Dorner Supporters

"Ai yi yi," as my grandmother would say.  For those not following the news, Christopher Jordan Dorner is a former LA cop who is suspected in multiple murders.  He apparently has a support page called "I Support Christopher Jordan Dorner."  The members seem to be largely conspiracy theorists, rather than RIP troll types.

Viral Child Shaming

This isn't the first child-shaming photo that's gone viral, and unfortunately, it probably won't be the last either.  Teresa Golden of Walker, LA decided that it would be a "creative, social, moral exercise" to force her 8-year-old son to stand near a roadway holding a sign saying "Shame on me for being a bully."  Not too surprisingly, someone driving by snapped a photo and uploaded it.

There are serious safety issues associated with allowing a child to become an online spectacle.  Once an image is out there, the parents have no control over it.  If it shows up in a context they don't like, they have little recourse.  It's also easy to alter photos.  A prankster could Photoshop something gross or inflammatory onto the sign, and then circulate that.  If that happened, there wouldn't be much the parents could do about it.

Twitter Watcher

I'd like to pass the baton, as it were, to a new blog called "Twitter Watcher" at http://twitterwatcher.blogspot.com/ .   The best word I can think of to describe pedophiles is "Legion," because they are indeed many.  Therefore, it's not surprising that Twitter is now having problems with users posting child pornography.

Operation Laminar

According to the New Zealand Herald, New Zealand took the lead in an international operation that led to the arrest of 55 people for using Facebook, grou.ps and Socialgo to trade child pornography.  Well done!  Although none of the defendants were identified, I have noticed the absence of some of the worst users associated with some of the countries listed in the stories.

News Coverage

It was surprising to see the extent of the recent news coverage about Facebook's problems with child pornography traders.  I'm glad that people are concerned about the problem of child pornography, but would like make a few remarks.

First, social networks are attractive to pedophiles and a number of other "problem" users because they simply provide the opportunity to anonymously connect with like-minded people.  Many child pornography collectors have obsessive traits.  How many news stories have you read about someone getting caught with only a few child pornography images?  Generally, it's a matter of hundreds or even thousands.  Facebook is one of the biggest players in the social networking arena and it also offers features like image and video sharing and private groups.  So it wasn't a matter of if pedophiles would show up on Facebook, it was a matter of when.

Facebook initially seemed to focus on growing and adding new technological features and may not have anticipated that it would also attract child pornography traders until they ended up with quite a few of them.  The problem was that by that time, there were millions of accounts.  So they had to come up with automated ways of finding users who did not want to be found. Automatically shutting down accounts annoyed the people behind them, but they could always just create new profiles.  So many of them did.  To make things even more interesting, the problem users came from a number of countries, some of which are a lot more proactive about fighting child pornography than others.

For the most part, the pedophiles trading child pornography on Facebook seemed pretty stupid -- not too far removed from the idiots sharing it on open P2P networks.  The ones on Darknet seemed smarter and scarier.  I'd challenge the WND writers and anyone else interested in fighting child pornography to investigate that and try to come up with viable solutions.

Ann Deragegirls

Below are a couple of recent screencaps.  Given Facebook's size and scope, there will probably always be pedophile users.  Overall, though, they seem fewer and less blatant than they were a year and a half ago.  Facebook's gotten more aggressive about reporting them and kicking them off, and it's possible that the higher default privacy settings have also helped.  If it's harder for a cranky blogger to find them, it's probably also harder for child pornography collectors to find each other.

Twitter has also had problems with these people, as have other social networks.  For the most part, the people using Facebook to trade child pornography haven't seemed too bright, and a number of them who've lived in countries that would actually do something about it have been arrested.   Child pornography is a big problem, and steadily chipping away at it may be the best anyone can do.

Soldier Arrested for Blackmail and Child Pornography

According to the Trib, a Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier currently serving in Afghanistan has been arrested for using Facebook to solicit and distribute child pornography.

A Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier is under investigation for using Facebook to allegedly solicit photos and videos of 10 Pierce County teenage girls in various stages of undress, then threatening to blackmail the girls if they didn't send more images. 

The 24-year-old soldier, who has not been identified by law-enforcement officials, allegedly began his activities some 10 months ago while stationed at Lewis-McChord and continued them in Afghanistan, where he is currently deployed. 

The soldier allegedly released some of the images online. The investigation, headed by the Washington State Patrol Missing and Exploited Children's Task Force, is focused on distribution of child pornography, blackmail and extortion, said Lt. Ron Mead of the State Patrol.

As the story says, it seems like a lot of problem soldiers have been associated with JBLM.  It's not clear whether there's something about the base itself, problems with recycling soldiers through too many deployments, or maybe some combination.