4-25-2009 Massachusetts:
Team 5 Investigates Controversial Tactic to Stop Child Pornography
BOSTON -- Child pornography thrives from the brothels of South Asia to back rooms on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
A former high school sailing coach from Nantucket made yearly trips to Thailand where he set up a camera and recorded himself raping dozens of girls as young as 7.
In Gloucester, a mother used her cell phone to take pornographic pictures of her 8-year-old daughter before posting them online at her boyfriend's request.
These are the kind of people the United States Postal Inspection service set out to find when it became the first federal law enforcement agency to crack down on child pornographers.
But in almost a decade, Team 5 has learned the Boston office hasn't caught a single Massachusetts producer or distributor.
And some say the agency's good intentions have gone too far.
Team 5 Investigates has discovered the government is using the mail to target people and rack up convictions that, in the end, aren't getting to the root of the problem and aren't making kids much safer.
"It's like trying to clean up the ocean with a grain of sand at a time," said psychologist Dr. Carol Ball from New England Forensic Associates. "We need to go after the people who are producing this stuff."
John Kotsaftis is a 65-year-old grandfather who had no criminal record and no history of hurting anyone until he responded to a letter sent by a postal inspector.
"Do you think you were set up?" asked Team 5 reporter Sean Kelly. "Oh, definitely, "Kotsaftis said. "I'm fed up and I'm disgusted."
Kotsaftis' trouble began shortly after he bought a family nudist video from a Web site under investigation at the time. As part of that investigation, a postal inspector, posing as a child porn distributor, sent test letters to Kotsaftis as well as 200 others who did business with the site. The Postal Inspection Service wanted to see if anyone's interests would be peaked and if some people might purchase videos of children having sex.
"Some of those titles were off the wall and I was curious and I bought it and I admit it," Kotsaftis said. "Did you think what you were purchasing was exploiting children?" Kelly asked. "I didn't, no," said Kotsaftis.
But a judge did. He found Kotsaftis guilty of possessing child pornography.
"I think the government should be seeking out criminals but I don't think the government should be seeking to induce people to commit crimes," said Kotsaftis' attorney Robert Casey.
Kotsaftis is now required to register as a sex offender although he did not get any prison time or probation.
"Why go after a guy like that?" Kelly asked postal inspector Jay Stern. "What I need is just a reasonable suspicion that someone is doing something that indicates they have an interest in children of a sexual nature," Stern said. "That's all I need."
"Is your agency tricking people by doing this?" Kelly asked. "Absolutely not," said Stern. "The percentage of people who we investigate who will actually be prosecuted is very, very low."
Dr. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, said so is the percentage of people who actually hurt kids.
"Only about 18% of people who were initially investigated for child pornography suspicion actually turned out to have had a child molestation issue that the police could uncover," Finkelhor said.
"Why are you trying to catch people who don't have a history of hurting people?" Kelly asked Stern. He replied, "In many cases we don't know what we're going to encounter."
Some people who respond to these letters are serious threats to children. Sometimes investigators find significant stashes of kiddie porn inside their homes. At former day care worker John Blaisdell's house, postal inspectors found 25 of his notebooks detailing fantasies about raping and abusing underage girls.
"These are people, sadly, that see nothing wrong with the exploitation of children," said U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan.
But during the Bush administration, when prosecuting child pornography case was supposed to be a priority, Team 5 has learned 55% of the cases brought by the Postal Inspection Service were declined by the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts. Those cases were pushed to the state level where the prison sentence is much less. And in some cases, like Kotsaftis, nothing at all.
"If this is such a big problem, why has your office declined so many of these cases?" Kelly asked. "Because we look and see whether or not the federal interest can be satisfied with a state prosecution," Sullivan said.
"What's the point if it goes to the state level and all they get his probation?" Kelly asked. "Well, hopefully through probably they're getting some level of treatment," Sullivan said.
"Is probation enough of a deterrent?" Kelly asked. "I would say in most instances not," Sullivan said.
But the Middlesex District Attorney thinks it is. In the past two years, Team 5 Investigates found that only two people in Middlesex County went to jail for possessing child porn. The rest got probation.
"Why not ask for the maximum?" Kelly asked Middlesex District Attorney Gerri Leone. "In not every case do we need to incarcerate or commit a defendant," Leone said.
Only half of the Postal Inspection cases in Massachusetts pushed to the state level resulted in prison time ranging from three months to five years. While at the federal level almost all cases resulted in prison time ranging from six months to 18 years.
Despite the failure to arrest actual pornographers and distributors in our area, Postal Inspectors will continue to lure people to buychild porn.
"Do you think you're making much of an impact?" Kelly asked postal inspector Stern. "I think we're making a huge impact," Stern said. "If I could save one child from being sexually molested then I've done my job."
"Going after these guys who have a few images of pornography, that's not going to stop the brutalization of children," Dr. Ball said.
The agency's tactics have led to better success nationwide. In the past year, they tell us almost 50 kids have been rescued from people trying to exploit them. ..News Source.. by WCVB TV
April 25, 2009
MA- Feds Send Letters Offering Kiddie Porn
December 14, 2008
Department of Justice Announces Ongoing Global Enforcement Effort Targeting Child Pornographers
Strange, only 60 were arrested, strange because according to Vice-President Elect Biden, before Congress when he wanted the BILLION DOLLAR S-1738 passed, just before elections:
"Let me repeat that, we have new investigative techniques that will allow us to identify many of the people who are trafficking child pornography and we can go pick them up. A very conservative estimate is that there are more than 400,000 people who we know who are trafficking child pornography on the Internet in the U.S. right now. We can, with minimal effort, take these people down."
Humm, maybe he forgot to give that list to the DOJ?
12-14-2008 National:
Operation Highlights Increased Law Enforcement Cooperation Between United States and European Union
WASHINGTON – Today, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, speaking after a joint United States and European Union (EU) ministerial meeting, highlighted "Operation Joint Hammer" – the U.S. component of an ongoing global enforcement operation targeting transnational rings of child pornographers. The operation already has led to the arrest of more than 60 people in the United States involved in the trade of child pornography; a number that the Attorney General remarked was likely to increase. Thus far, 11 child victims have been identified through Operation Joint Hammer.
"It should come as news to no one that crimes against children have been an area of special focus for the Department of Justice, and an area of great success," said Attorney General Mukasey. "Through initiatives such as Project Safe Childhood, we have increased prosecutions of those who abuse and exploit children by over 30 percent in the last two years. Through a series of national media campaigns, we have made great strides in making parents and young people aware of the dangers. And most important, through cooperation with other law enforcement agencies such as our partners in the European Union, we have identified – and in many cases, saved – hundreds of children depicted in images and videos of sexual abuse."
