Watching Facebook

Facebook's Content Review

2012-02-20T07:17:00.001-08:00

Not too surprisingly, Facebook outsources its content review to a company called oDesk, which uses workers in developing nations. Gawker has the story in more detail, including copies of Facebook's guidelines.

Menfor Babygirls

2012-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

What do you say about something like this?

Bad Librarian

2012-02-16T22:14:00.000-08:00

Richard Wareham had a number of accounts, including "Nobby Nobson" and "Richard Valentine." He was recently convicted of viewing child pornography at Paddington Children's Library, where he worked as a librarian. Below is a screencap of a pedophile group on Facebook that included the "Nobby Nobson" account.

No Greater Joy

2011-12-24T00:24:00.000-08:00

No Greater Joy Ministries has almost 10000 fans.

It also has a body count. This fall, Hana Grace-Rose Williams became the third child killed by parents who used the Pearls' book "To Train Up a Child." The first two were Sean Paddock and Lydia Schatz. Not too surprisingly, Michael Pearl has denied any responsibility and claimed that the actions of the parents were "diametrically opposed" to his group's teaching.

Oh really? Let's take a look at a video of the Pearls in action teaching parents how to use "the rod." Given that the YouTube video contains original commentary and excerpts, it appears to fall under the definition of "fair use." But given that the Pearls filed a copyright claim to get an earlier version of the video taken off YouTube, we can assume that they've basically admitted that the videos do indeed depict them and things that they've said.

More arrests

2011-12-23T23:57:00.000-08:00

According to CTV Calgary, Clement John Murray was arrested for sharing child pornography via Facebook. I vaguely remember a middle-aged Canadian white guy who went by "Clem Murray" and had some obvious pedos on his friends list. One anonymous source said that he was in a "nepi" group, which apparently involved babies.

Another Canadian, Alexander James Kennedy, has been arraigned on charges of posting 10 child pornography images to his Facebook page.

In Australia, John Raymond Zimmerman was sentenced to up to 16 years on charges of manipulating a number of underage girls into sending him explicit photos of themselves.

Shane Pleads Guilty

2011-12-23T23:08:00.000-08:00

According to the Lloydminster Meridian Booster , Shane Pattison, formerly known as "Shane Ispedo" has pleaded guilty to 53 counts related to child pornography. Robert Hull had sent Pattison some of his handiwork, and Pattison's arrest led to Hull also getting caught.

Lydia Cacho Takes on Facebook

2011-11-13T22:45:00.000-08:00

Last month, the Daily Beast ran an article about Facebook taking heat from activist Lydia Cacho about the sexual predators. It's not too surprising that their perspectives differed.

Perhaps we can shed some light on the issue. First, let's start with something that both the Facebook safety team and Cacho would probably agree on: most people strongly dislike child pornography. However, many of the pedophiles who collect the stuff are apparently somewhat compulsive about it. When they get busted, they generally don't just have a handful of images; it's more like hundreds or even thousands.

The internet makes it a lot easier for pedophiles to exchange material with like-minded people. Peer-to-peer software has often been used for this, but it's not too hard for law enforcement to automatically scan for known child pornography files on P2P systems and pick off the idiot who's sharing it. Social networks allow pedophiles to look for validation and acceptance as well as trading partners, so it's not too surprising that they've shown up on Facebook, Grou.ps, Grouply, MySpace, Google+, etc.

Facebook is currently the biggest player in the social network arena, with over 500 million accounts. They've made an effort to curb predators by scanning for known child pornography and certain kinds of anomalous behavior. But it's very hard to detect some things automatically, and it's impossible for them to do it manually. Therein lies the rub.

Joe Sullivan, Facebook's security chief, used an example of an account that sent all its friend requests to teenage girls. However, predators may also be looking to connect with other pedophiles. He also pointed out that Facebook is using PhotoDNA to scan photos. PhotoDNA is basically an improved approach to detecting known child pornography. Earlier this year, a man in the UK took photos of himself sexually abusing his 2-year-old daughter and uploaded them to Facebook so that other like-minded users could view them. PhotoDNA would not have been able to flag this because the image would not have been in its database. So it's commendable of Facebook to make the effort to use this technology, but it's still no silver bullet.

Because of the sheer volume, a lot of the Facebook account shutdowns are done automatically, with no human intervention. In the example Sullivan provided, the system might notice that a lot of friend requests are being sent to teenage girls and disable the account. However, if an account that tripped off some flags and got automatically shut down was also posting child pornography that PhotoDNA did not detect, no human would see it and it would consequently not get reported to law enforcement. It's possible that the failure to report some of this material is related to this, rather than willfully ignoring the law.

If Facebook continues to work on combating predators, it may encourage many of them to relocate to a different social network. But that's probably about as good as it's going to get.

Paolo Ghelardini Gets 12 Years

2011-11-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

According to translated news stories, Paolo Ghelardini was sentenced to 12 years for his extensive collection of child pornography. Although he'd also bragged about sexually assaulting children, it was apparently impossible to prosecute him for that. Nevertheless, he's apparently claiming that 12 years is too harsh and filing an appeal. I wonder if they could reconsider and give him a longer sentence?

Westboro Baptist Church

2011-10-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Westboro Baptist Church may be the ultimate scam organization. It's unclear whether there's anybody outside their organization that can stand them, and they're very good at eliciting reactions from people. Some of them are lawyers, which comes in handy when they file lawsuits claiming that their civil rights were violated. Do they actually believe the nonsense they spout about gay people? I have no idea.

Their Facebook page gives a pretty good idea of the level of discourse.

Not too surprisingly, the idiocy has also made its way to Twitter. One tweet by Margie Phelps is priceless. She announces that the WBC plans to picket Steve Jobs' funeral. According to Twitter, this was posting using ... *drumroll* ... an IPhone.

Preteen Girls

2011-09-15T01:36:00.000-07:00

This guy says, "I made a preteen group before and was blocked by some kind of freak." Gotta love the way that his concept of "freak" apparently means "someone who does not like child pornography."

War Against America

2011-09-12T02:04:00.000-07:00

Not too surprisingly, some apparent jihadi groups have found their way onto Facebook. One of them posted a 9/11 video, which received a number of "likes." Where does this end? I don't know, but the U.S. invading other countries does not seem to be improving the situation.

Wordsmiths

2011-09-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some screencaps gathered over the past couple of weeks. As you can see, some of the user name choices aren't too subtle.

Facebook's apparently gotten smarter about "PTHC" as an interest, so some users we saw are now listing "Pthc.littlegirls.9" as an interest.

Ray Gould -- presumably as in "R@ygold."

Whited Sepulchre

2011-09-01T02:05:00.000-07:00

DaySpring has a Facebook page with over 50000 fans as well as an electronic greeting card app with thousands of monthly users. Its overview section says, "DaySpring's purpose is to help people know and share God’s love in fresh, true, and inspiring ways."

Roy Lessin, DaySpring's founder, has written a number of books. Let's take a look at his approach to child-rearing. "Spanking: Why When How" has received quite a bit of feedback on Amazon.

The title is a little creepy, but we ain't seen nothing yet. Let's take a look at some of the contents.

Once my wife needed to give our young son a spanking. She was in a hurry to go somewhere, and didn't want the spanking to take up a lot of time. She took him into the bedroom, had him bend over the bed, and quickly gave him a spanking. When she finished, he turned to her and said, "Mommy, could you spank me again? Only this time let me pull down my jeans. It didn't hurt enough." I was as surprised as my wife was when I found out about the incident. But it helped us to realize how much children need effective discipline in order to bring them release.

Just .... ewwwww. We've seen a fair number of users on Facebook who find "release" through "discipline" but most of them seem to engage in this with other consenting adults. Many of the Amazon reviewers were equally disgusted. Below is an open letter to Roy Lessin by Bethany Fenimore.

Dear Roy,

After 19 years I have found the courage to write you this letter declaring how your choice to teach and write about spanking has affected me. My purpose in writing you this open letter is to share with you and others that the spanking approach you recommend is harmful. My parents both know my view on this issue. I have talked to them, as well, about how their decision to implement your spanking recommendations affected me. I have a mission. My mission is to warn new parents who are innocently trying to raise happy, healthy children. Should just one parent spare their child the kind of pain that I endured at the hands of my parents implementing your spanking recommendations, my pain will have more meaning than it does now. I want to begin by talking about your spanking approach so that we'll both be using the same language. In your book, you describe a process by which a parent performs a spanking on their child.

The first step is to use the right instrument; if a parent uses their hand, the child might become fearful of the parent's hand.

The second step is to spank promptly.

The third step is to find a private place in which the parent can conduct the spanking.

The fourth step is for the parent to explain to the child why they are going to be spanked.

The fifth step is to get the child into a good spanking position (when my parents and other adults - such as your wife, Char - spanked me, the ritual involved removing the child's clothing); you recommend bending the child over a bed, or bending a smaller child over the parent's lap.

The sixth step is to hit the child on the buttocks with a stick or other spanking implement.

The seventh step is to continue spanking until the child yields a broken cry, which indicates a broken will.

The eighth step is reconciliation. You recommend that parents comfort the child until sufficient time has passed, and then ask the child to stop crying. You recommend that parents spank a child who displays a "wrong attitude" by continuing to cry too long after a spanking.

The language in your book is much more "sugary" than what I've just written. But my description does not come close to what it feels like to receive a Roy Lessin spanking. So I'll describe what a Roy Lessin spanking is like.

My first spanking was when I was six months old. My mother spanked me for crying after she put me to bed. She had to spank me repeatedly to teach me to not cry when she put me down. I know about this incident because my mother used to tell all new mothers about how young I was when she started spanking me. My last spanking occurred when I was thirteen years old. The Roy Lessin spankings that I remember most vividly took place between the ages of three and seven, because I hardly went a few days without a spanking at that time. I'd like to share with you, and others, what it was like receiving a Roy Lessin spanking.

The moment I found out I was going to get a Roy Lessin spanking, I felt physically ill. Because the Roy Lessin spanking is a ritual, the ordeal could take a long time. (When I refer to a spanking ritual, I'm referring to the steps you outline in your book.) This was hard for me because I had a child's sense of time. The dread bubbled up and consumed me, and stayed with me until the spanking ritual was over. My parents usually sent me to a private room, such as my own room, and there I would wait until one of my parents came. (My dad spanked me the most, so in my illustration let's assume my father is conducting the Roy Lessin spanking.) My father would explain the reason for the spanking. This was an excruciating process because I had to listen while knowing what was coming. Since I might face back-to-back Roy Lessin spankings, I had to be careful not to be disrespectful in my listening to my father. I had already developed irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and would feel my guts cramp up with anxiety during his speech. Then he would ask me to take off my pants and underwear. I would feel deeply embarrassed because my father was not supposed to see me naked. (My family had a high standard for modesty.) My humiliation and fear would grow immeasurably as I leaned over the bed, my father's knee, or whatever was around. My private parts were helplessly exposed as my dad laid his hand on my back. Trying to pull away and defend myself would only mean that the spanking would be longer, or I'd get a back-to-back spanking. The stick, paddle inscribed with scripture verses, or belt would swish violently through the air before slapping painfully on my buttocks or thighs. I would scream in pain and anguish. I cannot remember a moment of thinking of resisting, rebelling, or trying to "win" anything, as you recommend parents should watch for as they hit their children. I just tried to survive the best way I knew how. The screaming, the hitting, and the pain would continue for unknown amounts of time. When the gruesome pain ended, I would begin to battle with my emotions and my body. I knew that crying too much could mean that my father would start a Roy Lessin spanking ritual all over again to correct my "wrong attitude."

