XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns   
   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
    Pedophile profile: Young, white, wealthy   
   Four-year FBI investigation shows that vast majority of online child porn   
   arrests involve people in high places.   
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   Written by Maria Seminerio, Contributor on Sept. 19, 1999   
   must read   
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   Associates of an Infoseek exec arrested for using chat to solicit a minor   
   may have been shocked and surprised, but not the FBI.   
      
   As it turns out, a corner office at a high-profile, high-tech company   
   isn't such an unlikely place to find an online pedophile -- not according   
   to records being yielded from a three-year-old Federal Bureau of   
   Investigation crackdown on Internet pornography.   
      
   Of the 413 people arrested as part of the agency's "Innocent Images"   
   investigation since 1995, "only a handful have not been upper-middle-   
   class, educated white men," said Special Agent Pete Gulotta who serves as   
   the investigation's chief spokesman. "They're almost all white males   
   between the ages of 25 and 45."   
      
   "We've had military officers with high clearances, pediatricians, lawyers,   
   school principals, and tech executives," Gulotta said of those arrested   
   under Innocent Images.   
      
   Pre-emptive strikes   
   Of those arrested, 337 have been convicted of online child pornography   
   trafficking or using the Internet to solicit children for sex, Gulotta   
   said. The investigation actually began in 1994, but was not publicly   
   disclosed by the agency until the following year.   
      
   The Innocent Images operation is aimed at "taking these people out before   
   they strike," which is why agents frequently pose as youngsters in chat   
   rooms, acting as bait for would-be child abusers, Gulotta said.   
      
   The Innocent Images project was sparked by the disappearance, in 1993, of   
   a 10-year-old boy from Brantwood, Md., Gulotta said. While the boy, George   
   Burdinski, was never found, the FBI obtained information linking his   
   disappearance to a network of online child pornography traffickers, he   
   said.   
      
   Gulotta objected strongly to claims that suspects are being "entrapped" by   
   agents posing as minors. Agents most often enter chat rooms after getting   
   tips that men seeking young sexual partners are frequenting the chat   
   rooms, though in some cases they investigate chat sites simply because   
   they have names that suggests pedophile activity occurs there, he said.   
      
   "We are very careful in these investigations to make sure that the subject   
   initiates the contact," Gulotta said. "And all these conversations are   
   documented. It's very clear what's happening."   
      
   Not entrapment   
   Tod Burke, an associate professor of criminal justice at Radford   
   University in Radford, Va., also defended the legality of FBI undercover   
   tactics, such as those used in the arrest of Infoseek exec Patrick   
   Naughton. In Naughton's case, an FBI agent encountered Naughton in an   
   Internet chat room, while the agent was posing as a 13-year-old girl,   
   according to an affidavit filed in the case.   
      
   "The investigators are not forcing people to commit criminal acts simply   
   by being present in the chat room," he said. "These individuals are   
   predisposed to commit these crimes." The criminal charges would be the   
   same if the suspect originally contacted the potential victim by letter or   
   by telephone, Burke added. (No laws specifically outlaw child pornography   
   and pedophile activity on the Internet, since they are already illegal in   
   the offline world.)   
      
   "This is nothing new," Burke said. "Using a computer to go undercover is   
   somewhat new, but for decades before that it was pen pal services" where   
   law enforcement officials sought pedophiles, he said.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)