Operation Joint Hammer was initiated through evidence developed by European law enforcement and shared with U.S. counterparts by Europol and Interpol. The European portion of this global enforcement effort, "Operation Koala," was launched after the discovery of a handful of people in Europe who were molesting children and producing photographs of that abuse for commercial gain. Further investigation unveiled a number of online child pornography rings – some of which hosted dangerous offenders who not only traded child pornography, but who themselves sexually abused children.
In one case, European law enforcement officials discovered that a father was raping his young daughters and offering a photographer across the continent an opportunity to photograph these sexual attacks. Identification of the father led to the discovery of a commercial Web site maintained by the photographer, which he used to sell the images of the sexual abuse of those children along with many other images of other children whose sexual exploitation he commissioned. Law enforcement has determined that the customers of the Web site were located in nearly 30 countries around the world, including the United States.
Eurojust and Europol brought together law enforcement officers from many of the affected countries, including the United States, to share information about possible customers of the Web site located in their countries and to coordinate enforcement actions against these child pornographers. With close cooperation from European law enforcement, U.S. law enforcement has been able to identify a number of the U.S.-based customers of the Web site. Further investigation into those targets resulted in the identification of a number of Internet-based trading sites dedicated to the sharing of child pornography. A number of the U.S. targets belonged to more than one site, revealing an inter-connected web of underground child pornography trading.
"Operation Joint Hammer illustrates the effectiveness of international cooperation and the speed with which we can move to protect children, identify those who prey on them and bring them to justice," said John P. Torres, Acting Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Those who produce, distribute and buy images of child pornography cause more children to be damaged. As a member of the Virtual Global Taskforce, ICE works globally every day to stop this from happening."
"This case is an extraordinary example of the good and important cooperation between U.S. and E.U. law enforcement. Together we have made results to the disadvantage of evil child molesters and to the benefit of a large number of innocent victims," said Max-Peter Ratzel, Director of Europol.
"The Internet has connected all of us into one world without oceans and boundaries," said Shawn Henry, FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director. As a result, cyber crimes present a challenge that can only be effectively confronted with strength and dedication exhibited daily by law enforcement agencies around the world working in close coordination. As today’s announcement demonstrates, we are making significant progress. We are proud to be partners in Operation Joint Hammer and I commend the many law enforcement personnel who contributed to its success."
"The Postal Inspection Service is proud to have participated in this multi-agency initiative," said U.S. Postal Inspection Chief Postal Inspector William R. Gilligan. "Through Operation Joint Hammer, those who used the Internet and the U.S. mails to traffic in child pornography were identified; huge amounts of child pornography have been seized; scores of individuals have been arrested, and, most importantly, many children have been rescued from further sexual abuse and exploitation."
To date, U.S. law enforcement, including federal, state and local authorities, have through close cooperation, filed numerous charges, and more are expected as investigations continue. Significantly, a number of the child pornography traders identified through this operation had been sexually abusing children themselves, sometimes producing images of their sexual abuse. Thus far, work by U.S. law enforcement has resulted in the identification of 11 child victims.
Operation Joint Hammer is the result of close coordination between the FBI, DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), along with European law enforcement, including Europol and Eurojust. In addition, numerous U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, as well as CEOS trial attorneys, have been handling the prosecution of the targets identified by these numerous investigations. ..News Source.. by DOJ
October 23, 2008
Making Punishments Fit the Most Offensive Crimes
10-23-2008 National:
Societal Revulsion at Child-Pornography Consumers Has Led to Stiff Prison Sentences -- and Caused Some Judges to Rebel
Are people who download and view child pornography -- but aren't themselves molesters -- as much of a threat to society as rapists or murderers?
The question, being raised by federal judges in response to tough sentences meted out to consumers of child pornography, goes to society's view of repugnant behavior and the legislative response to it.
The average federal prison sentence for individuals who possess, receive or share child pornography jumped to roughly seven years in fiscal 2006 from about three years in 1994, according to Justice Department data. In federal cases, the mandatory minimum for downloading images is five years in prison without parole. Defendants who download particularly lewd images, possess a large number of images or share some of them with others often get sentences of 15 or even 20 years.
In Arizona, the minimum mandatory sentence for one count of possessing child pornography is 10 years. Several years ago, a former teacher with no prior criminal record who was convicted on 20 counts of possession was sentenced to 200 years in prison.
These acts alone are disgusting to most people. But not everyone buys into the idea that they warrant two decades or more in prison. Federal judges around the country are speaking out against what they view as harsh mandatory and recommended sentences, spurred by Congress in recent years.
The sentencing guidelines for child pornography crimes "do not appear to be based on any sort of [science] and the Court has been unable to locate any particular rationale for them beyond the general revulsion that is associated with child exploitation-related offenses," wrote Robert W. Pratt, a U.S. district judge in Des Moines, Iowa, in a case earlier this year. In that case, he gave a seven-year sentence to one defendant, even though the advisory guidelines called for a minimum of roughly 18 years.
Some judges and other critics of the sentences say they stem from lawmakers' exaggerated reactions to societal alarm over very real problems. The crack-cocaine epidemic of the mid-1980s led Congress to pass much tougher sentencing laws for possession of crack, dwarfing the sentences for possession of the cocaine powder from which crack is derived, says Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who writes an influential sentencing blog.
Last year the Supreme Court said it was permissible for federal judges, who had complained for years about the disparity in sentences for the two types of cocaine, to give "reasonably" shorter prison terms for crack.
Similarly, the critics argue, concern over sex offenders is being stoked by television shows like "To Catch a Predator," which followed authorities as they captured individuals attempting to have sex with undercover agents posing as minors, whom they met online.
In possession cases where there is no evidence that defendants sought to abuse minors, several judges are giving much lower sentences than the guidelines intend, which they are allowed to do if they believe the recommended punishment doesn't fit the crime. They cannot go below a mandatory minimum.
In sentencing a defendant in July to five years in prison rather than the minimum recommended sentence of eight years, William Griesback, a federal judge in Green Bay, Wis., wrote: "The fact that a person was stimulated by digital depictions of child pornography does not mean that he has or will in the future seek to assault a child."
Some judges are making even more noise. In April, Jack Weinstein, a federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., threw out a conviction in a highly unusual manner. He made the argument that he himself had infringed on the defendant's constitutional rights by not informing the jury of the "harsh" five-year mandatory minimum sentence for receiving child pornography.
It is unclear whether most viewers of child pornography are likely to commit acts of physical abuse, some psychologists who treat sexual deviants say. Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic, says many of his patients have a "voyeuristic" interest in child pornography. "Absent any evidence that they have done something other than view child porn, I'm not prepared to conclude they are at a heightened risk of physically abusing a child," he says.