My parents were never concerned about the marks they left on my body. We never talked about the painful marks on my body, or how clothing, baths, chairs, etc. hurt. The message was clear: there was no pain. Pulling up my pants was incredibly painful, and so was sitting on my father's lap. Because "there was no pain," I had to pretend my buttocks and thighs didn't hurt even though they did, while my father would wrap his arms around me and "comfort" me. I was not like the idealized children you describe in your book, not knowing the difference between the spanking implement and the parent. My father caused me that pain - not a stick! My father's arms scared me, and I feared my father like I've feared no other man. His touch repulsed me. I was the same with my mother. (To this day, I cannot physically tolerate either parent touching me. I feel physically ill at their touch.) My father would pray, and I could hardly go along but for fear of yet another Roy Lessin spanking. After we prayed, it was time for me to be happy. But my insides would be a mess. Tears would threaten to come back and cause me more pain and anguish. I had to pretend that I wasn't sad, and that I wasn't in pain. This would be my greatest lesson: to be happy no matter how I felt inside. It would take me a few back-to-back spankings, but I would learn. It would be a lesson I'd learn for life - being falsely happy regardless of how my body felt.

One aspect of receiving a Roy Lessin spanking is the sexual aspect. It's taken me years to even begin to allow myself to speak of this aspect. You see, as a child I had no idea what sex was. I just had this funny sensation that came and went during the Roy Lessin spanking ritual. To my great dismay, I learned that sexual stimulation can be cross-wired with the painful ritual of spankings. This cross-wiring was a real problem for me. Because I couldn't cope with the double message of love and pain, I avoided developing an intimate relationship with a man for a very long time. It took years for me to find a healthy sexuality outside the memories I have of the Roy Lessin spankings. I struggled with this double message as a child. I feel a deep sense of shame as I remember hitting and torturing my dolls and Barbies when no one was around. I needed some way to express the fear, pain, and sexual confusion I felt inside; yet my childish mind couldn't comprehend the significance of what I was doing.

My parents were your "A" students. They followed your eight steps occasionally reducing the entire Roy Lessin spanking ritual to a few swats - not very often, though. My butt and thighs would sting for a long time after a Roy Lessin spanking ritual, so I'd go into the bathroom and use my mother's mirror to look at my behind. I remember seeing red stripes crisscrossing my buttocks and my thighs. At times, I had old marks underneath the new marks. My parents conducted several Roy Lessin spanking rituals a day when I was a young child. I remember a teacher at school asking me one day why I didn't just sit still. I couldn't tell her that it was because the marks on my butt hurt so bad sitting in the little wooden chair.

Now that we've established what a Roy Lessin spanking is and what it felt like to receive one, let's move on to wrong attitudes. I'd like to begin by telling you a story of what it was like having an adult, in this case your wife, address my "wrong attitude."

One day my parents were moving. I was four, and woke up to a house that I no longer recognized. I asked my mother what was happening. Whatever answer she gave, I didn't understand. She sent my brothers and me to your house, where your wife Char was to baby-sit us. On the way out the door, I saw our small parakeet Chirpy sitting in his cage outside our house near some bushes. Now, Chirpy wasn't supposed to be outside. A dark feeling of dread came over me. I was frightened as I walked to the car, looking at Chirpy frantically chirping in his cage next to a stack of boxes. At some point, at your house, Char put all of us down for a nap. The confusion and fear filled me, and I wondered if I'd ever see my home again. When the room was quiet, my emotions burst out of me. I cried. Char came in and told me to stop, and I couldn't. So she performed one of your spanking rituals. I went back to my napping spot. I lay there for the remainder of my nap - unable to sleep, afraid to move, filled with emotions of dread and fear so large I thought I'd explode. But I had to make Char believe that I was cheerfully obeying her. I put on whatever face I could to convince her, and pretended to be asleep. I had to pretend I felt different than I did inside.

There are two points I'd like to make about bad attitudes. The first is that, as you can see above, adults do not have "powers" that allow them to read the minds of children. My parents made this mistake over and over again. They weren't much better at reading my mind or how I felt than your wife was that day I stayed at your house. You see, parents make mistakes. There's no getting around this. But when a parent uses a force as violent as a Roy Lessin spanking, mistakes are truly damaging, especially when the spanking ritual involves breaking the child's will - or breaking any part of a child's psyche!

The second point about "wrong attitudes" is that you tell parents that their children will be happy with your mode of discipline, or even prefer being spanked. I want to say that I didn't experience that joy. I built myself a cheerful, obedient shell. I lived in that shell, only peeking my head out when I felt safe, for 30 years. It took me another seven years to actually try taking the cheerful, obedient shell off - only to run back into it when something felt like the "old fears of my childhood." I have not been happy living in this shell, constantly pretending to be happy when I felt miserable inside. When I think of a happy child, I think of a child who feels free to express their ideas, thoughts, and emotions. I think that a parent's job is to teach a child how to express their emotions, not hit them with a stick until the child displays the emotion of the parent's choosing.

You write about parents disciplining children for disobedience. It seems pretty simple. The parents set up some rules and the children follow them. When disobedience is based on a child doing or behaving just as the parent asks, following those rules becomes much harder. As your teachings played out in my growing-up years, I found that I violated more rules than I could keep track of. Not only that, one of the rules was to follow through without my mom or dad asking a second time. So perfection became the rule, and perfection was something I failed at miserably. Even in the cheerful, obedient shell, I was not completely safe. The life lesson I took away was that there is no such thing as second chances. I took this lesson to school, and found that I was afraid to try. Not that my parents didn't encourage me - it was just that if the encouragement didn't work, which it often didn't, they'd spank me for getting letters backwards, words wrong on spelling tests, and so forth. Basically, they spanked me for not trying hard enough. I haven't even mentioned the hundreds of other issues they spanked me for. I learned how to live helplessly. Not only did I face my own internal disappointment at not getting something correct, I faced a Roy Lessin spanking at home when I wore out my encouragement. I grew up thinking that I was mentally handicapped. Later, as a grown adult, I found out that I'm dyslexic - something a Roy Lessin spanking would never cure.

For most of my life, I worried that I'd remembered all this wrong. About eleven years ago I called Char and asked her to listen to while I recalled a Roy Lessin spanking for her. I described to her in as much detail as I could remember the beatings I endured again and again. Char told me that my memories were exactly what you and she had taught my parents. I had not remembered wrong!

I read your book a few weeks ago. I was again surprised to realize I knew and remembered your teachings very well. After the years of growing up around your family and hearing you preach at Outreach, your book brought back your painful teachings and the painful memories I've been trying so hard to live with. I kept wanting to grab my cheerful, obedient shell because to this day I feel scared when I think of all the Roy Lessin spankings and teachings.

Both Char, during my call with her, and you, in your first book, talk about spankings having a higher purpose in saving the soul. You reference Proverbs 20:30: "Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts." Those "blows" left horrible marks on my body that made sitting difficult and bathing with soap sting horribly, and they terrified my spirit.

Feeling terrified isn't the only outcome I live with. Ten years ago a gastroenterologist diagnosed me with IBS, a condition I've had since I was around three years old. Because of the fierce anxiety I felt because of the Roy Lessin spankings, I had terrible chronic stomachaches and diarrhea while I was growing up and as an adult. Five years ago my psychiatrist diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and I began to work through my deeply rooted fears of my parents and the Roy Lessin spankings. Later a physician associate (PA) diagnosed me with asthma and severe allergies from a poor immune system, a result of my chronic anxiety. The same PA told me that I'm at high risk for colon cancer because of the years of IBS as a result of my anxiety. Roy, these problems are all due to my parents implementing your teachings using Roy Lessin spankings to correct a multitude of childhood blunders and attitudes. I can't imagine why a parent would want these outcomes for their child. I may have looked happy and acted lovingly towards my parents, but I was emotionally and physically sick inside! Your teachings gave me no option but to live a horrible lie of looking happy when I was miserable.

For almost every day of my life, I fear people. If people like my parents, and friends of my family such as you and Char, would hurt me this badly, what horrible things would others do to me? I was supposed to be safe with my family and friends growing up! I especially fear men in authority roles. I occasionally look even at people I know, and who I know to be safe, with terror just because they've spoken in a tone that reminds me of those early times. I fear making mistakes. I choose not to have children of my own because a child's screams scramble my insides.

Remember all those sermons at Outreach that you, Don Leetch, Dean Kerns, and a few others delivered? I still hear children screaming as their parents spanked them outside the church sanctuary during Sunday morning service during those sermons. I remember the screams of my siblings. I remember on a Friday night, someone was preaching and a dad took a baby outside for a spanking, and a neighbor called the police. We stopped the church service, and you went out with your bible to explain to the officer why it was fine for the parent to spank their baby. All of us inside prayed that the officer would understand and not take the baby away.

As a grown woman I still fear Roy Lessin spankings. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night begging my husband to "not let them get me."

My father and I have talked several times about Roy Lessin spankings. He has asked for forgiveness, and is horrified by what he has done. These conversations have been incredibly painful for both of us, and I'm now 37 years old! I believe that he thought he was doing the right thing. You were a leader in the church he believed in, and you were his friend. Our families socialized together. This was not some teaching he picked up somewhere, and then went off to make the best of it.

I hope that by this point you begin to see how your simple, sweet words about raising children are actually harmful. Perhaps you're wondering if I want to have a dialogue with you, and talk about what you really meant by your early book. Perhaps you've adopted a policy of grace, and now recommend that parents spank less and not on bare skin? The truth is, I don't want to know. If I needed justification or reasoning for your teachings, I could use your book as a reference. What I'd like you to do is reconsider your position after carefully looking at how your teachings affected me. Would a loving parent really want to raise a child to fear people, to wear a cheerful and obedient shell, or to live with PTSD and other ailments? I hope the answer you come to is No. I hope that you realize that hitting a child for any reason is not loving. Then, I hope, you join the cause to end corporal punishment in the homes of children. I came into this world a happy, healthy baby. For no other reason than the Roy Lessin spankings, I now fight for my physical and mental health. Please help others and me so this doesn't happen to any more children. Help end corporal punishment. Help end child abuse. If Jesus said, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea," (Mark 9:42), I can't image that God would condone such behavior in people who claim to be loving parents.

Sincerely,
Bethany A. Fenimore

Another reviewer also regretted following Roy Lessin's teachings.

Thank you for bearing your soul, no matter how painful. I too used Roy and Charlene's methods and can also say that the results were disasterous. Seeds of this discipline led to separation, divorce and alienation from the Lord Himself. This is nothing against Roy, the discipline just goes way, way, way, too far. Please don't give up on God because somebody is off-the-wall. I know what has become of two of the kids from Outreach, because they are mine. Those of us who gave our lives to Outreach built a business, not a ministry. We must all be careful who we follow, because we might not like, in the end. where they are going.

Mara Salvatrucha 13 Pages

2011-08-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

MS-13 also has some active pages, one with over 5000 fans.

The fans of the group below were apparently not turned off by the description of MS-13.

Ansar Al Mujahideen

2011-08-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

One of the most active Jihadi forums online is Ansar al-Mujahideen Arabic Forum, also known as AMAF. There's a very similar looking closed group on Facebook.

If you take a look at some of the members, there are a fair number of profile photos depicting weapons and Osama bin Laden. The group may get shut down, but the underlying anger and despair is unlikely to go away.

Holocaust Denial

2011-08-10T02:44:00.000-07:00

Last month, a group of Holocaust survivors asked Facebook to remove Holocaust denial pages. Facebook concluded that those pages, while "repugnant and ignorant," were considered free speech and did not violate terms of service.

