Global child porn probe led to false accusations

[Newsjock]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/03/14/landslide-porn060314.html

CBC News

An international investigation of internet-based child pornography has led to accusations against innocent victims of credit card fraud, a CBC News investigation has found.

In other cases, victims of identity theft found themselves fighting to save their reputations, jobs and marriages after their names were used to buy child pornography.

Still others were implicated when they made legal purchases of adult pornography from sites that were associated with child-porn sites.

In the United Kingdom, almost 40 of those accused have committed suicide in the past six years, as well as six in Australia and at least one in Canada.

... Of the 35,000 names on the database from the United States, 200 people were arrested after allegedly agreeing to buy child porn in the stings.

lots more

[boobooday]

1. Someone I cared about a great deal went through this

He was completely devastated. Everyone knew he was innocent but the gung-ho prosecutor.

It was heartbreaking.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. Child Porn:

When spoken of in connection with the internet, the new Pavlov's Bell.

While I give ground to no one, regarding the essential wrongness of producing and disseminating Child Porn, I ask everyone to please read the article. See the numbers. Bounce them off one another.

And consider how maybe, just maybe, the *threat* of it being somewhere in some dark corner of the net, could be used to abrogate everyone's privacy rights.

I might be wrong, but it is worthy of your consideration, as are the suicides of innocent people.

This is a must-read article that should leave you with a few things to ponder.

[Up2Late]

3. Wow, .06% arrested, Great!

I wonder how many Dollars this Great achievement cost? :banghead:

Probably only a few.:spray:

[Xeric]

4. keystone kops

This is why hacking and identity theft need to be taken way more seriously than they have been. While the FBI and other gov. agencies have been wasting time spying on peace groups, listening in on irrelevant phone calls and, in general, putting on a show, they've let criminals on the net ruin peoples lives. This could happen to anyone. Feel safe with a Mac or Linux? Forget it. There are holes in any operating system. The only real way to stop ID theft is to catch the criminals and prosecute them.

Also, while pedophiles are an obvious threat, mass hysteria and a "shoot first ask questions later" approach only succeed in creating witch hunts like this. Gather the evidence. Make sure you've got it right. Then prosecute. Unfortunately the present administration is more interested in show trials and making it look like they are doing something than in real justice. That, and the hacks, incompetents, criminals and religious hucksters they put in charge.

[Trillo]

5. Interesting use of innocent people's data

What they do is held against them without a court of law.

So your data can be sold by other entities that have collected it for purposes such as a money transaction, but if anything seems illegal, the data source (not the data owner) is held responsible.

Money trickles up high, responsiblity crashes down low.

[wakeme2008]

6. That could have been me

:scared:

Ok I never balance my checkbook and use my debt card for a lot of purchases. This past Jan I went to my credit union site for my account and saw a strange charge for $35 from somebody I did not know. I started checking back and saw for the past 8 months around the same day I was charged $35.

I started googling and saw that company was a adult porn web site. I called their customer service and said I never ordered their service and in the end they refunded me 4 months of service charges.

As a computer geek I support shareware. And looking at the time this started I had brought a number of shareware programs for my new Apple. It would appear that one shareware author was stealing CC numbers for porn :grr:

Everybody just be careful.....

edited to add the word Adult... from their ads that what the company appears to be..... :scared:

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Interesting - I hadn't heard of the 'incitement' charges in the UK

which the article seems to say are used when no actual pornography is found, only credit card payments. I think that does sound a bit dubious. And that the doctor lost his job, despite having proof he couldn't have downloaded the porn at the alleged time, is awful.

[Dogmudgeon]

8. I'm a 47-year-old bachelor

I have been warned by two attorney friends of mine to exercise extreme caution around children, because --

• I live with my mother (like most serial killers on Court TV).


• I have worked as a computer programmer.


• I "frequent" the Internet.


• I am known to have met women on the Internet, and to have had sex with them. Or her (singular), as the case actually turned out.


• I have been online since 1988.


• I have had long periods of unemployment in the past five years.


• I am known to have attended several science fiction conventions.


• I am overweight. Everybody Knows that fatties are bad people.

In my favor, I don't have a porn collection of any kind, nor do I read comic books, but an aggressive DA would easily make me appear to be a sociopathic geek pedophile.

Of course, if that ever happens, I know I can count on my good friends on DU -- to make jokes about my being the victim of anal rape and being a "prison bitch".

So, if I'm not a child molester, how come I'm worried about it?

Ask Richard Jewell.

--p!
Paging Rita Cosby, paging Rita Cosby ...

[phrenzy]

9. Great Post..

Esp. about the snyde 'prison bitch' comments that you get non-stop on DU.

[wakeme2008]

10. LOL I meet most of thoses

I do not live with my mother or go to SF conventions.

But I do not understand the SF conventions thing. Now if you had said you were a Boy Scout leader, then I would understand....

[Dogmudgeon]

14. SF fans are supposed to be sexually deviant

The men are supposed to be highly sexually frustrated and live in their fantasies; the woman are supposed to be bisexual but avoid the men. (There's a nasty gag -- "by and large, sci-fi women are bi and large"). "Supposed" in this sense means "according to the stereotype".

