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#1
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Is real child porn very well hidden?
Up front, I want to make it very clear that I'm not looking for, interested in, sympathetic towards or advocating anything about child pornography. My question is due to an article I read in my local paper today, in which a man is discovered to have some on his computer. His defense was along the lines of: "I was looking for porn and stumbled upon it accidentally." This seems pretty unlikely since I'd imagine real child pornographers (eww I feel icky writing that phrase over and over again) would have their stuff very very well hidden, and not something you could just summon up by looking on google with a few easy searches. Am I right?
I should add that if this question goes against Board rules in some way, I apoligize and the mods can take it down as they wish. I realize that it's an icky subject, and not one to be taken lightly. Last edited by Love Rhombus; 11-19-2010 at 06:33 PM. |
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#2
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Ordinarily, one could just do a Google search to find out.
But I'm gonna have to call "not it" on this one. Last edited by SmithCommaJohn; 11-19-2010 at 06:33 PM. |
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#3
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Yeah, I'd agree. I'm certainly not suggesting anyone google anything in order to answer this question. I think I'm more asking for generalized knowledge, though I'm not sure who would have it.
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#4
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It depends to on age. Is a 17 year old in a porno, child porn?
Legally I guess it would be. To me, child porn would be pornography of boys and girls that have not reached puberty. You know having secondary sexual characteristics. I would refer to those not yet 18 as underaged porn, which is also, in my opinion wrong. I do believe it would be possible if you were to search some of the foreign sites. You would be more apt to stumble on models in their teens. You could also stumble on things like a mother putting her two sons 3 and 4 taking a bath up on Flickr and not restricting it properly so everyone could see it. If you were searching in obscure ways you might be able to land on someone hosting their own website and had child porn on it. Let's say you were using P2P networking and someone had child porn in their "share" folder. Then some site could come along and index that folder and put it in their search results so you'd come upon it like that. Last edited by Markxxx; 11-19-2010 at 06:48 PM. |
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#5
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Legally speaking, according to U.S. statutes, they're the same thing. Are they treated the same in practice? Apparently not. According to wiki:
Legal definitions of child pornography generally include sexual images involving both prepubescent and post-pubescent teenage minors and computer-generated images that appear to involve them.[16] Most possessors of child pornography who are arrested are found to possess images of prepubescent children; possessors of pornographic images of post-pubescent minors are less likely to be prosecuted, even though those images also fall within the statutes.[16] Wells, M.; Finkelhor, D.; Wolak, J.; Mitchell, K. (2007). "Defining Child Pornography: Law Enforcement Dilemmas in Investigations of Internet Child Pornography Possession" (PDF). Police Practice and Research 8 (3): 269–282. doi:10.1080/15614260701450765. http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV96.pdf. Retrieved 2008-07-01. The Sun and other British tabloids have also provoked controversy by featuring girls as young as 16 as topless models. Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker, Debee Ashby, and many others began their topless modeling careers in The Sun at that age, while the Daily Sport was even known to count down the days until it could feature a teenage girl topless on her 16th birthday, as it did with Linsey Dawn McKenzie in 1994, among others. Although such photographs were legally permissible in the United Kingdom under the Protection of Children Act 1978, critics noted the irony of Murdoch's Sun and News of the World newspapers calling for stricter laws on the sexual abuse of minors, including the public identification of released paedophiles, while publishing topless photographs of girls whom many other jurisdictions would legally classify as underage minors.[10] Controversy over these young models ended when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 raised the minimum age for topless modeling to 18. Hoge, Warren (August 7, 2000). "Britain Fights Tide of Anti-Pedophile Attacks". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...5BC0A9669C8B63. |
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#6
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Some government agency does set up sting operations. A few years ago someone in my office was caught by one. He didn't tell anybody, but I happened upon a local newspaper article about it (I can't find it any more, so I really don't have a cite). I also recall reading a magazine article (I think it was Playboy) that talked about it back in the 70's (again, no cite). I recall them making the statement that the Post Office at the time owned the world's largest collection of child porn (and no, they did not create it). I don't know if the Post Office is still involved since it does not generally go through the mail, but they were the ones operating the stings at the time.