Let's take a look at the page featured in one of the articles. It's safe to say that the posts speak for themselves.

So who is this "Tyrone Washington" guy who keeps showing up? He looks like a sockpuppet stereotype of a black man. Yeah, I know -- hard to imagine these racially sensitive folks doing such a thing.

Wonder if whoever created the "Tyrone Washington" profile was also responsible for "Kentuckyfried Chickeniqua?"

Poetry Slam

2011-08-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

It's been said that sometimes conservative Christians and spanking fetishists are singing from the same hymnal. This may be the best illustration I've seen yet. Below is a poem someone posted to the group "My parents didn't put me in time out, they whooped my ass." It starts out kind of creepy and goes downhill from there.

Let's see.... Emma Young shows up on the friends lists of users like "Anita Paddlin" so we could reasonably assume that she's a fetishist. But when we take a look at Wendy Jackson's profile, she just appears to be a conservative Christian with no obvious red flags.

So what is this "smilingwithteeth.com" site? Well, it appears to be offering stuff like spanking stories, multimedia, and role playing. I'd guess that even many conservative Christians would agree that some of the stories that "js@smilingwithteeth.com" has written are obscene.

Young Girls

2011-08-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

Here's yet another closed group. Given that one of the members had what appeared to be child pornography posted to an open wall, I suspect it may not be a Bible study group. Just a guess.

Paolo Ghelardini Indicted

2011-08-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

Paolo Ghelardini, who was arrested this spring, has been formally indicted in Romania. According to news accounts, he had over 9500 child pornography images and 1000 videos. At this point, he has not been charged with production.

He allegedly had 19 different Facebook accounts, and was apparently active between January 2010 and May 2011.

He had also used the alias "Paul Grechiadan" among others.

Pro Spanking Mom

2011-08-03T01:27:00.000-07:00

Molly Anderson claims to be a "pro spanking mom" with five kids. She lists "parenting toddlers" as an interest, but her friends appear to be spanking fetishists.

Let's see, she's got a video of someone talking about spanking kids and a picture of a girl getting spanked with her pants down, among other things.

Preteen Lesbians

2011-08-03T01:17:00.000-07:00

Jeff Pingle, like one of the users in a previous post, claims to be interested in "preteen lesbians." This term apparently translates to "yet another sick way to exploit young girls."

Cascade-O-Crap

2011-08-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

Facebook's apparently gotten smarter about certain keywords, such as "PTHC." So some users came up with a new interest called "pthc.incest.young schoolgirls 10.11.12.daddys littlegirl." It's like a cascade of crap.

Kidzz

2011-08-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

This guy has had a number of accounts. Given that there are plenty of idiot parents willing to allow their kids to be on reality TV, he should be entertained for a while.

But the "Watching kidzz...." thing seems to be new. But by this point, it's hard to be surprised by the content.

Weirdest Facebook Groups

2011-08-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to blog.rounds.com for the link in the story "Top 15 Weirdest Facebook Groups."

Readers probably will not be surprised to hear that the group mentioned continues to attract creepy users. Below are some screenshots. Can anyone guess what Mike Shanks is fixated on?

Uh yeah.

On the group "Spanking Children," a user gets even less subtle, if that's possible. Paul Williams wants to chat about spanking kids.

We've seen Rich before trolling for videos of girls getting spanked. Would anyone be too surprised if Paul also turned out to be a fetishist?

We didn't think so.

Robin Pagoria and Money

2011-08-01T02:21:00.000-07:00

According to court documents, Robin Pagoria filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Christopher Lobban, the Australian man she was involved with online, is reportedly wealthy. It's quite possible that Lobban's wealth made him more attractive to Pagoria, just as her access to minors may have made her more interesting to him than she otherwise would have been.

Given that Pagoria had apparently found spanking sexually stimulating from an early age and had also been spanked as a child, it may have been easier for her to rationalize her actions as "discipline." In fact, if she'd done what the woman in the cartoon below had done, she might not have been charged at all.

Chester

2011-07-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

It's occasionally hard to tell whether someone is trolling or serious. Below is the user originally known as "Chester MoeLester."

Facebook apparently forced him to change his name, and he became the more prosaic "Chester Brown."

Here's Hans Rockhard, one of Chester's friends.

Is Hans serious or trolling? Let's take a look at a comment he posted.

Just .... ewwww.

Possible Extradition in Pagoria Case

2011-07-19T01:27:00.000-07:00

Christopher Donald Lobben, from Mullaloo in Western Australia, faces possible extradition to Polk County, Florida in the Robin Pagoria case. According to news stories, Lobben allegedly told Pagoria how to make a "spanking table" and encouraged her to videotape herself severely beating two naked girls with a paddle.

Some of the media's coverage seems a bit confused. The Orlando Sentinel claimed that Pagoria allegedly uploaded the videos to a website called "spankolife" where Lobben could watch. It's quite likely that she did indeed upload the files somewhere Lobben could access them, but it probably would not have been to spankolife.com. Although Pagoria had a profile there, the site apparently does not support any kind of private video, nor does it tolerate anything involving minors. According to The Ledger, Pagoria used a popular video-sharing site called Vimeo.com to upload the videos. This actually makes more sense, since Vimeo supports password-protected videos.

From what I could put together, it's unclear whether this is the first time that Lobben has connected with a woman online who had access to children and persuaded her to send him videos. Although most adults with a sexual interest in spanking do not seem to be predators, it's possible that secrecy and shame may help a predator get away with victimizing others. It'd be a lot harder for someone in the closet to go to the police about something they saw or experienced on a kink site.

The outrage and disgust directed at Pagoria have been palpable, but corporal punishment of children continues to be widely accepted in the U.S. The WA News story noted this in its final paragraph:

Florida still permits corporal punishment in schools and a number of books on child-rearing advocate spanking, with the more extreme "Christian" ones recommending doing it on bare buttocks.

Some of the articles made a point of saying that she'd used a "leather sex paddle" in an apparent effort to distinguish it from the wholesome wooden paddles that can still be legally used in Florida's public schools. But the reason she moved to a leather paddle from a wooden one was that the wooden paddle left severe bruises.

Let's take a look at a couple of things she posted on her Spankolife profile. She says that lying was "spanked out" of her as a child.

On her profile, she also indicates that her fascination with spanking began early.

Human sexuality is complex and not yet well-understood. But some people do experience some sexual imprinting from early experiences, and a study has shown a correlation between being spanked as a child and later sadomasochistic behavior. People's idea about what is normal is also shaped by their formative experiences.

The potentially sexual aspect of spanking can be confusing to children. In an essay titled "I Don't Believe This Was God's Will," a young Christian man writes about his childhood experiences and his struggle to deal with his adult fetish. "Taking My Medicine" is another story of growing up with frequent and severe physical punishment and developing a paraphilia. Robin Pagoria arguably represents a far worse outcome, perhaps because she also developed a very impaired sense of boundaries.

Billy Kidd

2011-07-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

Alas, since Facebook has blocked Mr. Kidd from adding friends, it looks like his "PEDO friends" will have to add him.

Ben Thomes

2011-07-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

The good news is that Facebook has shut down the profile below. The bad news is that "Ben Thomes" has come back with a new profile picture that's so foul that I can't screencap or link to it. (It was, of course, reported to Cybertipline.) PhotoDNA may indeed be an improvement over the previous approach, but it does not seem to be a silver bullet.

Love Boys

2011-06-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

Via Scribbal and KOB, a woman in New Mexico saw child pornography on a Facebook page called "Love Boys" and reported it to law enforcement.

Valencia County resident Loretta Armijo contacted the Valencia County Sheriff's Department after making the shocking discovery on Facebook and said she wanted to do anything she could to bring down the page and expose it to authorities.

The page was titled “Love Boys” and posted pictures of scantily clothed children on the wall.

Armijo said she found the page while surfing Facebook and immediately called police, but was told she would have to talk to federal authorities.

Local sheriff's officials said that in cases like this, people need to report the page or site right away to police, the attorney general's office of the FBI.

Officials stated one person is responsible for creating the page and law enforcement will investigate it.

Armijo was appalled with what she saw on the Facebook page.

“I was disgusted with the photos that were on the site, on this page and it brought tears to my eyes because I felt bad for these kids. I don't know what part of the world they are in but Facebook is a place for everybody,” she explained.

Good for her (and anyone else who tried to do something about it).

Hot Cute Boys

2011-06-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

Pedos and spammers and trolls, oh my!

James Dobson Fans

2011-06-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

Karen Mentor seems to be a big fan of anything related to spanking kids, including the Bible and some books by James Dobson. Some of Karen's friends just seem to be into spanking, plus or minus the Christianity.

Meet Lynn Redbottom, one of Karen's friends. She's not exactly subtle about her interest in spanking.

She's a fan of James Dobson's books on child discipline. Is Dobson really not aware that certain kinds of people find his books "stimulating" or is it just easier for him to ignore this fact?

Here's where it really starts getting creepy. She's in a number of groups, including one named "Mommy, show your love by using your belt." The "About Lynn" section says "Have two teenage daughter's that know what it means to go over Mommy's knee."

Someone else questioned this, and she seemed to have no idea why other people might find it less than appropriate.

St. Augustine's High School

2011-06-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond's decision to ban corporal punishment at St. Augustine's High School generated a lot of controversy. It even made its way to Facebook.

Corporal punishment is currently banned in all U.S. Catholic dioceses. Why was Archbishop Aymond so concerned about paddling? Some of the members of the St. Augustine community see it as a racial issue, where white people are telling black people how they can discipline children. Let's take a look at a very brief clip, believed to be shot at St. Augustine's.

Some public schools, mostly in the South, still use paddling. The paddle is not an idiot-proof device, and students have been injured. Some of the public schools' handiwork is online at http://www.nospank.net/violatn.htm .

The New Orleans Archdiocese hired Monica Applewhite, a well-respected consultant, to prepare a report and recommendations about discipline policies at St. Augustine. Applewhite reported that some parents and students had mentioned injuries and excessive paddling. Some St. Augustine alumni responded by suing her. Here's a link to one of the documents they filed: http://www.scribd.com/doc/56993089/St-Augustine-Lawsut

Let's take a look at some of the claims the plaintiffs make. In 2005, New Orleans was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest in the history of the U.S. There were 1836 confirmed fatalities and over $80 billion in damages. St. Augustine's was forced to temporarily close its doors.

But Katrina's devastation pales compared to the damages caused and now continually inflicted upon this venerable institution due to the defamatory statements by Monica Applewhite, which have been carelessly, recklessly published and then republished by the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Let's get this straight. These people believe that a consultant saying that she had heard complaints about paddling-related injuries at St. Augustine was of the same magnitude as Hurricane Katrina?

There's something really disturbing about the paragraph below:

The school administrators learned, unequivocally, no parent, student, or alumni ever stated to Applewhite or any member of the Disciplinary Review Committee that their son had been hospitalized due to corporal punishment at St. Augustine, nor did anyone report that their son had ever been paddled 5 or 6 times in one day. Further, an independent consultant checked all state records of any reported abuse that would have been made by area hospitals, which are also mandatory reporters of abuse pursuant to the Louisiana Children's Code. There were no reported cases by any area hospital of any St. Augustine student complaining of abuse by the school. None.

Does this mean that conversations between Applewhite and students or parents were not confidential? The claim that a school consultant was able to check all state records of abuse reported by a hospital and see if any of the cases mentioned a St. Augustine student is even more troubling. Aren't both medical records and child abuse reports supposed to be confidential?

