Operation Ore
Saw the first part of a documentary on BBC2 yesterday. The documentary was about "Operation Ore", a police operation in which over 1000 Brits who'd paid by credit card to look at an American child pornography website (Landslide) were checked out by the police.
Amongst others also The Who's Pete Townshend. He claimed to have only looked at the site for research purposes, on a book he was writing, and had not downloaded any images. A story which was supported by the evidence found.
Other men had logged on to the site for very different reasons and had over 10.000 images of child abuse on their computers. That's 10.000 abused children, where people have taken photographs of the abuse and put them on the internet to "share"!
Some were sentenced to a few years in jail (maximum three, minimum 9 months), others were given community service.
The "evidence" the police have to process to catch people who download child porn was discreetly blocked away in crucial parts, but still... anyone with half an imagination could fill in the blanks. Literally. It was unreal, that's the only way I could look at it. If you think about the fact that it is real, then... well, you just can't.
I must say I am impressed by the way the police handled things. Very few "cowboys" in the British police, they treated their suspects humane and with decency. The only time I thought they went a little overboard is when they thought a suspect had weapons in the house and therefor smashed in the windows to gain access to the building.
I've always been wary of people who fulminate against child porn and paedophilia too much. It's easily seen as suspicious. Like these policemen. I found myself thinking, as they were processing the evidence, is this an excuse for them to watch child porn themselves and meanwhile be able to say how disgusting they find it all? Like queerbashers being secretly turned on by homosexuality. Probably shows I'm too much of a psychologist, look too much into things and I owe those policemen an apology.
I found myself thinking the same thing about myself though. Should I really be watching this. Should anyone really be watching this? Why am I watching this. To find out more about what the reality is? To find out what drives these people? What the police does about it? What their reasoning is? Or is it just the same as looking when an accident has happened... disaster tourism?....
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Saw the first part of a documentary on BBC2 yesterday. The documentary was about "Operation Ore", a police operation in which over 1000 Brits who'd paid by credit card to look at an American child pornography website (Landslide) were checked out by the police.
Amongst others also The Who's Pete Townshend. He claimed to have only looked at the site for research purposes, on a book he was writing, and had not downloaded any images. A story which was supported by the evidence found.
Other men had logged on to the site for very different reasons and had over 10.000 images of child abuse on their computers. That's 10.000 abused children, where people have taken photographs of the abuse and put them on the internet to "share"!
Some were sentenced to a few years in jail (maximum three, minimum 9 months), others were given community service.
The "evidence" the police have to process to catch people who download child porn was discreetly blocked away in crucial parts, but still... anyone with half an imagination could fill in the blanks. Literally. It was unreal, that's the only way I could look at it. If you think about the fact that it is real, then... well, you just can't.
I must say I am impressed by the way the police handled things. Very few "cowboys" in the British police, they treated their suspects humane and with decency. The only time I thought they went a little overboard is when they thought a suspect had weapons in the house and therefor smashed in the windows to gain access to the building.
I've always been wary of people who fulminate against child porn and paedophilia too much. It's easily seen as suspicious. Like these policemen. I found myself thinking, as they were processing the evidence, is this an excuse for them to watch child porn themselves and meanwhile be able to say how disgusting they find it all? Like queerbashers being secretly turned on by homosexuality. Probably shows I'm too much of a psychologist, look too much into things and I owe those policemen an apology.
I found myself thinking the same thing about myself though. Should I really be watching this. Should anyone really be watching this? Why am I watching this. To find out more about what the reality is? To find out what drives these people? What the police does about it? What their reasoning is? Or is it just the same as looking when an accident has happened... disaster tourism?....
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