Ugh, the worst part is that, at least about ten years ago, you used to be able to come across (sorry) thumbnails of horrible shit (bestiality, at least) on your search for a comparatively innocent video of two people fucking. That's less common now, granted, but I would bet you can still get lost in the porn maze and end up at something illegal.
The issue I find with automatically jailing those who are suspected of pedophilia, is that while it is a crime, the underlying issue is that these people need to be treated in a mental-health facility, not merely locked up, released in 10 years for them to potentially find themselves in the same situation. You're imprisoning people who have as much of a mental-health problem, as they do an "ethical" problem. Which, if you are a pedophile, could possibly hamper your ability to distinguish between what is and what is not ethically correct.
@dogisdead: Pedophilia generally does not respond to treatment. In order to prevent a "relapse" pedophiles would have to be in treatment, away from children, from the rest of their lives.
As someone who has actually done both criminal prosecution and defense, I'm going to tell you that no, clicking is not a crime. While these FBI raids most assuredly ruin people's lives, any first-year law student would be able to mount a credible defense.
@Smooth Operator: I can't imagine that the clicking of the link, by itself, was the foundation for that guy's conviction. He probably had already given up so much incriminating evidence to investigators before hiring his attorney that there wasn't even a case to be made.
What's really lovely about this is that the same people who will applaud this bullshit wholeheartedly in the name of The Children are the ones who recoil in horror at the notion that we ought to put more tax dollars into education, and especially sex education.
@Moff: The Roman Catholic Church does not approve your message. (Neither does Chabad, for that matter).
What about the potential to use the links for purposes other than busting perverts for being perverted? What if they use it as a way to exact political revenge? Any other kind of malicious prosecution?
Has anyone ever done a study to determine what percent of men are attracted to children? It seems like the more we learn, the more there are. Doesn't seem to be much of a big issue with women. But seriously... could the numbers be far higher than we suspect even?
@Uncle_Billy_Slumming: Good luck getting people to admit that they're attracted to children, even in a 'study' setting, if they think they'll be tagged a predator if they say yes.
Alternatively you could strap people into a chair Clockwork Orange-style and test their physical reactions. Maybe we should try this at Guantanamo before we close it?
@Moff: I agree, but with the staggering amount of people who have (or claim to have) been molested, it might do our society some good to shine a brighter light on the causes.
People may not admit it, but they love shows like To Catch a Predator and the frantic stories about little kids getting molested; some weird part of them is actually titillated. Of course, most will claim that they want to go lynch-mob on child molesters in the name of seeing justice done, but I have a strong suspicion there's something deeper at play.
Sex education isn't going to convince grown men (and women, I guess) not to want to sexually abuse children. Stopping the cycle of sexual abuse will -- and perhaps addressing some of the fascination our society has with perversion, murder, etc. might. What does it say that shows like CSI and Law & Order: SVU are so popular? (Not to mention American Idol! Kidding. Kind of.) We absolutely fetishize the dirty, weird and wrong with some unfortunate results.
@PrincessKashmir: Absolutely. But is it nuts to imagine there's a correlation between that kind of unhealthy fascination and an irrational attitude toward sex in general? Broader, better sex education would be a good step toward a healthier sexual culture: Instead of all the guilt and taboo feelings over things that are a little weird but perfectly harmless, we'd be able to make more mature, intelligent decisions about what's really dangerous behavior and how to stop it.
Better sex education will provide a foundation to discuss exactly what you're talking about sensibly. Also, it may not keep grown-ups from molesting kids, but it might help kids get out of dangerous situations.
@Moff: Point taken. I guess I'm a little wary about sex education in general because my experience (in Texas -- that needs to be said) was so poor. If we could extend sex education past 6th grade or whenever we normally provide it through young adulthood, that would be great. As it is, I learned a lot more about sex from Loveline and Savage Love than I did from the P.E. teacher turned sex educator or my parents.
Also, I was only considering the impact of such education on now-adults, not the potential victims. You're right; it seems like a lot of abuse could stop earlier if we could convince children nothing bad will happen if they tell a parent/other trusted authority what happened. (I know that's a more complicated issue than that, but it's a good start.)
@Mo MoDo: Yes, but there usually has to be quite more to it than clicking on a single link, right? It's one thing to discover that someone's been plotting a bombing or a murder for days or weeks, and taking steps toward making it happen, and another to catch somebody for exercising poor judgment over the space of a few seconds.
@Moff: I might also add that intent or conspiracy charges (with no other additional or extenuating charges/circumstances) pretty rarely end up in convictions.