On June 1, Archbishop Aymond responded that he had also heard from students who'd been injured as a result of paddling. Later that week. St. Augustine made the news again in connection with a case where a school employee was alleged to have taken a $20000 bribe in 2004 to involve the school in a scheme to defraud the federal government. Instead of complaining about the damage to the "stellar reputation of the school," these alumni have been surprisingly quiet so far.

Robert Hull Sentenced to 15 Years

2011-05-31T01:51:00.000-07:00

Last week, Robert Hull was sentenced to 15 years for producing child pornography. It's a relatively light sentence, but he got a break for pleading guilty and cooperating in an investigation that led to another arrest. The investigation is continuing, and there may be more.

This man from Prince George, BC, who was arrested for using his 7-year-old daughter to make child pornography, sounds a lot like Hull's trading buddy.

A Prince George man accused of taking photos and video of his seven-year-old daughter and sharing them over the Internet faces child pornography charges.

The 41-year-old man was arrested in Prince George on Saturday, RCMP said, after police executed a search warrant and uncovered hundreds of child pornography files.

Robin Pagoria and LDD

2011-05-31T01:23:00.000-07:00

According to the affidavit, Robin Pagoria met her boyfriend on a site called spankfinder.com . This looks a lot like her profile.

Given her current legal problems, she probably won't be in a position to tell us about her "other kinky interests" any time soon. But her other profile provides ... well, probably way too much information.

"LDD" stands for "loving domestic discipline," which seems to be a combination of sadomasochism and bizarre headgames. One partner, usually the man, "disciplines" the other partner to enforce rules. There's an even stranger variation for fundies called "Christian domestic discipline" that allows them to claim that this lifestyle is "Biblical." Presumably Pagoria's boyfriend would have been the partner who was (ostensibly) in charge. It would be interesting to know whether he had found any other women on the spankfinder website who had access to children. Is this really the first time something like this has happened? It's not clear whether Robin Pagoria would have done something like this under her own steam.

We saw someone else in an earlier entry who was talking about being in a "domestic discipline" relationship. Given that she'd also talked about spanking her daughter on the bare butt, I called a social services agency in North Carolina to express concern. They told me that what the woman was doing was legal, so they wouldn't be taking any action. It's sort of paradoxical -- getting caught with an image or video depicting a child getting spanked bare could mean a felony conviction and sex offender status. But actually doing it to a child in real life is legal because it's considered "discipline."

Robin Pagoria

2011-05-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

Robin Leigh Oplinger looks a lot like Robin Leigh Pagoria, a former Polk County Sheriff's deputy, was arrested yesterday for aggravated child abuse and production of child pornography. She allegedly made videos of herself whipping two girls and sent the video to her boyfriend. The affidavit is here.

We've previously seen people who seemed to be fixated on spanking kids, including a couple who were talking about sharing videos. This woman is accused of taking it to the next level.

It's probably not too surprising that she'd show up on a site called "spankolife.com."

She expands on her interest in "domestic discipline."

It's sort of ironic that she's complaining about being "violated." What about the girls who were whipped and videotaped?

She was also seen on launchpad.net asking questions about getting Skype videoconferencing running on Ubuntu Linux. Do we want to know what she was transmitting via webcam? Probably not.

Because spanking is considered an acceptable way to discipline children, boundaries can get blurred. Florida, where Pagoria lives, still permits corporal punishment in schools. A number of books on child-rearing advocate spanking, and a few of the more extreme "Christian" ones even recommend doing it on the bare butt. The problem is that for many people, spanking can also be a sexual thing. For example, Robin Pagoria recalled drawing a picture of "a girl bent over a bed with paddles and belts lying beside here" when she was "about 13."

Update: a video of Grady Judd, Polk County Sheriff, speaking about the case and Pagoria in court. More information about her online behavior here.

PhotoDNA

2011-05-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

According to numerous articles and press releases, Facebook will be using a new software package called PhotoDNA developed by Microsoft and donated to NCMEC. It uses a technique called "robust hashing" and is based on work by Dartmouth's Hany Farid.

It's easy to demand that something be done about child pornography, but much harder to actually curb it. Computer vision is useful for simple things (like reading license plate numbers), but it has its limitations. Most people have experienced the "CAPTCHA" technology to block spam where you have to read a series of letters or do something similar. Why does that work? Because humans can recognize things in images that computers can't.

However, it is possible for a computer to tell whether an image is identical to known child pornography. Law enforcement and ISPs currently use a type of hashing known as SHA-1. ISPs would calculate the SHA-1 hashes of images uploaded to their servers, compare them to hash values of known child pornography, and then take action if they detected a match. An automated approach like this is very important for big players like Facebook that may have millions of images uploaded every day. Having humans review all content isn't feasible.

The problem with the SHA-1 hashing was that it would only work if one image was exactly identical to another. So let's say someone took a known CP image and slightly cropped or resized it. The automated image recognition breaks because the files are no longer exactly the same. This is what PhotoDNA addresses. Note that even PhotoDNA only works with known CP images. So if a predator creates his own CP and uploads it, the system won't recognize it. (This happened with John Huitema, who recently pleaded guilty to victimizing a 2-year-old girl and producing child pornography.)

The information about how PhotoDNA works is pretty limited, since it's mostly in the form of Microsoft press releases. So there are still a number of unanswered questions. It sounds like the image is converted into black and white, resized to a standard size, broken up into small blocks, and the digital signature is calculated for each block. So this is supposed to detect images that have been altered, and Microsoft said that their testing had yielded some promising results.

It does sound like PhotoDNA will be more robust than SHA-1 hashing, but there's not much information available on its limitations or future directions. It's also not possible for regular people to download the software and play with it. Some image manipulation involves discarding a lot of information. Would PhotoDNA be able to detect a preview-sized image of known child pornography that someone was advertising on another site? The "digital fingerprint" seems to rely a lot on edge detection and intensity. What happens if someone alters a photo in a way that changes the edge information, e.g., by adding another object or lettering?

Some of the Facebook problem children have also shared CP videos. It does not sound like PhotoDNA is currently being applied to that, and I'd be curious what the potential was in this area. Some video codecs contain I-frames, which could probably be analyzed this way.

Ironically, Windows Live has apparently had some major problems with child pornography. Has Microsoft tried applying PhotoDNA to its own network? If not, why not? If so, why doesn't it work better?

Recent Arrests

2011-05-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

Recently, there have been more arrests in the U.S.. Arthur Barnett, Tong Yang, and Stephen Schmid were charged after Facebook reported them to NCMEC for posting child pornography. This is encouraging; it seems like there's been some real improvement. Congratulations to Facebook, NCMEC, and the law enforcement agencies involved.

Ben Wwantsit

2011-05-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

The poster formerly known as "Ben Wwantsit" and "Barry Wwantsit" pleaded guilty in Glasgow this week. It turned out that he was a Dutch national named John Huitema. Below is a screenshot of one of his Facebook profiles. We redacted the profile photo. He bragged about sexually abusing girls, and some of his like-minded friends encouraged him to do even more.

This is a photo that he said was himself.

Video Hard PTHC

2011-05-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

By this point, Hope Rock's friends and interests look pretty familiar. Jose Gutierres Pteachece appears to be yet another incarnation of Marcos Teia. We've also seen Nieza Anousha in a previous entry.

But in the corner of the screenshot, we see some a live chat for a Facebook group called "VIDEO HARD PTHC." What could that be? Well, thanks to the anonymous tipster who sent the redacted screenshots for this post, we have a pretty good idea. (Given that "PTHC" stands for "Pre-teen Hardcore" and is a common child pornography keyword, we can probably assume that the blurred and whited out pictures were originally indecent images of children.)

We've seen Rafa Fernandes Novo, also known as Marcos Teia, before. He's advertising a "dweebbbz" site. Below is a screenshot of the descriptions of some of the videos posted to this site. This is apparently what gets these people off.

Ghelardini Arrested

2011-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

According to some Romanian news stories, Paolo Ghelardini was arrested a couple of days ago for child pornography, detained for 24 hours, and possibly taken to Bucharest for further proceedings. His house and another building were searched by law enforcement.

BBC One - Social Networks and Pedophiles

2011-05-13T10:09:00.001-07:00

Sexual Predators Share Disturbing Images on Facebook

2011-05-09T23:26:00.000-07:00

Fox News New York had a story about Facebook users sharing child pornography.

FBI officials describe illegal photo sharing on social networks as "rampant." Nickolas Savage, assistant security chief of the FBI's cyber division, says pedophiles exchanging pictures on social networks can feed a vicious cycle.

"They can meet other people like themselves, and go off and validate their behavior," Savage says. "When they trade with others there's always a sense they need more material."

Child predators even steal innocent pictures of children that could come from their parent's Facebook profiles and unlocked photo albums.

Stolen or illegal images can be reported to Facebook right on the site. The company removes them. But Bechard thinks the company should do more.

They shut somebody out, but they don't lock the door," he says. "They just come back right in as another profile, putting up the same images and trading the same information with other pedophiles."

This is consistent with what we've seen. For example, "Jimmy Lemoni" (ab)uses the grou.ps social network to create a new group dedicated to child pornography. For obvious reasons, the URL has been redacted.

His friend "Ddeby Cchrm" came back with a new account very quickly after Facebook shut down the previous one. Given the interests, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that "Ddeby" also seems to be involved in the group that Jimmy was advertising.

Porn and School Uniforms

2011-05-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

School uniforms are apparently a turn-on for some people. Professional models and performers may use them as props.

From my perspective, the photo above wasn't really a problem. Although I had no interest in viewing the video, it appeared to involve only consenting adults. However, the logo on the sweater is associated with a particular order that's established a number of Catholic schools, and I wondered whether the order could sue the porn producer for trademark dilution. Maybe, it turned out. A helpful law school professor pointed me to a 1979 decision involving the Dallas Cowboys and said that the school would need to be able to show "a protectable trademark interest in their uniforms."

Practically speaking, there's no way that a school can guarantee that a distinctive piece of uniform clothing that students are required to buy will never show up in online porn. A few years ago, a 17-year-old student at a Catholic high school in the Bronx appeared in a porn video. Given the volume of low-quality amateur porn out there, it's unlikely that this would have gotten much attention -- except that the student apparently wore her school uniform for part of it.

It's not unusual for pedophiles on social networks to display children in their profile pictures to signal their interests. We've seen a few of them with photos of kids in school uniforms. Nieza Anousha has connections to some more obviously predatory users and is also displaying an image of a prepubescent girl sitting in a way that provides a clear view up her skirt. (We've blacked out the faces of both girls.)

The solid color polo shirts and navy skirts look like school uniforms. Luckily for the girls, they can't be readily identified. This is a good thing since some pedophiles take a disturbing interest in the real names and locations of children in the photos that they trade. That's why it really blew my mind when I discovered that some Catholic schools now require students' shirts and sweaters to be embroidered with the child's first initial and last name. What were the administrators thinking?

The Real McCoy

2011-05-06T01:26:00.000-07:00

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Christopher McCoy was arrested Thursday.

A 48-year-old Granite City man was being held without bail Thursday after Madison County prosecutors charged him with 10 counts of aggravated child pornography.

Stephanee Smith, a spokeswoman for the Madison County state's attorney's office, said Christopher H. McCoy of the 2900 block of Willow Avenue had thousands of pornographic images of children on compact discs, memory sticks and a laptop computer. She said the children depicted ranged from toddlers to teen-agers. Smith said there was no indication McCoy knew the children.

