Posted on 03/18/2002 12:42:56 PM PST by MeekOneGOP
'Operation Candyman' targets child porn
FBI probe began in Houston office
03/18/2002
WASHINGTON - Federal law enforcement authorities have broken up a computer-based pornography ring that targeted children, Attorney General John Ashcroft said.
Announcing "Operation Candyman," Ashcroft said Monday that more than 80 people have been charged in the operation and said more arrests are coming.
One of the Texas suspects, from Henderson County, was scheduled to be arraigined in Tyler Monday afternoon.
"As its name implies, the 'Operation Candyman' e-group had a single purpose in mind as well: to exploit and degrade children," Ashcroft told a news conference at FBI headquarters here.
"It is clear that a new marketplace for child poronography has emerged from the dark corners of cyberspace," he said. "Innocent boys and girls have been targeted by offenders who view them as sexual objects."
Holding a news conference with FBI officials, Ashcroft revealed that the sting operation, which began in January 2001 at the FBI's Houston office, is ongoing.
"In the past 14 months," he said, "all 56 national FBI field offices investigated hundreds of individuals who were subscibers to the 'Candyman' email group." Ashcroft said that among those caught in the sting were police officers, members of the clergy and -- in one case -- a bus driver.
He said that prior to Monday's announcement, the FBI had arrested 86 people "on child pornography grounds" and that 27 members of the "Candyman" email group have been arrested and admitted to molesting 36 children.
Ashcroft told reporters federal authorities have shut down the email group and will to shut down others as well. "Our investigation uncovered an estimated 7,000 members (of the email group), including some 2,400 outside our borders," he said.
So, as many people have asked here, why did it take our govt so long to begin to follow this child porn stuff back to its source and crack down on it? Probably because Bill and his house idiot Janet didn't care.
Often you can, but not always. And sometimes one will be browsing through search-engine's list of links and hit a site which from the outside looks reasonable but will send a barrage of porno pop-ups at anyone unfortunate enough to click there with a Javascript-enabled browser.
Consider as well that it's trivial for anyone posting on a web site to send pictures into your cache. For example, in your cache right now you have (or are most likely getting) a picture of a cartoon character squishing a cat [look in your cache under elmyra128.gif]. If I didn't tell you it was there, though, you'd almost certainly never notice it. Nonetheless, suppose I'd put a link to an offshore child-porn site there instead, just before having phoning in a 'tip'? |
To buy your crock of self-righteous tut-tutting crap one would have to believe all churches condone pornography and pornograpers.
In truth, only the liberal churches do. Do you belong to a liberal church? Then tut-tut and wag your bony finger at your own clergy.
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I also was doing a search one day for NASA. I made the mistake of typing in NASA.com instead of NASA.gov. The site wasn't porn but did have porn banners.
WarHawk42
You may may want to note that many of the replies here are from old-timers. The FreeRepublic's open border policy has let the "unwashed" in in droves.
Now why doesn't your name match your join date?
Once I wanted to do some research on bluebirds. I maintain some bluebird houses. Anyhow, I typed in Bluebirds.com. You wouldn't believe the porn that showed up. How can one protect oneself from this kind of trash?
Somebody else on this thread pointed out the problem of sites that are either dummy sites, with a name similar to something that people are likely to type in when attempting to find a commonly referenced site, or unused sites that have been taken over by a completely different uesr. A couple of years ago, I was translating a document for a Spanish automobile salvage company. They did your basic wrecking, salvage, crushing, etc. Unfortunately, their industry organization in Spain, which evidently got very few hits on its own and was basically an abandoned site, had been taken over by a group of ladies with very large - uh , headlights. Well, come to think of it, their tailfins were pretty big, too.
Of course every time you try to close the window 30 more open automatically. I pulled the phone cord out of the wall!!
I sent some URL's to someone who reports them to the authorities. Most of them I couldn't even look at they are so disgusting.
WarHawk42
I think that any adult who gets their "kicks" looking at naked kids or abusing kids are the sickest of the sickos.
Mea culpa. Should be fixed now (adjusted filename on server).
Wonder how many will turn out to be "social workers" .....
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