But Ernie Allen, who heads the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, argues the sentences are simply "catching up to reality." Hundreds of thousands of Americans currently possess illegal images and may be tempted to generate child pornography themselves -- by molesting children and taping the acts -- to gain acceptance in Internet groups whose members share images, he says.
The Justice Department, which launched an initiative in 2006, argues that this heightened acceptance is leading to "an escalation in the severity of the abuse depicted" and has made child pornography prosecutions a priority. Many such prosecutions in the U.S. now occur in federal court.
In fiscal 2008, U.S. attorneys' offices brought 2,211 computer-based child exploitation cases, the vast majority against child pornography viewers, who mostly pleaded guilty. That was more than double the number five years earlier.
Drew Oosterbaan, chief of the Justice Department's child exploitation and obscenity section, says that even if they haven't committed child abuse, some individuals who view child pornography undoubtedly "pose a threat against children." Mr. Oosterbaan says the Internet has led to an explosion of new child pornography images and cites studies showing that viewing them may empower people to act on their sexual interest in children. There is no consensus on how many of the viewers will pursue physical abuse, Mr. Oosterbaan says, but "if your daughter's camp counselor is using child porn, common sense dictates there is a threat to your daughter."
This perspective, of a potential for danger, troubles Troy Stabenow, a public defender in Jefferson City, Mo., whose critique of child pornography sentences has been cited by judges. "You shouldn't punish someone for something they haven't done -- it's not American," he says.
He compares the long child pornography sentences with those given to online predators who drive hundreds of miles to engage in sex with minors they met in online chat groups. The mandatory minimum federal sentence for those offenders is 10 years, while receiving child porn carries a five-year mandatory sentence.But under the guidelines set by the U.S. Sentencing Commission -- a federal agency tasked with turning legislation into rules that guide judges on sentencing -- child pornography viewers often accumulate penalties, known as "enhancements," that magnify recommended sentences for individuals who use a computer, have a large number of images or possess images of prepubescent children, among other things. As a result, the recommended sentences for viewers can easily be higher than those for predators.
In 1990, Congress criminalized the possession of child pornography, and later passed legislation to significantly increase penalties for these offenses. In 1991, a person with no criminal history who possessed violent child pornography images and movies and shared them with others would face a maximum of two years in prison in federal cases. Today, that same person could face more than 20 years, Mr. Stabenow notes.
"Imprisonment of at least five years for this defendant is cruel," wrote Judge Weinstein, the Brooklyn judge who argued he had infringed on the defendant's rights himself, in his April opinion. "Few jurors or others would send a psychologically stunted man who: had suffered vicious sexual abuse as a child ... had established a home and family with a loving wife and children ... to prison for five years because he repaired to a locked room in his garage to watch child pornography received on his computer."
The Justice Department is appealing the judge's decision. ..News Source.. by Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com
September 18, 2008
STOP "The Protect Our Children's Act (S-1738)" from becoming law! WHY? The SOCIETAL PROBLEM needs to be solved..
I've now had two readers who have miscontrued my position on S-1738 because they have failed to read the post through to the end. As a result this is for those readers: "A quick get to the point version of my position on S-1738."
The following is a more detailed reasoning: A few days ago in my commentary "Monday's Oprah Show - Internet Predators, How Bad Is It.. " I gave a few of the reasons, in essence, this alleged solution (S-1738) only looks at prosecution and incarceration of offenders. That perspective fails to solve the SOCIETAL PROBLEM.
The societal problem is, children are being exploited, abused, or whatever other word one wants to substitute there, and the societal resolution is to, 1) Find the perpetrators, 2) Prosecute them, 3) Incarcerate them, 4) Civilly commit the worst of them, and 5) Provide treatment for the remainder as they will be released back into society at some point in the future.
That is how you solve the SOCIETAL PROBLEM from the societal perspective. What you DO NOT DO is, stop with step 3, which is exactly what S-1738 does.
One point I want to get out of the way first is, S-1738 was introduced in June of 2007 by Sen. Biden, and the bill has gone no where, it has sat in committee. September 2008, Sen. Biden becomes Democratic nominee for VP of the U.S., all of a sudden S-1738 becomes a campaign issue. Draw your own conclusions.
Now, on to the societal problem, a few facts no one can refute:
1) Sen. Biden on introducing S-1738 in 2007, said, and I quote, "Let me repeat that, we have new investigative techniques that will allow us to identify many of the people who are trafficking child pornography and we can go pick them up. A very conservative estimate is that there are more than 400,000 people who we know who are trafficking child pornography on the Internet in the U.S. right now. We can, with minimal effort, take these people down."
If we believe Sen. Biden, and I do not dispute him, but why do we need NEW high-tech computer software that can track down Internet predators? What is wrong with the computer software currently used, its finding the bad guys?
2) If there are -more than 400,000 people trafficking- they are doing it through some Internet Service Provider (ISP). Like the State Attorneys General who worked with MySpace to remove registered sex offender accounts from the MySpace website, why cannot the ISPs of the 400,000 not simply close their accounts. Clearly if one is trafficking in child pornography that is not allowed under the terms of agreement of the ISP. No costs beyond a listing of the 400,000 and their ISPs.
3) Again about the 400,000 trafficking, obviously they are doing it through some websites. Here again, that has to be a violation of the terms of agreement of that website's ISP. Get the ISP's to close down such websites, and if necessary sue the ISP for permitting trafficking.
State laws place responsibility on hosts for accidents that occur when a drunk guest causes that accident (dram shop laws). State laws also place responsibility on host for injuries that occur on the premises of a host (premises liability). Why then is the government not making the hosts responsible for their guests' content posted on the internet, and for the hosts ridding the sites of the content of their guests? These hosts contribute a lot of money and include Comcast, Time Warner, etc.
4) S-1738 creates a host of NEW federal agencies or departments within federal agencies, the functions of which are already in place and functional within the states. Are these NEW federal divisions PORK? Or, are they precursory to another more hidden agenda. If offenders are NOT prosecuted in state courts, and instead, are prosecuted in federal courts where the certain outcome is a federal sentence in a federal prison (the Bureau of Prisons), and mandating civil commitment hearings and possible commitment. Internment is a goal of the SMART Office.
There seems to be a push to do everything on the federal level which is not necessary.
Accordingly, because S-1738 was Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 862. it could be voted on at anytime. I am urging everyone to contact their Senator and ask that --S-1738 NOT PASS-- because it fails to solve the SOCIETAL PROBLEM.
Contact your Senators NOW..
By E-mail :
CLICK http://www.senate.gov/ to find your senator. When you find your senator click on "Web Form" below name, and e-mail your letter to have your voice heard.