We were familiar with Christopher McCoy's Facebook account, which has since been shut down. Below is the profile photo he used, which is somewhat more flattering than his mugshot.

A couple of people in our group ran "alt" accounts where they posed as high school girls. McCoy got pretty creepy. In one message, he said, "I enjoy pthc loli incest favs are 9 and under." In another, he said, "I live across the river in granite city a steel mill town I wrk across the river in st louis .mmmm 14 is very sexy wher in wi u live [...] wats the oldest man u been wit and how old were u." Hopefully, the police are investigating this guy thoroughly.

He also expressed an interest in "nudism" and posted this [NSFW] cellphone photo of himself online.

Chris Wittwer Rides Again

2011-05-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

Given that Chris Wittwer has repeatedly asked people to mass-report users, groups, and pages, one might imagine that he takes Facebook's Rights and Responsibilities very seriously. So imagine our surprise when we saw him blatantly advertising a new profile he'd just created called "Chris Wittwer-Two."

Makes one almost wonder how many accounts he has in all. Of course, he also seems to lose friends regularly, so perhaps that will limit the number of profiles he needs. In the exchange below, he accuses a woman of being a pedophile lover and threatens to publicize information about her children. What a class act.

Chris Wittwer

2011-05-04T02:31:00.000-07:00

Chris Wittwer has gotten some press for posting names, photos, and addresses of registered sex offenders in the UK on his website. He's named his group "Children Have Rights in Society." The first letters of this spell out "C.H.R.I.S." As in his name. Of course, one problem with this is that pedophiles sometimes like to talk about "children's rights" too. As in claiming that children should have the "right" to have sex with adults. It's surprising that someone who claims to be very knowledgeable about online predators would not have known that.

He's had some legal issues related to anger management problems at football games and other locations. It's unclear whether he will face charges related to posting prohibited information about a notorious juvenile offender's alleged new identity on his website. Perhaps it's not too surprising that there's a large "Make a Donation" button that appears at the top of every page on his site, including that one. There are also frequent requests for funds on the C.H.R.I.S. Facebook page. Although the site has a plethora of links, there's no information about how much money the organization raises or where it goes. C.H.R.I.S. even displays an animated graphic of a burning candle to honor children who have died of abuse. How could one be so cynical and unmoved as to ask questions about the lack of financial transparency? That would be almost as crass as asking about the origin of the fire that burned down the pub he used to run.

Mr. Wittwer also claims that he's been "attacked three times near his home" by sex offenders he's put on his site. Child molesters are often wimps that avoid confrontation with adults, so it's rather amazing that there would have been three attacks.

Chris Wittwer actually has been involved in a fair amount of online conflict. But is it really just a matter of him being targeted by online predators? Based on screenshots someone sent me, it doesn't look like it. He's essentially encouraging members of his group to mass-report another Facebook group called "Sexual abuse must stop." Is this group preying on children or even violating Facebook's policies? Not that I could see. But it did contain some people that Chris didn't like. Presumably, that was enough.

Update: he's apparently dedicated an entire page on his website to bashing another activist he's been feuding with, along with the guy's friends. Although he certainly has a right to his opinions, the page raises some questions about the purpose of the site and organization. He claims to be fighting child exploitation and "naming and shaming" pedophiles, and is collecting donations online to support this activity. But none of the people shown on the page have ever been charged with crimes, let alone sex offenses. If his site is going to be a mismash of sex offender information copied from other sources and people that he personally dislikes, shouldn't he be more honest with the donors?

Ars Technica

2011-04-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Facebook shut down Ars Technica's page, accusing them of copyright infringement. Given that Ars Technica was apparently just posting their own material to their page, it's not entirely clear where the alleged infringement would have occurred. Facebook hasn't given them any hints either. The story is up at http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/04/facebook-shoots-first-ignores-questions-later-account-lock-out-attack-works.ars

Update (6:34 PM CST): The Ars Technica page was restored. Facebook is apparently working on an official statement.

I Tawt I Taw a Pedophile

2011-04-28T01:09:00.000-07:00

We've seen "Love Little" repeatedly. He's not too subtle about his interests.

And yet another pedo looking for groups.

Pati and Rafa

2011-04-28T01:05:00.000-07:00

I'd guess that "Pati Nova" and "Rafi Massa" would be Marcos Teia. Again.

Carolina

2011-04-28T01:02:00.000-07:00

Carolina Smith claims to be a middle school girl. Of course, most middle school girls wouldn't have child pornography keywords as their interests.

So we can't exactly get surprised that "she" is looking to trade.

TSA Screener Arrested

2011-04-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

Via Philly.com, a TSA screener at the Philadelphia International Airport has been charged in distributing child pornography. This coincides with recent controversy about TSA screening procedures, particularly those involving children.

A passenger screener at Philadelphia International Airport is facing charges that he distributed more than 100 images of child pornography via Facebook, records show.

Federal agents also allege that Transportation Safety Administration Officer Thomas Gordon Jr. of Philadelphia, who routinely searched airline passengers, uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform.

We were quite familiar with his Facebook accounts. He showed up as "Tom Gibbons", "Tom Gibson", and "Mark Rogers." Below is a a screenshot from the Mark Rogers profile.

His wall was not publicly viewable, but sources said that was even grosser. We were told that he'd expressed interest in sexually abusing young girls as well as looking at their photos.

The complaint describes some of the images that he uploaded to Photobucket. One titled "Hehehehehehe.jpg" depicted "a naked prepubescent girl lying on her back with her legs spread apart and her genitalia exposed. An adult's hand is seen inserting a pink sexual object into the child's genitalia. The child is holding a pink ball in her mouth that appears to be attached to a strap around the child's face."

According to the indictment, Gordon used at least six different Facebook accounts to post over 100 sexually explicit images of minors. He also allegedly possessed more than 600 child pornography files, including videos and images. He was a member of at least one closed group called "PTHC Lovers" on Facebook. Below is a partial screenshot of the member list.

Since he'd listed Raleigh as his location on his Facebook profiles, we contacted the North Carolina ICAC about him. Although it turned out that he was actually from Pennsylvania, they were helpful and responsive. We thank everyone involved in apprehending him. However, the idea that someone like this was in a position to conduct intensive pat-down searches of children at airports is extremely disturbing.

Good Friday

2011-04-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, someone sent me a link to a publicly viewable photo album that somebody had posted to Facebook. I wearily clicked on it and instantly wished I hadn't. There were a number of young boys, some engaged in various sex acts with adult men. All I could do was go to Cybertipline, fill out the report form, and clear my browser cache to make sure that the images were deleted. Facebook will almost certainly shut down the account and file their own reports with law enforcement if the person who posted them appears to live in a country that will do something about it. But there will always be more online predators.

Ironically, today is Good Friday, a Christian religious holiday commemorating Jesus's crucifixion and death. Crucifixion was a horrible way to die, and I always wondered what kind of people would want to watch it. There may be certain parallels between Jesus, who was publicly tortured and humiliated, and the victims of child pornography. In Matthew 25, Jesus makes the point that whatever is done to the least of God's people is done to God. Surely this would apply to the children in the photos and videos, whose abuse and humiliation are freely circulated online.

Turkey

2011-04-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

According to the Turkish Justice Ministry, the rate of women murdered in that country has jumped 1400% between 2002 and 2009. This is part of a larger pattern of violence against women. Honor killings, where women and girls are killed to protect the family's perceived "honor," continue to be a problem. During the relatively brief time that this blog has been online, I've noticed a surprising amount of pornography posted to Facebook by Turkish users. Most of it involves adults, but some of it clearly does not.

Two Men Kissing Update

2011-04-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

Via Newser, Facebook has apparently apologized for removing the photo of two men kissing. In fairness to Facebook, the event was apparently removed by the organizer in response to troll harassment and not by Facebook itself (as the blog post originally stated).

Two Men Kissing

2011-04-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

Some users organized a "Kiss-In" protest on Facebook in response to an incident where two gay men were ejected from a pub in the UK. One man posted a photo of two men kissing to the "Dangerous Minds" Facebook page in the context of the event. Facebook removed the photo, sent the user a warning, and deleted the protest event. Below is a screenshot from their blog that includes the photo.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at what some currently active users on Facebook have been up to. Sarah Dee is interested in finding some other groups where people post images and videos.

What kind of images and videos? Well, Sarah Dee lists her interests as "Lolita" and "P T H C." For the blissfully unaware, "PTHC" stands for "pre-teen hardcore." We can reasonably assume that Sarah and friends are interested in stuff that's a lot more explicit than kissing, and it doesn't involve adults.

Sarah Dee's friend "Children Side" is also openly trolling for child pornography.

Emily Emmerson uses the "Questions" application to ask "Would anyone like to trade pics or vids?"

Zac Cartoon is also looking for like-minded friends and is not too subtle. He posts, "plz all pedo add me."

The two fully clothed men in the first picture hardly seem sexually explicit. If the Facebook safety team would like to see something that was, they might want to take a look at some of the closed and private groups that some of the users we saw were talking about.

Distortions

2011-04-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

One thing we've noticed about the pedophiles that we've tracked is an almost compulsive level of persistence. In the past few months, we've seen a few users arrested and charged for posting child pornography to Facebook and all of those users had created new accounts after being kicked off Facebook at least once. So it was interesting to read "Inside the Mind of a Pedophile" (Neuroanthropology, 2010) that discussed some of the neurological and behavioral abnormalities associated with pedophilia. It mentioned neural characteristics similar to disorders in the obsessive-compulsive spectrum, e.g., pathological gambling and kleptomania. It said that there were both biological and environmental factors, specifically mentioning experiencing sexual molestation as a child. Another article cited, Abnormal Attraction (Scientific American Mind, 2009), expanded on the correlation between being abused as a child and later committing a sex offense.

Both articles also referred to cognitive distortion, and the SciAm one pointed out that in some cases, this distortion may help prop up an individual's self-esteem. This may be the case with Marcos Teia, one of the most active posters of child pornography on Facebook who seems to use this to gain attention and acceptance.

There are some unsettling parallels between these people and some of the spanking enthusiasts we've seen on Facebook and elsewhere online. For example, if you google Becky Chandler's ID, "beckychr007" and "spanking," you get about 840 hits. It's not hard to find anecdotes involving her mother spanking her bare with a hairbrush, and it's even easier to find her posting in parenting forums about the benefits of spanking kids. Others have posted collections of images depicting children getting spanked with their pants down, which have attracted equally disturbing comments from their Facebook "friends."

Some have even trolled for videos.

There are also some problems with boundaries and distorted patterns of thinking in both groups. When discussing child pornography, pedophiles often rationalize it by saying that the victim seemed to be enjoying the sex acts. Some of the spanking fetishists claim to be loving parents who have to "discipline" their children. For example, we saw Amanda Facey in a previous post commenting enthusiastically about sadomasochistic fan fiction, posting to a Yahoo group about her boyfriend spanking her to tears, and also talking about spanking her own daughter with her pants down. When someone else expressed their disgust, Amanda accused that person of "child pornography."

Human behavior and sexuality are complex and still not very well understood. I can't offer any explanations as to why some of the people I've watched are the way they are, nor can I offer any solutions. But some things are hard to ignore. Both the child pornography traders and the S&M people who fixate on children getting spanked seem to be troubled individuals with damaged sexuality. A number of the S&M people have talked in great detail about getting spanked as children, and some recent research has even established a correlation between this and later "sexually deviant" behavior. The Neuroanthropology article about pedophiles have indicated that at least some of them were sexually abused as children and may be "re-living" what they experienced and trying to master it.

