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The Independent reports that hacktivist group Anonymous, in a project named Operation DeathEaters, is calling for help in its fight against international pedophile networks, or what it calls the “paedosadist industry” and has issued a video instructing activists on how they can aid in the operation. The Anonymous project is intended to break what it says is a conspiracy of silence among sympathetic politicians, police and mainstream media to downplay the full extent of the online child sex industry. “The premise behind OpDeathEaters is to expose high level complicity, obstruction of justice and cover-up in the paedo-sadist industry in order to show the need for independent inquiries,” says Heather Marsh, an online activist who is helping to co-ordinate the operation and describes herself as an “old friend” of Anonymous. The Anonymous database, which will be hosted on the GitHub online repository, promises to collate cases from all around the world, cross-referencing connections within sub-groups including the police, armed forces, schoolteachers, politicians, media, academics and religious organisations. The database’s ultimate purpose has yet to be fully determined, but in the first instance the group says it wants to shut down the child-sex industry by “dismantling the power structure which held it there” and by “educating to create a cultural change”.
The group is calling on volunteers to help with the ongoing work, which has been divided into three steps. The first is about collecting “all the factual information,” second is to “share that information as widely as possible,” and the third step is “to set up an independent, internationally linked, inquiry into all the areas which do not appear to have been investigated properly.” Activists point to the muted media coverage given to a recent case in Washington DC in which Michael Centanni, a senior Republican fundraiser, was charged with child sex offences after investigators traced transmissions of child pornography to his computers in his basement. The case was not covered by The Washington Post or the New York Times, and was only picked up by a local NBC affiliate state and The Washington Examiner, a small conservative paper in the city.
According to the court filings, Centanni was found in possession of 3,000 images, many apparently filmed in his own bedroom, including one showing a man raping a five year old girl.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @04:26AM
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This group aims to gather "meticulously researched and clearly documented examples of high level complicity in the industry, obstruction of justice and cover ups to show the need for independent inquiries". If they do it the wrong way, they will fail at their stated purpose. But to do it the right way they must start sharing the actual evidence of child abuse: the pictures of children being abused. This will not be possible on github or anywhere else except for may be TOR hidden servers. But it must be done. The evidence of criminal child abuse must enter the public record. No one should be able to censor these images, especially when doing so would abet a child abuser of high social standing. Sharing these evidence images non-commercially would also destroy the industry margins, as only insane would pay and assume criminal liability when they could fire up TOR and get it anonymously, legally, and gratis. We must drive a wedge between abusing children and depictions thereof. We tolerate other people looking at images of murders, and we should do the same for people looking of images of sexual nature. The censors are directly complicit in the industrial child abuse. ~Anonymous 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @04:36AM
That's a detail that should have made it to the summary.</understatement>
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 26 2015, @09:16AM
This doesn't sound right to me, especially because perceptive hashes may in the hand of computer experts yield better results than croudsourcing.
But the first biiiig problem I see is: what stops pedos to join the project to boycott it (failing to make connections, making up fake connection, entrap...) and get free kiddy porn as bonus? Did anonymous think this through?
but OTOH I thought anonymous was part of the system, so never going to hurt really powerful people, and some of them surely have a way better understanding of how powerful people behave. So I wait for actual results before judging.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @05:07AM
In other words, the only way to catch pedophiles is be become pedophiles! Yeah, this is going to turn out well!
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @05:29AM
The point, since you obviously don't get it, is that the way the laws are written and enforced, if you even *see* an image of a child in a situation that a prosecutor decides is child pornography, such as photos of your kids in the bath [sayanythingblog.com], you are immediately branded a pedophile and probably a child molester.
In such an environment, many people will willfully ignore that kind of stuff for fear of being tarred a pedophile or even prosecuted and imprisoned. Real child abusers thrive in such an environment.
Simply viewing child porn should not be a crime unless it can be proven that the person in question supported the abusers/distributors or engaged in such abuse themselves. In that kind of environment, many more resources can be brought to bear in identifying children, abusers and locations where abuse has occurred. That can lead to identifying, prosecuting and imprisoning many more of those who abuse children and create the child porn.
Get it now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @05:49AM
Yeah, right! It is not that I didn't understand it, it is that now every perv on the internet will claim to be a member of Anonymous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @06:12AM
Yeah, right! It is not that I didn't understand it, it is that now every perv on the internet will claim to be a member of Anonymous.
Simply viewing child porn should not be a crime unless it can be proven that the person in question supported the abusers/distributors or engaged in such abuse themselve
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @09:56AM
Like drug possession, child porn possession should not be a crime. Good luck trying to flip lawmakers though
(Score: 2, Informative) by sjwt on Monday January 26 2015, @12:30PM
As I read it, Anonymous are looking for people who have been abused to share there truthful stories of abuse by those in power, and collaborate on sharing this information and forcing action against those who where and or are in power, they are not asking people to trawl the internet trying to buy child porn and then share that info.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @07:13AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @08:13AM
He's looking for street cred.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @01:21PM
Maybe he's including secret encrypted information disguised as fake PGP signature. The intended recipient will then know how to decrypt it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday January 26 2015, @07:13AM
No mod points yet - maybe they'll come with the site update in a few hours...
This is an incredibly important point: child abuse is criminal, but criminalizing the images was always a stupid idea. As the AC points out, one of reason is that criminalizing the images actually helps protect the actual child abusers. I don't know how successful Anonymous will be, but if nothing else, perhaps they will re-open the dialog on this important issue.