By Calling them:
Tell them to VOTE NO on Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act. And be sure to tell them why (See above).
By Writing them:
Use the address provided in their contact information.
Whether you choose to write a letter, fax, telegram or e-mail, use the following sample letter, or make changes using your own ideas.
----------------------------------------------
Dear Senator:
It is of paramount importance to protect children from Internet Predators, but it is more important to solve the SOCIETAL PROBLEM which goes BEYOND prosecution of offenders, and I am asking you for help. I want MORE THAN just prosecuting offenders, I want to solve the SOCIETAL PROBLEM!
Sen. Biden says, he already knows where over 400,000 of these Internet Predators are. Accordingly, we do not need all that S-1738 asks for, we do need to work with the states in simply going out and arresting these folks. Further, we need to have the Internet Service Providers close their accounts and the accounts of any associated websites. Each of the over 400,000 and the websites have addresses somewhere in the states, have these addresses given to the respective state Attorney General offices for their prosecution.
As your constituent, I urge you to STOP the PROTECT Our Children Act (S. 1738, Biden-Hatch) from passing. According to Sen. Biden who has knowledge of these 400,000 addresses, this bill should be amended to work with the states and go after the known 400,000 offenders.
(Your name here)
--------------------------------------------
How to Copy and Paste the Letter:
To copy and paste into your senator's web form. Point your mouse arrow at the beginning of the text that you want to copy;
Click your left mouse button and hold it down. Drag your arrow to the end of the text that you want to copy. Release the button. The text should be highlighted.
Now, place mouse arrow over the highlighted text, click your right mouse button once and let go. A new menu should appear. Select Copy from that menu.
When you get to the senator's Message Form Field, point your cursor arrow at the beginning of the message field that you want to copy into, and right click your mouse again and click Paste
Submit your form, it is that simple...
Thanks, you have helped by doing this.
September 15, 2008
Monday's Oprah Show - Internet Predators, How Bad Is It..
9-14-2008 National:
On Monday September 15 the Oprah show will be doing a piece on Internet Predators.
The real, but hidden, purpose of this show is to push a bill pending in Congress, S-1738, a bill originally introduced by Sen. Joe Biden, currently Sen. O'Bamas choice for Vice President in his run for the Presidency.
Since every bill has two titles, first the Political: `Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2008' and the Actual: A bill to establish a Special Counsel for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction within the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, to improve the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, to increase resources for regional computer forensic labs, and to make other improvements to increase the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute predators.
Now, given those facts who would ever think there is anything wrong with this bill?
Is there a problem in the definitions it sets up?
SEC. 2. DEFINITIONS. In this Act, the
following definitions shall apply:
(1) CHILD EXPLOITATION- The term `child exploitation' means any conduct, attempted conduct, or conspiracy to engage in conduct involving a minor that violates section 1591, chapter 109A, chapter 110, and chapter 117 of title 18, United States Code, or any sexual activity involving a minor for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.
(2) CHILD OBSCENITY- The term `child obscenity' means any visual depiction proscribed by section 1466A of title 18, United States Code.
(3) MINOR- The term `minor' means any person under the age of 18 years.
(4) SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONDUCT- The term `sexually explicit conduct' has
the meaning given such term in section 2256 of title 18, United States Code.
Effectively "..or any sexual activity involving a minor for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense," covers ANY type of sexual crime against a person under 18 and in some cases will conflict with a state's age of consent laws (generally 16 or so). In those conflict case permitting a harsher sentence than state law would have permitted before this bill.
This also affects the right of a state to legislate without federal interference (another 10th. amendment issue?). At what point will the federal government stop interfering with state legislatures.
What has been appropriated is shocking and makes one wonder if this bill is just fattening the pockets of federal appointees and enlarging the federal government duplicating what already exists in the states:
SEC. 107. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
(a) In General- There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this title--
(1) $60,000,000 for fiscal year 2009;
(2) $75,000,000 for fiscal year 2010;
(3) $75,000,000 for fiscal year 2011;
(4) $75,000,000 for fiscal year 2012;
(5) $75,000,000 for fiscal year 2013;
(6) $75,000,000 for fiscal year 2014;
(7) $100,000,000 for fiscal year 2015; and
(8) $100,000,000 for fiscal year 2016.
(b) Availability- Funds appropriated under subsection (a) shall remain available until expended.
Sen. Biden, in his speech introducing this bill in 2007, said:
The most troubling aspect, one that led to the drafting of this legislation is that we know where many of these people are and if we set the right priorities we can go pick them up.
Let me repeat that, we have new investigative techniques that will allow us to identify many of the people who are trafficking child pornography and we can go pick them up.
A very conservative estimate is that there are more than 400,000 people who we know who are trafficking child pornography on the Internet in the U.S. right now.
We can, with minimal effort, take these people down. But, due to lack of resources we are investigating less than 2 percent of these cases. Again, we are only investigating 2 percent of the known child pornography traffickers.
If the location of these people is known are these appropriations justified?
In April of this year when the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs held its hearing ars Technica covered the hearing and also pointed out problems that may be encountered with "fasle positives" which could ensnare innocent folks. That coverage is well worth your time to review.
In closing, assume 400,000 folks are captured, prosecuted in federal courts, and placed in the federal Bureau of Prisons. We all know those sentences will end with a civil commitment hearing which is required by the Adam Walsh Act, and may result in commitments. Commitments means folks need sex offender therapy.
Does anyone see ONE DIME appropriated in this bill for the costs associated with the after prosecution phase of S-1738 efforts?
Zip, zero, zilch. America, open your pocketbooks the government is coming.
eAdvocate
August 24, 2008
PA- Man picks prison over freedom
8-24-2008 Pennsylvania:
Defendant in child-pornography case volunteers to return to cell
A Girard Township couple volunteered to house a former Erie medical student while he awaited federal trial on child-pornography charges.
But neither the couple nor the defendant, Jeremy Noyes, were prepared for the storm of controversy surrounding the Noyes case -- stemming largely from writings in which, the FBI said, Noyes plotted to breed a colony of child sex slaves.
Noyes volunteered to return to the Erie County Prison late Friday after the friends he was staying with, 60-year-old Jerome Lynch and his wife, Barbara, received threats, Noyes' lawyer, Thomas Patton, said Saturday. Patton said he did not know the nature of the threats or whether police were investigating them.
"They indicated they were no longer in a position" to house Noyes, said Patton, an assistant federal public defender. Noyes did not want to place his friends in danger, Patton said.
Patton informed Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Paradise Baxter of Noyes' decision Friday, and she issued a warrant for Noyes' arrest.