What can be done about these people? Beyond locking up the ones who break the law, I have no idea.

Lydia Cacho on Child Pornography and Social Networks

2011-04-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

Lydia Cacho, a Mexican journalist who has won awards from Amnesty International, International Women's Media Foundation, and UNESCO, is tackling the issue of child pornography on social networks. She is calling on Facebook to report child pornography to the police. Facebook's position has been that they do when it comes from a country that has an agreement with the U.S. to prosecute it.

As I've said before, one technical problem here is that large social networks may not always be aware of child pornography because not all of it can be automatically detected. If a user who lives in the U.S. posts a file that the system recognizes as known child pornography, that user probably will be reported to law enforcement. But if the image does not match any known child pornography hashes, the system will not automatically flag it no matter how bad it is. Since many of the child pornography traders seem to use closed and secret groups for posting their material, they're also unlikely to be reported by other users.

From what I understand, most account shutdowns happen as a result of an automated process, not a human review. The system is capable of detecting certain anomalies that are likely to be associated with abusive accounts, but it is unlikely to be smart enough to recognize accounts that need to be reported to law enforcement. Once an account is shut down, the clock starts ticking and the information is automatically deleted after 90 days.

Kiki

2011-04-04T21:45:00.000-07:00

Kiki Dubois makes Becky Chandler look subtle.

He gets excited about a photo of a small boy holding a paddle.

His buddy Dan Schneider posts a photo of three boys.

The commenters take an interest in the boys' backsides and Kiki brings up spanking. Again.

Dan Schneider, who posted the picture above, is interested in boys.

Jamie Blue, who also commented on the photo of the boy with the paddle, is disappointed that a "great vid of a kid getting spanked" didn't stay up for long.

Pictures or Videos?

2011-04-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Rich Taylor, who is an enthusiastic fan of the "Spanking Kids" page promoted by Becky Chandler, is apparently interested in procuring pictures or videos of another user spanking his daughter.

He asks if "Chuck Baxter" can get someone else to take videotapes when he spanks his daughters.

Becky

2011-04-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

"The Intelligent Mom's Guide to Spanking" group was created by "Becky Chandler" who claims to be an "unabashed radical Pro-Spanking Mom." Becky goes on to emphasize that this group is not a fetish site.

That's an interesting claim. One of the regular contributors was featured in an earlier blog post and another seems to show up a lot in spanking-related groups. And Yolanda Varela, one of the members shown on the left, has a rather telling profile picture.

Let's check out this "Spanking Children" page that Becky promotes. There seems to be a number of like-minded people.

Becky Chandler seems to be all over the net as "beckychr007." Below is one of her Twitter status messages.

She also likes to frequent Yahoo and answer questions about parenting. Below she talks about paddling adolescents.

Should we be surprised that she again mentions bare-butt spanking? By this point, probably not.

Who "sexualized" the "traditional way parents disciplined?" According to Becky, it must have been the anti-spanking activists. Glad she cleared that up for us.

She links to the "teacherswhopaddle" blog, which some people believe to be a fetish site.

She claims that her 11-year-old daughter encouraged her to start a discussion on Yahoo about whether she should be paddled.

She seems to have done a lot of research into different kinds of spanking implements.

One of her contacts uses the screen name "spank men otk for bad behavior" and asks a question about consenting adults receiving "real discipline spankings."

Becky also has an interesting list on Amazon. I'm sure that the "Spanking Tails" books were just there for scholarly purposes.

She's also got quite a collection on ImageShack.

It's difficult to imagine any high school student, let alone a cheerleader, wearing red polka-dotted underpants that said "USA" on the back. Just sayin'.

Becky has claimed to be Catholic, and what could be more respectful than nunsploitation? Let's see how many things we can find wrong with the image below. First, the entire background is white. You might find this in a studio but not in a school. Second, the "nun" appears to be wearing pants under the "habit." Third, there are no Catholic schools left in the US that practice corporal punishment.

Although Google shut down the "Just a Girl in short shorts" blog, we can retrieve parts of it through the Wayback Machine. Hey Becky, want to tell us again how it's the anti-spankers who "sexualized" things?

Update: if you Google "Becky Chandler and spanking," there's apparently a well-circulated porn clip depicting a blond girl in short cutoffs being paddled.

By an amazing coincidence, the Becky Chandler we've seen repeatedly posting about spanking also seems to be fascinated by short cutoffs. Below is the photo she's used repeatedly. Coincidence or not?

At any rate, some other users on Yahoo also noticed Becky's pattern of behavior: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090228221837AAu8bBR

Reporting Defaults

2011-03-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Most of the Facebook users interested in child pornography take it somewhere else or use private groups. However, one will occasionally post some horrendous stuff to an open wall where anyone can see it. Recently, I came across this and reported it to Facebook. Here's what the reporting interface looks like. We select the "nudity or pornography" category.

Here's what's a little worrisome. Bear in mind that we're trying to report child pornography. So why is the default option set to just block the user and not report it to Facebook?

Sheva and Joe

2011-03-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

According to some recent articles, Facebook disables about 20000 accounts a day for various reasons. Most of this is done automatically because there are millions of users. Users whose accounts are disabled are usually not given a reason if they appeal.

So let's consider two Facebook profiles. Sheva Burton is an activist fighting child abuse. Joe Dogsex is interested in things like "playing with my little girl", "family sex encest", "Dog Knots the Girl," and "BEASTIALITY." So which of these profiles did Facebook shut down? If you guessed "Sheva Burton," you'd be right. Mr. Dogsex was still there at the time this was posted, and apparently has been for a while.

Below is a screenshot of Sheva Burton's profile from Google's cache.

Below is a screenshot of Joe Dogsex's profile at the time this entry was posted:

Sheva Burton's profile, however, is currently disabled.

Sukk Midic

2011-03-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

"Sukk Midic" isn't a subtle kind of guy. He's had a number of accounts with screen names like "Nude Foru." So perhaps it's unsurprising that he's also open about his interest in "little ones." The screenshot has been redacted since a couple of the profile photos depicted parts of his body that we'd rather not see.

His friend "Milly Luvlittlewon" has similar interests.

"Ineed Hotvideo" hides his wall and profile information, but manages to communicate his interests with his screen name and the photo of a prepubescent girl in a bikini. The screenshot below has been redacted to hide her face.

RIP Trolls for Fun and Profit

2011-03-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

"R.I.P. trolls" on Facebook are the unusually mean-spirited people who get a kick out of posting upsetting comments and images on memorial pages. They tend to get mass-reported and shut down pretty quickly, but usually reappear quickly with new accounts. One of the worst, an Australian named Bradley Paul Hampson, was recently sentenced to jail time for posting sexually explicit photos and comments on Facebook pages memorializing dead children. Below is an excerpt from the SMH story:

A man who vandalised Facebook tribute sites for two dead children has been jailed.

Self-confessed "troll" Bradley Paul Hampson, 29, of Tarragindi in Brisbane's south, posted pictures of penises and wrote offensive messages on the two sites in February last year.

On one Facebook tribute site for the 12-year-old boy, he wrote "woot I'm dead" across an image of the dead child.

He also morphed a photo of the boy's face inside a woodchipper and made it appear blood was coming from the machine.

On another, he wrote sexually explicit comments implying he was responsible for raping and killing the eight-year-old girl.

"My definition of pleasure ... listening to her ribs crack," he wrote. "I got mad ... so I murdered her."

In the U.S., there are a group of real-life R.I.P. trolls known as the Westboro Baptist Church. Instead of posting foul things on memorial pages, they show up at funerals and picket. Judging by the results that come back when you search Facebook for "Westboro Baptist", they're also widely hated. However, some people have suggested that Westboro Baptist Church may be a scam organization that provokes people and then uses lawsuits to generate revenue. Since they call themselves a "church," they may also be able to avoid paying taxes.

Shane Ispedo

2011-03-24T15:29:00.000-07:00

The user previously known as "Shane Ispedo" is currently facing over 50 charges related to possession, distribution, and production of child pornography. Shane Dale Pattison is a 21-year-old former student from Marshall, Saskatchewan who sometimes used the name "Pokedod." I believe that this is his DeviantArt site: http://pokedod.deviantart.com/ . It's strikingly ordinary.

When I was in high school, many of us envisioned pedophiles as dirty old men. A number of Catholic priests had been charged, including two who had been pastors in the local Catholic Church. Years later, it's difficult to wrap my head around the idea of people younger than I am now being arrested for sex offenses. "What made them that way?" I wonder sometimes. A number of causes have been suggested, e.g., experiencing sexual abuse, exposure to pornography, genetics, and personal choice. But nobody really knows.

Police in Australia Criticize Facebook

2011-03-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

According to a TNW story at http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/03/24/australia-police-claims-facebook-hinders-child-abuse-probe/ , Australian police have expressed frustration at the mutual assistance treaty and Facebook's response.

Australian Federal Police’s high-tech collection and capability manager, Grant Edwards, expressed that the mutual legal assistance treaty with the US is outdated and not designed to allow for a rapid response to online crime. And that Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, hasn’t been helpful with the push.

A revised treaty, supported by the AFP, is necessary to speed up the actioning of the police’s right to obtain information about online crime using a warrant on Facebook, which is head-quartered in the United States. Currently, the AFP is still required to undergo a long, tedious legal process in order to use US law enforcement to force Facebook to respond.

The Australian government has made efforts to amend the assistance treaty in order to speed up the process of lawful data acquisitions. However, the changes would need to be ratified by the US to take effect. According to Edwards, Facebook hasn’t been as helpful as it could because the company is “brand-protecting.” Furthermore, he labeled the social networking site’s action to remove pedophile profiles that were needed as evidence by the AFP as "ignorance on Facebook’s behalf."

Facebook has an automated system to detect and disable problem accounts. However, this system generally can't detect when a user should also be reported to law enforcement. Once an account is shut down, Facebook will retain the information for up to 90 days, and then it's gone. Automatically detecting child pornography is a hard problem. The most promising approach has been comparing images to hashes of known child pornography files, but that only works if there's a match.

The situation may also be fraught in terms of politics and public relations. The ground truth seems to be that there's a lot of child pornography floating around and nobody's really figured out a surefire way to detect it. Even if it is detected and reported to law enforcement, some countries are more responsive than others. But a social network can't go on record saying that child pornography is a hard and frustrating problem; it's more palatable to say that their sophisticated technology is keeping things under control. As an obscure blogger, I can comment about seeing a lot of users from certain countries who seem to be interested in child pornography. If a Facebook spokesman said that, people would probably accuse them of being bigots and they'd be forced to apologize.

Reflections and Expectations

2011-03-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

In the few months since this blog started, a lot has changed. In November when it started, there were a number of users on Facebook blatantly advertising their interest in child pornography. Some would even post links and invitations to trade on open walls. Facebook has since gotten more aggressive about shutting those accounts down, though it may never be possible to completely block predatory users. A number of concerned citizens have gotten very upset about the situation, and some have even set up a website and sent postcards to Facebook.

There may be some conflict between expectations and reality. When I started this blog, most of my understanding of child pornography had come from news stories about people getting arrested. There weren't too many of them in my community, and I was inclined to assume that very few people were interested in child pornography and the ones who did got quickly arrested. So it was hard to understand why some of the people I saw weren't in jail.

Since then, I've learned that the sheer volume of child pornography on the Internet is staggering, and none of the major social networks are completely free of predators. There are a number of dedicated law enforcement professionals working hard to combat the problem, but the situation has been compared to drinking out of a fire hose.

