Why are bad guys/child porn distributors in business if the govt knows all/sees all?

[CoffeeCat]

I assume that the government has had access to our emails, phone conversations and digital communications. What Snowden has revealed is no big shocker to me. The Patriot Act, warrant-less wiretapping and the rest of the "war on terror" has pretty much assured the obliteration of our privacy and civil liberties.

Given all of that, I'd really like to know--if the government can see all of our communications--why don't they do anything about child pornographers and predators who swap/trade/disseminate horrendous images of child sex abuse?

Why is this allowed to happen?

Supposedly, if you write any electronic correspondence with specific keywords, your email is flagged for further inspection. Really, if I say "cop" or "terrorism" then Billy at the NSA is going to review what I've said--but untold numbers of images of child-rapes are not flagged or dealt with?

And this type of child pornography is rampant. Perps can communicate with each other, via online--and it's never been easier to create these images, post them and trade them. Countless victims with lifelong damage are being created by this criminal behavior.

I really think this is a question we should all be asking. If the government knows all and sees all--why aren't they going after child predators who post evidence of their crimes online? Why isn't there an explosion of arrests in these crimes?

[niyad]

1. pay-offs??

[Poll_Blind]

2. CoffeeCat, I want to show you two articles:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-01/missile-defense-staff-warned-to-stop-surfing-porn-sites.html
[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: none; border-radius: 0.3846em 0.3846em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Missile Defense Staff Warned to Stop Surfing Porn Sites[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: none; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3846em 0.3846em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency warned its employees and contractors last week to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites, according to the agency’s executive director.

In a one-page memo, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected “engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network.”

“Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images,” James wrote in the July 27 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

“These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code,” he wrote.

More at the link!

Bonus blast from the recent past:
9/3/2010: Pentagon declined to investigate hundreds of purchases of child pornography

A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department -- including some with the highest available security clearance -- who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.

The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.

PB

[geek tragedy]

7. Virtually every employer can tell if it's employees are downloading porn. nt

[CoffeeCat]

8. So, what I take from these articles is that...

1.) The government does have the capability to monitor internet activity and does so.

2.) It doesn't really care about child pornography or about any of the victims that are being traumatized and abused in those images. They simply lack the will to do anything about this, or they just simply don't care.

Edited to add--And yes, I understand that this is an employee/employer relationship. That is somewhat different. However, the situations described in these articles certainly underscore the notion that our government doesn't give a shit that child pornography is an epidemic and they don't even go after those who are downloading these images. In effect, they are turning their backs on these crimes, which are federal offenses and punishable by very lengthy prison sentences.

It's as if they're watching banks being robbed, but they're looking the other way.

THAT is what I'm talking about. Why is this? Why are known cases of child pornography dissemination/distribution/production being ignored?

[Poll_Blind]

15. And that's about what I take from them as well. America is a funny place. Not funny "ha-ha", either.

America likes to think of itself as one thing, but (more often than not) it's the other.

To wit: NYT: Nearly 1 in 5 Women in U.S. Survey Say They Have Been Sexually Assaulted

An informal conspiracy of societal complacency.

PB

[CoffeeCat]

25. Yes, and the complacency...

...is because there are so many perpetrators out there. Also, there are likely many organized pedophile rings that are run by the rich and powerful.

Look at Penn State. That went on for years, with the knowledge of the local police, higher ups at Penn State, Paterno and even the president of the College. No doubt, kids from Sandusky's "charitable organization" were being abused by many in the community and probably by wealthy donors and boosters as well. Sandusky was just the tip of the iceberg and one perp.

I imagine that there are untold numbers of pedophile and child exploitation networks in this country and around the world.

The perfect crime. Children are groomed into silence and when they become adults, no one believes them and there is no longer evidence of past crimes.

Thank you for the link Poll Blind and for understanding this reality and epidemic that so many deny.

[MindPilot]

17. You I think have a pretty accurate take on the situation. n/t

[Recursion]

3. Isn't that also the argument against gun control? (nt)

[morningfog]

4. The privacy invasions, while overbroad and wrong, do not necessarily rise to

"know all/see all." Nor does it suggest the programs were used for things such as child porn. We've been told that the focus is terrorism, but who knows if that is the full truth.

[oldhippie]

5. Priorities. nt

nt

[emulatorloo]

6. If the govt knows all/sees all, how was Mr. Snowden able to take classified docs?

I personally think that there has been some exaggeration about what the govt knows and sees. I suspect the corporate data mining firms have greater specificity about people in their databases.

[SugarShack]

9. Because the U.S. makes black money off human trafficking and child porn. See Franklin Cover Up

[SummerSnow]

10. Cause they like porn too

[emulatorloo]

12. Yes everybody working for the government is a pedophile.

[onehandle]

11. Too much data. Too few eyeballs. The odds that any one random person has been scrutinized...

...is remote at best.

That should comfort most people at least a little.

