are by extension SUPPORTING the "industry" that manufactures it. Therefore... THOUGHT CRIME! MUST GO TO JAIL NOW!
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
So I'm suporting the MPAA by downloading movies from a torrent and watching them?
Why do they seem to not like it then?
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If you CONSUME child porn (no matter if it's images that are a hundred years old) you are by extension SUPPORTING the "industry" that manufactures it. Therefore... THOUGHT CRIME! MUST GO TO JAIL NOW!
Here are some sick illegal movies for you:
Pretty Baby [imdb.com]
Rambling Rose [imdb.com]
The Warzone [imdb.com]
Kids [imdb.com]
Have fun committing federally approved thought crimes. Just don't pirate them!
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Anytime you promote any activity by doing it it can cause harm by making it more acceptable to others. Foe example the occasional use of illegal drugs promotes drug use in others as well as supporting smuggling and violence. The yet to become addicted person looks and thinks that some others who play with dope don't become addicts and his path to self ruin is made easy.
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>If there is a "healthy" "market" for child pornography then some people will go out and get fresh product for that market. This is how children are harmed by viewing it.
Your logic is lacking. If it made sense, we should also outlaw:
- murder photos
- snuff videos (like animals set on fire)
- accident scenes
- and so on. Because the distribution of this material will cause an "industry" of murder to create new photos/films! The horror!!!
Or not.
Your logic is flawed. Just like most religious nutcases (think Jim Baker or Pat Robertson). Stop trying to suppress free people from exercising "thoughtcrimes" like pornography, smoking weed, chewing tobacco (sin tax), and so on. Victimless crimes are NOT crimes.
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But there are victims: kids. Somebody makes these photos, domestically or internationally. The exploitation of children for sexual gratification is plainly evil. Some adults are addicted to it. They need help. By chasing them down, you reduce the harm to children; you may never be able to eliminate it.
The resources used, if the data is correct however, is way too high of a portion. Porn is otherwise largely a victimless crime, barring child porn, or those held in "white slavery". Not every porn actor did wh
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody makes these photos, domestically or internationally.
And looking at a picture will change nothing. It won't somehow make the situation worse. If people are so afraid of them, for some reason, beginning to buy child porn, despite the fact that most people apparently don't (if that's true), then why don't they also ban murder photos and the like?
The exploitation of children for sexual gratification is plainly evil.
That depends on your definition of "evil."
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:4, Interesting)
It's evil because children are exploited. There is a choice, exploit or not. Exploit is the wrong choice; children are vulnerable, where adults can make informed decision. That's why sex with a mentally incompetent person has the same evil: they can't make an informed decision that we would call adult or mature.
Looking at the picture gives vicarious gratification. The process of getting the picture was one of exploitation, see the above statement. A picture of a murder wasn't taken for the sexual gratification of the murder-- altho there are such things as snuff films-- also plainly evil.
Whether you share the porn or buy it, you're part of the chain that started with exploitation, brought on the ecosystems around porn. Somewhere, someone made money, or did it to share the exploitation. Either motivation exploits children.
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:4, Insightful)
It's evil because children are exploited.
Which isn't "evil" to all individuals. Whether something is "good" or "bad" is subjective, really. Personally, I think it's evil, but that does not make it a fact.
Looking at the picture gives vicarious gratification.
And? How does it logically do any further harm? Looking at the picture can't harm the child anymore than they have already been harmed.
Whether you share the porn or buy it, you're part of the chain that started with exploitation
The difference is that, more often than not, the people who made it won't even know that the people who didn't give them money, but still viewed it, even exist.
Either motivation exploits children.
Why does the same not apply to murder pictures and the like? People who like that type of stuff are supporting the behavior, according to you, right (even if they don't give anyone any money for the pictures)?
The people who hurt the children are the ones who actually hurt the children, anyway. Not random people who merely view images anonymously, I believe.
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Statutory rape and child molestation are a crime; viewing it makes you part of the production process as an end (ab)user.
How so? What if you don't pay for it and they don't even know you exist? Apparently, most of them share it on completely irrelevant websites.
Pictures after-the-fact
That's what child pornography is.
That's why the laws are written the way they are.
Or it could be that they're faulty.
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No, not faulty.
Child exploitation may have a long disconnection between the event and a viewer, but the photos weren't made to put in a family album.
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:4, Insightful)
viewing it makes you part of the production process as an end (ab)user
How? Since when is observing an act, or in this case a record of it, comparable to committing it? If I watch news footage of a clash between protesters and police, am I a protester? Or am I part of the police force? Is the severity of a crime dependent on the number of observers?
Also, you seem not to understand how wide the child porn definition is. A 17-year old girl snapping a nude picture of herself with a cellphone camera and sending it to her boyfriend has committed the crime of manufacturing and distributing child porn (since the model is under 18 years) and her boyfriend can in turn be charged with possession of child porn. Do you want those two to end up on the sex offender register, or do you want the FBI to focus on stopping actual child abuse instead? Chasing after the fluttering images does not help the victims, it just creates more prisoners.