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#7
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#8
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On a slight tangent it should be apparent from the location of the images/videos or whatever else whether it was accidental or not. If they were stored in his internet cache then he may be telling the truth but if they had been saved to a different folder his argument doesn't really hold up.
Back to the OP I can see circumstances where it could be found accidentally. For example downloading movies over torrents, the torrent name may be something generically sexual and not indicative of the age of the people in the video but if he has downloaded the files and then not deleted them his argument doesn't hold very well. |
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#9
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Yes and no, there are some sites out there like 4chan for example which is a message board but for posting images. People will post a picture of a clearly underaged person. Those posts get deleted very quickly.
From my understanding from some documentaries I have seen the child porn trade is more of a p2p type deal where people will meet up on message boards or usernet for ISPs that still offer it and use code words to talk and trade. Putting it all on a website would be WAY to risky as it is easy to shutdown and all ISPs would just block that IP address. Also there is another issue on what is defined as "art" I have seen a movie on Sundance that showed a naked 8 year old swimming in the water with everything to see. It was a movie, shown on US television on a cable channel. I think since it was classified as art it was ok. It didn't even seem weird to see honestly because how they pulled it off I wasn't thinking eww but more like wow this really got pass censors? The young women in American Beauty was only 17 when she filmed topless but it was ok to put in a movie, one of her parents had to be there during filming though, the naked boy on the Nirvana cover is not child porn either |
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#10
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Now & Then had an entire sequence of teen & preteen boys skinnydipping & having to run after the girls that stole their clothes. I remember reading that none of the actresses playing the girls were actually onset at the same time as the boys, but all the boys' mothers were there, plus the mostly female film crew. Technically they weren't completely naked either; they were allowed to wear flesh coloured "modesty pouchs". Then again American actors of all ages usually wear cock socks when doing non-frontal nude scens so it had nothing to do with them being underage.
__________________
No Gods, No Masters |
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#11
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A topless teen isn't child porn. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of SDMB threads that discuss instance of nudity in film and art that aren't classified as porn. Let's not get sidetracked to that discussion, because it's been rehashed repeatedly, and the OP actually raises two very interesting questions.
First, whether it's likely that a defendant might have accidentally stumbled on child porn. The federal law actually accounts for that as an affirmative defense. Quote:
In the child porn cases I'm familiar with (including the one linked in the paragraph above), the prosecution described how the image was downloaded, making it pretty clear that the defendant knew what he was getting. And to the OP's other question, child porn is not that hard to find if you are looking for it. This is clear by reading the indictments. I'm not going to describe the methods, but it's not rocket science. Distributors don;t necessarily try to hide it so much as they try to make sure they aren't connected to it. Kinda like drug dealers. Last edited by anson2995; 11-19-2010 at 09:01 PM. |
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#12
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#13
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I have seen run across it accidentally although not in many years. The web as searchable through Google seems like it is anarchy but it is mild compared to some of the stuff that is out there on the internet as a whole. Once you get into bittorrent streams and things, a lot of it is completely mislabeled on purpose so you don't know what you are really getting until you open it up. Back in the dark ages, Usenet used to be really popular. It is just text based messages like this message board but more wild and free, There was a huge underbelly of it (and still is) of stuff you won't see through google. People can post the raw 'code' to images in multiple messages and you can use utilities to piece them together and display the real picture as a .jpeg or some other common format. I only did this up until 1996 or so when the web was very young and I had a Mac and not a lot of stuff was out there for it. You would think you were downloading and piecing together the code to some cool piece of software and then you got an eyeful when you opened it.
