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Unprecedented: FBI Dealt Child Porn to Nab Criminals

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

The FBI seized and ran a child pornography service late last year as investigators worked to identify its customers, one Western Washington man allegedly among them.

Following a lengthy investigation, Nebraska-based agents raided the large child pornography service in November hoping to catch users who shared thousands of images showing children being raped, displayed and abused.

The Bureau ran the service for two weeks while attempting to identify more than 5,000 customers, according to a Seattle FBI agent’s statements to the court. Court records indicate the site continued to distribute child pornography online while under FBI control; the Seattle-based special agent, a specialist in online crimes against children, detailed the investigation earlier this month in a statement to the court.

The investigation appears to mark a departure for the Bureau and other federal law enforcement agencies aiming to root out child porn purveyors.

Historically, child pornography investigations stem from tips made to law enforcement, interactions with undercover officers posing as customers or reviews of documentation seized during searches of child porn clearinghouses like the one recently raided in Nebraska. While investigators are known to have posed as child porn dealers – a 2011 effort involved targeted emails to suspected pedophiles – it is not apparent that the FBI previously dealt child porn as part of a sting.

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Study Shows Children Accessing Porn At Age Six, Internet Flirting At Age Eight

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Photo Credit: opposing viewsA study has revealed the Internet habits of young children, and the results are startling.

The study found that many children start watching porn on the Internet at the age of six, and will begin “flirting” online when they are eight.

The study involved a survey of more than 19,000 parents. They compiled data about what sites the parents choose to block and those which the children have access to regularly.

They also found that about a quarter of children had at least one social network account, like Facebook, by the time they were 12 years old, and that they likely lie about their age when they create the profiles.

Around two percent of computer addicts were five years old and 17 percent were social media users by the time they were ten.

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How Porn Links and Ben Bernanke Snuck Into Bitcoin’s Code

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Photo Credit: CNN MoneyHere’s a little-known quirk of cyber currency Bitcoin: There are coded messages hidden in the ledger that track bitcoin transactions. Most are innocuous, but this week, the discovery of a malicious transmission filled with porn links set the Bitcoin community abuzz.

Bitcoin, a four-year-old digital currency developed by a hacker who still remains anonymous, is a favorite plaything of libertarians and cryptography geeks. It burst into the mainstream this year when investors took note of its wild price swings. One bitcoin is now worth around $112, down from a record high of $266 last month, but up from $5 a year ago.

At the core of the bitcoin network is a database recording every single transaction.

Bitcoin enthusiasts have long known about a technical loophole that allows people to inject coded messages into the database. The trick is typically used for pranks or harmless notes, but Bitcoin discussion boards lit up on Monday with the news that someone took advantage of it for a nastier purpose: adding encoded links that claim to lead to porn sites, some featuring children.

A technical analysis posted on BitcoinTalk.org delves into the details. There doesn’t seem to be much danger for the casual bitcoin user. The porn links are concealed in hexadecimal code, and a decoder is needed to translate them into English. In other words, you’d really have to be looking for it.

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European Parliament To Vote On EU ‘Ban On All Forms Of Pornography’

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Photo Credit: ALAMYControversy has erupted over next Tuesday’s European Parliament resolution “on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU”, meant to mark international women’s day, after libertarian Swedish MEPs from the Pirate Party spotted the call for a ban in the small print.
While not legally binding, the vote could be the first step towards European legislation as the EU’s assembly increasingly flexes its political muscle within Europe’s institutions.

The proposal “calls on the EU and its member states to take concrete action on discrimination against women in advertising… [with] a ban on all forms of pornography in the media”.

Kartika Liotard, a Dutch left-wing feminist MEP, is seeking “statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism”, including measures in the “digital field”.

The MEPs are also demanding the establishment of state sex censors with “a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls”.

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party which campaigns for internet freedom and has MEPs, warned that there is “a clear majority in favour of this report, much because of its title and a belief that there’s nothing odd about it”.

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Iceland Considers Pornography Ban

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Photo Credit: AlamyThe government is considering introducing internet filters, such as those used to block China off form the worldwide web, in order to stop Icelanders downloading or viewing pornography on the internet.

