Path: news.nzbot.com!not-for-mail
From: Daytek <Daytek@isp.com>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rolex
Subject: Hello Everyone! Longtime no see. Security Info: you read, you decide.
Date: 19 Aug 2008 21:46:02 -0500
Organization: Newscene Usenet News Service, http://www.newscene.com/
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Taken from SecurityFocus website:
P2P investigation leads to child-porn busts
Published: 2008-08-19
Federal law enforcement officials arrested seven men on Tuesday on charges
related to child pornography, the latest arrests in an investigation of
peer-to-peer networks that has led to 52 California residents charged or
indicted this year.
******Look at this paragraph*****
The investigation, spearheaded by the FBI's Sexual Assault Felony
Enforcement (SAFE) team and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
used unspecified "sophisticated computer programs" to identify child
pornography stored in folders shared through peer-to-peer applications,
such as Limewire, according to a statement released by the office of Thomas
O'Brien, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. Law
enforcement officers have previously used pattern-matching programs,
similar to antivirus scanners, to quickly scan Usenet groups for images
that match a list of known images of child abuse.
"As criminals exploit technology to commit their crimes -- whether it be
identity theft, money laundering, distribution of child pornography, or any
other criminal conduct -- law enforcement will quickly react to develop
equally sophisticated means to track down their wrongdoing," O'Brien said
in a statement.
****Read the last sentence*****
Federal law enforcement and state prosecutors have aggressively targeted
those who traffic in child pornography. In 2006, officials announced that
more than 125 arrests had been made nationwide as part of an investigation
into a Web site that sold access to images of child exploitation. The FBI
have also reportedly sent links of purported child pornography to
newsgroups and then raided anyone who clicked on them.
Companies have also rushed to cooperate with law enforcement on fighting
online sex crimes. Five major Internet service providers pledged to seek
out and bar Usenet groups that traffic in child pornography. And in 2007,
after finding its service potentially a haven for thousands of convicted
sexual offenders, MySpace barred at least 29,000 people believed to be
registered offenders from its social network.
The efforts are not without some controversy, however. Two progressive
policy groups have urged state prosecutors to do more to target online
crimes that affect consumers, not just child exploitation crimes. The
Center for Democracy and Technology and the Center for American Progress
could not find much reliable data on states' investigations into electronic
crimes, but what they did find suggested that prosecutors are overly
focused on sex crimes. Moreover, in two notable cases, prosecutors appear
to have gotten the wrong person, resulting in calls for better training of
law enforcement personnel.
In the latest case, eight law enforcement agencies teamed up with the FBI
to form SAFE, including the California Department of Justice, U.S. Postal
Service, Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff's
Department. The U.S. Secret Service and the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children also took part.
All 52 people charged or indicted as a result of the investigation reside
in California. A single charge of possession of child pornography carries a
sentence of up to 10 years in prison, unless the person has previously been
convicted of a child exploitation crime, in which case the sentence is a
minimum 10-year prison term.
--
DayTek
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