Real child porn, bestiality pics, and everything else you can imagine still exists out there on the internet but you generally won't find it on Google which is a good thing for all of us. I wouldn't believe anyone today that gave that defense as a general rule but I can see how it could have happened at one time. |
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#14
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The Japanese P2P networks use plausable deniablity so it's very possible some child porn could be on your computer of course in encrypted form, so even the user wouldn't know. In theory you can't decode it without the complete file.
So I could upload a child porn into the network and then delete it off my computer. Then it's floating around, well god knows how long. But you are still downloading and know it. I think the person in the OP argument was, I was trying to DL a public domain copy of XXX file and got YYY file instead. You could download a torrent and it could be named "Leave it To Beaver." But until it's on your computer you don't know what it is. So suppose I DL "Leave it to Beaver" from a torrent site and it's 33 episodes. I see the first episode is really child porn and I delete the other 32 episodes. But suppose I forget one of them and only delete 31 and I think I got them all. Now I'm not saying any of these are good reason or even barely plausable, I'm just shooting for any reason how a file can get on your computer and you not know it. |
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#15
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Quote:
You can find bestiality pics on a google search just fine. Just google girl with dog hard core or something similar and it pops up right up in yo face.
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#16
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Quote:
Quote:
FBI Qualifications Quote:
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#17
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The porn sites I have been to for umm... research seem extremely strict on avoiding any suggestion of child porn. They even have rules like banning ALL Tracy Lords, even the stuff she did while legal, on the chance that something illegal will show up. The guy on the OP is almost certainly full of crap if he claims to have found it on a website. More temporary sources like 4chan, IRC, and possibly Usenet might be easier to accidentally stumble upon some, but on the WWW it's doubtful.
ETA: It sounds like I'm suggesting that 4chan is not the WWW. I guess technically they are, but also a force on their own. Last edited by thelurkinghorror; 11-19-2010 at 07:40 PM. |
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#18
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From time to time, folks will push the limits on blogspot, nibblebit, or sensualwriter blogs. These usually disappear within a few days, though [url="http://nudistjohn.nibblebit.com/blog/"some [/URL] [B][COLOR="Magenta"](NSFW)[/color][/b] have taken the defiant position that mere nudity is not illegal.
Last edited by samclem; 11-19-2010 at 09:17 PM. Reason: Even though you included a NSFW, I broke the link |
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#19
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Quote:
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#20
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#21
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There are viruses that plant child pornography on your computer for various purposes.
One forum I visit has banned-and-erased a few people in the past for posting child porn or links to it as a "joke" or out of spite. It could accidentally get in your cache at least that way too I'd think. |
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#22
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If that's their idea of a "joke", that's seriously fucked up. I hope they reported these assbags. |
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#23
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That's why I can't believe this guy merely had a few jpgs in his browser cache; that kind of charge would get thrown out almost immediately. |
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#24
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Depends on what you consider porn. If someone's looking for clothed models in sexual poses, or non-sexual nudity, or lolicon/shotacon, finding that kind of smut is trivial.
If you're looking for blatant sexual activity, well...it's been awhile since I worked for Perverted Justice, but back then it wasn't that hard to find either, if you knew where to look. Usenet even had newsgroups with names like "alt.sex.children", although they were mostly filled with spam, last time I checked (and we're talking years & years ago...) The easiest way to gain access to child porn is to find a pro-pedo website or blog & gain the person's trust; however I would NOT recommend that for curiosity seekers, I hope I don't have to explain why... Is it possible to stumble across child porn accidentally? Certainly, yes. Even I trip across it from time to time, and I know other SDMB'ers have posted about it in the past. Therefore, it is possible the guy in the OP's article is innocent -- but I don't think so. Cops don't file charges unless they're sure someone's absolutely guilty. ETA: @Mr. Downtown: I've reported your link, since it may cause legal issues. Last edited by fuzzypickles; 11-19-2010 at 09:15 PM. |
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#25
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Quote:
Actually, I did hear from a friend that another friend (who'd gotten in trouble for downloading child porn previously) got his net access cut at college when he was trying to find info on pornography for a class. She claims that he showed her some kiddy porn. Then again the friend was really effed up emotionally, so I take her claims with a grain of salt. (not quite borderline personality but stll something very wrong) |
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#26
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Quote:
I have gotten my share of the pop-ups from porn sites and spam about women and horses (although not as much since I use Gmail) and that sort of thing, but never any kiddie porn that was being pushed as aggressively as that kind of thing was. Fortunately. Maybe I am naive. Ok by me if I am. Regards, Shodan |
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#27
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Quote:
BTW, I just realized this... Quote:
What I meant to say was, cops typically don't file charges unless they're certain they have a solid case. (Unless you're Pete Townshend.)