The unprecedented censorship is justified by fears about damaging effects of the internet on children and women.

Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland’s interior minister, is drafting legislation to stop the access of online pornographic images and videos by young people through computers, games consoles and smartphones.

“We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime,” he said.

Methods under consideration include blocking access to pornographic website addresses and making it illegal to use Icelandic credit cards to access pay-per-view pornography. A law forbidding the printing and distribution of pornography is already in force in Iceland but it has yet to be updated to cover the internet.

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Double Life of Top Federal Child Porn Enforcer Who Was a Pornographer Himself

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South Florida’s former chief of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has been sentenced to almost six years in prison on a child pornography charge.

Anthony Mangione, 52, offered sorrow but no explanation of his behavior when speaking to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra. ‘I’m pretty much a broken guy,’ he told him. ‘I feel like I’m in a hole eight feet deep with six feet of dirt on top.’

Mangione cut a plea deal in October to provide evidence against other child porn collectors he met online. Mangione ran ICE’s South Florida office from 2007 to 2011, a job that included numerous child porn investigations and oversaw 450 federal employees.

He even spoke out against child pornographers. ‘ICE relentlessly pursues predators who sexually abuse children, whether that abuse is physical or whether it is accomplished by exploiting their images,’ he said after the 2009 sentencing of a Wellington man for enticing boys online to take off their clothes.

He was a respected, 27-year veteran of law enforcement when he retired shortly after April 2011, when investigators searched his home and office computers. Up to 150 images of child porn, some depicting ‘extreme abuse of children’, were found in his position, according to federal prosecutors.

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Video: The Destruction of a Culture – How the Digital Age is Polluting our Children

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By Daily Mail Reporter. Girls as young as 12 who are posting images of themselves online wearing lingerie, because they want to ‘feel sexy – like Megan Fox,’ have become the subject of an award-winning new documentary.

Sexy Baby: A Documentary About Sexiness and The Cyber Age, opening in U.S. movie theaters tomorrow, reveals how a generation of children now gets their sex education from online porn, thanks to Facebook, smart phones and instant access to the Internet.

Following three young women, aged between 12 and 34, the film sheds light on how technology and pornography are shaping the sexual identity of young girls, something the filmmakers, former Miami Herald journalists Ronna Gradus and Jill Bauer, hope will be a ‘conversation starter’ for parents.

The film, a first for the two women, had its world premiere earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. It has been labelled ‘troubling’ by parents, who agree it ‘brings up important topics that require mass discussion,’ as said by one New York mother, Hedi.

Manhattan resident Winnifred, 12, features in the documentary and strives to emulate her musical idol, Lady Gaga by wearing fish-net stockings and midriff-baring tops. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s the trailer from Sexy Baby [CAUTION: sexual images and themes]:

Las Vegas Attempts to Cleanup X-Rated Litter but ACLU Threatens Tourists, City

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Photo credit: Moyan Brenn

Some tourists try to dissuade them by directing icy glares their way. Others stare, zombie-like, into the Las Vegas Strip’s ubiquitous video screens and light displays in an effort to ignore the pushy handbill distributors.

But some tourists accept the pamphlets and glossy cards that advertise all-but-nude exotic dancers. Then, more often than not, they toss the material in the trash. Or if a trash can isn’t nearby, onto the sidewalk — creating an endless X-rated litter problem that Las Vegas officials are now trying to clean up.

A new ordinance requires handbillers to pick up litter within a 25-foot radius on the sidewalk. But there’s a hitch: The law might run afoul of the First Amendment.

“If someone takes some material, regardless of what it is, and then walks down the street and decides to drop it, that’s the person who is littering. That’s the person that is responsible, not the person who gave it to them originally,” said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union.

Las Vegas police aren’t enforcing the ordinance yet. The ACLU has been meeting regularly with the exotic dancer businesses and police to talk about how that will happen, as well as encourage handbillers to help keep the Strip clean. The group has not yet challenged the law in court.

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