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."
Double-Edged Sword? (Score:4, Interesting)
Creepy pictures (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sex (Score:1, Interesting)
Homeland Security? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article...
"...prompted his team to alert the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which dispatched investigators to the alleged crime scene."
Um.. why would they have jurisdiction? I thought they were supposed to be protecting us from terrorists? Wouldn't the FBI be the ones working on this?
I sure don't know my legal jurisdiction rules, anyone care to explain?
~Z
Re:Creepy pictures (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the combination of the subject material here, and the shoddy (yet perfectly sufficient - let's not nitpick) reconstructions here definatley give me the creeps.
Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:5, Interesting)
I work with people who investigate the child sex trade. It's not a surprise that those pictures showed a Disney hotel, as Disney resorts used to be a popular place for child peddlers to hand over the kids they were selling. There are so many kids running around there, who's going to notice that a little girl in a yellow dress comes in with one person and leaves with another?
Disney knew nothing of this at the time, though they're aware of it now. They have a great security team, but they're focused on pickpockets and and the garden variety perverts who want to cop a feel on Snow White, not child traders.
Child porn is a dirty business, perhaps the dirtiest. The people responsible probably get some perverse pleasure from trading their sex toys at a place like Disneyland.
Then again, one thing DHS has done right over the last 18 months is arrest and dispose of over 3,000 of the bastards who trade in kids. It's just too bad disposal only consists of deportation or detention. If any crime deserves the death penalty, sexual abuse of children is it.
(Yeah, I take it personally. I have a nine-year old daughter. If you'd seen what these bastards do with kids, you'd scratch their names on a few bullets, too.)
Sorry about the rant. But this subject touched a nerve or two.
Tried this in Australia (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Having seen the photos... (Score:2, Interesting)
Child "super model" sites (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I'm not trying to go "OMG KILL IT WITH FIRE!" here, but I think the law needs to be refined a bit to take this exploit out of it. I don't want it to become illegal to have a picture of your family nude (Hell my aunt has some of me and my cousin in the bath completely naked she brings out at "big" birthdays to embrass us both), but these sites are clearly ment to whack off too, it's plain disturbing yet totally legal.
Re:Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Having seen the photos... (Score:1, Interesting)
I would suspect that most of the people interested in this material have kept hold of these pictures because the girl in them is pretty and fairly obviously North American. From what I recall there isn't really any sexual content beyond nudity, except for one photo, which hints that there is perhaps a more serious sexual relationship between the girl and the photographer.
I actually agree with other posters that the girl's face should be posted - that way she would probably be found pretty quickly. In fact, in a couple of those photos that were posted she was fully-clothed and they could release the full photos without any trouble if they so desired. I'm guessing this might be their next step?
Re:The girl (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but? (Score:5, Interesting)
The hard part is figuring out at what age to draw the line. Most cultures agree that 9 is too young, but the age of consent where I live is 14. Many other places set it at 16, 18, or somewhere between.
The odd thing is that although a 14 year old can consent to sex in this country, taking pictures of that act would be illegal.
If two people under 18 videotape themselves having sex, they could be considered guilty of creating child pornography. A very strange world we live in.
Re:Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem? They forgot to make it impossible to remove the black bars, probably by sending them out as PSDs.
Heres an even worse case of negligence:
Re:Creepy pictures (Score:3, Interesting)
Give it a rest (Score:2, Interesting)
Dude, take your thought crimes and shove'em up your lily white self-rightcheous ass.
Re:Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:4, Interesting)
If you were abducted when you were 8 years old and some old guy kept you away from everyone, taking your photo and molesting you.. Would you think murder was worse? At least the victim is dead.
It's.. They're both horrible, but a child who was abducted and molested has to REMEMBER it for the rest of their lives.
Chucky Cheese (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, since you believe sexually abused children would be better off if they were dead, do you think they should be euthanized?
Re:Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:1, Interesting)
No parole after 20 years, no sympathetic judge, no high dollar mouthpiece...nothing.
They are dead, children are safe(r).
Adults who sexually molest children should be summarily executed when convicted. Period.
Re:No punishment strong enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually there is a technical term - "of tender years" - law enforcement takes child endangerment very, very seriously if they're twelve or under. Once they hit thirteen hormones and runaway tendencies change perceptions quite a bit. I got to work on a case where a fifteen year old runaway vanished and it was very, very difficult to get law enforcement interested in the case.
The girl made it back home in one piece but with some unfortunate knowledge she didn't have when she left. The perp made bail then stuck a gun in his mouth a week later.
Re:Disney World and Child Exploitation (Score:3, Interesting)
The short answer to your question is that a whole heck-of-a-lot of people who are in jail are there for drinking/drug-related offenses and various forms of robbery -- and a vast majority of them have wives/sons/daughters. Even the murderers have family. So, to them, if you're a child molester or (to a lesser extent) rapist, you're pretty much at the bottom of their food chain, since you could potentially be raping their wife/son/daughter.
Re:Fine Line? What Fine Line? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay. Here's the problem I have with the tactics the Toronto police used here. Nobody's going to want to stay in the hotel room where these indiscretions took place. Who would want to sleep on a bed where a 9 year old girl was raped? The hotel owner's not to blame, so why should they be penelized?
