Terre des Hommes - An international charity which concentrates on children’s rights based in the Netherlands has created a virtual 10-year-old girl “from the Philippines” named “Sweetie.”
Sweetie was designed to track down, and hopefully convict, online pedophiles who use “webcam child sex tourism.”
I’m not sure where Terre des Hommes got these numbers, but they state at any given moment there are least 750,000 pedophiles online. That’s a staggering number of nonces with webcams, IMO. - Hmm, 750,000 pedophiles? Yeah right! That number is very close to the number of sex offenders in the USA, but a majority of them are not pedophiles!
Warning: This video may be upsetting to some viewers
On one side is the ‘Internet Safety Industrial Complex’ faction that includes representatives of companies that sell internet safety technologies, i.e. Internet filtering, monitoring and age verification technologies. Members of this faction also include internet safety experts who promote the idea that internet safety technologies, along with education and parental engagement are key factors in mitigating the risks to children and young peoples’ well-being online. Larry Magid urges readers to ‘beware’ because he alleges the ‘Internet Safety Industrial Complex’ faction exaggerates the nature, scale and extent of online risks to children and young peoples’ well-being online.
The other faction, of whom Larry Magid is one of the key figures, is the ‘Anti-Media Panic’ faction, relies on selective pieces of research, which serve to substantiate their position. The central tenets of the Anti-Media Panic faction is that the majority of children are not at risk online, and, in fact any perceived risk has its genesis in ill-informed media hype generated to a large degree by the Internet Safety Industrial Complex faction.
When and why did these factions emerge and what effect is it having?
Let’s start with the Anti-Media Panic faction, who, for more than five years, has been talking about the media coverage of online child safety issues and describing it in terms of “media panic”. This narrative can be traced back to the mid 2000’s, but it really coalesced in 2008, in the aftermath of the publication of a report by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF). The ISTTF was a multi-stakeholder Task Force convened in response to a request by the US Attorney Generals to explore whether or not the age verification solutions available on the market at that time were fit for purpose, i.e. could provide the global internet industry with scalable, commercially viable, proportionate, low-cost, privacy preserving, age verification methods that would augment the safety of children online.
The Task Force was comprised of representatives from industry, law enforcement, child safety advocates and technical experts and it met several times over a one-year period. The meetings were convened and hosted by the Berkman Institute at Harvard University. The circumstances that prompted the US Attorney Generals to ask for this Task Force to be convened were that Myspace – remember them? – had used the Sentinel solution to scrub their database of users against a data set of known sex offenders. MySpace found approximately 40,000 sexual offenders and there were some procedural delays in handing over this information to the appropriate authorities. The Attorney Generals were not happy about this situation and felt that industry could be called upon to do more to protect vulnerable children and young people online and so the ISTTF was convened.
TAMPA - Parents teach children at a young age to not talk to strangers, but it's a lesson that seems lost when it applies to the Internet, a place cyber crimes experts call a playground for predators. - The term "predator" covers more than just sexual crimes! The Internet is also a "playground" for many other criminals as well, like identity thieves, spammers, hackers, hate groups, etc, but those don't stir up emotions like the sex offender hysteria. Technology is always exploited by people and always will. If someone is intent on committing a crime they will. Parents and schools should be teaching kids common sense and educating them on sexual abuse, privacy, security, etc, not fear mongering BS!
Every time a teenager turns on their smart phone, computer, iPod, Xbox, or any electronic device with Internet access, there are countless of places to travel to and meet people.
"All the bad people in the world have access to you if you have access to them ... With technology, it's becoming a target-rich environment for pedophiles, for people preying on children," says Detective Bill Lindsey with the Cyber Crimes Unit at the Pasco Sheriff's Office. - Based on the true definition of pedophile, pedophiles are rare and not the norm like the media continually tries to make it seem. Just because someone molests a child, that doesn't mean they are a pedophile!
Lindsey says one popular site is Meetme.com. It claims to have 90 million members as young as 13 years old. Until last year, users knew it as Myyearbook.com, described on Facebook as "a social networking site for teens." Members have live webcams, where Lindsey says predators solicit videos and pictures.
Lindsey says, "The kinds of adults that are getting on Meetme.com and meeting children are doing that with malicious intent."
Unlike sites such as Facebook that will match one up with mutual friends or interests, sites such as Meetme.com will recommend people based on where one lives. 10 News checked for sexual offenders and predators and found 314 within a 5-mile radius.
Lindsey says, "It's terrifying. Parents don't know how much danger their children are in." - If the parents and schools were educating their children, then this wouldn't be much of an issue, now would it?
Lindsey says teens often give away too much information online, listing schools, interests, and hangouts, providing predators with a road map to them and to trouble.
"We've had juveniles who have met adults online because they were their suggested friends, and adults take advantage of that online relationship, set up meetings in person, and engage in unlawful sex with minors," says Lindsey.
"In my situation, he wasn't a predator. He was a normal guy who swept me off my feet. I fell in love with him," says 18 year old Alexis Carrascos. Her nightmare began when she is 16 years old. She says, "To think all this started online from me posting a little too much information."
When Alexis met her ex-boyfriend, she thought it was a chance encounter. Later in the relationship, she learned he stalked her on Facebook first through mutual friends and pictures she'd tag online while out with those friends.
Alexis says, "If I could go back and un-tag myself in all those locations I would. It could have saved me a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache, a lot of lessons I think I learned too early in life." - You can as far as we know.
Alexis says three months into the relationship she learned her 17-year-old boyfriend was really 18, and she says he became aggressive. Alexis says, "He started being very pushy, very jealous, very controlling."
And she says he became very violent, from grabbing her to punching walls. The break up included a restraining order against him. "He would stalk me," she says.
Alexis says she needed therapy plus extra protection. Alexis started carrying a taser and a trained dog for protection. Six months after the relationship ended, she's learning to trust again. "I'm still very alert with who sees my things, who likes my things, who's my friend on Facebook or Instagram or whatever." - This is how everybody should be. Don't post personal information at all.
Her advice to teens is to use caution online. She says, "If you don't know them, don't friend them. You don't need to necessarily tell people where you are because it's so easy for a predator, anybody that looks like a normal person, to become a stalker, to become possessive or abusive, lead to something that you don't want."
Meetme.com says it has "zero tolerance for abuse" and has staff to monitor images posted 24/7, Lindsey says, "Meetme.com is the most proactive of the social media online at policing their own website. They make an incredible amount of complaints to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children."
Detective Lindsey and Alexis say that doesn't replace parents from keeping an eye on their kids' online activities.
Alexis says, "This generation, we're too friendly. We think no one is going to cause us harm."
Detective Lindsey advises parents to know their child's passwords and frequently review each account with them. Also, make sure each friend is someone they know. And don't stop at Facebook; he suggests checking all their online accounts, including messaging sites such as kik, Twitter and Instagram.
