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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.
(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.