Why can't Facebook and other social networks completely block pedophiles and child pornography from their sites? It turns out to be a much harder technical problem than many activists realize. It is often impossible for a system to recognize that an image is child pornography and when there are millions of accounts, it's not feasible for a human to manually review all images and videos that users post to a site. Child pornography traders generally try not to call attention to themselves and are less likely to get reported by other users than spammers or a malicious trolls. Even when someone who posts child pornography is detected and reported to law enforcement, their country may or may not take action.

A number of concerned citizens are currently demanding that Facebook eliminate child pornography from its site. It's easy to understand why people are upset and angry about child exploitation, but harder to accept that there's only so much Facebook or any other social network can do about it. The best case scenario may be that some people get arrested and most of the child pornography traders migrate elsewhere. But no matter how proactive the social networks are, child pornography is going to continue to be a hard problem.

Independence High School Strikes Again

2011-03-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

Last week, a 14-year-old student attending Independence High School in Mississippi ended up in the hospital after having his jaw fractured and some teeth knocked out. Below are his (redacted) status posts on Facebook.

What happened? According to a Fox News story, he lost consciousness after receiving corporal punishment from Jerome Martin, his high school's assistant principal. He also sustained bruises from the paddling.

An anonymous poster commenting on the story said that this was not the first paddling-related injury that had occurred at Independence High School.

So what kinds of things can a student at Independence High School get paddled for? Let's check the student handbook. Hmmm... it says that the first office referral for "minor violations" like gum chewing, eating or drinking in class, dress code violations, distracting other students, and violations of hallway rules can result in corporal punishment.

Perhaps it should not be surprising that Tate County School District is already being sued by another student who was paddled at Independence High School.

Missouri Arrest

2011-03-14T17:50:00.000-07:00

According to the Columbia Tribune, John Kitch was arrested last week for posting child pornography to Facebook. Congratulations to Facebook, NCMEC, and the Boone County Cyber Crimes Task Force.

John W. Kitch of 5809 S. Bethel Church Road was arrested yesterday and was being held in the Boone County Jail with bond set at $100,000.

The Boone County Sheriff Department’s Cyber Crimes Task Force began investigating the incident in December after Facebook employees discovered the child pornography and reported it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Dexter

2011-03-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, we've thought that Facebook needs a law enforcement liaison like Dexter Morgan.

"Sarah Love" displays a sign that says "Keep the CP coming." We assume that "CP" would stand for "child pornography."

Marcos Teia is back yet again. Does this guy have any real-life friends? Somehow, we doubt it.

Sorry, DHS

2011-03-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

There was a sleazy-looking site up recently that called itself "Precious Treasure Holiday Company" and appeared to be promoting sex tourism. I filed a report with NCMEC/Cybertipline and also sent email to the Cleveland Police department. There was no response, and the site remained online. So I tried reporting it to the hosting company, which did shut it down. There's a copy of the PDF they sent my friend with the password protection removed here.

Turns out that the "sex tourism" site was actually a string operation run by DHS. Perhaps it should have been a tipoff that the site was created with a version of Microsoft FrontPage that appeared to be about 8 years old. It does seem like it might have been a good idea to communicate with the hosting company ahead of time, though.

Sara Teia

2011-03-10T00:26:00.000-08:00

"Sara Teia" popped up last night. Since "Chad Roberts" featured a couple of entries ago is friends with "Sara," his account should also get bombed by about noon Pacific time today.

Update: neither of them even lasted until 8 AM.

Kassie Hubertt

2011-03-10T00:21:00.000-08:00

"Kassie Hubertt" says, "Love me or hate me I'm still gonna SHINE." Sort of like an oil slick in the middle of a mud puddle. This user claims to be "14 and a freshman in high school." Yeah, right.

This user is also looking for like-minded people to trade "pics" with. We'd assume that "Valentine Dick" would be the user formerly known as "Knobby Knobson", "Richard Wareham", and a number of other aliases.

Chad

2011-03-10T00:04:00.000-08:00

Chad Roberts isn't the best speller, but he manages to get his point across. His interests include "Lolita", "Dady's Little Girl" (sic), and "pthc."

He seems to be interested in connecting with like-minded people and exchanging material. Don't think we'd care to see any detailed information about his anatomy.

Back Again

2011-03-09T00:57:00.000-08:00

Marcos Teia may create new Facebook accounts more frequently than he changes his underwear. It's hard to tell. But he inevitably pops up every day or so with yet another name or user photo. Within a few hours, Facebook has usually shut down not only that account but all of his friends too. I'm betting that the one below plus all of his friends will get nuked by noon tomorrow. Mr. Teia has also decided to grace grou.ps with his presence again, along with some reportable photos of young girls. Hopefully, Facebook security won't get too jealous over this since they'll almost certainly see him again.

BTW, it might be worth checking out his groups before booting him. He's apparently found his way into at least one that may be sharing something other than Bible verses and holy cards.

Update: They didn't even last until 9 AM Pacific Time. The group that he was in is gone too.

Looks Like Berkeley

2011-03-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

Most of my visitors are welcome, but the ones who appear to be searching for child pornography are sort of a pet peeve. For a while, I put up a link on the entry that they seemed to hit most frequently encouraging people looking for that kind of material to try the infamous GNAA lastmeasure site. Some of them apparently fell for it. It was politely suggested that this might be a bit unseemly, so the link has been removed.

Today, I got a visitor searching the words "looks like pthc." To be fair, the ISP listing "University of California - Office of the President" may be somewhat misleading. An nslookup on the IP address resolves to a residence hall at Berkeley and the browser is listed as "Netscape 5.0 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117." So I'm guessing that a someone with an iPhone found an open wireless router.

Robert Hull Pleads Guilty

2011-03-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Robert Hull pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of children and is due to be sentenced on May 16th. Canadian law enforcement discovered child pornography that appeared to be recently produced while investigating a man in Saskatchewan and helped to trace it back to Hull. The Canadian defendant sounded a lot like the widely-hated "Shane Ispedo" we saw in early November.

Both Hull and the Canadian defendant seemed to be into "hurtcore," a particularly ugly type of pornography. They exchanged emails fantasizing about raping and torturing very young children.

Plea bargain PDF:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49977482

Links to related stories:
http://www.idahopress.com/news/article_e4c8402c-44f1-11e0-bb03-001cc4c002e0.html
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/03/02/1548459/nampa-man-pleads-guilty-to-sexual.html
http://preferredbypete.com/world-news/32506-sask-child-porn-bust-leads-u-s-girls-rescue.html

Max and Gerd

2011-03-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

There's something especially revolting about the folks who seem to be into both sadomasochism and pedophilia. We've seen this guy before as "Max Lomax."

Gerd seems to have similar interests.

Mexican Article on Pedophiles and Social Networks

2011-03-01T01:18:00.000-08:00

Lydia Cacho, a Mexican journalist renowned for her coverage of human trafficking issues, discusses pedophiles and social networks. The original column is up at http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/columnas/88554.html and the Google translation is here. She makes some excellent points; the social networks themselves have not done anything wrong, but they are often used by predators. Shutting down the offending accounts is a start, and Facebook has certainly made an effort. However, as she points out, the users are often back within 24 hours sharing the same materials, and the problem requires a coordinated effort between law enforcement in many countries.

It might be helpful if social networks made it easier for users to explicitly report child exploitation. For example, if an image or video was specifically flagged as child pornography, it might be useful to take a hash or some kind of digital fingerprint. The CP traders we've seen are often very repetitive and I'd guess that many of them are probably posting the same images and videos again and again. That data plus whatever hashes the government shares would help automatically detect at least some known CP.

Facebook and the Daily Mail

2011-02-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

There's a fascinatingly convoluted blog post today entitled "Time for a referee between Facebook and the Daily Mail" by Dan Sabbagh. This was apparently related to a possible lawsuit about a Daily Mail headline that said "How many victims of Facebook sex gang?" When pressed, the Daily Mail changed its wording of the headline, but refused to apologize.

In early 2010, the Daily Mail claimed that a man posing as a 14-year-old girl who had created a profile on Facebook had been approached "within seconds" by older men who wanted her to perform a "sex act" in from of them. Turned out that the author had actually created the profile on a different social network that had nothing to do with Facebook. Oops.

In a nutshell, I'm not convinced that there's any need for a referee here, but some basic fact-checking from the Daily Mail might be a good start.

One Weekend, Five Accounts

2011-02-27T21:25:00.000-08:00

Marcos Teia's apparently had about five accounts this weekend, which is busy even for him. The Marcos Alves account got bombed sometime on Friday.

Then he was "Marcos Silva."

After that got shut down, he was "Marcos Gomes." 76 friends? I bet that's more than he's ever had in his real life. Let's face it, normal people don't find child pornography endearing.

That account got nuked too, and he came back as "Marcos Vasques." If he has to buy a bunch of pedo friends by constantly posting child pornography, that's pretty pathetic.

And there's another account known as "Lisa Teia."

The Boy From Brazil

2011-02-21T17:58:00.000-08:00

In his novel Sacrifice, Andrew Vachss says, "Slime can slide, but it can't hide." This describes Marcos Teia perfectly.

Marcos Teia's profiles have been shut down so often that he's set up a number of them with different names and avatars. In the past, he's been "Marcos Souza" and "Marcos Robson" as well as "Marcos Teia." He's diversified even further, appearing as Marcella Souza, Servidor Teia, Marcos Teia Servidor, and Marcos Teia. But his most active profile at the moment would be "Marcos Garcia."

So it's probably not surprising that Marcos Teia would be an admin of a private group called "xxxpedo" along with "Marcos Fernandes", presumably another one of Teia's alter egos. According to our sources, this is one of the worst private groups they've ever seen. In addition to posting numerous vile images, Marcos Teia is apparently offering child porn videos for sale.

Another One Bites the Dust

2011-02-18T23:12:00.000-08:00

Jerry Cannon, the user we knew as "Terry Lewis" has also been arrested. He was quite persistent, and more than a little creepy. This is his profile picture, which was recycled in more than one account. We were aware of 7 accounts, and the news story said that he had 13.

A lot of the users on his friends list had profile pictures depicting girls and young women, and he was quite chatty. He kept a collection of child pornography in his private albums and apparently hoped if he granted his friends access, they'd reciprocate by taking "private" pictures of themselves. Of course, most of his Facebook friends probably weren't the attractive young girls in the Facebook profile photos. One of them was an author investigating human trafficking, and another turned him into the FBI. Then again, it's also unlikely that he really owned a "multi-million dollar buisness."

We contacted Kentucky ICAC about him, and they were responsive and professional. However, the FBI had begun an investigation when the other Facebook user reported him. It turns out that "Terry Lewis" was actually Jerry L Cannon, formerly the pastor at God's House in Dry Ridge, KY. The news story is at http://blog.al.com/live/2011/02/kentucky_pastor_facebook_pornography.html and the criminal complaint is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/49175841/tlewis .

John Wilson Arrested

2011-02-18T20:57:00.000-08:00

Via Bangor Daily News, John Wilson of Greenbush, ME was arrested yesterday on child pornography charges.

John Wilson, 23, was arrested Thursday afternoon on a charge of possessing sexually explicit material, a Class C felony, after state police raided his Middle River Road home and seized his computers and cell phones, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said Friday.

“They found [sexually explicit] images immediately and then seized the equipment,” he said. He said Wilson’s hard drives now are being analyzed by the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit in Vassalboro.

According to McCausland, investigators believe that Wilson posted child pornography on as many as 15 Facebook accounts he created over the past year. Wilson’s alleged criminal activity was reported to authorities by personnel from the social networking site as well as members of the public over the past month.

