On the topic of Child Pornography...

[Aractus]

I came across this blog article (you'll have to read through the comments that go all the way to 2013), where John was taken to court in 2006 charged with possessing Child Pornography. He in fact possessed, as identified on his site, ColorClimax material that was not of underage performers and it took him until 2010 to get proof of age for almost every girl in the CCC images that he had been charged with. It surprised me that CC said they had a policy thus: "Please know however that Color Climax has always used a strict company policy of only hiring models of 18 years of age or older." Are they re-writing their own past, or is it legitimate? I actually don't know - I do know they produced bestiality, and I thought that CCC also produced much of the Danish child porn, however that may be wrong and it may be that it was only the smaller companies that produced that material.

It highlights what is wrong with our child pornography laws at the moment. To quote John:

• I was prosecuted ALONE. The research on the pictures, I did myself.
  
  My skills on this type of research (locating pictures on the net) are EXTREMELY good. I only wish I could do this kind of thing for money.
  Assist defense attorney’s in winning these type cases – or legal research. I am due to graduate college this semester with a 2 year AAS degree in computer networking.
  
  The school found out about the case, and as I suspected would happen I was booted off campus, but am allowed to graduate with my degree.
  
  I am available for hire, by any attorney in the country, as a research expert. I have also done many, many, cyber crime cases. I usually get about a 95% conviction rate. These have been prosecuted and resulted in close to life sentences to the criminal in all of the cases.
  
  PLEASE re-read ALL my notes, as they have MUCH good defense information. These cases CAN be won. But it is a VERY difficult VERY long expensive battle.
  
  As far as age based on looking at the picture, this is JUNK science, and can easily be dismissed by researching Turner’s syndrome. Contact a Doctor that has treated Turners, and if necessary bring one of these people to court.
  
  It is impossible for a normal person to guess a person with Turner’s Syndrome age. They stop aging at about 12-13 years old. But can live to 40+ years old. I know a few in this area that are like this. It is a difficult life for them, as they NEVER age AT ALL past 12 years old.
  
  Many Turners Syndrome ladies, in the Porn Industry. I know several by name. Their pictures have been used in multiple child porn cases. They detest this, but rarely are asked to testify.
  
  The age experts are full of crap. Their is NO way to tell age by looking at someone. I got in minor trouble in my last class on campus. The girl looked 20 or older, but was a special student that was admitted to campus at 16. She even showed me her ID. We became friends but nothing more. No one can accurately guess age by looking at a picture or at a person.
  
  In my case we did send the pictures to a well known doctor. Out of 29 images he got 1 correct. The one that was a minor was NOT pornographic so it was dismissed.

I am well aware that this is indeed how child porn possession is prosecuted. This case goes to show how the law works in action, and it has happened to many people that an “expert witness” testifies that the girl or boy depicted “is under the age of 18” and then the onus of proof is completely on the defendant. VHS and 8mm resolution is not good enough in anyone's books to prove age, nor are the scanned airbrushed magazine images.

But let's think about a couple of things first. There are three types of child pornography: there's the stuff that was made legally in Denmark and other European countries, and then there's the stuff produced by child pornography rings (generally parents molesting their own children), and finally there's the "cartoon porn" and although I would absolutely agree that cartoon porn can't classify as child porn, the law sees it otherwise.

Why do we prosecute the possession of child pornography? The most important reason is that it's a legitimate child protection issue, however there's no room for amnesty and that's exactly the problem. In Australia, if I was to find that somebody has child pornography, I can't legally hand it to police - I would be charged with possession of it for merely handing it in. That's the part that worries me, if there's no room for amnesty then how is anyone expected to cooperate with the law?

Why do we care about it? It’s the child exploitation images produced by parents and child pornography(/abuse/prostitution) rings that we need to be concerned with, not the stuff made in the 70’s that’s completely tame compared to American porn anyway. In the 70’s it wasn’t glamorous to be a poor star, and most did the line of work because they couldn’t get other work – look up Robert Kerman – he stared in a few Italian films like Cannibal Holocaust, but couldn’t get work in Hollywood and then did pornographic work, and then no one in Hollywood would hire him because of his pornographic career.

