Bad Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.