And a recent study -- I've never seen the citation, but it's probably real -- has "proved" that there is a strong positive correlation between Star Trek fandom and pedophilia. I guess they found that an unusually large number of pedophiles were also big Star Trek fans -- or perhaps they're just easier to sting.

I haven't been to an SF "con" in years, but in a court of law, a junior DA -- intent on building a career -- would have a field day with my description.

It's a shame. I like children, and I'm good with them. I think I'd rather open a vein than have sex with one. But the unmarried man in today's world seems to scream "deviant"; scriptwriters and lawyers have taken special note of it.

--p!

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. It's a claim from the Toronto police

The first thing detectives from the Toronto police sex crimes unit saw when they entered Roderick Cowan's apartment was an autographed picture of William Shatner. Along with the photos on the computer of Scott Faichnie, also busted for possessing child porn, they found a snapshot of the pediatric nurse and Boy Scout leader wearing a dress "Federation" uniform. Another suspect had a TV remote control shaped like a phaser. Yet another had a Star Trek credit card in his wallet. One was using "Picard" as his screen name. In the 3 1/2 years since police in Canada's biggest city established a special unit to tackle child pornography, investigators have been through so many dwellings packed with sci-fi books, DVDs, toys and collectibles like Klingon swords and sashes that it's become a dark squadroom joke. "We always say there are two types of pedophiles: Star Trek and Star Wars," says Det. Ian Lamond, the unit's second-in-command. "But it's mostly Star Trek."

It's the type of oddball coincidence that's difficult to ignore. Even more so when you realize there's virtually nothing else, beyond their shared perversion, that links the new generation of child sex offenders.
...
Lamond told me what he told you, that "all but one" was a bit of hyperbole. However, the cops do stick by their claim that the vast majority of people that they bust seem to have an obsession with sci-fi. And that most of them seem to really like Star Trek. Whether that's the original series, TNG or Deep Space 9, remains open to debate.

http://importance.corante.com/archives/2005/05/30/hopefully_the_last_post_on_the_star_trekpedophilia_connection.php

[daleo]

11. Yes, the stereotyping can get pretty bad sometimes

When I was young, we were told it was wrong to stereotype. That idea seems to be less honored than it used to be.

[Occulus]

13. deleted

MORE stupidity :grr:

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. Awesome post: those on these boards who gleefully welcome prison rape

Are no better than rapists and pedophiles themselves. Seriously. It is a fucking sickness in our culture, openly and proudly flaunted. It's disgusting, and people need to be called to account for it.

[NYC]

12. The judge decided that Google must hand over info. to the gov't.

This is supposed to be an investigation into child porn.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/03/14/google-060314.html

[killbotfactory]

15. It's not related to child porn

It's about children's access to pornography on the internet. The government is trying to build a case that supports their previous failed measures attempting to censor the internet to "protect the children".

[NYC]

16. Thanks for the clarification.

I understood it had to do with child porn. I must admit my primary focus was on whether or not Google would have to turn over the information.

[Dogmudgeon]

18. There are several ongoing investigations, including pedophilia busts

They tend to be blurred together in the Press. There is, in fact, a major child-porn investigation going on, and this morning, a number of arrests/indictments were announced. This one was "the worst ever" ... just like all of them.

My main concern with this isn't over prosecuting pedophiles and traffic in kiddie porn (that's always welcome), but over rampant prosecutorial zeal and careerism. A large percentage of pedos actively seek help before they are arrested, but there is only minimal help available. Actual public concern over child abuse has always been secondary. But busting pedophiles is good for the careers of prosecutors and aspiring politicians, so there will always be something or other in the news about it.

It's no problem when we can get actual child abusers "off the street". The problem is that some -- perhaps many -- accused pedophiles aren't. People feel gleefully unrestrained in pouring out hatred toward pedophiles, but there is almost no effort put into solving the problem. Very little child-protection law has been passed, and social services are nearly non-existant in spite of the overall frenzy and superheated rhetoric. It is our Two Minutes' Hate which also absolves us, as a society, from any responsibility toward the child-victims, let alone children in general. And most legislation that does make it out of committee is scuttled by the Religious Right, for fear that it will "subvert parental authority" and inhibit the quasi-religious sacrament of whipping one's children. I'm not talking about the mild corporal punishment that passes for "spanking", but ritualistic, abusive "correction" as promoted by James Dobson and his fellow self-sanctified spankers.

In fact, there is another item in the news this week, where a teenager died recently in a "correctional" Boot Camp/Gulag (in Florida, no less). Most attempts to ban these practices have failed. Yet another news item is over a 17-year-old boy who received a long adult sentence for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. These cases are primarily crowd-pleasers for the crowd of thugs who vote to keep this system in place. So much for our concern for The Children.

The situation with Google is entirely different. The pretext may be a pedo investigation, but the purpose is to bring the on-line world to heel, seeking a potentially dangerous precedent. I'm pretty sure that there are several such cases now moving through the court system, with arguments being heard by technologically illiterate Reagan/Bush benchwarmers.

--p!

[Vidar]

19. Maybe we could get Gonzales a red dress to match J Edgar Hoover's.