Agents from the U.S. Marshals Service then went to where Noyes, 30, was staying on Gudgeonville Road in rural Girard Township and took him into custody, Patton said. He was incarcerated late Friday night, the Erie County Prison said.
Patton said Noyes' return to prison did not mean the defense was conceding that Noyes should be held in prison pending trial. Patton said the defense would be looking for other housing options for Noyes.
Baxter had freed Noyes on Thursday after finding the government had not presented enough evidence to prove that Noyes was a danger to the community. Noyes had been in prison since his arrest on the child-pornography charges on Monday. Baxter prohibited him from using a computer during his release.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian Trabold argued on Thursday that whether Noyes intended to carry out the sex-slave plot described in his computer records did not matter. He said the writings gave Baxter a window into Noyes' mind-set.
"I am extremely pleased that Mr. Noyes has been detained," Trabold said Saturday.
On Thursday, Trabold told Baxter in court, "You have a laundry list of chats that reveal his innermost thoughts, and they unquestionably center around the rape, torture, mutilation and humiliation of little kids over an extended period of time."
On Friday, Trabold appealed Baxter's decision to release Noyes. U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin is expected to rule on that appeal.
Patton maintained on Thursday that the FBI had uncovered no evidence that Noyes' plot was real or fantasy. He said the only evidence obtained so far indicated that the case was "unfortunately, a run-of-the-mill child-pornography-case."
Jerome Lynch, Noyes' friend in Girard, testified on Thursday that he and his wife did not approve of the material found in Noyes' possession. However, Lynch said they had known him for five years and had never experienced problems with him.
The FBI arrested Noyes at his residence in the 700 block of Brown Avenue in Erie on Monday. Special Agent Thomas Brenneis said he found exchanges of child pornography in Noyes' e-mail account.
Noyes was a student at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine at the time of his arrest. The school has since dismissed him.
The FBI investigated Noyes after a fellow LECOM student, who sought Noyes out on a hardcore bondage Web site, www.collar me.com, contacted them using a pseudonym. The woman, Noyes' former girlfriend, told the FBI Noyes was planning to bring a New Zealand woman and her 4-year-old daughter to the United States so that Noyes could begin breeding a colony of sex slaves on a farm or an island.
At Thursday's hearing, Brenneis said agents found writings on Noyes' laptop that praised Hitler and the notion of a super race. In his musings about his family of sex slaves, the writer spoke of obtaining superior DNA from Germany and Sweden. He also repeatedly talked of violent methods to discipline the children in the colony, including throwing them in a pit for disobedience, and methods of sexualizing infants and toddlers by exposing them to pornography and sexual abuse.
Testimony also has indicated that Noyes was stockpiling silver and owned vacant land in New Hampshire. ..News Source.. by LISA THOMPSON
Internet child-porn crackdown: Federal prosecutions soar
8-24-2008 National:
Just a few mouse clicks into the forbidden world of Internet child porn can transform an apparently upstanding individual into a federal prison inmate - doing a long sentence.
That's the harsh reality former KGO radio host Bernie Ward will encounter this week. The popular and prominent liberal voice on Bay Area radio for decades is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in San Francisco federal court for distributing sexual images of young children. The best the 57-year-old Ward can hope for is five years in prison.
Setting aside his celebrity status, Ward's case is no aberration.
Ward is ensnared in what is becoming one of the U.S. Justice Department's fastest-growing areas of prosecution. Child-porn crimes have gone from a rarity on federal court dockets to a phenomenon, with prosecutions jumping nationally from a scant 30 in 1995 to more than 2,100 last year, according to a Mercury News analysis of Justice Department data maintained by Syracuse University.
In the Bay Area, dozens of federal cases are being filed every year and the U.S. Attorney's Office is on pace to file a record number of child-porn prosecutions in 2008. There were just two child-porn cases filed in the region's federal courts in 1995 - an era when child pornography just began to proliferate on the Web.
Aggressive law enforcement teams - nationally and in the Bay Area - are policing the Internet. Typically, they are catching successful people - engineers, businessmen,
professors and lawyers - who are under the false impression that their habit is personal, harmless and anonymous.
But by downloading or sharing sexual images of pre-pubescent children, those who do so find out they are not sequestered by the privacy of their own computers and are shocked when they suddenly find themselves facing the law's wrath.
"Almost without exception, I find these defendants to be honestly amazed at the seriousness of their conduct as far as the system is concerned," said Alan Baum, a Studio City defense attorney who specializes in child-porn cases.
For some of those caught by the legal system, the consequences and public humiliation have been too much to bear. In the Bay Area alone, five defendants facing child-porn charges have committed suicide over the past two years. This year, on the eve of a court appearance on child-porn charges in the spring, one of the defendants, Los Gatos businessman George Halldin was found dead in his car inside a burning warehouse. Authorities ruled it a suicide.
Court papers show the alarming trend prompted the U.S. Attorney's Office to push for child-porn defendants awaiting trial to be put on electronic monitoring or even kept in jail to prevent more suicides.
This as prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers and others expect the number of child-porn cases to continue to swell. San Francisco U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello has made child-porn cases a priority, saying that catching people who favor such images is one way to stop potential pedophiles from doing worse.
The Justice Department generally has emphasized the child-porn crackdown, unveiling "Project Safe Childhood" two years ago and setting up a national child-exploitation unit that prosecuted Ward's case.
For the federal courts, child-porn cases are raising a host of issues, from concerns in the defense bar that prosecutors are casting too broad a net to questions about the severity of the prison sentences, which often carry mandatory minimum terms ordinarily reserved for violent felons in gun cases and major drug dealers.
"These cases are difficult," said San Jose U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who just this summer sent several child-porn defendants to prison. "Many of the defendants have no previous criminal history and have been productive members of the community, and often there are complex psychological reasons why (they) are interested in child pornography.
"At the same time," Fogel added, "the images themselves are truly horrible. Even passive viewers of such material help to make its production profitable."
On July 2, Christopher Burt Wiltsee's family and friends, including his wife, filed into Fogel's courtroom to show support as he faced sentencing for possessing child porn, found on his government computer at NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View. The case was a paradigm of child-porn prosecutions unfolding in courts across the country.
Under sentencing guidelines, Wiltsee, a 57-year-old Morgan Hill man, confronted as much as eight years in prison - and federal prosecutors were urging the judge to come down hard. "The practical effect of possessing child pornography is to stimulate the market in child pornography, which encourages things such as child torture and rape," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Fazioli told Fogel.
But as in most of these cases, Wiltsee's defense pointed to his clean record and family support, depicting him as a depressed man who'd get drunk and download some child porn in the midst of hundreds of images that for the most part were adult pornography. An apologetic Wiltsee told the judge the child porn streamed into his computer with so many other images he did not always know what he was doing.
