Spend What it Takes to Catch the World's Worst Scumbags

By: Lowell
Published On: 3/1/2008 7:18:11 AM

As Ben says over at NLS:

You will be shocked when you see it zoom in on the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And keep in mind Virginia needs $32 million dollars a year to fund this program to catch internet predators.

The House budget gives 1 million

The Senate budget gives nothing.

Let's compromise... on the full $32 million.

I couldn't agree more.  This video makes me so angry I can't even say.  The people who commit this evil need to be caught and punished, immediately, whatever it costs.  Watch the video and then call your state representative ASAP!

P.S. We were shown this video (by The National Association to Protect Children) at "bloggers day" Thursday in Richmond and -- needless to say -- were totally horrified/enraged.

P.P.S.  We were asked by the "Alicia's Law" lobbyist to call out Attorney General Bob McDonnell on his ridiculous" email initiative -- as if getting a list of online child abusers is going to accomplish anything?!? What a pathetic joke compared to the level of action and resources needed here.


Comments



What is child pornography? (elevandoski - 3/1/2008 9:08:40 AM)
Here are statistics from a study by the US Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children:

Alicia's Law

As you can see from this study, child pornography is way more than just taking "dirty" pictures of children.  Photos/videos of nude children exclusively accounts for only 1% of the pornography that these sick bastards peddle online.  



I smell a rat (snolan - 3/1/2008 10:04:26 AM)
The abuse of children is a horrible crime that should not be tolerated.

However, I am very suspicious of some of the numbers being presented in this video and can't help wonder if we are being motivated and distracted by fear and anger (these tactics are very familiar after all) into skipping over something else.

I just cannot believe that over 350,000 people are involved in child-abuse video trading; that is a staggering number.

I have personally seen public prosecutors in other states exploit the public's shock and recoil about this topic for their own political ends, to propel a name for themselves into getting elected into office.  These self-aggrandizing prosecutors tromped all over the justice system to get their name in the press, become district attorney, and then abuse that office to launch a successful bid for the US congress (and this from an alleged Democrat!).

Yes, child abuse and child pornography are serious crimes, and not to be tolerated, but every time I see people trying to rally huge public support to witch hunt a few individuals my internal alarm bells go off.

May you rot in hell Mike Arcuri.  



Agree (HisRoc - 3/1/2008 7:04:23 PM)
I have to agree with you, Scott.  My Bullshit Detector started buzzing about halfway through the video.  Only 2% of all known Internet predators are even investigated?  98% of the known criminals are ignored because of a lack of funding?  And Special Agent Waters' colleagues in law enforcement "are not free to come here and testify?"  Why not?  Who is stopping them?

Not to minimize in any way the problem of perverts out there on the web, but this sounds like someone trying to pad their budget with Federal funding and just does not pass the smell test.



Not surprising to me, unfortunately. (lizquierda - 3/1/2008 11:18:50 PM)
I just cannot believe that over 350,000 people are involved in child-abuse video trading; that is a staggering number.

If you go through the nls links and read the article in the Fairfax Times, you'll find there are 20,000 computers in Virginia alone that have child pornography on them.

Source

That number doesn't surprise me at all.  The list of sexual predators in municipalities is mind-blowing.  When I lived in California, a bedroom community just outside of San Jose had 5,000 sexual predators on their registry.  It is a truly terrible sickness in the US.  Groups where women post routinely have polls that show that more than 50% -- more like 60% or more -- of women experienced sexual abuse as children.



Still Not Convinced (HisRoc - 3/2/2008 5:38:17 PM)
I am far from being an expert on Peer-to-Peer File Sharing, but my understanding is that most PTP networks have anonymity features that mask both the IP address of the requestor and that of the download location.  While anonymity is not 100%, it is not possible to inventory the entire network and determine content by individual IP address.

Anyone know differently?  



How things work (Hugo Estrada - 3/3/2008 10:50:39 PM)


According to Flint's congressional testimony, identifying individuals through their computers is fairly simple.

Investigators initiate downloads and then identify Internet protocol (IP) addresses. Law enforcement officials can then obtain physical addresses from Internet service providers.

"Once an offending computer has been identified in the local jurisdiction, the investigator may download child pornography directly from the suspect computer," Flint's congressional testimony reads. "Once criminal conduct is confirmed, the investigator sends process to the [service provider]. This request will attempt to identify the physical address associated with the IP address."

When all the evidence has been collected and reviewed, and a physical address has been identified, local authorities can then decide to apply for a search warrant to search the property in question and seize the offending computer.

http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/ne...

In other words, they search for porn, keep tabs of the IP addresses, and once they get enough evidence, get a warrant to search the physical computer.



Well, There Is No More Authoritative Source Than The Fairfax Times... (HisRoc - 3/3/2008 11:38:13 PM)
Sorry, Hugo, but try a literature search of the people who actually know what they are talking about and not reguritating a self-serving press release.

Look at:

http://netforbeginners.about.c...

http://www.zeropaid.com/progra...

http://ietisy.oxfordjournals.o...



So how do they catch them, then? (Hugo Estrada - 3/4/2008 1:27:26 AM)
Law enforcement gave an explanation on what they do.

You say that is is not possible to do it.

Yet they have been catching people with tons of child pornography on their computers.

But you said that this is not possible to do because of the P2P technology.

Even if law enforcement is lying about the described technique  for finding computers with child pornography, they obviously have some method that enables them to trace the source of these files.

This seems to indicate to me that either the technology itself has some kind of a flaw that allows for tracing, or that certain networks have been poorly configured so that they are not offering the protection that they could to child pornography file sharing pervs.

So the evidence indicate that law enforcement can trace the source of the images.

Since you don't like the official explanation, please explain how they do it.

Enlighten us.



hi-jacked PCs maybe? (snolan - 3/3/2008 3:56:25 PM)
Odd... I work in Herndon.  I am not sure there are that many computers with peer to peer software on them, unless the owners have had their crappy Windows PCs hijacked my mal-ware and the hackers installed p2p networks without the owners knowing about it.

Yes absolutely, serious issue.  But I question the credentials of this special agent.  I am not sure he knows that much about technology.



spam correlation (snolan - 3/3/2008 4:00:50 PM)
If I were clueless enough to think that the amount of disgusting filthy sex/cialis/viagra/vicoden/penis-enlargement/breast-augmentation/diet spam I got represented in anyway the ratio of real people using the internet, I'd abstain from computer use forever.

Just because 80% of the crap in my email inbox is spam does not mean that 80% of internet users are spammers....

Likewise, it looks to me like someone is thinking that because .5% of their email claims to be child porn that .5% of internet users are involved in it...

Sigh.



THESE CRETINS DESERVE THE SYRINGE (heywaitaminute - 3/1/2008 10:04:50 AM)
Anyone that rapes a child should receive the ultimate punishment by the state.  Prisons need to be cleared of low level non-violent repeat offenders (unless they  are repeat DUI offenders who pose an immediate threat to the public) who need to be doing community service such as picking up litter,cleaning streams of debris and working at recycling centers, then fill every cell with child predators who, convicted of something less than rape, should spend the rest of their lives without sunshine.  A society that cannot or will not protect its children from such cretins is not a civilization, period.  Once a child is treated this brutally they statistically are much more likely to become very anti-social at best and molesters themselves at worst.  Stop the cycle.  


syringe (melvin2008 - 11/14/2008 2:38:00 AM)
A syringe is a simple piston pump consisting of a plunger that fits tightly in a tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed along inside a cylindrical tube allowing the syringe to take  and expel a liquid or gas through an orifice at the open end of the tube.
==================================
Melvin
DUI