As part of the overall strategy, the U.S. Marshals Service is launching a nationwide operation targeting the top 500 most dangerous, non-compliant sex offenders in the nation. DOJ also created 38 additional Assistant U.S. Attorney positions to devote to child exploitation cases.
According to the Report, since FY 2006, DOJ has filed 8,464 Project Safe Childhood cases against 8,637 defendants. These cases include prosecutions of online enticement of children to engage in sexual activity, interstate transportation of children to engage in sexual activity, production, distribution and possession of child pornography and other offenses.
DOJ outlined four distinct threats concerning child pornography:
- research indicates child pornography poses a danger to both the victims and other children;
- indicators suggest a significant increase in the proliferation of child pornography;
- child pornographers are becoming more sophisticated in the production and distribution of materials;
- organized crime syndicates are involved in the child pornography trade.
From 2005 through 2009, U.S. Attorneys prosecuted 8,352 child pornography cases, and in most instances, the offenders used digital technologies and the Internet to produce, view, store, advertise, or distribute child pornography. Unfortunately, the number of images and computers used to store and distribute child sex abuse images has increased exponentially.
Two programs are currently used by law enforcement agencies to identify IP addresses and catalog images. Since 2006 these two programs have identified over 20 million different IP addresses offering child pornography files (pictures, videos) on a Peer-to-Peer file-sharing network. Approximately 50% of these are located in the United States. Although a vast majority of these IP addresses had just one presumed child pornography image, over 60,000 had between 10 to 99 images, and 860 had between 100 and 299 images.
Further, the programs have identified 290,000 unique images representing some of the “worst” (movies and photographs of the most violent assaults, with the youngest victims) of the child sex abuse images.
It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of identified child pornography victims (69% in one data set) were abused/exploited by people familiar to the children. These people included parents, other relatives, neighbors, family, friends, babysitters, coaches, and guardians’ partners; only a small fraction of victims (4%) were victimized by individuals with whom the child had no relationship.
In terms of content, 21 percent of child pornography offenders had images that depicted violence such as bondage, rape or torture and most of these images involved children who were gagged, bound, blindfolded, or otherwise enduring sadistic sex.
Of greatest concern is the finding that organized criminal groups are becoming more prevalent in child exploitation investigations. Such groups include commercial enterprises that produce and distribute child pornography material for profit as well as non-commercial enterprises that produce and distribute child pornography images not for material gain, but to fuel the group members’ common sexual interest in minors.
The Report outlines an impressive list of resources DOJ utilizes to combat child pornography. The involvement of one powerful non-governmental organization, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [NCMEC], remains central to the Department's efforts. As advocates for victims of child pornography, we have long believed, and continue to believe, that the detection, investigation and prosecution of child pornography offenses is solely a government responsibility. No private organization or entity, no matter how well-meaning or well-funded, should have any official or unofficial role in this essential governmental mission.
For far too long, technology industry lobbyists have thwarted any effort to reign-in an online world which is seemingly beyond any regulation or oversight. According to the DOJ Report, "the lack of Internet regulation has restricted law enforcement investigations and assisted offenders in committing child pornography offenses" and "the lack of Internet Service Provider regulations, including but not limited to, reporting child pornography, responding to law enforcement inquiries, and retaining customer IP addresses, IP logs, and other subscriber information, have hampered law enforcement investigations."
One serious impediment to timely effective law enforcement investigations is that "there is no federal statute or regulation requiring providers to keep user IP information for any length of time, or at all. Some U.S. providers only keep the information for a few days. In a 2009 survey of 100 U.S. Internet crimes investigators, 61 percent of the investigators reported that they had had investigations detrimentally affected because data was not retained; and 47 percent reported that they had had to end an investigation because data was not retained."
If businesses need to keep basic information about gun sales, then Internet service providers should be required to keep some basic information about pedophiles on their networks.
The government's last attempt to require retention of this information, the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act of 2007 (SAFETY), was widely opposed by lobbyists representing AOL, Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp., AT&T, Microsoft, and Yahoo [the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association].
Groups like NCMEC, which is funded with millions of dollars by tech industry giants such as CA, Google, Microsoft, AOL, Qwest, Sprint, MasterCard, Yahoo, Adobe and ATT, should not be involved in any aspect of the federal oversight, investigation and supervision of the high technology industry which has knowingly facilitated the worldwide distribution of child pornography and ongoing exploitation of children.
Whether it's Harvard Law School's high tech sell out [Cyber Conflict of Interest - Harvard Law School's Berkman Center Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown] or the tech industry co-opting the regulators through technology grants and feigned cooperation, following the money in Washington is a sure way to uncover the many conflicts of interest which prevent real reform to protect victims of child pornography and online exploitation.
The tech industry already enjoys almost limitless protection from liability for third party content posted or transmitted on their networks. The least they can do is support legislation which helps law enforcement track down the bad guys.
Further evidence of a huge regulatory vacuum - no need for child porn when you can serve up an 11 year old prostitute on Craig's list. Victim's letter to Craigslist millionaire founder Craig Newmark goes unanswered. Read more here at CNN.com.
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