'I'm horrified by those images," he said, "and I didn't look at them or dwell on them very much."
Fogel, however, noted that some of the images of children being "essentially tortured" were "at the extreme end of the scale."
The judge sent Wiltsee away for five years in federal prison. In meting out the punishment, he said he was puzzled why someone like Wiltsee would want to download such images, calling it a "great mystery."
That mystery is at the heart of most child-porn possession cases. There is little agreement whether defendants like Wiltsee are predators-in-waiting, or merely troubled souls taking a peek into the dark underbelly of cyberspace. Even psychiatrists, now frequently being asked to evaluate defendants for sentencing, haven't reached a conclusive answer. In some cases, psychiatrists describe the conduct as "pathologically voyeuristic" instead of pedophilia.
'It's a big, big question," said Dr. Humberto Temporini, a psychiatry professor and expert on child-porn cases at the University of California-Davis. "What we know is very limited to a very skewed sample because these are just the guys who get caught."
Federal prosecutors insist there is a connection between downloading child porn and preying on children.
"As a prosecutor, I don't really need to know why," Russoniello said. "For every one of these people we take down, we're intervening in preventing child abuse."
Experts say there isn't much variance in the profiles of child-porn defendants. They tend to be middle-aged, educated white males with no criminal history and seldom a history of being sexually abused. They get caught in a variety of ways - child-abuse groups monitor the Web for child porn, reporting some to the FBI. Federal agents also conduct stings.
Ward was nabbed when he e-mailed child porn to an online dominatrix, who reported the image to local police in Oakdale.
Once caught, however, there isn't much of a defense. The computer hard drive is all federal prosecutors need to gain a conviction, and child-porn cases seldom reach trial. "The elements are very easy for the government to prove," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor.
In Ward's case, his lawyer, Doron Weinberg, argues the radio celebrity was downloading child porn and entering chat rooms as part of a journalism project to explore the issue. But Ward pleaded guilty in May to one count of distributing child porn, admitting he sent dozens of illicit images via e-mail, some of children as young as 3.
To defense lawyers, the case underscores an overarching problem: The government may be coming down too severely on those who view the material while the producers of it, many in foreign countries, elude law enforcement's grasp.
"There is nothing about prosecuting the Bernie Wards of the world that is going to stop the East European exploiters from marketing this stuff," said Weinberg, who believes his client should be facing six months of home detention. "And I'm going to be begging for five years."
But federal prosecutors are urging a San Francisco judge to lock the father of four up for nine years, calling his conduct "amoral" in court papers filed last week. And that type of punishment is warranted to those who fight child abuse.
"The bottom line is that possession of child pornography is a crime," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "These are crime scene photos. Our hope is these prosecutions will be a deterrent and people will think twice about accessing this stuff." ..News Source.. by Howard Mintz
August 20, 2008
Cuomo, ISPs sign child porn accord
8-20-2008 National:
Five Internet service providers, or ISPs, serving New York have signed an agreement by the state Attorney General's office to rid their servers of child pornography Web sites.
The agreement also requires the providers to eliminate access to child porn newsgroups, a type of message board that can supply illegal images. LocalNet, Windstream, Wild Blue, Onestream and WINC Communications have joined America Online, Verizon, Time Warner Cable's RoadRunner, Sprint, Earthlink, United Online and HughesNet in agreeing to purge child pornography from their servers.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomol's office said it sent a letter three weeks ago notifying LocalNet that it was opening itself up to legal action if it didn't sign.
However, LocalNet President Marc Silvestri said because the company has been following federal policies, as well as has its own strict user policy, he "could not admit guilt where there was none."
"Our network has not and has never been alleged to be used for the transmission of sexually abusive images. It's particularly offensive to me to be painted with a broad brush," he said.
Silvestri said he only signed the agreement after the AG's office acknowledged in writing that it was not alleging wrongdoing and removed the threat of litigation.
However, an AG spokesperson said LocalNet signed the exact same agreement that the others signed.
"There is no difference from one agreement to the other," John Milgrim said.
Regardless of the disagreement around admission of guilt, the agreement is designed to make the Internet safer.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which regularly reviews and updates its registry of Web sites posting child porn, has partnered with the AG's office.
"We have seen a recent increase in the number of ISPs that are accessing our database of URLs known to contain child pornography," National Center for Missing & Exploited Children CEO Ernie Allen said in a statement.
A Web site, www.nystopchildporn.com, provides details on which providers have signed agreements and provides information on how to contact those that have not.
The agreement follows 2007 initiatives where Cuomo worked with law enforcement agencies to investigate sex offenders who had been found on MySpace and worked with Facebook to create safeguards protecting its members, especially children from sexual predators, obscene content and harassment.
The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP), which Cuomo sponsored in January and Gov. David Paterson signed in May, restricts certain sex offenders' use of the Internet and updates Megan's Law for the Internet age.
..News Source.. by Jodi Sokolowski For The Business Review
August 9, 2008
HI- Hilo man gets 3 years for having child porn
8-14-2002 Hawaii:
A 32-year-old Hilo man was sentenced to three years and five months in federal prison yesterday for possessing computer diskettes containing child pornography.
U.S. District Judge David Ezra noted Jed Abregana had a "terrible history of recidivism" and the harm to children from child pornography offenses was "profound and measurable."
Because Abregana was on probation for a prior state conviction for sexual abuse of a minor, his probation was revoked, and he was sentenced to 10 years in state prison with the possibility of parole.
U.S. Attorney Edward Kubo Jr. said the case originated from an undercover Internet operation conducted on the mainland. Postal inspectors and investigators from the state attorney general's office of Pennsylvania posted an advertisement for videotapes, which contained child pornography.
Abregana's twin brother, Jay, responded to the advertisement and sent the undercover agent diskettes containing child pornography. Agents recovered pictures of Jay Abregana and what appeared to be an underage male engaged in sexual activity, Kubo said.
Jay Abregana expected to receive videotapes containing child pornography in return for the diskettes, Kubo said.
On Aug. 28, 2001, authorities obtained a search warrant for Jay Abregana's home and found child pornography that belonged to both Abreganas.
Jay Abregana pleaded guilty to mailing child pornography to an undercover agent in Pennsylvania and was sentenced to 44 months in federal prison by District Judge Helen Gillmor.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service's child exploitation section in San Francisco, Hawaii County Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Customs Service were involved in the investigation. ..News Source.. by Rosemarie Bernardo
June 15, 2008
PA- Jury can't hear about prior offense in child-porn case
A complicated case, however, blend this into the story: When Bunty returned to the U.S. and Customs agents searched his laptop, Bunty claimed the search was illegal filing in theU.S. District court in Pennsylvania. That court just issued a ruling on that specific search, CLICK to read it (in essence, search was LEGAL due to his prior conviction on a sex offense). Now continue the story reading below:
6-15-2008 Pennsylvania:
Jurors won't hear about an East Petersburg man's previous sexual misconduct when he faces charges of transporting child pornography from overseas, a federal judge has ruled.
