Quietly Fighting The War On Child Pornography

NBC News is reporting today that federal agents have shut down the world’s “largest dark web child porn marketplace.”

The article reports:

The now-shuttered English-language site, called “Welcome to Video,” contained more than 200,000 unique videos or almost 8 terabytes of data showing sex acts involving children, toddlers and infants, according to the 18-page criminal indictment unsealed here Wednesday, and processed 7,300 Bitcoin transactions worth more than $730,000.

According to prosecutors, the vast online store was run by Jong Woo Son, a South Korean citizen currently serving an 18-month prison sentence in his home country after his conviction on charges related to child pornography. The site operated from June 2015 until it was seized and shut down by U.S. authorities in March 2018.

At a press conference Wednesday morning, U.S. officials said 337 suspected users of the site had been arrested worldwide to date.

…In addition to Son, more than 300 other suspects have been arrested in South Korea as of Wednesday, while still more suspects were identified in other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, including a Washington, D.C., man who was caught with the equivalent of 50 years worth of video footage he had downloaded.

The website ran solely on the dark web, a section of the internet that can only be accessed via a Tor browser, which is designed to protect users’ tracks online and obscure digital footprints. Users could purchase videos using cryptocurrency and an annual membership was priced at 0.03 bitcoins (at current exchange rates, around $300).

The article concludes:

When they announced the arrest of “Mr. A” in 2018, the South Korean police also said they had arrested a total of 156 South Koreans for either uploading or downloading child porn materials, which was unusual given that the site operated entirely in English.

“Most of the users were in their 20s, unmarried and white-collar office workers and first-time offenders, although some were ex-convicts of sexual crimes, including juvenile sex offenders. One possessed as many as 48,634 child porn [files],” the KNPA said.

Paul Henkins, head of the Americas region for the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, said at the Wednesday press conference that 18 investigations of alleged site users had yielded seven convictions, with one defendant sentenced to 22 years.

The case, Henkins said, demonstrates the “increase in the scale, severity and complexity of child sexual abuse offending.”

Hopefully the people arrested will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Friday Night At The Movies

Tonight my husband and I went to see 2016: Obama’s America at the Regal Theater in Swansea (MA). This is a movie that the liberal press has not loved. Variety’s Joe Leydon dubbed it a “a cavalcade of conspiracy theories, psycho-politico conjectures and incendiary labeling.” He must not have seen the same movie I saw.

The theater was relatively full–it was a 6:40 showing. My husband and I had a chance to talk to a few of the people who were there. I don’t know what their political affiliations were–this is Massachusetts–sometimes it’s better not to ask–but the feeling I got was one of concern for America and worry about the direction the country is currently heading.

The information in the movie was not new–anyone who has paid attention to anything other than the mainstream media during the past three and a half years knew the basics of the movie. What was different about the movie was the organization of the information we have about President Obama and the insights of the writer, who is from a country that was for many years a British colony.

As Americans, we sometimes forget what it is like to grow up in other countries. President Obama spent some of his younger years in Indonesia, where his stepfather’s leaning toward democracy created problems in his parents’ marriage. Through President Obama’s mother, the President developed an image of his biological father that was not necessarily accurate. There were a number of influences described in the movie that explained President Obama’s policy positions on various issues. In the movie, the President is described as an anti-colonialist. This explains, among other things, his attitude toward the bust of Winston Churchill (see rightwinggranny.com), and his support of Argentina in the debate over ownership of the Falkland Islands.

The movie was not anti-Obama. It was a compilation of biographical facts that should have come out four years ago. There was nothing startling in the movie. It was pointed out that four more years of an Obama Administration would probably change this nation fundamentally, but the audience was given the option of deciding how it would feel about those changes.

I would strongly recommend seeing this movie. It is a basic summary of the biography of President Obama. The information in the movie should be a part of every voter’s decision process before deciding on their Presidential vote in November.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Tonight my husband and I went to see the movie “Bernie” (the link is to the movie trailer). The movie was made by an independent film company and is showing in small theaters around the country. It is well worth seeing. It is a dark comedy. The movie is based on a true story and represents a true moral dilemma. I strongly recommend it.

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