If you want further reasons why outlawing the images is stupid, try these:
- "Tough on crime" law enforcement takes any law and carries it to ridiculous extremes. Like outlawing cartoons. [dailytelegraph.com.au] There was also the truck driver crossing the US/Canada border who was prosecuted for having a printed, fictional story (no pics) involving underage sex, though I can't find the link just now.
- Just like tossing a packet of weed in your car, these laws open the door to the police [plymouthherald.co.uk] planting images on your computer. Alternatively, maybe after Crypolocker we will get ransomware that plants images on victim's computers - wouldn't that be fun?
- There is ample evidence that a sexual attraction to children is hardwired in the brain. Allowing those affected to have some safe outlet (cartoons, stories, computer graphics, etc.) would make sense? Instead, current laws drive those affected to illegal behavior, which is surely not in anyone's interest.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday January 26 2015, @09:49AM
In the interest of harm reduction, making cartoons illegal is just stupid. There is evidence that pedophilia may be an organic condition ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Causes_and_biological_associations [wikipedia.org] ) and if so, it isn't something you get hooked on by exposure like chocolate or cigarettes in which case banning drawings or stories is counterproductive because it isn't going to stop anyone from becoming a pedo. On the other hand, if the use of wholly made up stuff, like cartoons, helps a pedo satisfy his urges without supporting actual child rape by purchasing porn, or worse, abusing kids himself, then that is a good thing which would lead to less actual abuse, because paper and ink just don't care what gets done to them, but if the cartoon is just as illegal as anything else and the stakes are the same whether a real child or a cartoon is involved, it is easy to see that more children will be harmed because there is no disincentive between choosing real humans over drawings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @10:20AM
It doesn't matter if a study can prove that cartoons and drawings are a "gateway" to real abuse. It's still thoughtcrime. Arguably the prosecution of the real thing (possession, not production) is the same.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday January 26 2015, @04:46PM
I'm ok with prosecution for possession of actual photographic or videographic materials because demand is an important component in supply -- I don't know if punishment would reduce supply but it seems fair to punish those who encourage abuse of others as well as the abusers. The punishment for production should be more severe than that for possession however.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @01:12AM
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You are saying that demand is an important component of supply, but you have made the standard mistake of conflating the child abuse with the production of violent and/or pornographic imagery. In your mind, the demand for imagery magically creates a supply of abuse, which is nonsense. Industrial child abuse is mainly fueled by the same mechanism as any illegal trade: prohibition (not of abuse, but of imagery). Just as with cocaine and heroin, the world-wide ban on production and consumption of certain imagery creates sky-high margins, and criminals step in to satisfy the demand. Because they are both criminals and businessmen, they chose the cheapest way to produce the said imagery, and here the actual child abuse begins. If we are genuinely interested in reducing the incidence of child abuse, then we must attack their margins by regulating the market of violent pornographic imagery. We could insists on "child abuse" pornography being produced without any involvement of children or any acts of violence. It could be drawn, digitally altered, or shot with adult actors who are able to give consent. We could insist on our right to share any imagery non-commercially, and that would saturate the imagery market, cutting the pornographers' margins even further. Abusing children does not pay, and no "respectable businessman" will run a child abuse factory at a loss. As for the public, we can be confident it will choose the art over the real thing every time, just like it prefers movies to the security camera footage... Or simply consider this: does the demand for murder imagery create the supply of murders? Or does it sustain film factories in LA? ~Anonymous 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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(Score: 1) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday January 28 2015, @02:51PM
Freedom of speech is far more important than stopping child porn. Furthermore, if someone acts based on supposed demand, *their actions are their own*, and no one else's. You can't blame anyone except the rapists, so your reasoning is flawed.
Government thugs shouldn't be in the business of censoring anything. I oppose all government censorship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @11:26PM
Sheesh, so now I can't even read Vladimir Nabokov without getting arrested?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @10:24AM
You should consider upgrading your signature system, Jim. I found your name in a rainbow table.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday January 26 2015, @01:05PM
It's overly simplistic to say that we tolerate people looking at murder victims. Generally speaking we don't, we cover the body and don't publish photos because it would degrade the victim, turning their murder into something used for entertainment or to satisfy curiosity. Of course there are counter-arguments, such as news organizations showing victims of war instead of sanitising it. What I'm saying is that it isn't straight forward for murder, and neither is it for child pornography. If the image is of a child being abused then the victim may not want that image distributed or used for sexual gratification, and I'd argue they have a right to control that image. On the other hand if there was no abuse and the agreed to the image being distributed (difficult as children can't make contracts, but there are ways children can work as models and actors so in theory it could be possible) then yeah, maybe we shouldn't be criminalizing those people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday January 28 2015, @02:54PM
It's overly simplistic to say that we tolerate people looking at murder victims.
We should tolerate it in the sense that government thugs shouldn't punish people who do manage to get pictures and such.
because it would degrade the victim
The "victim" is now merely a lump of meat; there's nothing to degrade.
If the image is of a child being abused then the victim may not want that image distributed or used for sexual gratification, and I'd argue they have a right to control that image.
Getting offended or sad is not a good reason to allow government thugs to censor information. There is no right to not be offended; once the information is out there, that is too bad. In the US, these policies are unconstitutional, even if the authoritarian courts try to modify the first amendment with invisible ink.