Computer-Edited Photos Lead To Child-Porn Locale 806
Leilah writes "Toronto police have found a new application for computerized photo editing. The police released edited photos on Feb. 3 from a series of child pornography pics in an attempt to locate where the photos may have been taken. Two days later, they have identified the Port Orleans hotel in Disney World as being the location. This seems to be the first time photo editing has been used in law enforcement this way and strikes an interesting line between protecting the victims and being able to get public tips. It looks like it may be used quite heavily in the future given this success."
Re:Double-Edged Sword? (Score:2, Insightful)
Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly that's no different then sending out 'awards' to criminals and when they show up, arresting them.
There is no 'interesting line' between privacy and law enforcement. Law Enforcementis paid to lie to GET the 'bad guy'. And anyone that says sexually assaulting a 9 year old girl (or boy) isn't bad needs to post their home address.... so that that tip can be forwarded onto the appropriate authorities (or anyone else that owns a baseball bat).
Privacy of the victim is 100%, assuming they didn't include a 'thumbnail' of the original image embedded in the jpg.
Sad commentary on /. (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting question arises though. How did they know that it was all the same scene? What if the kid was abducted, or moved around?
To the guy who blamed all of the jokes on Linux use... you must be new here
Re:Double-Edged Sword? (Score:5, Insightful)
*Shudder* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Creepy pictures (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now wait a minute! (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I correct, Mr. Anti-Open-Source Person?
Re:Sad commentary on /. (Score:5, Insightful)
New worst job in technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Creepy pictures (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It still isn't proof (Score:5, Insightful)
It's being used as a tool to determine a location where the criminal act might have occurred. Now they can look for surveillance tapes, talk with hotel personnel, etc. to determine who was there with the victim.
This is no more "evidence" than a person calling Silent Observer and saying "I saw Mr. X with a little girl at the Acme Hotel" would be. It's a lead. Nothing more. Don't make it out to be something it's not.
p
Re:Yes, but? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever spent time relating to a nine-year-old child? They dont know what the hell they're doing. If they did, we'd let them vote, drink and buy property, as well as give their consent to engage in sexual activity. But they don't. Thats why we love them and protect them instead of subjecting them to situations that will give them nightmares as their lives progress.
People who believe like you do want it both ways. You want both to be able to manipulate children into doing things they don't understand, and at the same time you want to call it "consent" because they said "ok" when you asked them if they wanted candy and led them away to your house of pain. Or maybe that's not really you, just the guys you're defending... in either case you seriously need to re-examine what it means to hurt another.... and stay to your own kind until you find the right answer.
TW
Re:Fark. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:5, Insightful)
And anyone that says sexually assaulting a 9 year old girl (or boy) isn't bad needs to post their home address.... so that that tip can be forwarded onto the appropriate authorities (or anyone else that owns a baseball bat).
You fucking moron. Here's an address for you:
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20520
There you go. I promise a child abuser lives there. Looks a bit like a monkey. Go nuts with your damn baseball bat.
Vigilante justice is WRONG. Vigilante justice is NOT JUSTICE. Suggesting it in response to child abuse just makes you look like yet another flaming THINK OF THE CHILDREN panic attack kneejerker.
I fully support using these measures to track down sex offenders and bring them to justice. But I'd rather they go free than we throw away the right to due process.
I know! (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't impinge rights + helps protect children... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a great use of technology by government, and I'm suprised many people are commenting against it.
Law enforcement isn't editing people *into* pictures, they are removing the victims so that the public can help determine where the crime took place.
They see the child in the arcade, edit it so the public sees just the arcade. Someone recognizes it, and then they know exactly where to go next. A very elegant solution when public places are shown in the picture set.
If this makes criminals more wary about taking pictures...well...good. If all they can take is sick pictures against a vanilla background, well I think that would cause less people to be interested in them...so good.
Re:Fark. (Score:3, Insightful)
The quality of the editing job, since the better it is, the greater privacy the victim will have.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad commentary on /. (Score:2, Insightful)
RANT
Most of the off-handed comments that are joking about the story seem to be due to a lack of maturity in regards to talking about the subject matter. I personally find it offensive and disgusting that so many people can make light of such abuse.
Where is the intelligent discussion? Right, I forgot where I am. It seems like most people here don't handle real-world issues very well. This isn't intended as a troll or flamebait, but if you want to think it is, be my guest.
