413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Law enforcement said they were able to download some of the images from me and I
didn’t know how this happened because it didn’t seem to be part of the program I was
using for them to do that. I clicked the option from file sharing not to share the images. I
wasn’t sending any images back out so I was confused how law enforcement got them.
(F5)
Jenkins’ 2001 (13–14) book quotes a “guru” of the child porn community who says that offenders will only
get caught if they take their computer in to get fixed, send or receive child pornography through their
email, or use IRC for “lolita business.” Jenkins later describes other common ways to get caught: using
mediums such as AOL or attempting sexual contact crimes, such as trying to seduce children through the
Internet.
Eight offenders (38 percent) stated they were caught by law enforcement identifying them through their
file sharing activity through IRC or P2P networks. In five cases (24 percent), they were caught by a victim
or family member turning them in. Three offenders (14 percent) were turned in to law enforcement when
someone in their trading network was caught. One offender (5 percent) was caught when he took his
computer to a repair shop and one offender (5 percent) believed he was caught through facial recognition
software identifying him in child pornography he produced. Three offenders (14 percent) were not sure or
did not share how they were caught.
None of the offenders mentioned sites or programs posing a threat to individuals who use them to trade
child pornography. One offender believed that these sites should be held accountable, since they are
complicit in child pornography activity. In his case, a file sharing program took no action when the
offender was flagged for sharing child pornography. This program later aided the offender by alerting him
that he was under investigation for child pornography, which allowed him time to erase his collection of
images and videos:
One interesting thing about the program I used: I was reported to owners of the program
about a year before I got arrested. I got a designation put on me by the program, for
trading child pornography. But nothing happened. I chatted with a guy, he said that he’d
report me. I don’t know why he did it. I waited and waited and used the program, and
nothing happened. I thought he must not have reported me. Then when I was
investigated, [law enforcement] contacted the program. Then the next day I couldn’t sign
in to the program. The program had a box to find out why I couldn’t log on to the site. I
typed in my name and password and got an email that I couldn’t log in for child
pornography. (C7)
Strategies to Stop Proliferation
Though offenders did not think it was possible to completely remove child pornography from the Internet,
some shared an assortment of tactics that could be used to limit the proliferation of child pornography.
In order to find child pornography websites, one offender suggested the Federal Communications
Commission could block websites known to host child pornography by identifying and blocking their IP
addresses:
The only way the government could clamp it down is if you have the FCC identify that
these sites are maintaining child pornography. They would get a warning. If they didn’t
abide and take it off the servers, you can make lists of IPs that are blocked, could make a
law that all the servers are blocked in the US so you can’t access them … There are first
amendment problems with it, but you don’t allow people to sell drugs on the street, why
would you let people do the same thing on the Internet (A11)
Another recommendation was to track cameras used to produce child pornography images or videos
through their EXIF serial number:
One idea that I had was to search for the EXIF information. A partnership with Google
image search, I don’t know if they could do it through their interface now, but working
with them. Search the Internet for any images that have EXIF serial number that matches
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