[Mister Agenda]

You raise some good points. If this stuff turns up in your in box, the smart thing to do is delete it, as bringing it to the attention of the FBI can lead to you being charged. There should be an exception made for that kind of thing...and maybe a reward for taking it to the authorities so they can investigate it.

And an exception should be made for art depicting children. No children are harmed in the process, and we should err on the side of free expression, at least until it can be shown scientifically that pornographic artwork or CGI of children somehow has a bad outcome for children. I suspect it gives people with pedophilic tendencies but who are not compulsive about it a relatively harmless outlet, keeping them from seeking actual photos or film of real children.

[Aractus]

It's extremely difficult to locate servers as they're HTTPS encrypted through proxy servers that intentionally have their logs disabled thus making locating the actual servers nearly impossible (as it should be with HTTPS encryption FYI). They also use partition encryption (eg TrueCrypt) which means that the server appears completely normal, with a normal partition and normal web content and in an instant the primary partition can be resized to consume the encrypted partition as empty space. You might ask - but what if they found the hard drive with a truecrypt partition on it? So what? That's not illegal, all it means is that it has an encrypted partition and the only way to decrypt is via the access key that is stored elsewhere, you would need to also locate it. If you can't see the content on the server it doesn't exist. Unless they can break the encryption, they'll have to return the hard drive. It is not realistically winnable to locate and destroy the world's child pornography - it just can't happen without a very serious security flaw that would affect everyone's security online. Yes I am well aware that smaller operations who do not use full security get caught, but the large ones have their partitions fully encrypted in servers that they have full control over 24/7 so that within minutes they can demount them and remove the partitions whenever they want.

And with bitcoin, which I can only assume would be the preferred payment method now, however there are still near untraceable methods to get money - and the usual way is via an anonymous bank account. No, Swiss accounts don't count, the only banks that will open anonymous accounts seem to be in the middle east, and you would need to physically find one that would agree to open the account for you, and then you can withdraw your funds from an international ATM (ah the one place the authorities can catch you is when you collect your money), and this was the method preferred by the child porn industry - and probably still is if it hasn't been completely replaced by bitcoin. Most however don't have truly anonymous bank accounts, but rather opened them with stolen identities that they got from their spambots. This is the most vulnerable part of the whole operation. Tracing bank accounts has had people caught, but they can't be traced if they are truly fully anonymous, the best you can do is ask the bank to close the account. The other vulnerable part is the digitizing, and I have no idea if it's still done, of the 70's Danish material - if it is then being caught with 8mm reels and magazines is what will get people prosecuted - but that's the double-edged sword come full circle most people only ever get charged with possession, and they rarely charge anyone with distribution of child porn.

How is it a viable business? I don't know, it does seem like an excessive amount of work - especially since to advertise you need to run spambots via viruses from infected PC's since you can't just send them from your servers, you have to keep changing IP's and you have to keep changing proxies. And we all have SPAM filters that stop the material even reaching our inboxes. My guess is it's viable because of the volume of child porn that exists from the 70's until now, and also that paedophiles must intentionally look to find the spam. The fact is though that's it not just going to go away.

[Minimalist]

I've always been troubled by the somewhat cavalier attitude of the Supreme Court towards pornography. Perhaps best summarized by Justice Potter Stewart's quote: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. "

This is an ex post facto determination and the law should be able to define what it is against.

[Aractus]

FYI, Swiss accounts are never truly anonymous and the money can be traced when it is moved - the only way to use a numbered Swiss account to hide your money was to physically deposit the physical cash. The bank account is still in your name, however. Let's say you made a ransom demand and told the payer to pay into a swiss account - all they have to do (AFAIK) is get a court order to disclose your name. You can still, in principle, hide your money in numbered swiss accounts - so long as you travel to Switzerland and deposit the physical "untraceable" money personally (and you have to travel back there to get the money back out).