I encourage you, the jokers, to actually discuss the story topic and not make barely-related jokes about how bad the photo edit was or how the whole thing would have been ok to you if it were a young boy getting on with an older woman. The whole point isn't to demonstrate 1337 photoshop sk1lz. It's to help police to track down sexual and violent offenders that happened to document their damage..
Re:Fark. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Creepy pictures (Score:5, Insightful)
If a quick 5 minute clone does the job, I don't see a need to perfect the image.
I can't believe how bent everyone is getting over the quality. If you think you can do a better job, go ahead and volunteer. I for one would not want to look at the originals.
Re:Fruition? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are born in say 1980, and somebody is born in 1984, then when you are 20, there is a good chance that other person (at 16) is sexually attractive, just as they would have been if you were born in 1984 too. It doesn't matter if you fancy him/her, it doesn't matter if you kiss each other. Just don't fucking fuck, abuse, assault or harrass them.
'course ages of consent are different in different countries. Whether a 16-year old is capable of entering a meaningful sexual relationship with, say, a 20 year old seems to be a matter of debate. There could be a difference between intent to shag for fun for one partner, and normal teenage experimentation for the other. That can cause problems, but then two 16 year olds can have very different attitudes towards sex, and somebody is going to feel hurt then too. Its really a matter of whether a persons actions could be considered to be torture or likely to cause distress and unreasonable feelings of self shame in the other. I say unreasonable because I could feel ashamed if I pull an ugly bird in a nightclub but that is my own fault
But laws tend to be black and white so just act according to the most limited of the letter of the law and your own moral values.
Re:Usefulness (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet her parents would love it too.
Even if they found her, not only would it make her life a nightmare, she probably wouldn't be able to help them anyway.
Even if she hadn't repressed the memory completely, she still wouldn't be able to give them enough useful information to find the person that did it.
A good friend of mine, and her little sister were molested by their father. The older one had repressed the memory and believed it had never happened to her (This is true, I know what her reaction was when she found out that it did happen, and she's still screwed up now). Her little sister told their mother, and while charges were being filed, etc. the local newspaper decided to print a nice story about the man that molested his daughter. Not only did it (more than likely) screw her up for life, they had to move 120 miles away to get rid of the embarassment of her peers.
Cases like these are *very* sensitive and have to be handled with a lot of foresight. The privacy of that poor little girl is much more important than catching the guy that did this to her.
You can bitch and moan all you want about it, but I've witnessed what this does to people firsthand, and it isn't right.
Re:Fark. (Score:2, Insightful)
Who do you choose:
1. The person most qualified to do a wonderful editing job.
2. The person most qualified to view the original images.
Re:Fark. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:1, Insightful)
If any crime deserves the death penalty, sexual abuse of children is it.
I don't understand this attitude. Surely murder is worse? At least the children are alive. But even criminals in prison consider murder to be nothing compared with child abuse. Why is this?
Re:No punishment strong enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Bein attracted to children ISN'T a problem. The girl next door to me is 14 and VERY hot (I'm in the UK she's legal in two years). I'll freely admit (on Slashdot), I've looked at her chest as she walked past, didn't get caught and got a little giggle out of it at best. Is this a problem? Does that make me a child molester?
Alot of people are attracted to underage girls (usually catholic school girls is the best example), this is perfectly acceptable and does no one ANY harm. They wank thinking of a little girl rather than some 18 year old bomb shell air brushed to fuck.
The problem comes when they act upon it against the consent of the child. The same applies to everything sexual. If you don't act upon it, it's not a problem. Hell you could go as far as to steal a pair of her panties and it still wouldn't be a major problem(as long as it didnt go any further and you weren't caught ( I know in my time I've nabbed a few pairs of panties from very hot friends/friends mothers, it's nothing too bad).
The problem comes when you add together the mindset of a rapist and an attraction to children.
Re:Fark. (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to bring you such bad news, but you're seeing things that don't exist.
Re:Double-Edged Sword? (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem is that government control Zealots may try to muddy the water by invoking kiddy porn to justify their attempts to regulate everything.
LK
Re:Sex (Score:3, Insightful)
My great grandmother was 14 when she was married, to a guy who was in his mid 30's no less, however this wasn't frowned upon, basically because there was an elegable 18 year old batchelor drought around the time with pesky wars thinning out the numbers and because my great grandfather had a stable job and could provide for her.
Child molestors are differnent in that they are attracted to prepubescent girls (or boys). Child porn laws are a crock and need revising, if not to avoid stupid situations where boyfriends are charged for taking photos of their girlfriends.