@Mo MoDo: Um, no. There's no crime in any penal code in the US for having the "intent" to do something bad. You may be thinking of attempt crimes, but even those require you to do more than just intend to do a bad thing.
And same goes for conspiracy. There have to be actual acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. And, you know, some actual conspiring with other people going on.
@Moff: People face charges for "wanting" to commit a crime all the time. "distribution with intent" based only on the amount of controlled substances found; basically any "conspiracy to commit _____" where the intended crime doesn't take place but there's evidence to indicate it might have; crimes where even attempting to do the illegal act is in itself a crime, such as soliciting a prostitute - undercover police don't actually have to have sex with johns to thrown them in jail, ya know?
@PomPom: The confusion might be in drug arrests, where one will be caught with a certain amount of 'weight' and so are slapped with an 'intent to distribute' even if all the drugs was for them and their spouse or something.
I figure it all depends on how the law you are violating is worded.
@PomPom: Except that it looks like what people are doing here rises to the level of attempt: they've taken every action that, but for the government's shenanigans, would in their reasonable expectation lead to them accomplishing the criminal act of looking at naked children. The FBI makes me queasy when they do this, but they seem to be minding their legal p's and q's.
@Bitrex: Yeah, but in the first case, there are illegal drugs. In the second case, there is a person practicing an illegal trade. In this case, there is no child pornography.
@Astigmatism: In part, it seems like it depends on where they're doing this stuff. If the message board in question really is a hotbed of child pornography and it's not some place you might run across randomly, I'm less bothered (although it seems like in that case there ought to be a way to crack down on the most prolific distributors and follow them back to the material's sources).
What scares me is the idea that someone who's never looked at child porn before, on a lark (admittedly, a stupid, stupid lark), finds his way onto a message board, sees a link supposedly advertising child porn, and out of somewhat incredulous curiosity clicks it. Is that stupid? Yes. But is it worth three years in prison? I can't see how, personally.
And other comments have made the valid point: What if someone gets tricked into clicking on such a link? I don't like child porn, obviously, but the lack of any real engagement here between the cops and the alleged criminals concerns me. It seems way too easy for someone to get stung who's not really part of the problem, and way too likely that even a credible defense won't be taken seriously.
@Moff: "What scares me is the idea that someone who's never looked at child porn before, on a lark (admittedly, a stupid, stupid lark), finds his way onto a message board, sees a link supposedly advertising child porn, and out of somewhat incredulous curiosity clicks it."
Yeah, I agree. That's exactly what bothers me about this too.
In my mind, an equivalent scenario -- in the non-cyber world -- might be a person walking through the park, and spotting a child-porn magazine lying on the path in front of them. What if that person, horrified at seeing something so vile lying around in a public place, actually picked it up and briefly look inside out of shocked curiousity before tossing it aside in disgust?
And what if a cop then rushed up behind that person, slapped cuffs on them and told them they were under arrest for viewing child pornography?
Now consider this: What if the cop was the one who put the magazine on the path, and was crouching behind a bush waiting for someone to come along, pick it up and look at it so they could bust them?
Would that be fair? Would it be just? Because I think that's the equivalent of what the FBI appears to be doing in this case.
@MisterHippity: I used to work from my home computer for a search engine company, and my job was to rate URLs. We sifted through a lot of porn, and occasionally something looking like child porn would come up. IMMEDIATELY I would freak out, shut the window down, and email my boss explaining what had happened. I would also try to go back and erase as much as I could from my browsing history. But if my computer ever got confiscated for some reason, or if someone else ever saw a record of that, I'd be toast. So these kinds of "police busts" are pretty scary IMO, because mine is a prime example of how clicking on a link or viewing a page does not necessarily mean intent to commit a crime whatsoever. Sometimes people just stumble across shit in the jungle of the internet, and I don't think it's comparable to other "intent" crimes which tend to be based on more solid evidence.
@MisterHippity: Well, if I were to find something like that on the ground I WOULD pick it up and I would take it to the police station. I think if the police laid something like that in the street and then arrested you for picking it up it would be entrapment.
Also, if I were tricked into clicking a link for child porn I would call the police station and find out what I should do.
@downlow: "I think if the police laid something like that in the street and then arrested you for picking it up it would be entrapment." Exactly. That's my point. I think this "link" thing is entrapment too.
Re: "If I were to find something like that on the ground I WOULD pick it up and I would take it to the police station." That would be a risky thing to do. Better to leave it on the ground and tell the police where you left it. If you pick it up and take it with you, you're in possession of it - and possession of child pornography is illegal. It doesn't matter if your "intent" was to take it to the police - you couldn't prove that if they caught you with it. (In fact, that's probably a common excuses given by people busted in possession of that stuff: "I just found it on the ground, and I picked it up so I could turn it in to the police!" Sure you did.
