Monday's Times carried a major expose on child molesters who use the Internet to lure their adolescent prey into performing sex acts for webcams. In the course of investigating the story, reporter Kurt Eichenwald broke open a massive network of pedophiles, rescued a young man who had been abused for years and led the Department of Justice to hundreds of child molesters.
I kept waiting for the catch, but apparently the Times does not yet believe pedophilia is covered by the "privacy right." They should stop covering politics and start covering more stories like this.
In order to report the story, the Times said it obtained:
copies of online conversations and e-mail messages between minors and the creepy adults;
records of payments to the minors;
membership lists for webcam sites;
defunct sites stored in online archives;
files retained on a victim's computer over several years;
financial records, credit card processing data and other information;
The Neverland Ranch's mailing list. (OK, I made that last one up.) Would that the Times allowed the Bush administration similar investigative powers for Islamofacists in America!
Our woman Ann slyly points out that The Old Gay Lady gets their undies in a bunch about Bush "invading the privacy" of terrorists, but has no compunctions about invading the privacy of Americans.
Well, at least the Times kept the gayness of the Americans whose privacy they violated "private". ;-)
Live And Let Spy (December 21, 2005)
Thanks for passing along Ann's report. I think she and I are going to have to get together to compare notes ;-)