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:3, Insightful)
-
So the question is, if a child is being held as a sex slave, would they really care if their rights are being trampled while being rescued?
Not to dismiss the usefullness of what has been done with the photos released, but you're asking the wrong question here. The right question is: do we want to release those photos to the mass public so the girl's forever recognized as the victim of a sex crime? If she's been abused as a sex slave we want to rescue her and give her a normal life, not one where she knows she can never go out in public because she'll be recognized and humiliated because of her past.Re:No punishment strong enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, yes. The "I've done it, and I'm not bad, so it must not be a bad thing" theory of ethics.
Or is it simply, "It's ok, because I didn't get caught." ?
Because it's actually kind of sick. If you had been caught, I'm sure the women would have been pretty upset by it.
Evil qualified (Score:4, Insightful)
Molestation is the objectification and probable physical harm of someone nowhere near old enough to willing participate in consensual sex. I say harm because this isn't a sexual act exactly, its more the molester going through some ritual meant to undo some childhood harm they suffered - the fear and suffering of the victim is often the goal.
When I type evil I was thinking of the case described to me by the state patrol guys - a nine year old girl bound, suspended from the ceiling, and penetrated orally, analy, and vaginally.
Take a minute and imagine how that girl is going to feel when she is eighteen and wanting a normal relationship. She'll either be completely unable to interact with a man in any fashion, or she'll have no boundaries at all. She has been robbed of something that can never be replaced and the harm will never, ever be undone.
Re:Sad commentary on /. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always thought laughter was related to fear: it is generally a reaction to the unknown/unexpected, it is extremely communicable, and even the facial expressions and sounds of laughter and fear are actually quite similar. If I was going into psychology I would probably study this relationship myself.
Re:Cops that edited these Pictures... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But rewarding to help put them away (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't punish someone for being mentaly ill. It doesn't make sence.
I have a better question, slightly off-topic (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet here we that is clearly not the case, and in fact they are employing advanced technologies to enforce the law and protect people all over, even using the public to help them. I wonder if those sort of complaints mentioned above will cease, or will this article quickly get forgotten in the next round of timothy-posted pro-piracy articles?
Just askin'.
Re:PRecisely (Score:1, Insightful)
And if there's a privacy concern with that, then I guess the whole kidnapped/missing person methodology needs to be scrapped.
Re:Sad commentary on /. (Score:3, Insightful)
But none of these posters are in a stressful situation, which is what makes their jokes so ghoulish.
Re:No punishment strong enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that's what they, your students in your computer forensics class from your local state patrol child endangerment squad, believed. However, they would probably also tell you if you asked that people go crazy at the full moon. It's a well-cherished myth that still gets trotted out but the problem is that actual examination of the evidence dispels it.
And that is a myth that persists even though they (the law enforcement personnel) get no particular benefit from believing it. From having seen the way my local law enforcement handled their suspicions of child endangerment, I can tell you how they benefit from believing myths such as "no child abuser can ever be cured" and "you can always tell an abuser because they're in denial about being abusers" -- it removes a lot of the painful ambiguity from the job. They don't have to try and distinguish the guilty from the innocent -- everyone who comes under suspicion must be guilty. They don't have to preserve the rights of the innocent -- only the victim is innocent; everyone else is guilty. They don't have to try and sort out the redeemable from the scum -- everyone who's guilty is scum, and everyone is guilty.
You're telling us what you think is the whole truth, but you got it from only one source, and a source with a heavily vested interest. I think if you checked actual statistics on recidivism of child sexual abusers you'd find contradiction for your assertion that only locking up all offenders forever can make children safe.
Re:Cops that edited these Pictures... (Score:3, Insightful)
you're 100% right. they certainly do it all the time.
Re:Thought crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Double-Edged Sword? (Score:2, Insightful)
Rape and execution (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality the number is much larger than 50%. We have a unpleasant choice between sex criminals repeat offending and turning lots of our sex criminals into murders.
sorry, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Homeland Security? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not the original poster, but perhaps I can try.
What if the "molester" was innocent, hrm? What if it was just a big misunderstanding? What would occur then?
Don't believe that could happen? Okay, then imagine this: you get a divorce and your spouse loses custody of the children. Angry, (s)he starts spreading rumors. Maybe sets you up, or plants evidence. When the bat-wielding mob of vigilantes comes knocking at your door, what would you say then?
