Week 10 Essay

The internet has been a useful tool for criminals, which has led to an increase in crimes especially child pornography.

The popularity and easy access of the internet has led to a whole new era of crimes, the most heinous of these crimes being child pornography. Some of the reasons that the internet has become a sanctuary for these criminals are: the anonymity of the internet, the fact that criminals are only subject to laws from within the country they reside, and the fact that there is no international governing body policing the internet. Though child pornography has been around long before the advent of the internet, the internet has become a tool to increase the outreach and create a community of these pedophiles.

The anonymity of the internet has created an environment where thieves have a much easier time getting away with a crime. Most criminals who use the internet as their medium have some degree of knowledge of the internet. These criminals use that knowledge to hack into serves to falsify IP numbers, trace lists, and other identification (Palme, 2002). Though it is usually possible to track down these criminals, the work is tedious and many times crosses legal jurisdictions. For example, “A person posting a picture, the server, the picture site where other users can locate the image, and the site providing the password for access may all represent different legal jurisdictions”(Bauserman, 2003).

One of the biggest challenges when dealing with internet crimes is that cyberspace has no borders. This is especially frustrating in terms of how criminals are punished. One of the biggest producers of child porn is Russia. In Russia, there is no distinction between adult and child pornography, and possession of any type of pornography is not a crime (Shytov, 2005). In fact in over 130 countries possession of pornography is not a crime; and in over 120 countries there are no laws which address child pornography distributed over the internet (International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, 2006). The international centre, along with Interpol, found that only 5 countries (United States, Australia, Belgium, France, and South Africa) whose laws were adequate enough to deal with child pornography (International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, 2006).

There have been some programs and laws created in order to fight child pornography. In Florida the Cybercrimes Against Children Act of 2007 has just recently been passed (Jones, 2007). This act specifically addresses pedophiles who target children over the internet, and includes a harsher sentence for offenders. The FBI has also created the Innocent Images National Initiative, which targets sexual predators over the internet (Mueller, 2007). Internationally, efforts to control child pornography are few, and nowhere near adequate enough. The Convention of the Rights of the Child, which entered into force on September 2, 1990, is the first convention that specifically addresses child pornography (Esposito, 1998). This convention was the first to attack the issue of child pornography at an international level. The First World Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was held in Stockholm in 1996 (Sinclair, 2005). However, the specific issue of internet related crimes was not discussed. The Council of Europe Cybercrime has been the only multilateral treaty to address specifically child pornography as a computer crime (Shytov, 2005). While there has been limited international cooperation to regulate child pornography, most of it has been highly ineffective. “A 2002 report by ECPAT International and the Bangkok Post estimated that 100,000 child pornography web sites existed in 2001” (International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, 2006). By 2003 that number had doubled.

Since law makers have been so ineffective in stopping online child pornography many citizens have decided to become online vigilantes. Perverted Justice is one of many online vigilante groups. They have a list of over 675 men who they have met in online chat rooms while posing as preteen girls (Schultz, 2004). They post these men’s picture, contact details, and online conversation on their website. While they can not actually arrest these predators, they do set up sting operations with their decoy profiles. These operations attract anywhere from ten to thirty men who believe they are going to have sex with a girl between the ages of eleven and fourteen (Perverted Justice, 2007). These men are in for a nasty shock when not only are they surrounded by police, but they find NBC Dateline news cameras capturing footage for their upcoming edition of “How to Catch a Predator” (Perverted Justice, 2007).

Child abuse is not a crime caused by the advent of the internet. Pedophiles existed throughout history. The Greek emperor Alexander the Great is documented having a sexual relationship with a boy (Wright, 2002). In more recent times we have learned that many Catholic priests have been abusing young boys in the past. Still for the most part these criminals had limited access to child pornography. Today, the internet has made viewing child pornography easier then ever before. Web sites, message boards, file sharing, email, and web cams are just a few of the many avenues the internet has opened (Mueller, 2007). With so much pornography available, these predators have become desensitized to these acts of molestation (Mueller, 2007). Men who might have started out just observing may become enticed to actually seek out children to molest. The internet has also led to a feeling of security among children. Myspace is a social networking website that is popular among teenagers today. However, in only twenty days of looking through myspace profiles, Perverted Justice found 1,203 myspace pages of registered sex offenders (Perverted Justice, 2007).

For most people the words “advanced technology” usually have a positive connotation. This seems reasonable as the advancement of civilization has been dependent on humans’ ability to create new and innovative technology. However, along with the benefits this new technology brings, there will always be disadvantages. For millions of children around the world this has meant a loss of security and new vulnerability, even within their own homes. The anonymity of the internet and the false sense of security of social networks for teens, have made them easy prey for online predators. The lack of international cooperation, and lenient penalties for offenders in most countries, has allowed this tragedy to flourish. While vigilantes try to help authorities bring these criminals to justice, their victories seem small in comparison to the amount of child molesters who get away unpunished.



References
Bauserman, Robert (2003) “Child Pornography Online: Myth, Fact and Social Control” The Journal of Sex Research 40(2): 219

Esposito, Lesli C. (1998) “Regulating the Internet: The new battle against child pornography” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 30(2,3): 541-566

International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (2006) “New Study Reveals Child Pornography Not a Crime in Most Countries” Press Release http://www.icmec.org/missingkids/servlet/NewsEventServlet?LanguageCountry=en_X1&PageId=2338 (accessed 10 May 2007)

Jones, K.C. (2007) “Crackdown on Pedophiles” InformationWeek 1132(1): 23

Mueller, Robert S. (2007) “Child Pornography and the Internet” Vital Speeches of the Day 73(1): 45-47

Palme, Jacob (2002) “Anonymity on the Internet” http://people.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.html (accessed 10 May 2007)

Perverted Justice (2007) http://www.perverted-justice.com/ (accessed 10 May 2007)

Schultz, Marisa (2004) “Online Vigilantes hunt down pedophiles” US Today http://www.rickross.com/reference/perverted_justice/perverted_justice6.html
(accessed 10 May 2007)

Shytov, Alexander (2005) “Indecency on the Internet and International Law” International Journal of Law and Information Technology 13(2)

Sinclair, Ruth (2005) “Child Protection” Research Matters 18(1): 19-25

Wright, Michael Phillip (2002) “Abuse of Boys and Slaves by the Homosexual Patriarchs of Ancient Greece and Rome” http://members.aol.com/mpwright9/greece.html (accessed 10 May 2007)