Re: "If I were tricked into clicking a link for child porn I would call the police station and find out what I should do." If clicking the link is enough to get you arrested, then calling the police an telling them you did it could be self-incriminating. I'd sooner call a lawyer in that situation than the police.
@phlox✔: OK, I was going to make a joke about never giving up kiddie porn, but reading the lyrics to that song, it suddenly seems scarily creepily apropos:
Re: your last point - the feds tracked shipments from a manufacturer of grow lights that advertised in High Times and, based on deliveries to someone's house, got a search warrant and busted him with a little pot farm in his basement. So they don't need to set up a fake company.
@formerly it takes a lot to laugh: Also, from what I understand, Tor does not protect you from federal snooping, via the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act [which is a Clinton thing, not a Bush thing].
Couldn't someone post those same links in other places (newsgroups, for instance) with different enticements and entrap innocent people who didn't even want to look at porn? Just asking.
Simply put, your web browser tells every site you visit where you came from. If you were tricked into clicking an FBI link, and the referrer wasn't from the forum place the FBI posted it on, they probably wouldn't bother tracking you down.
A tech-savvy defense lawyer would quickly point out the incorrect referrer means the link had been improperly used.
Of course, referrers (and cookies, for that matter...) are VERY easily faked, and if you manually copy and paste a URL into your address bar, you'll have no referrer at all... Good thing to know!
"There's no evidence the referring site was recorded as well, meaning the FBI couldn't tell if the visitor found the links through Ranchi or another source such as an e-mail message."
@lobstr: Not to mention every hobbyist BBS system around. I got a lot of rank stuff by accident. Thank god all those hard drives have been triple security wiped and landfilled long ago.
@son of spam: your comment makes me feel stabby!!! (Note: Violence actions, thoughts or words are wrong, unless it's the word 'stabby' used on jezebel.)
@formerly it takes a lot to laugh: "Man, my boyfriend is so terrible at oral sex, men in general suck in bed and are such complete losers. I just want to get all stabby on all of them. WAIT WHAT SOMEONE SOMEWHERE HAD A NEGATIVE THOUGHT ABOUT WOMANKIND THE SOURCE OF AL LIFE THIS IS A CODE 1 PRIORITY ALERT NOTIFY CNN"
@formerly it takes a lot to laugh: don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about modeling. But you have to walk lots and you don't always get paid lots. But I'm not complaining. It's just that sometimes it's a hard job. Oh but it's so hard being objectified, but I love being a model, but it's a terrible job for girls, but I love the money and the glitzy lifestyle. Oh and maybe if I keep on writing this indifferent, mediocre twaddle complaining about my job, and how difficult it is to be pretty, I'll build up an audience of women who all tell me how brilliant I am.
Listen Phineas, I for one object to the generalization of Jezebel as a legion of humorless harpy-bloodhound hybrids dogging the blogosphere, ever intent upon the slightest pretext to evince stagmata.
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Great way to take someone down, ruin their reputation, make them unemployable, completely discredit them.
Doesn't even need to make it to trial.
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03/26/09
the guy in the article got convicted by a jury though
the only way to rid our society of these sorry sorts is to throw anyone we even suspect of being one of them into jail for good
03/26/09
Also, you're joking, yes?
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What about the potential to use the links for purposes other than busting perverts for being perverted? What if they use it as a way to exact political revenge? Any other kind of malicious prosecution?
Has anyone ever done a study to determine what percent of men are attracted to children? It seems like the more we learn, the more there are. Doesn't seem to be much of a big issue with women. But seriously... could the numbers be far higher than we suspect even?
03/26/09
Alternatively you could strap people into a chair Clockwork Orange-style and test their physical reactions. Maybe we should try this at Guantanamo before we close it?
03/26/09
People may not admit it, but they love shows like To Catch a Predator and the frantic stories about little kids getting molested; some weird part of them is actually titillated. Of course, most will claim that they want to go lynch-mob on child molesters in the name of seeing justice done, but I have a strong suspicion there's something deeper at play.
Sex education isn't going to convince grown men (and women, I guess) not to want to sexually abuse children. Stopping the cycle of sexual abuse will -- and perhaps addressing some of the fascination our society has with perversion, murder, etc. might. What does it say that shows like CSI and Law & Order: SVU are so popular? (Not to mention American Idol! Kidding. Kind of.) We absolutely fetishize the dirty, weird and wrong with some unfortunate results.
