Again, this is tough stuff to stomach, so feel free to stop reading here and know that according to the Justice Department, busting Dreamboard resulted in the largest prosecution of people involved in online child exploitation ever. The investigation lasted for two years and charged 72 people with 52 people already arrested. Thirteen have plead guilty and four have received prison sentences of 20-30 years.
Dreamboard required users to upload images of children 12 years or younger in order to earn membership. In order to maintain their Dreamboard membership, they needed to continue to upload images with more submitted images leading to more access to content. In all members traded tens of thousands images with one another. Attorney General Eric Holder says:
“Some of the children featured in these images and videos were just infants. And, in many cases, the children being victimized were in obvious, and intentional, pain – even ‘in distress and crying,’ just as the rules for one area of the bulletin board mandated.”
Disgusting in every sense of the word. I hope they rot. [CBS News]
paul
Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 9:52 AMThis is the way to deal with these perverts. Not some nonsensical internet filter a la Conroy
TSH
Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 11:03 AMAgreed.
A filter would just make groups like this harder to find. Unlike drugs and weapons dealers, the end users of child exploitation are the source of the problem. We have to balance the (questionable) benefits of the proposed filter with the (undeniable) hindrance it will be to law enforcement agencies who seek to bring these sickos to justice.
Mike
Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 1:33 PMPrison sentences of only 20-30 years? I really think for shit like this the death penalty is more appropriate. To intentionally cause pain and suffering to children and infants for your own sexual gratification?! I’d have absolutely NO qualms about strapping them in the chair myself.
travis
Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 8:39 PMI would have no issues killing them myself. Makes me angry thinking about these sort of people.
Arj
Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 2:55 PM^ agreed 100%. Capital embarrasment and punishment
james_whatsit
Friday, August 5, 2011 at 2:45 AMif it only takes 72 ppl to create 10s of thousands of images of evil, imagine how many more are out there :’(
olearymo
Friday, August 5, 2011 at 9:14 AMThe thing is, you can imprison, torture and kill these people all you want.
It doesn’t undo what they did to those children.
The only way to deal with this sort of thing is prevention. I don’t mean Conroy’s filter, because how can something that filters webpages catch people using peer to peer and other technologies?
We need to look at what makes people like this, the abuse cycle, etc etc.
Yes it’s evil. But just saying ‘they’re evil kill them’ will NOT help protect children. The most important thing is not revenge, but keeping children safe. We need to be clever about this stuff instead of simply reactive.