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#28
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How many non-paedophiles do you know who've been arrested for downloading and possessing paedophile material? It's at least one who got convicted, you say?
Last edited by Baron Greenback; 11-19-2010 at 10:28 PM. |
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#29
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Anyone who has spent any time on 4chan or other image boards knows that real child porn occasionally gets posted. Mods take it down fairly quickly (minutes at most, if not seconds) but... well, not fast enough to not have seen it. *shiver* A shame too, because I like those type of websites that deliver random funny images posted by users.
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#30
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As others have said, it's very possible to randomly run across child porn on image boards like 4chan. Through just regular browsing, I would find it unlikely in the extreme, but you can't really browse 4chan more than a couple times (in certain categories) without seeing it. It does get yanked quickly, fortunately, but it is definitely the real reach-for-brain-bleach stuff.
Fortunately, they try to keep things to their own threads that are marked fairly well (for someone familiar with the site), but it isn't unheard of to go into a random thread about funny pictures and get some images you really wish you hadn't seen (child porn and extreme gore). If you haven't been there before, it'd probably be more likely to see it by accident, since you wouldn't necessary know what this means. So no, I wouldn't say child porn is really well hidden. I'm sure anyone who wanted it who was reasonably savvy with a computer could figure out where to start looking. It's not the kind of stuff that you're going to find in a convenient form, though -- which probably makes it easier to catch offenders, since they'd very likely have to store lots locally due to the fleeting nature of image board postings. Last edited by fluiddruid; 11-19-2010 at 10:12 PM. |
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#31
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Quote:
Regards, Shodan |
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#32
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It's a cartoon drawing of a bear.
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#33
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I have some very good friends (a married couple) who both have PhD's in "sexology" through this accredited university.
The husband of the team -- who has written a number of papers on the subject -- assured me that almost 90% of the child porn that exists on the 'net has been created by the government as a method to snare and arrest offending pedophiles who actively attempt to trade and buy images. Just reporting what I have been told. Not commenting on its veracity. |
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#34
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Quote:
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Distributed? IME, that's not true either. Actual sting sites are quite rare. It's a common myth, though. Last edited by fuzzypickles; 11-19-2010 at 10:20 PM. Reason: added dzeiger's quote |
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#36
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It should also be pointed out that reports of child porn can also be referring to cartoon/animated depictions as well, depending on what local laws are in place and how specific the reporter wants to be.
There's certainly a lot of underage cartoon stuff out there, including a ton of Japanese stuff that would be very easy to accidentally download. |
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#37
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My ex-husband was into the "barely legal" type of porn (like girls who were 18 but didn't really look 18). This was eight or ten years ago, but we used to get horrible icky spam sometimes of young kids, boys usually. We had an email program then where the first message would automatically be open when you opened the program, so sometimes it was like "GAAAAH!" I always forwarded them to the postmaster, but I was kinda concerned that the FBI or someone would come arrest us.
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#38
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Frankly, I didn't believe him either.
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#39
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I am not going to do the google searches. But, at one point, I received not just one, but several emails pointing to what sounded to me like it could very well be underaged children.
