In the last few days an FBI tip-off to the Australian Federal Police resulted in a nationwide swoop on somewhere between 150 and 400 suspected paedophiles who were caught in possession of material pertaining mostly to child pornography. The suspects include many people employed in trusted professions such as clergy, doctors, school teachers and police.
The evidence collected so far includes offending video clips and still images stored on around 300 confiscated computers as well as chatroom and messenger logs and links traceable to child porn websites based in Russia and other former eastern bloc nations. Other confiscated equipment includes movie production equipment and miscellaneous computer equipment for running servers and distributing the offending material.
Four of the suspects, to date, have committed suidicide (good!) which probably goes some way towards admitting guilt. One suspect who is a school teacher on the outer urban fringe of south western Sydney admitted to installing a video camera behind a mirror in a student change room and admitted to collecting, storing and distributing the footage. A doctor (unsure of exact location) was nailed for using one of his consulting rooms as a studio to film child sex movies.
I, as an oper on a community based IRC network, have never actually banned anyone for such activities, largely due to a lack of hard evidence, though I do realise it exists and that no particular established network can assume that they arn't affected by the presence of paedophiles. Having said that I didn't realise the problem was so wide-spread. Paedophilia would rank as the most henous of all crimes and the fact that some of the most trusted people in the world community are involved makes the matter worse.
Has anyone here seen evidence of IRC-borne paedophilia? How is one to determine that a user is committing a crime or about to commit a crime and not necessarily just talking dirty? More to the point, I can't see how this is easy without infringing on people's privacy, another thing I consider important. The most severe case I have seen was where someone was labelled a paedophile and later I found that the 'offender' and the 'victim' were over 18 and merely cybering (dirty talk) and the 'victim' simply didn't like the 'offender' and wanted to set him up.