Patrick Joseph Bunty, 55, charged with one count each of possession and transportation of child pornography, will stand trial in Philadelphia on Nov. 12 before U.S. District Court Judge Bruce W. Kauffman.
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Bunty on Jan. 27, 2006, after allegedly finding images of nude young girls on a floppy disk and flash drive in Bunty's luggage after he arrived from England at Philadelphia International Airport.
One month before that arrest, Bunty pleaded guilty before Judge Emanuel Cassimatis to a corruption of minors charge and received 3 years' probation for an incident that occurred Sept. 28, 2004.
In September 2004, Manheim Township police charged Bunty with five counts, including rape and indecent assault on a person under 13 years of age, but all charges were either dropped or dismissed except for the corruption of minors charge.
Bunty was not required to file as a Megan's Law sex offender.
Bunty's jury trial was scheduled to begin June 2. It was delayed while Kauffman ruled on a series of motions, including defense requests to suppress evidence or toss the case and a motion from the prosecution to submit evidence of Bunty's 2004 offense.
Kauffman denied all motions Monday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle T. Rotella said Friday she was disappointed that Bunty's previous conviction and other incriminating evidence obtained from his home in a search warrant will not be admissible.
"But we are pleased with the court's denial of every one of the defendant's motions, as (the) government always believed they had no merit," Rotella said.
Customs agents said they discovered a floppy disk that contained "child pornography depicting prepubescent girls nude, posed in explicit positions" when Bunty's flight from England landed in Philadelphia on Jan. 27, 2006.
After a routine initial search, agents searched Bunty a second time after noticing that his name appeared on a national crime database. Customs officials then looked at the contents of the disk, which they found in Bunty's luggage, according to court documents.
Agents said the disk had six files on it that contained child pornography. Officials then asked Bunty to enter his password to unlock two laptops in his possession.
Bunty entered the correct password on one laptop but entered a wrong password on the other, which locked it and prevented agents from viewing its contents, according to court records.
Bunty, who was employed as a pharmaceutical consultant by BearingPoint Inc., was informed of his rights but was not arrested. However, customs agents confiscated his electronics equipment.
Authorities later found six images of alleged pornography on a flash drive that matched the photos on the floppy disk.
On May 17, 2006, agents conducted a search of Bunty's residence after Judge David R. Strawbridge issued a search warrant. Agents seized 26 items from his East Petersburg home.
Bunty was indicted by a grand jury on Oct. 11, 2007.
Bunty's attorney, Demosthenes Lorandos, has vigorously denied that the disk or flash drive belonged to his client. Since being charged Nov. 14, 2007, Bunty has remained free, posting $25,000 bail and surrendering his passport. ..News Source.. by PATRICK BURNS, Staff
May 21, 2008
Judges uphold part of a 2003 child porn law
5-21-2008 National:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld criminal penalties Monday for promoting child pornography.
The court, in a 7-2 decision, brushed aside concerns that the law could apply to mainstream movies that depict adolescent sex, classic literature or innocent e-mails that describe pictures of grandchildren.
The ruling upheld part of a 2003 law that also prohibits possession of child porn. It replaced an earlier law against child pornography that the court struck down as unconstitutional.
The law sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting, or pandering, child porn. It does not require that someone actually possess child pornography. Opponents have said the law could apply to movies like "Traffic” or "Titanic” that depict adolescent sex.
But Justice Antonin Scalia said the law does not cover movie sex.
There is no "possibility that virtual child pornography or sex between youthful-looking adult actors might be covered by the term ‘simulated sexual intercourse.'” Scalia said. Likewise, he said, First Amendment protections do not apply to "offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography.”
Justice David Souter, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissented. Souter said promotion of images that are not real children engaging in pornography still could be the basis for prosecution under the law.
The opposing side
The 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals struck down the provision. The Atlanta-based court said it makes a crime out of merely talking about illegal images or possessing innocent materials that someone else might believe is pornography.
In the appeals court's view, the law could apply to an e-mail sent by a grandparent and entitled "Good pics of kids in bed,” showing grandchildren dressed in pajamas.
In 2002, the court struck down key provisions of a 1996 child pornography law because they called into question legitimate educational, scientific or artistic depictions of youthful sex.
Congress responded the next year with the PROTECT Act, which contains the provision under challenge in the current case.
Authorities arrested Michael Williams in an undercover operation aimed at fighting child exploitation on the Internet. A Secret Service agent engaged Williams in an Internet chat room, where they swapped non-pornographic photographs.
Williams advertised himself as "Dad of toddler has ‘good' pics of her an me for swap of your toddler pics, or live cam.”
After the initial photo exchange, Williams allegedly posted seven images of actual minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
Agents who executed a search warrant found 22 child porn images on Williams' home computer.
Williams also was convicted of possession of child pornography. That conviction, and the resulting five-year prison term, was not challenged. ..more.. by Associated Press
The case is U.S. v. Williams, 06-694.
March 20, 2008
FBI posts fake hyperlinks to snare child porn suspects
3-20-2008 National:
The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.
Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.
A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of identifying who's using an open wireless connection--and whether anyone who clicks on a FBI link that contains no child pornography should be automatically subject to a dawn raid by federal police.
Roderick Vosburgh, a doctoral student at Temple University who also taught history at La Salle University, was raided at home in February 2007 after he allegedly clicked on the FBI's hyperlink. Federal agents knocked on the door around 7 a.m., falsely claiming they wanted to talk to Vosburgh about his car. Once he opened the door, they threw him to the ground outside his house and handcuffed him.
Vosburgh was charged with violating federal law, which criminalizes "attempts" to download child pornography with up to 10 years in prison. Last November, a jury found Vosburgh guilty on that count, and a sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 22, at which point Vosburgh could face three to four years in prison.
The implications of the FBI's hyperlink-enticement technique are sweeping. Using the same logic and legal arguments, federal agents could send unsolicited e-mail messages to millions of Americans advertising illegal narcotics or child pornography--and raid people who click on the links embedded in the spam messages. The bureau could register the "unlawfulimages.com" domain name and prosecute intentional visitors. And so on.
"The evidence was insufficient for a reasonable jury to find that Mr. Vosburgh specifically intended to download child pornography, a necessary element of any 'attempt' offense," Vosburgh's attorney, Anna Durbin of Ardmore, Penn., wrote in a court filing that is attempting to overturn the jury verdict before her client is sentenced.