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Child exploitation may have a long disconnection between the event and a viewer, but the photos weren't made to put in a family album.
Yes, sir, in some cases, they were.
http://www.cfcamerica.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=358:woman-charged-with-possession-of-child-pornography-for-taking-photos-of-herself-breastfeeding&catid=3:news&Itemid=96 [cfcamerica.org]
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20stories/story/Innocent-family-pictures-or-child-porn-Parents/ARX1K8NqXk6yMGyVfAmueQ.cspx [abc4.com]
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/22/family-vacay-pics-deemed-child-porn-by-wal-mart-at-center-of-lawsuit/ [wsj.com]
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
She is now a registered sex offender and can't go to school or college. Her life is destroyed because of some blind application of a law that was not intended to target her but because of overzealous DA's who want a notch on their political belt go after such easy crimes because of the emotional appeal to people like you.
http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/sexting-teens-makes-sex-offender-list-20110121-19zwu.html [watoday.com.au]
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-07/justice/sexting.busts_1_phillip-alpert-offender-list-offender-registry?_s=PM:CRIME [cnn.com]
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20001082-504083.html [cbsnews.com]
Or how about the grandmother who took pictures of her naked grandchildren (under the age of 3) in a bathtub and then took the pics to walmart to get prints? Another overzealous DA went and prosecuted her. She was sentenced to 3 years in prison.
http://reason.com/blog/2009/05/04/grandma-arrested-for-child-por [reason.com]
It is evil that children are getting exploited. The problem is, the ones getting punished by the application of the laws due to the political and emotional fervor such application engenders for those leading the crusade, are not the ones exploiting the children.
Both those who download decade old pictures, or pictures of jailbait teens who voluntarily post their own pics on the net, or of innocent grandmothers who take pictures of their infant children, these are not the people being exploited nor are they the one's exploiting others, yet they are the people being targeted by the current application of the law.
Because a DA with 10 "Child Porn convictions" under his belt has an emotional appeal to mindless cosmic space zombie followers and that emotional appeal will get him elected / re-elected.
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Yes, particularly photo-shopped pictures and hand-drawn cartoons, all of which are now a criminal offense in most countries, a natural and logical consequence of the "thoughtcrime" "logic" you are so fond of. And then there is the "self-inflicted" "molestation" of kids with webcams and cell-phone cameras, who "exploit" themselves, for which, according to the likes of you, they need to be punished.
The ac
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim, or any branch. Rape is rape. You can give consent, and it's not rape. Children can't give consent. Ask any therapist-- any of them. You'll see that I'm not talking God and Satan and Hell.
I'm talking about the fact that children are exploited in child porn. Adults can do what they want-- you, too.
The Therapeutic Inquisition (Score:3)
Therapists are a religion of their own, and their beliefs are just as nutty as those of any other religion - and nuttier than most. Their regime is one of torture and intimidation, and anyone who questions their findings they treat as a damned heretic.
If you really want to look at exploitation, follow the money. The big bucks are made by the child abuse industry - the psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, politicians and cops that prey on the public's concern for children by pretending to protect or
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Big difference between someone abusing children and making material and someone who is viewing material.
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If you pay someone to do a contract murder, you'll never see it, but you're a murderer in the same way as someone pulling the trigger.
And if you don't pay them to do a contract murder -- in fact, you never speak to the person or communicate anything to him in any way -- you'd have a very hard time convincing anyone that you committed a murder. Not even conspiracy.
Yes, if you buy kiddie pr0n from someone, you're a part of the chain. No question. Your money funds the system.
If you are just surfing free adult pr0n sites and come across a site with what looks like CP, you have not participated in any way in the creation of those images an
CAUTION! DO NOT DO THIS! (Score:3)
If you accidentally stumble across child pornography, do not report it to the authorities. You can be and likely will be prosecuted if you do so.
Possession is considered a serious crime, and criminal intent is not considered relevant.
If you stumble across child pornography, immediately clear out your browser history, do whatever you can to clean up your hard drive - and hope to ghod that the site wasn't an FBI honey pot that just got your IP address.
There is no defense.
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If you accidentally stumble across child pornography, do not report it to the authorities. You can be and likely will be prosecuted if you do so.
Possession is considered a serious crime, and criminal intent is not considered relevant.
If you stumble across child pornography, immediately clear out your browser history, do whatever you can to clean up your hard drive - and hope to ghod that the site wasn't an FBI honey pot that just got your IP address.
There is no defense.
However, if you are malicious and have access to HTML display of a website (your own or via SQL-injection, etc.), please DO document the URL, and use the following HTML in all of the pages you can post to in order to ensure that unsuspecting web visitors download the child porn without even being alerted to its presence:
<img style="position:absolute;top:-99999px;left:-99999px" src="URL_goes_here" />
Thus allowing you to, if prosecuted, claim that the download happened without your control -- Point
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Informative)
If there exists a demand for a good, eventually someone will fill that demand. If there is a "healthy" "market" for child pornography then some people will go out and get fresh product for that market. This is how children are harmed by viewing it.
Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 4% of cell-owning teens ages 12-17 say they have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images or videos of themselves to someone else via text messaging, a practice also known as “sexting". The same survey also found that 75% of all American teens ages 12-17 own a cell phone. According to Wolfram Alpha, there are 22,410,000 teens between 15 and 19, which is likely close enough for these calculates. this means that roughly 672,000 images classifiable as CP are generated by teens during the 5 years that cell-owning teens are between the ages of 12-17. This works out to 134,000 images per year produced by teens for other teens.
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
If there exists a demand for a good, eventually someone will fill that demand.
Not at no cost; were you not paying attention in your economics course? Most of the "consumers" of child pornography are paying nothing for it -- they are not paying for it with money, they are not paying for it with new images of child abuse, they are just leeching off the small minority who are fueling the production.
My understanding of the economics of child pornography is this: at the highest levels of production and distribution, pedophiles are trading new and unseen images and videos with each other. The market is based on barter, not money, to thwart efforts at tracing the participants.
Eventually this material is somehow leaked to lower level forums which are more easily accessible, and from there the images are reposted again and again. Below a certain level in the distribution chain, the incentive for the producers to keep producing is entirely lost; the material is reposted on various forums at no cost. The overwhelming majority of people who view child pornography are viewing it at a level that is far below this point, and are contributing nothing to its production.
In simpler terms, arrested the "low hanging fruit" is nothing more than showmanship; it has little affect on the people who are actually abusing children. Every few years we hear about some big deal arrest, where law enforcement agencies manage to gain access to a high level production network, and those are good things in terms of thwarting child abuse. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of child pornography arrests are not in that category.
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:4, Interesting)
In a sense, they're right.
If there exists a demand for a good, eventually someone will fill that demand. If there is a "healthy" "market" for child pornography then some people will go out and get fresh product for that market. This is how children are harmed by viewing it.
Which is why, I think, it is important to distinguish in law between purchasing child pornography and possessing child pornography. The former should be a crime, since you are providing the means and incentive for further child abuse and are in some sense an accessory to that crime, but the latter should not be, and yet people are arrested for mere possession of child pornography all the time.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:4, Insightful)
And the amount of time we stick on the social retards (many looking at 40 plus according to my friend) simply means we'll have to let more vicious criminals go to put up some guy who sits in his basement and jacks off. yep, smart plan we have there.
Not only is it the cost of incarceration, and the loss of productivity going into society during the incarceration, but the cost of that person not working anymore for the rest of his life. Convicted sex offenders are pretty much unhirable.
If the idea was to get that person to stop looking at child porn, slap him a fine and use that fine to pay for a shrink that might help him move on. But no, it's not about that at all, it's about vengeance and "righteous" wrath.
And, I think, a need to distance oneself from ones own attraction to teenagers by violently and publicly opposing it.
Hint: Being attracted to teens is normal. Sleeping with teens (unless you're one) isn't.
We need to differentiate the two. Stop going after guys who wank off to teens, and stop going after pedophiles unless you intend to help them. Start going after child molesters, whether they wear uniforms or frocks.
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"Common Sense" vs. actual information... (Score:3)
(This is also common sense for most reasonable people.)
I'd be careful of "common sense" - "common sense" is that information which we take for granted and assume is true, whether it is or isn't.
Not having conducted any studies myself I'd say your arguments do make sense to me - but I think it's important to be clear about what's truly reliable information and what merely seems right.
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Yes and no.
This largely invalidates your previous point. These people are the worst type of people. They abuse the trust of their relatives in sexually deviant ways. As such, they are l
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He was found to have quite a few photographs of naked children, both just nudes and of sexual activity.
The ages of the kids in the pictures were from 3 to 15.
It might be possible to mistake a 15 year old with an 18 year old, especially by just looking at a picture.
There is no way you can mistake a 3 year old for a consenting adult.
The law is binary, and that works out as a bad thing.
30 year old banging a 17 year old the day before her 18th birthday should not
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I know its not popular, but pedophiles dont do much harm in the big picture.
Poor parenting does a lot more harm than pedophiles.
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More importantly, there isn't a powerful lobbying group or a cabal of rich corporations to object to the sorts of things that these people are passing around amongst themselves. There's no one actively lobbying congress and handing out bribes to everyone to ensure that the penalties for these people become more severe or that more resources be aligned against them.
There's no megacorp to keep pressing the issue.
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I wonder what percent of that 41% are qualified to handle information security jobs. It's a whole different ballgame that tracking down porn. InfoSec jobs are in high demand and the government can't fill them fast enough. Why do you think im getting a full ride + $18,000 /yr to get a masters for only a 1:1 education:work obligation.
They're desperate, and I doubt very much of those 41% could fill security roles.
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Maybe we could give computers to the molesters already behind bars and give them bonuses for tracking down under age kids in porn sites. They would love it and research the area with great eagerness.
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It's the RIAA. They're probably upset that there's not more investigation into the copyrighted backing tracks used in the child porn.
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Do you mean the National Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alikes?