Human beings aren't rational. That's why we have a justice system. People accused of a crime get to see the evidence against them, and defend themselves. If their defense does not hold up then "the People," in the form of a Jury, will convict them.
Due process is about defending the rights of the innocent, not protecting the guilty.
Simple: it's entertaining. You know what else is entertaining? War movies. Crime dramas. Holocaust films. Scarface was a great movie. Maybe we should all be a bit more like Tony Montana?
Really, it's a ridiculous argument. It says a little about human nature alright, and the stories we find interesting, but nothing about whether vigilantism is right or wrong.
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument is stupid. If a murder took place in your hotel, then by golly your hotel will be all over the papers the next day. If a crazy man goes balistic with a gun in your store, then by golly your store will be all over the papers the next day. Similary, if shifty things like this occurs in your establishment and it gets found out, the press will know. Thats how the cookie crumbles, it's not your fault at all, but it's part of the many risks of running a business.
free speech (Score:2, Insightful)
Child porn law's are absurd. The only necessary law regarding sexual activity should be a ban on rape. I agree that adults that have sex with young children are sick. (Adults that knowingly lie to children or force them to do useless or harmfull physical or mental activity....as many public school teachers do....are sick as well) I should be able to own any pictures I want. Teenagers have sex with each other. They always have; they always will. Defining an adult as one over 18 when humans generally become sexually mature at a much younger age is wrong. If teenagers (not 18 or 19 year olds like legit porn sites define teen, but real teenagers: 13-17) have consensual sex with each other and decide to take some pictures and upload them to the net, anyone who wants should be able to download them. I wonder what would happen if some minor took pictures of themselves and a parterner engaging in consentual sexual activity, and years later is caught with the images? There are all kinds of cases where noone is harmed by so called "child" pron. Safe trusting consentual sex is a fun and socially benificial activity. Excessive conservatism is just going to turn us into a more regressive backward god fearing people. Yes....many teens are not ready and do stupid things. Often this is because conservatives have sheltered them from pron, education, and frank discusions about fucking. Many "legal adults" are also too immature to have safe sex. When society arbritrarily sets 18 as the age of consent, we are just encouraging both minors and adults to not take the law serously.
(even on slashdot its hard to speak out on free speech...when I defended the right to send any email your bandwidth would allow, I was accused of being a spammer...I would not be surprised if I were labeled a rapeist for defending "child" pronography)
Re:Sad commentary on /. (Score:3, Insightful)
What we are seeing here is a bunch of immature (censored) making a joke at someone elses expense because it makes them feel l33t, not a bunch of professionals bleeding stress.
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and by the way, Batman is not super-normal. He is just highly trained, highly motivated, and very rich 'ordinary bloke'. No radioactive spider bites, not from another planet, nothing. (Sorry, bit of a pet peeve of mine, this calling Batman a superhero.)
Re:Creepy pictures (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh god, I hadn't even though about how closely you'd have to focus in on the original images in order to edit them. I bet the poor bastard who had to do that felt like he needed a long, hot shower by the time he was done.
Overreacting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sad commentary on /. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever spent time relating to a nine-year-old child? They dont know what the hell they're doing. If they did, we'd let them vote, drink and buy property, as well as give their consent to engage in sexual activity. But they don't. Thats why we love them and protect them instead of subjecting them to situations that will give them nightmares as their lives progress.
Now I agree with you and the intentions of the law against statutory rape (which is what covers informed consent) and the like. Now I don't believe that something magical happens on someone's 18th birthday in the US or 16th birthday in the UK. The maturity required to give informed consent is gradual, and occurs at different times for different people. But the law requires an age to be set, so it quasi-arbitrarily sets an age. The fact that different countries draw the line at different places, but in roughly the same age range is a testament to the well-natured, but arbitrariness of any law drawing line between when someone is mature enough to make adult decisions, and when they are not.
Now here's where the fun begins.
In the United States we had a juvenile justice system. When a minor committed a crime, they were tried under a juvenile justice system. The idea was that kids aren't mature enough to make decisions, and as you said "Don't know what the hell they're doing." Also the kids are still young, so society can still "fix" them before they become an adult. Sentences were much lighter in the juvenile system, since society was dealing with kids and not adults. Another key component of the juvenile system was that all records were sealed on a kid-criminal's 18th birthday. The idea is that someone shouldn't be stigmatized and punished their entire lives for something they did when they were 12.