You might say the hotel owner should take some responsibility to police its guests. Fine, but do you want hidden security cameras in the hotel rooms you stay in? Would you mind if the midnight desk clerk sat in the back room secretly looking in on you to make sure you're not doing something illegal? The technology to do this is very inexpensive nowadays, and video cameras can be made incredibly small and easily hideable. We don't want to give hotel owners any incentive to do this, but if this kind of police work becomes routine, I fear it will be inevitable. So much for any privacy in your hotel room.
Re:google this (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for illustrating my point on a very personal level.
As I said: there are people who wank to pictures of kids in catalogs. There are people who don't even care about the stuff you're demonizing, they want kids wearing Bratz and Powerpuff Girls playing on swings and climbing on monkey bars. So when do we outlaw ALL pictures of children because some pervs want to wank to them?
It's not a fucking "loophole" you moron. It's called freedom of thought. I realize that's a challenge to folks like you, so think of it like this: you just admitted you found these pics akin to "softcore porn." So when do we call the thought police to come haul you in for re-education?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an very important subject (Score:2, Interesting)
I think what the Toronto polic is trying to do is a good thing - BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH. These children are scarred for life. A life that's is incomprehensible especially for the average geek until you got to know someone who was abused and traumatized. Then the pain is REAL because the pain that the person faced is so deep and scarring that he or she cannot but help radiate that pain and misery. I felt the pain from a close friend of mine first hand. Just 6 months ago she committed suicide because she can't live with the pain and how it has scarred her anymore.
For anyone who think of this as a trivial manner, please read this entry of hers. She is dead now, but hopefully her words here will help people understand how important it is that we face up to these criminals and PREVENT them from ever committing them in the first place.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/comedotparvuli
that's ass-backwards (Score:2, Interesting)
On the contrary, most pedophiles are not child molesters. They have normal or heightened levels of self-control (heightened from having to control what they say all their lives).
In both cases, recidivism rates are much lower than normal. One also has to ask about the nature of the crimes - there are plenty of cases where the child gave consent in their own mind, if not in the mind of the law, and in these cases the evidence suggests that they are worse off if they are found out. If they did not feel raped in the first case, they often feel raped by the investigators who barge into their life.
Even in the question of Child Pornography itself, we have to ask what we mean by Child Pornography. When mere possession is outlawed, it is impossible even to determine what the police are talking about - "sexual assault" sounds violent and unwanted to us, but this is not necessarily so.
Consider this quote by former FBI child abuse expert Kenneth Lanning, "It confuses us to see the victims in child pornography giggling and laughing."
http://www.sexcriminals.com/library/doc-1076-1.
p. 16.
Baldur of Asgard
Re:Double-Edged Sword? (Score:4, Interesting)
Many allegations, no proof (Score:2, Interesting)
Fortunately for the police, they don't have to. By making even possession of CP illegal, and in the minds of the sheep worthy of death, they not only do not have to show any evidence, but the more evidence they don't show, the more the public believes them!
The same goes for the international child sex slave rings - very little evidence, almost none in the United States, and when a little evidence IS found, most of those child slaves are 17 years old.
Yes, the enemy is so sneaky one can't even find them! Very dangerous, indeed. Better give the police some more money to work on the problem.
Baldur of Asgard
Re:I have a better question, slightly off-topic (Score:3, Interesting)
When it comes to stuff like sex, people have basic urges and a child porn junkie is either born to be one, one led to be one by seemingly unrelated stuff (like general pop culture), or it might just be the repressed urges that everyone has (just ask Freud).
Making the assumption that the child porn makers do it for profit (no idea if it's true), they need to charge for the material to make money. P2P directly competes with whatever black market channels they use to sell their smut.
If my goal was to minimise the number of children abused, I would ignore P2P since:
1 - Aside from the gateway drug effect (which happens with every popular thing made illegal, be it good or bad), watching kiddie porn is unlikely to change your disposition. The perverts have plenty of other stimulation they can get, and I for one would rather it happens behind closed doors than with real kids.
2 - P2P is directly competing with the smut publishers for eyeballs. If the police focus on the for profit distribution, it will become very hard to make a buck off of making child porn because even computer novices will use it once the word gets around that it's fairly safe compared to the alternatives.
3 - It's extremely easy to monitor, so the police can keep easy tabs of what stuff is going around (so long as actions by other groups, like the RIAA and MPAA, don't push P2P to be heavily encrypted, like Freenet).
What's wrong with child porn? (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm not saying it's right. I don't use it myself. I'm just asking... why is there this kneejerk assumption that it's "evil", when there is absolutely no scientific evidence (that I'm aware of) that consensual sexual activity with "minors" causes harm?
False Positives (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Most hotel rooms are architected the same.
2. Furniture and electrical fittings in almost all hotel rooms seems to come from the same small handful of suppliers.
3. Same goes for bed linens.
Since the US is so huge, this means that there are potentially hundreds or thousands of matches for any set of hotel-room pictures.
So yeah, it may narrow the search space a little, and in this case maybe it's evident that it was Disney, but in the general case you won't learn much unless there are some exterior shots in the photo series. Therefore such information should be treated as far from conclusive.