On March 10, 2011, while doing some research on the English Defence League I stumbled across something extremely unpleasant. I went to Google image search and typed in the words “gay division” (without the quotes). Yeah, it really is a joke, this anti-Islamic pressure group (or whatever you want to call it) has not only a gay division but a Jewish division, but let’s keep on track.
I was expecting to see some images of people marching in the street, men wearing pink balaclavas and such, but to my disgust, and dare I say to my horror, I was greeted by a page full of queer porn. Well, not entirely full, the 11th image was of Hillary Clinton smurfing for the camera with someone I didn’t recognise; there were also pictures of cars, and some other innocuous stuff, but it was the 4th image that really struck me. It was of two youths. I say two youths, but the one whose face was visible was clearly under age. They were both naked, and the youth who appeared to be the older one was standing, penis erect, while the other was touching it.
I scrolled down the page before deciding it was better to research elsewhere, and perhaps using a different search term, but to cover my back “and” because I am a fine, wonderful, concerned, upstanding citizen, not to mention homophobe, the next day I phoned CrimeStoppers and reported my findings.
The response I received was far from reassuring. The phone was answered by a woman; do you have a computer in front of you, I asked? Yes, she said. I mentioned the EDL and told her why I was using the search term “gay division”, and this drew a laugh. Can you go to Google image search, I asked? This was the first problem. No, she wasn’t allowed to.
So I explained the situation, and returned to Google image search typing in that phrase again. When the page came up I noticed that the 6th image was of the same two boys; the 5th was an obvious spoof, a group of Ku Klux Klansmen dressed in pink robes and hoods holding an advertising board which proclaimed GAY BLACK JEWISH KLANSMEN FOR TOLERANCE AND UNDERSTANDING – as I said, an obvious spoof, apparently also on the EDL.
Back to the 6th image, this time, one boy was fellating the other. After some for me frustrating discussion, the woman on the other end of the line said she would report it to the police, but she was unable to provide any meaningful answers to my questions, such as what if I scroll down the page? What if some other unsuspecting and totally innocent person comes to this image and clicks on it? What is someone supposed to do if he comes across this page using a similar search term? What should he click on? What should he not?
I pointed out to her that with all the hysteria we’ve had about child porn over the past few years, the proper thing to do was to target the websites concerned. Her response was that she could give no guarantee that the police or the FBI would remove this sewage at once, but that it probably would be removed at some point.
Back in 2003-04 I had some correspondence with the CPS concerning this sort of thing; their response was far from comforting, to put it mildly.
Over the past few years we have seen much manufactured debate about policing (ie controlling) the Internet, in particular about attempts by governments to restrict the flow of what they regard as sensitive (read embarrassing) information. Fortunately, for the most part this has come to nothing. But there really are some things that do not belong on the Internet, or anywhere; that includes pictures of young boys fellating each other, being fellated by men, fellating men, being buggered by men, etc and ad nauseum. Can it really be so difficult both to remove this sort of filth and remove from society the people who publish it?
Four years ago, some creep hacked one of my on-line accounts and attempted to steal some money from it. When I reported this to the company concerned – Neteller – they made absolutely no attempt to investigate; the police refused point blank. Such an investigation would have been extremely simple because the person concerned tried to transfer money to a gaming site, which means he must have an account with that site. And have registered a physical address. How much effort would it take to send a couple of detectives to that address to ask the householder to explain this transaction?
Websites are no different. Anyone may open a free website with no meaningful identification, but most hosting companies will shut down any sites that breach their terms of service, with no warning and no fuss. Most websites though are not free, the owner must first purchase a domain, and hire webspace. This leaves a paper trail, a paper trail that both the police and the banks can follow with consummate ease, as has been demonstrated on numerous occasions when murderers and other serious criminals on the run have been traced through their victims’ bank cards. (1)
How much effort would it take the British police much less the FBI to track down the physical addresses of the persons responsible for most of the child porn sites on the Internet, clap them in gaol, and shut down their operations? Failing that, a simple phone call to the relevant hosting company would have the site removed within hours. (2) As far as I know, there is no country on Earth that tolerates this sort of filth, so there should be no issues of jurisdiction either. But what do the police do? In 1999, Operation Avalanche was launched in Forth Worth, Texas; the British version, known as Operation Ore, led to literally thousands of arrests of suspected paedophiles.