Anyone who thought that their digital life could not be looked at by many, many government and related services before this was kidding themselves.

No encryption. No stealth of any kind can hide you if you are connected.

[OnyxCollie]

13. An open honey pot attracts all kinds.

Just watch who shows up and blackmail them.

Similarly, why wouldn't the porn industry raise holy hell about everyone downloading copyrighted material for free?

Bailouts Gone Wild! Porn Chiefs Seek $5 Billion
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/bailouts-gone-wild-porn-chiefs-seek-5-billion/

Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, and Joe Francis, the producer of the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, said Wednesday that they were asking Congress for $5 billion in federal assistance, asserting that the adult entertainment industry was among those hit by the recession, which “has acted like a national cold shower.”

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind,” Mr. Flynt said in a statement. “It’s time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

As evidence of the industry’s troubles, Mr. Flynt and Mr. Francis said that sales and rentals of adult DVDs fell 22 percent over the past year as viewers turned to the Internet for pornography.

[MindPilot]

19. To be fair I think that was a typical Flynt stunt.

To bring attention to the level of corporate welfare being doled out while ordinary working folks were losing their homes.

But this is about child porn, and that should not be conflated with adult porn.

[randome]

14. Why does one political party not control the other?

Why does the SCOTUS make unwelcome rulings?
Why does the FISA court sometimes rule against the NSA?

Some who rightfully laugh at the idea of Obama playing nth dimensional chess have no problem with an unwieldy, bureaucratic agency doing the same.



[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[MindPilot]

16. To feed to private prison system

The feds are monitoring web traffic and they are making huge numbers of arrests for child porn. I don't have a link handy but arrests and convictions are up several hundred per cent in the past couple years. There are faculities being built that are dedicated to housing child porn offenders.

The problem is they are not targeting the producers, and they are leaving the distribution sites up. The people getting arrested and convicted are people who have never touched a child, and never would. They are people who just--quite frequently by accident--happened across the "wrong" website.

There is no defense--once a federal prosecutor has you in their sights, you are toast. Innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply here; you are going to prison. And CCA will get 300 taxpayer dollars per day for your ass.

Edited to remove the reference to a "trial". Nobody caught in these sweeps ever actually gets anything close to due process.

[davidn3600]

18. Because they dont want to take the producers down

Notice the government never does a sting and arrests people who make it? The ones that actually hurting the child....

The only people they target and arrest are downloaders so the privatized prison system has a constant flow of new offenders.

Same thing with drugs. They target the users.

[kestrel91316]

20. They are too busy going after liberals who use medical cannabis, I assume.

[kenny blankenship]

21. THose things are of no consequence to the state.

This massive surveillance institution is concerned with threats to the state's power -and with threats to the image of that power as reflected in the minds of its subjects. And it is concerned with threats to the empire. It is not created for the purpose of finding lost kitty cats or catching people who don't recycle their glass bottles. Nor was it tasked with stopping illegal porn, banking fraud, or serial killers. The main concern of the state is above all the power of the state. Rival states threaten the growth of each others' power. Hostile states threaten the existence of each others' power. Terrorism threatens the state's image of being in total control. Therefore, lacking credible hostile powers to focus on, with its emerging rivals some ways off in distance and time, terrorism is what the United States' secret infii-zillion dollar surveillance complex is most concerned with. Be careful about wishing it to come closer to your life. Think twice before asking it to sort out the jungle of everyday crime and predation. By nature, it is a TOP PREDATOR itself, and you will surely regret inviting it into your life any more than it already is.

[hunter]

24. Yep. The crimes of the Proles don't threaten the Party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proles

[datasuspect]

22. intel/feds/1%ers are some of the biggest perverts

and drug abusers out there.

[CoffeeCat]

27. That is most likely why this...

..situation is the way it is. Too many mucky mucks participating in child-sex crimes.

It really makes you wonder if there are any good guys left out there any more.

[Submariner]

23. SPAMMERS...jail and kill off the spammers

if the tracking is so good. Get rid of these maggot spammers.

[Revanchist]

26. What we see is only the surface of the internet

There is a whole other world buried under the surface that most people are not even aware of.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/03/15/tor-the-deep-web/

[riverbendviewgal]

29. I think they could do this - detect different calls that indicate

Possible terrorism, child pornography, gang activities and bank fraud (done by banks and wall street). Each of these can be directed to the agencies for those criminal activities.
But perhaps that is not legal.

Storing large amounts of call logs of phone numbers, callers and called and then location and times and duration called is what my
Last employer did (cellular phone company). The law agencies had to obtain warrants. And yes phone calls were wiretapped but it was with warrants. The company did go through call records investigating when for cloning fraud, which is not prevalent now with sim cards. There still ID fraud using phones and stolen credit cards going on. I was in the fraud department working as an analyst for many years. The technology kept getting better and better. I retired almost ten years ago. I am not surprised that the US goverment is doing this.

We are all being tracked.