He didn't seem like the subtle type.

Examiner Article

2011-02-11T01:49:00.000-08:00

We were recently mentioned in an Examiner article by Raymond Bechard, who has written extensively about human trafficking.

To be fair to Facebook, dealing with abusive accounts is a hard problem and they've been making some effort. They've got a system in place that seems to be automatically nuking a number of profiles. However, the bad guys just come right back with new accounts, and I'd doubt that there's any mechanism in the "auto-nuke" system to report predatory users to law enforcement. If not, that could mean that the only consequences some of the people are experiencing for soliciting and posting child pornography are having a Facebook account shut down.

Here's an interesting article from last year about Facebook not notifying Australian LE about child pornography:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-failed-to-tell-police-about-paedophile-porn-ring-20100826-13ual.html
It says that someone had sent Facebook 10 messages telling them about the CP rings and nothing had happened. That was likely more about the inability to process user messages than deliberate refusal to do anything about child pornography.

Facebook's reporting mechanisms are limited. For example, imagine you see a profile of of a man hinting at sexually abusing his daughter. How do you go about reporting that to Facebook? Note that there is no "child exploitation" option anywhere. If the profile picture contains actual nudity or pornography, that's reportable, but if they're just using a photo of a child to signal their interests, no dice. "Inappropriate profile information" is limited to hate or violence, and there's nothing for profiles that refer to pedophilia or child porn. There's also no free text field that allows you to provide additional information.

Realistically, Facebook has millions of users. If you assume that 1% of accounts are abusive in some way but there are 100 million accounts ... well, that's potentially 1 million abusive accounts. That's why Facebook wants to automate as much as it can -- they have to. However, I would like to see an improved reporting system that allowed users to specifically flag child exploitation and other things that are problems but don't fit neatly into their existing system. For example, how would you go about reporting a profile or page that seemed to be advertising an escort service (human trafficking)?

Paolo Ghelardini

2011-02-11T01:14:00.000-08:00

Who was this "Paolo Constantino" who clicked "like" on the comment about him raping young girls?

Well, he looks a lot like a guy called Paolo Gherlardini, an Italian illustrator. Let's take a look at his profile.

He even lists "paologhelardini" in his contact information.

He argues that Romania must be a civilized country because the government provides cable TV with porn. In a recent CNN blog post, David Batstone called Romania a "global center for human trafficking."

According to the Wikipedia article on Eva Ionesco, there were some controversial erotic photographs taken of her when she was five years old.

He is proud of his involvement with "Lolita" magazine, which reportedly rewarded readers who submitted child porn for publication with free magazines.

He also talked about his time in the Netherlands.

"I recall Red Light Center in Amsterdam, The Amstel, Casa Rosso, Rokin Road...Oh...what a fine country is Holland, I love, I miss! Pity Pornoshops now are deleted......I know! But in 1969 I remember you said_ let‘s live pornography...then when we shall be satisfied she will desapppear! You right! First Lolita Magazine and Chick by my lost friend editor Joop Wilhelmus born in Dordrecht (and killed in Rotterdam 1997 by a bastard catholic), I was one of his photographers and scienist for Super8 movies! My glory, my dream! This is freedom, this is civilisation! I am proud of you dutch people! Long life to you!"

"Lella" wasn't his only victim. He also bragged about exploiting other young girls.

"She is one of my best lilmodels! Now she is 10 yo, but she began to do sex since 2 ys! She likes so much analsex and piss!"

"Barbara my model! She began sex at only 4 years! Now she is 17, a real slut nymphomaniac!"

Given Romania's problems with human trafficking and the number of vulnerable children there, Ghelardini could probably find a number of young victims.

"Ls magazine" also published child pornography, and seems to be a popular child pornography keyword.

He thinks that the (redacted) image posted by Marcos Teia would be better without the swimsuit.

He can't seem to get enough child pornography.

Many of the child pornography traders have gotten kicked off Facebook and returned with new accounts. Ghelardini is no exception.

His next account used the screen name "Paulo Constantinescu."

"My alter-ego Paul Constatin banned! Ahahah!! I don‘t care a rap! Problem is for my friends notfor me because I have an arkiv with + of 10.000 pthc pics and 1000 vids! My mails no one, nteiher God, can delete! Fuck asshole Facebook ad idiots snakes fake friends!"

He seemed to think that email would be a safer approach:

"If you wanna watch them in sexual activity no limits call my mails! Proud to satisfy you! By mail we are in security!"

Ghelardini has a twisted approach to theology and philosophy. Many others would consider producing child pornography to be a mortal sin.

The comment where he invokes the name of God has to be one of the grossest violations of the Second Commandment I've ever seen.

Will Romanian law enforcement ever do anything about Ghelardini? We can only hope.

Update: there have been some anonymous comments posted claiming that these Facebook profiles were created by somebody else. One of these accounts posted this image, which looks a lot like him:

http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-d70UtlyoVxo/TYECUWT1GVI/AAAAAAAAAhs/2Np0CAtoblY/s1600/paolo_yuk2.png

For obvious reasons, we redacted the image, but it's hard to understand how an imposter would have gotten ahold of the original.

Hardcore

2011-02-09T00:31:00.000-08:00

As of 8:00 yesterday evening, the closed group "hardcore" had 30 members. The description was "for the true pedos that love little girls please post pics, vids, and stories."

The Pain Players

2011-02-09T00:07:00.000-08:00

There are numerous profiles with obvious sadomasochistic interests, but most of these folks seem to play only with other consenting adults. However, as we saw in an earlier entry, that may not always be the case.

Harald Schneider expresses interest in "spanking my kids" and a number of other things, and his "About" information apparently translates to "Family. 3 children. Strictly." His profile photo (which is redacted here) shows a young girl bent over a table.

Below is his photo album, which is also redacted here. The image in the middle seemed to be especially popular with his friends.

Harald's friend Max Lehrer had quite a collection of drawings. The one below displayed a Bible verse and attracted some obviously prurient comments. This isn't too surprising; Amazon shows that some "Christian" books on child-rearing that advocate corporal punishment are popular with the BDSM crowd.

Photos Online

2011-02-07T02:08:00.000-08:00

A recent article in NYMag discussed pressure on junior high and high school girls to share racy pictures of themselves on the internet. Let's take a look at where some of those pictures could end up.

As you may have guessed, many of the pedophiles and child porn traders we've covered seem to have a low-bandwidth connection to reality. A number of the profile pictures on friends lists and groups depict attractive young women. Are most of these users really teenage girls who are eager to share child pornography with men online? Probably not. Some people who had used the screen names "Stephanie Stewart", "Lisa King", "Jenna Foltz", "Amy Farmer", "Buffy Tanner", "Katy Ellis", "Katy Cat", and "Katy Kat" were recently indicted for using Facebook groups to share child pornography. The indictment also refers to a "Jodie Green" account.

How many of these defendants are female? None. The American defendants are James Paul Byrd, David Large, Brian Slott, Daniel Slott, and Henry Wright. In fact, Brian and Daniel Slott are registered sex offenders in Wisconsin. "Jodie Green" was actually Ian Green, a British sex offender who has already been sentenced to prison for his role in the groups. It's not hard to guess how these people found the photos of adolescents and young women that they used in their profile photos.

To any middle or high school students who may be reading this, we'd seriously encourage you to think about what could happen to photos before you send or post them. Once they're circulating, they're out of your control. Guys aren't exempt either; we've seen a number of pedophiles using photos of boys to signal their interests.

We've also seen these people solicit nude photos from girls they believe to be underage. If they got one, they would almost certainly trade it with other like-minded people. Child pornography is a largely a barter-based economy, and images that had not previously been circulated would be valuable currency. They like webcams too, especially since many of them know how to capture streaming video and convert that into video to trade.

Below are some screencaps of users we've seen recently who have probably borrowed photos from unsuspecting young women. Whoever took that cellphone photo of herself probably would not be happy to discover that "Steve Wesley" found it.

This is "Alaina Loli," who's been deleted and come back numerous times with new accounts. Is this character really a 13-year-old girl? We doubt it. We'd guess that "Alaina Loli" is actually a skeezy guy who found the cellphone photo of the girl in a bikini somewhere and used it to pose as a woman. Just a hunch.

Exploited

2011-02-07T00:51:00.000-08:00

Mark Trotter's profile photo shows a Photoshopped Pedo Bear groping some blond girls. His interests include "PTHC", "Lolita", "All Children Should Be Spanked", along with the age range of his preferred victims.

The twins in the photo were once known as "Prussian Blue," a young duo who performed hate music. Their mother is April Gaede, is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "neo-Nazi stage mom." A 2010 article has more information about Gaede and the twins.

Marcos Teia

2011-02-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

Marcos Teia is a legend in his own mind. He's created groups dedicated to himself and has come back numerous times with new accounts after being kicked off Facebook. Below is a screenshot of one of his recently shut down incarnations. He's back with new accounts, of course.

The self-aggrandizement would be almost comical if it weren't for his large and ugly collection of child pornography. But it has bought him a certain fame. Teia has been featured in two articles by Raymond Bechard: "Federal Crimes on Facebook" and "A $50 Billion Company - The Perfect Place for Human Trafficking." In one article, Bechard describes material posted to a private Facebook group: "These photographs were explicit images of girls appearing to range in ages between 3 and 9 years. The images showed these girls involved in vaginal, oral, and anal sex acts. Some are bound with duct tape." This is consistent with accounts I have heard from other sources, and I also found it unsurprising that Marcos Teia would be a member of that group.

Dave Abby

2011-02-04T17:10:00.000-08:00

Here's Dave Abby, another recently booted Facebook user. According to our source, he wasn't joking about the "homemade porn" or "k9 love" interests. Nor about "My 2 Daughters." If this is indeed true, I hope that he is ~~executed~~ investigated.

The Dearly Departed

2011-02-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Facebook has taken to "auto-nuking" accounts based on keywords in profiles, associations with other users who get booted, and probably some other factors as well. This isn't too surprising, given that there are hundreds of millions of accounts on Facebook. Below is one user account who got shut down, and it's not too hard to guess why.

However, we hope that some of the most alarming users are getting reported to law enforcement, rather than just kicked off Facebook. In the picture below, we have blacked out the face of the prepubescent girl, but we've left the user's comment about her unredacted.

Keeping It Classy

2011-02-04T13:37:00.000-08:00

Some of the problem children like to use closed or private groups to share material. Below is an example. Gee, wonder what those folks might be interested in?

Canine Bad Citizen

2011-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Jane Zimmer lists "bend over take that knot", "a dogs tail get on ur hands & knees", "extreme insertions", and "playing with my dog." For the blissfully unaware, "taking the knot" apparently refers to a woman having sex with a dog.

She also apparently has granddaughters.

Boxers or briefs?

2011-01-31T23:07:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another John Wilson, this one interested in boys.

He has lots of photos of young boys.

Tommy

2011-01-25T00:08:00.000-08:00

Tommy Grey claims to be "16 and bi."

He has at least one disturbing photo album and wants to be added to groups. Child porn traders sometimes use closed or private Facebook groups to share photos and videos.

Tommy may have found a lot of like-minded friends.

Tyreece

2011-01-23T01:40:00.000-08:00

Tyreece Brackenbury is purportedly an adopted 9-year-old who is "in a relationship" with another young boy. ETA: He's back.

Interesting how many of his friends also have young boys as their profile photos.

Animal Cruelty

2011-01-23T01:30:00.000-08:00

Rowal Reyes really likes to watch animals fight.

And this would be the "MATABAN GAMEFARM" that Mr. Reyes admired.