I did not click on these links, and I deleted the emails and freaked out. Now we all know you have to be an idiot to click on those kinds of things, but this was around 2001-2002, and I could see someone innocently doing that. Specifically, at the time I had teenaged sons in my house, and who knows what they might have been searching for. There are also ways for people to maliciously send it do you, so you don't even know you have it on your computer. This site--US Dept. of Justice Child Exploitation & Obscenity Section--has some FAQs about what to do to stay safe and what procedure to follow should you run across child pornography. So, apparently, it can happen. |
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#40
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Back in the days of ICQ I had a spam message come through from a user I didn't know and didn't have on my friends list. That wasn't uncommon at the time. I did what I usually did to trace and report it and in the process I clicked on the link. It took me to a site with an explicit pornographic image of a young child.
I was horrified and spent the next 24 hours reporting the link to anyone I could think of - the police, the site host, and their upstream, the Australian telecommunications watchdog, any American agencies I could find that appeared to investigate child porn, etc. I checked the site a few times with a finger over the stop button so I could stop it loading further before any images downloaded (dial up was good for something), and after a day or so the site vanished, and then I emptied my cache repeatedly and considered a format and reboot - some brain bleach would have been nice too. So, yes, I have accidentally found child porn on the internet while engaged in a completely innocent activity - not P2P, not surfing porn sites, just sitting on ICQ chatting to my friends and reporting the odd spammer to their site host. Last edited by Eliahna; 11-20-2010 at 03:53 AM. Reason: Now with paragraphs for added readability! |
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#41
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I have been professionally involved in a case. The person sought it out. It's out there. That's all I'm going to say on the matter.
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#42
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Answer facts
I just retired from the FBI after 25 years and heck I will be a wistle blower.
There is a difference beetween CHILD PORNOGRAPHY and POROGRAPHY INVOLVING MINOS UNDER 15. Child pornography ( up until 9 years ago, child pornography could be googled ) At that time spam was running rampid and you could recive uncoliceted advertisments. In America KP is controled and only accesable by the FBI and DOJ. We did not have the tecnology to automaticlly searh for these site at time. Sadley to say Child Pornography could not be blocked. For ever site that is shut down there are 10 new sites. Most of the sites originated in RUSSIA JAPAN UKRAIN and some other forign countys. America had no legal coperation from russia at the time. Also due to the number of people that where counsomers ( millions ) It was impossible to enforce it... The industry was a gold mind catering to many consumers all over the world. USA had the most consumers. And it was impossible to arrest the tens of thousands of counsumers. Only a small fraction of counsumers who where selectet targets where arrested and often would not be convicted of recie a week sentance.. Unless there is a particular site that deplicts pre pubesent children ( not tenagers ) that diplicked Absue tourcure movies and trading ( that is ring ) LEA wount bother most of the time. There are existing sites in forighn countrys. They are not accessable in the USA. My advice to you if you know how to access these sites - Is get help, for one your hacking into govt servers and - not many people know how to do this. Also your information goes directly to the DOJ and ICE. So those are just some facts... To access and join a site in a foriegn county - you must go through the Law Enforcment and you will be caught. |
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#43
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(zombie thread) |
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#44
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__________________
There's an Initiation Ceremony. It involves a Squid and a Goat. You're gonna be good friends with that Goat. The Squid will not exactly be a stranger, either. ~~Me, on the SDMB Initiation |
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#45
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#46
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Sorry to be dense--was the above intended as a joke, or is it a fact?
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#47
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#48
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Seriously? How can we take this seriously. I'm not sure all FBI are lawyers or accountants, but their standards are pretty strict. 30 years or writing reports should produce something better than this. The spelling mistakes seem to be more phonetic poor spelling than fat fingers, no spellcheck or wrong-word insertions, grammatical oopses, so I'm not buying the "typing on a dumbphone" excuse. |
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#49
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Kool! Im a rokit syintist from the CIA-we shood git toggether and compair notes!
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#50
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You win the internets.
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