As usual, the mass arrests of suspects and the seizures of their computers was announced with great fanfare. When literallly dozens of totally innocent men committed suicide because of the resulting stigma, this ardour was dampened somewhat.
There are several problems with tarring men as paedophiles on the basis of their simply looking at pictures – which is what we are talking about. The first is that in the aforesaid operations, suspects were tracked using bank card details. Many of these were stolen, something that is extremely common nowadays. I mentioned above that my Neteller account had been hacked. This also happened to my e-gold account. (3) I have also seen my Visa card used both for purchasing furniture in Saudi Arabia and buying currency in Australia, even though between 1989 and 2009 I ventured abroad precisely twice, to France and Iran. Indeed, many, perhaps most of us, have probably fallen victim to these sort of scams.
One innocent person who could have been arrested in one of these paedophile hunts was a certain Peter Mandelson, whose bank card was used to purchase girlie porn. He probably avoided the early morning knock on the door only because he is so well known, both as a politician and as someone who like Elton John has absolutely no interest in pictures of naked females, of any age.
Peter Mandelson aside, in an age where the majority of the population is on-line, and where home personal computers are commonplace, it is quite likely that most of us could be charged with possessing child pornography! In the small hours of June 2, 2006, the Metropolitan Police raided the home of two brothers, devout Moslems Abdul Koyair and Abdul Kahar Kalam after an “intelligence led operation” (read anonymous - and in this case - false, probably malicious tip off) concerning “Islamist” terrorism. Unsuprisingly, the totally innocent victims thought they were being burgled. There is absolutely no need for these sort of raids to be carried out in the dead of night, and in this case, the result was that one of them ended up being shot, although fortunately, on this occasion the victim did not suffer a life-threatening injury.
It quickly became apparent that the brothers - or the police - had been set up, but on August 3, as a result of the de rigueur seizure during the bungled raid, one of the brothers was charged with possessing child pornography. I thought at the time this was a deliberate act to tarnish their reputation and defuse the natural sympathy people - especially fellow Moslems - would have for them, especially as the charges were quietly dropped some time later. However, it appears indecent images were indeed found inter alia on a computer, but were deleted immediately they were downloaded, and those that were not, were embedded. All e-mail accounts receive considerable amounts of spam, and there is all manner of filth whizzing around in cyber-space which we don’t see. It is probably no exaggeration to say that most personal computers contain a few “dodgy” images, and that under the law as it exists, and under the right - or wrong - circumstances, most of us could be charged with, and even convicted of, possessing either child pornography or something of a similar nature.
Yet another problem is what constitutes child porn? Pictures of naked babies, especially of very young babies, are extremely easy to find on the Internet, and are occasionally seen on both TV and billboards, advertising toilet tissue for example – soft as a baby’s…yeah, right. The British police – indeed police everywhere – being pig-headed bastards, they and their chums in the so-called independent Crown Prosecution Service will sometimes bring the most specious and contrived of prosecutions for alleged offences of all kinds, and will not desist no matter how weak or contrived their “case”. A good example is the harassment meted out to the late Colin Jordan, who was dragged into court over one poxy cartoon at the behest of the Jewish Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, who ironically, was later tarred with the same brush by the odious Jewish Chronicle newspaper for having the temerity to speak out against the inhuman policies of the Israeli Government. (4)
Then the was the self-styled “lyrical terrorist” Samina Malik, whose only “crime” was to write bad poetry. (5) More recently, businessman Terence Brown received a three year sentence for selling a publication he called the Anarchist Cookbook, a CD compiled from various webpages which described how to carry out all manner of nefarious and illegal acts.
So what is the solution? Very simply, the authorities should remove child porn from the Internet as soon as it is pointed out to them, prosecute to the full extent of the law both the people who create it and the people who distribute it, in whatever jurisdiction, and should refrain from seizing computers per se! In short, if Joe Sixpack downloads anything from a publicly available website, anything at all, there should be no prosecution for merely possessing the picture(s), video(s) or whatever.
Furthermore, the authorities should not be permitted to set up sting operations or entrap people for child porn or for any other offences in any way, manner, shape or form, certainly not as they did under Operation Avalanche. (6) No one, absolutely no one, should be criminalised for simply looking at pictures, however obscene. Furthermore, all written “pornography” and cartoons should be totally exempt from all prosecution.
An afterword: When I used the same term for an image search three days later, these obscene photos were still there, but the next time I did it, on the morning of March 25, they were gone. If nothing else, this proves it can be done.
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