Then in the 80s, conservatives began to complain that the juvenile justice system was joke, and let repeat offenders out into society too early, and the sealed records harmed society and police. So under the guise of "We're only going to apply this to the hardest of the hard. We're only going to apply this to those that are almost 18," laws were passed that allowed kid defendents to be "tried as an adult". Upon conviction, these minors would be given adult prison sentences in adult jail. Society was scared of 16-17 year old black gang banging crack dealers, so the law was changed.
After the law was changed, the "adult trials" were few and far between. Were they in and out of juvenile hall most of their short lives? Yeah. Was it likely they were going to commit another crime in the future? Yeah. Did the defendents know what they were doing? Eh....maybe. They were going to be 18 in a year anyway. So society didn't have much qualms about trying these minors as adults.
Over the years since, society has pretty much gutted the juvenile justice system. Lots of kids are now being tried as adults. Lots of kids who never before committed a crime are being tried as adults. 10-12 year old kids are being tried as adults. In some states, kids can even be executed. [cnn.com]
Right now there's a case being tried in Florida [courttv.com] where a boy killed his grandparents when he was 12. He's now 15. If convicted, he will spend the rest of his life in jail. By all accounts, this kids was pretty messed up when he was 12. The kid was on Zoloft, for crying out loud. (I can't imagine how messed up he is now after being in police custody for 3 years.) The prosecution has been saying the 12 year old knew what he was doing, and killed his grandparents in cold blood. Furthermore, he knew it was wrong, and tha
Re:Double-Edged Sword? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it's quite so black and white... after all, homosexuality and lesbianism have lost their power to shock, so now semi-nude 11-year-olds are being used in advertising campaigns (e.g. Calvin Klein, etc.) Children are increasingly considered more exploitable both as consumers and as the consumed -- it's not surprising that people whose brains are wired that way are more exposed to the concept of 'child as sexual being' these days, but I still believe that anyone actually acting it out should be punished to the full extent of the law, and additionally that standards should be tightened so that advertisers would stop pandering to these desires, which helps create the climate for these attacks.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Double-Edged Sword? (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider closely some of the whacked flamewars that start on slashdot, then consider the effects where the cost of losing is life in prison rather than a karma hit
Statutory rape != child abuse (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:1, Insightful)
The same thing I'd say NOW to the handgun-weilding police that would come knocking on my door- "I'm innocent." I expect I'd get the same response.
When vigilantes who think you are a child rapist arrive at your door, you'd honestly expect a trial where you are presumed innocent, where you have the right to a lawyer and the right to an appeal?
Re:I have a better question, slightly off-topic (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, there ARE organised producers and distributors of child pornography. Organised crime makes a buck wherever there is something illegal people are willing to buy. These people are in serious need of incarceration, obviously, but I guess there's also quite a lot of perverted uncles/neighbours swapping their amateur abuse clips. Clips of things they were already doing, would do even if they weren't in possession of a camera. They are also in need of some legal-smackdown, but they aren't doing it for money.
I've been having arguments with people over the fact that they feel that downloading kiddy porn increases the demand for the creation of child porn and therefore leads to more kids being abused.
I see a giant, gaping hole of logic in that position (they assume it's a 100% commercial venture), but hoping for a rational argument when child porn is mentioned is pretty pointless.
On the other hand, using photoshop to edit out the victims from the documented evidence of their abuse and using the "cleaned" backgrounds to find out where it happened is a rare case of clever policework that isn't creepy or brutal... jolly good work.
Scary Thought crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
She turned that person into the police.
That person hadn't abused anyone. But recognizing a deviate behavior and 'correcting' it before irreparable harm comes to a child is more important than fixing it after the fact. (and even then, can you really fix it?)
Attention molesters, the message is clear:
If you have impure thoughts about a minor, do not look for help before it's too late. No, just go ahead and act on these impulses, because you're gonna get punished wether you do them or not. So if you're gonna do the time anyway, might as well do the crime.
Spoken like someone that doesn't understand. (Score:3, Insightful)
Trump it as a thought crime, fine. May you never experience your children being molested under the guise of 'free speech'.
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:3, Insightful)
The American Revolution only happend because Colonists were treated like second class citizens who were not given the same rights, nor were their grievances addressed like other subjects of the Crown.
It wasn't a matter of "England sucks, but let's not bother trying to fix it by ASKING. Let's just revolt!"
Franklin was not the only prominent American to bring grievences to the Crown through due process, but I'm not aware if Washington himself did too.
Re:What's wrong with child porn? (Score:2, Insightful)