03/26/09
Better sex education will provide a foundation to discuss exactly what you're talking about sensibly. Also, it may not keep grown-ups from molesting kids, but it might help kids get out of dangerous situations.
03/27/09
Also, I was only considering the impact of such education on now-adults, not the potential victims. You're right; it seems like a lot of abuse could stop earlier if we could convince children nothing bad will happen if they tell a parent/other trusted authority what happened. (I know that's a more complicated issue than that, but it's a good start.)
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It's probably not impossible to build a case of intent on someone frequenting pedo boards, though.
03/26/09
Who is "we" white man?
03/26/09
And same goes for conspiracy. There have to be actual acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. And, you know, some actual conspiring with other people going on.
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I figure it all depends on how the law you are violating is worded.
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@Astigmatism: In part, it seems like it depends on where they're doing this stuff. If the message board in question really is a hotbed of child pornography and it's not some place you might run across randomly, I'm less bothered (although it seems like in that case there ought to be a way to crack down on the most prolific distributors and follow them back to the material's sources).
What scares me is the idea that someone who's never looked at child porn before, on a lark (admittedly, a stupid, stupid lark), finds his way onto a message board, sees a link supposedly advertising child porn, and out of somewhat incredulous curiosity clicks it. Is that stupid? Yes. But is it worth three years in prison? I can't see how, personally.
And other comments have made the valid point: What if someone gets tricked into clicking on such a link? I don't like child porn, obviously, but the lack of any real engagement here between the cops and the alleged criminals concerns me. It seems way too easy for someone to get stung who's not really part of the problem, and way too likely that even a credible defense won't be taken seriously.
03/26/09
Yeah, I agree. That's exactly what bothers me about this too.
In my mind, an equivalent scenario -- in the non-cyber world -- might be a person walking through the park, and spotting a child-porn magazine lying on the path in front of them. What if that person, horrified at seeing something so vile lying around in a public place, actually picked it up and briefly look inside out of shocked curiousity before tossing it aside in disgust?
And what if a cop then rushed up behind that person, slapped cuffs on them and told them they were under arrest for viewing child pornography?
Now consider this: What if the cop was the one who put the magazine on the path, and was crouching behind a bush waiting for someone to come along, pick it up and look at it so they could bust them?
Would that be fair? Would it be just? Because I think that's the equivalent of what the FBI appears to be doing in this case.
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Also, if I were tricked into clicking a link for child porn I would call the police station and find out what I should do.
03/26/09
Re: "If I were to find something like that on the ground I WOULD pick it up and I would take it to the police station." That would be a risky thing to do. Better to leave it on the ground and tell the police where you left it. If you pick it up and take it with you, you're in possession of it - and possession of child pornography is illegal. It doesn't matter if your "intent" was to take it to the police - you couldn't prove that if they caught you with it. (In fact, that's probably a common excuses given by people busted in possession of that stuff: "I just found it on the ground, and I picked it up so I could turn it in to the police!" Sure you did.
Re: "If I were tricked into clicking a link for child porn I would call the police station and find out what I should do." If clicking the link is enough to get you arrested, then calling the police an telling them you did it could be self-incriminating. I'd sooner call a lawyer in that situation than the police.
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Simply put, your web browser tells every site you visit where you came from. If you were tricked into clicking an FBI link, and the referrer wasn't from the forum place the FBI posted it on, they probably wouldn't bother tracking you down.
A tech-savvy defense lawyer would quickly point out the incorrect referrer means the link had been improperly used.
Of course, referrers (and cookies, for that matter...) are VERY easily faked, and if you manually copy and paste a URL into your address bar, you'll have no referrer at all... Good thing to know!
03/26/09
You still could.. sometimes the URL itself has a referral-identifier. Look for "?" in URLs.
03/26/09
And so is HTTP-REFERER for that matter.
Rule #1 of web security: Anything sent by the client can't be trusted!
03/26/09
"There's no evidence the referring site was recorded as well, meaning the FBI couldn't tell if the visitor found the links through Ranchi or another source such as an e-mail message."
Don't count on the FBI for intelligence.
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I didn't know about the stabby thing. Should I feel honored, outraged, or fearful?
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Listen Phineas, I for one object to the generalization of Jezebel as a legion of humorless harpy-bloodhound hybrids dogging the blogosphere, ever intent upon the slightest pretext to evince stagmata.
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And once upon a time, I even made a funny satire blog about it. Oh good times. That was like... a year ago though.
HOLY SHIT it still exists.
[jezeblargh.tumblr.com]
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