Posted on 08/03/2002 4:54:57 PM PDT by Pokey78
More than 7,000 British paedophiles have been snared in a sting operation by US authorities investigating two worldwide internet child pornography rings.
Detectives in Britain have been given the names and addresses of 7,272 Britons who used their credit cards to access pictures of under-age children, some as young as a few months old, engaged in sex acts.
Unbeknown to the paedophiles, the two sites which they were using had been seized last year by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. British police now plan a series of raids on the suspects in what will be the country's largest paedophile investigation.
The Telegraph has learned that the National Criminal Intelligence Service, which co-ordinates use of intelligence against criminals in Britain, has already used the FBI information to organise the arrest of 36 paedophiles in May. Detectives now intend to swoop on many more offenders, all believed to be men, over the next few months.
Anyone who subscribed to the sites and viewed images faces a jail term of up to five years.
All of the paedophiles registered on the pay-per-view websites between May 1999 and September last year. Every customer had to provide an e-mail address and his credit card details: by return they were sent a username and password to enable them to log on to a paedophile site. In October, detectives in the US arrested the websites' owners and seized the database.
The FBI has raided hundreds of homes of subscribers in the US but has found difficulty in mounting prosecutions because the American definition of possessing indecent internet pornography is much laxer than that in British law.
Det Supt Peter Spindler of the National Crime Squad, who organised May's raid, confirmed that it would be the first of many in this country.
He said: "This is the first time we have targeted people who use the internet to buy images of children being sexually abused. We will continue these operations to protect children and show paedophiles that law enforcement agencies will find them, regardless of which area of the internet they use."
News of the investigation will heighten concerns about the levels of paedophile activity in Britain, highlighted by the murder in 1999 of eight-year-old Sarah Payne and the campaign for a "Sarah's Law", which would reveal the whereabouts of child abusers.
Carole Howlett, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who has led the campaign against child abuse on the internet, said that the investigation proved the extent of the problem.
"A lot more work needs to be done," she said. "There is no greater priority than the protection of children: it should become a ministerial priority and it should be a priority of every policing plan in the country. We have a fair way to go."
There's not one bit of inference in the article that the FBI left the sites open one moment more than it took them to bust down the doors.
I think that "fresh air" has created a vortex somewhere between your left ear and your right ear...
Just like most predators.
Now, when the FBI uses this child porn to catch the users - they again mount an attack on the action - now claiming that the FBI is responsible for causing the child rape.
If I remember correctly - the earlier threads swore that child rape was not caused by the mere incitement of child porn - that many could view it and never harm anyone. Kind of a switch in views isn't it?
Maybe they just resent anyone knowing that they look at the stuff and want to keep on doing so and they fear that somehow the FBI may run across their ID. I hope they are scared silly.
I would be in agreement with the FBI investigating any that ever accessed PAID FOR child porn on the internet.
From the article --
Unbeknown to the paedophiles, the two sites which they were using had been seized last year by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
.....
In October, detectives in the US arrested the websites' owners and seized the database.
I don't see where it says they closed it down. It does seem to imply that the customers continued to use it after it was siezed.
And, anyway, you seem to think they messed up if they shut it down. There is obviously not enough info in the article to say for sure whether they did or not. I hope they did shut it down immediately. And I hope they don't sell heroin to children to solve underage drug-use problems.
Profound mental horsepower there...
Only two kinds of people: kiddie porn aficionados and moral giants like you.
There are no persons ever, smart enough to see the questionable and dangerous potential abuse and questionable tactics used in campaigns "for the children".
After all, that requires an IQ over 35...
Ummmmmm.
Wrong question.
Should the authorities be allowed to break down your door, seize you house and assets, throw you in the pokey and make your life a living hell because someone stole your identity?
The problem with moral absolutists is that they know only one thing: act first and ask questions later...
It's for the children.
We just have to be sure there are safe methods of recourse should an innocent have to face the system.
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