In a telephone conversation on Wednesday, Durbin added: "I thought it was scary that they could do this. This whole idea that the FBI can put a honeypot out there to attract people is kind of sad. It seems to me that they've brought a lot of cases without having to stoop to this."
Durbin did not want to be interviewed more extensively about the case because it is still pending; she's waiting for U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage to rule on her motion. Unless he agrees with her and overturns the jury verdict, Vosburgh--who has no prior criminal record--will be required to register as a sex offender for 15 years and will be effectively barred from continuing his work as a college instructor after his prison sentence ends.
How the hyperlink sting operation worked
The government's hyperlink sting operation worked like this: FBI Special Agent Wade Luders disseminated links to the supposedly illicit porn on an online discussion forum called Ranchi, which Luders believed was frequented by people who traded underage images. One server allegedly associated with the Ranchi forum was rangate.da.ru, which is now offline with a message attributing the closure to "non-ethical" activity.
In October 2006, Luders posted a number of links purporting to point to videos of child pornography, and then followed up with a second, supposedly correct link 40 minutes later. All the links pointed to, according to a bureau affidavit, a "covert FBI computer in San Jose, California, and the file located therein was encrypted and non-pornographic." 
Some of the links, including the supposedly correct one, included the hostname upload.sytes.net. Sytes.net is hosted by no-ip.com, which provides dynamic domain name service to customers for $15 a year.
When anyone visited the upload.sytes.net site, the FBI recorded the Internet Protocol address of the remote computer. 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.
With the logs revealing those allegedly incriminating IP addresses in hand, the FBI sent administrative subpoenas to the relevant Internet service provider to learn the identity of the person whose name was on the account--and then obtained search warrants for dawn raids. 
The search warrants authorized FBI agents to seize and remove any "computer-related" equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any "addressed correspondence" sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements, and credit card statements.
While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise. On March 6, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Nevada agreed with a magistrate judge that the hyperlink-sting operation constituted sufficient probable cause to justify giving the FBI its search warrant.
The defendant in that case, Travis Carter, suggested that any of the neighbors could be using his wireless network. (The public defender's office even sent out an investigator who confirmed that dozens of homes were within Wi-Fi range.)
But the magistrate judge ruled that even the possibilities of spoofing or other users of an open Wi-Fi connection "would not have negated a substantial basis for concluding that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography would be found on the premises to be searched." Translated, that means the search warrant was valid.
Entrapment: Not a defense
So far, at least, attorneys defending the hyperlink-sting cases do not appear to have raised unlawful entrapment as a defense.
"Claims of entrapment have been made in similar cases, but usually do not get very far," said Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at George Washington University's law school. "The individuals who chose to log into the FBI sites appear to have had no pressure put upon them by the government...It is doubtful that the individuals could claim the government made them do something they weren't predisposed to doing or that the government overreached."
The outcome may be different, Saltzburg said, if the FBI had tried to encourage people to click on the link by including misleading statements suggesting the videos were legal or approved.
In the case of Vosburgh, the college instructor who lived in Media, Penn., his attorney has been left to argue that "no reasonable jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Vosburgh himself attempted to download child pornography."
Vosburgh faced four charges: clicking on an illegal hyperlink; knowingly destroying a hard drive and a thumb drive by physically damaging them when the FBI agents were outside his home; obstructing an FBI investigation by destroying the devices; and possessing a hard drive with two grainy thumbnail images of naked female minors (the youths weren't having sex, but their genitalia were visible).
The judge threw out the third count and the jury found him not guilty of the second. But Vosburgh was convicted of the first and last counts, which included clicking on the FBI's illicit hyperlink.
In a legal brief filed on March 6, his attorney argued that the two thumbnails were in a hidden "thumbs.db" file automatically created by the Windows operating system. The brief said that there was no evidence that Vosburgh ever viewed the full-size images--which were not found on his hard drive--and the thumbnails could have been created by receiving an e-mail message, copying files, or innocently visiting a Web page.
From the FBI's perspective, clicking on the illicit hyperlink and having a thumbs.db file with illicit images are both serious crimes. Federal prosecutors wrote: "The jury found that defendant knew exactly what he was trying to obtain when he downloaded the hyperlinks on Agent Luder's Ranchi post. At trial, defendant suggested unrealistic, unlikely explanations as to how his computer was linked to the post. The jury saw through the smokes (sic) and mirrors, as should the court."
And, as for the two thumbnail images, prosecutors argued (note that under federal child pornography law, the definition of "sexually explicit conduct" does not require that sex acts take place):
The first image depicted a pre-pubescent girl, fully naked, standing on one leg while the other leg was fully extended leaning on a desk, exposing her genitalia... The other image depicted four pre-pubescent fully naked girls sitting on a couch, with their legs spread apart, exposing their genitalia. Viewing this image, the jury could reasonably conclude that the four girls were posed in unnatural positions and the focal point of this picture was on their genitalia.... And, based on all this evidence, the jury found that the images were of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and certainly did not require a crystal clear resolution that defendant now claims was necessary, yet lacking.
Prosecutors also highlighted the fact that Vosburgh visited the "loli-chan" site, which has in the past featured a teenage Webcam girl holding up provocative signs (but without any nudity).
Civil libertarians warn that anyone who clicks on a hyperlink advertising something illegal--perhaps found while Web browsing or received through e-mail--could face the same fate.
When asked what would stop the FBI from expanding its hyperlink sting operation, Harvey Silverglate, a longtime criminal defense lawyer in Cambridge, Mass. and author of a forthcoming book on the Justice Department, replied: "Because the courts have been so narrow in their definition of 'entrapment,' and so expansive in their definition of 'probable cause,' there is nothing to stop the Feds from acting as you posit." ..more.. by CNET.news
March 9, 2008
Federal Prosecution of Child Sex Exploitation Offenders
December 2007 NCJ 219412
Abstract:
Presents Federal criminal case processing statistics on child sex offenses, including sex transportation, sexual abuse, and child pornography. The report includes data on case processing, such as the number of cases referred, prosecuted, and convicted. Defendant characteristics at initial hearing for the three types of offenses are provided. Data are also presented on changes in the number of defendants charged from 1994 to 2006.
Highlights include the following:
--A total of 2,039 suspects were prosecuted for Federal sex offenses in 2006, representing about 2.5% of the 83,148 suspects prosecuted in Federal courts.
--The main sex exploitation offense referred to U.S. attorneys shifted from sex abuse (73%) in 1994 to child pornography (69%) in 2006.
--Convicted sex offenders sentenced to prison increased from 81% in 1996 to 96% in 2006. ..Source DOJ..
