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Becoming Sweetie, The Computer-Generated Girl Who Took On Child Predators
- dublinben 12y agoIs it really a crime to proposition a virtual child?
- decad 12y agoWhat if you are under the assumption that said child was real?
- tinco 12y agoNo, but if it is clear you do not know the child is virtual then it is clear evidence that you are the sort of person who would proposition a real child. That information can make cases against predators easier, and might even be valuable for the police to get a search warrant.
- dublinben 12y agoSo we're OK with raiding and arresting the "sort of person" we find undesirable on their potential to commit a crime? I'm not sure if thought crime or pre-crime are more abhorrent concepts, but here we are.
- EpicEng 12y agoYes,I'm ok with it,as long as the charge is one of intent. Do you also think that we should allow people to plan murders, robberies, etc. with no penalty as long as they do not follow through before they are caught?
- aroch 12y ago> Do you also think that we should allow people to plan murders, robberies, etc. with no penalty as long as they do not follow through before they are caught? Yes, there's nothing illegal or "wrong" with thinking. That's why every `conspiracy to X` charge necessarily requires a proof of intent. It isn't illegal to think about killing someone, if it was 99% of the world would be in jail. Put it this way, should it be illegal for whitehat hackers to test a program, on their home computer, for bugs? There's no intent to do harm but what they;re doing could cause harm if they intended to.
- EpicEng 12y agoPlanning != merely thinking. Planning implies intent. And how could white hats harm anyone by practicing a hack on their own system? There's also a benefit to this sort of thing. Where is the benefit in planning a murder or searching for children to abuse? Poor analogy.
- aroch 12y agoI can plan a trip to Italy, complete with finding best flights, hotel, etc with no intention of traveling to Italy. Where's the benefit? The level of thinking you do should not and does not automatically cause you to have a certain level of intent. How could "predators" harm anyone if they're talking to a computer model?
- EpicEng 12y agoYou could, but that would be a stupid thing to do, as would planning a murder that you have no intention of committing just "for fun". If you do that, well, hope no one finds your plans. Jurors aren't mind readers. We have have a practical way to determine there was intent. Creating a plan to commit a crime shows intent. If you were doing it just because you're an ass-hat then you may pay the price for being an idiot. No reasonable person is going to document a plan for a crime they have no intention of committing. You're living in a theoretical fantasy land.
- aroch 12y agoPlenty of people fantasize, to great lengths, about killing some one who has wronged them. Under your view 99% of the population should be in jail because they've thought about killing someone.
- EpicEng 12y agoYou're obviously not reading what I write. I'm not talking about fantasizing, I'm talking about planning. not the same thing. What would you suggest that we do with someone caught with plans to bomb a building? Let them go until they actually do it and then arrest them?
- rosser 12y agoIf you know it's a virtual child then almost certainly not (except, perhaps, in .au, which I think at least had statute defining even obviously cartoon depictions of naked minors as child porn). The caveat here is that these (alleged) perps all believed they were interacting with a real child. In Common Law countries, at least, criminality exists in the presence of mens rea — the "guilty mind" — and actus reus, an overt action. Virtuality or not, if you think you're chatting up an actual, breathing, 8-year-old girl, and offer money for her to remove her undergarments, you are a criminal.
- gambiting 12y agoThis is going to be an extremely unpopular opinion,but I would like to actually have some meaningful discussion about this - am I the only one to think that chatting/flirting/talking about sex with a generated avatar, no matter what is it of, should not be a crime?
- pitnips 12y agoIf you know it's an avatar, maybe not. But if you think it's a real girl, then yes, absolutely it should be.
- gambiting 12y agoSo...it's a crime to think about something? Is it a crime to think about murdering someone? Or about stealing a purse, but without actually doing any of these things?
- crusso 12y agoHaven't you done more than think by participating in the conversation? I'm all for discussing this and thinking about it, but actually chatting with the person on the other end demonstrates intent.
- gambiting 12y agoThen they should be tried for intent. And it is my understanding,that they are being accused of actually molesting a child,even though there was no child present on the other side.
- mcphage 12y ago> And it is my understanding,that they are being accused of actually molesting a child That would certainly change things—where did you get that data from?
- tinco 12y ago
- aroch 12y agoI wonder if, had this been done by the police instead of a private charity, if this would constitute inducement or if any arrests would hold. And if a affirmative defense could be mounted -- often there is nothing overtly illegal about text or computer generated imagery. It would have been fascinating to be the fly on the wall at the various meetings to decide the legality of arrests based on this information.
- clubhi 12y agoI'm so happy these computer generated little girls are now safe.
- fixermark 12y agoI'm happy the real flesh-and-blood children who were accessible one screen name over from Sweetie are now marginally safer.
- dllthomas 12y agoThey're probably not. Unfortunately, I don't expect that enslaved little girls whose associated revenue stream dries up typically wind up safe little girls - the perverts on the other end of a bunch of wires aren't their biggest threat. I'm happy that there's less inducement to enslave new little girls...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- alayne 12y agoWhy is some non-government agency organizing stings?
- gress 12y agoI'm in no way defending anyone who takes advantage of anyone who's age they are unsure of (or really anyone who is vulnerable), but I notice that nowhere do they talk about the age of the person they are modeling. I'd be curious to know what age a randomized blinded panel would rate their avatar at. If this was a psychological test, that would be a requirement for it to be considered valid.
- fixermark 12y ago"My name is Sweetie. I am 10 years old. I live in the Phillipines." ~ from the video
- gress 12y agoThanks. That answers part of it, but it doesn't answer the question of what age people would rate the Avatar at. The two should be consistent.
- fixermark 12y agoYes and no. I haven't seen the whole video, so I'd really have to know what their procedure was for engaging (suspects/victims/potential predators, depending on one's [apparently wide-ranging in this thread ;) ] view). "She said she was 10 but she looked 18" isn't really a tenable defense, as far as I'm aware. In every US jurisdiction I'm familiar with, at least, if the honeypot declares "I'm 10 years old," that's it. Game over if the predator continues to engage sexually; the honeypot's face-value declaration of age is enough to get the predator on the hook for intent. FYI, while Sweetie is a next step in that it has an audio-visual component, the standard operating procedure in text-only fora for years has been adult male F.B.I. agents roleplaying as a young male or female child to nab predators. The declaration of age is part of that standard operating procedure to make it easy to prove intent ("the chatter even said he was 10 and the perpetrator still went on with it!").
- gress 12y agoI'm not saying it's a defense - it's clearly not. There just seems to be something creepy about using a representation that looks older and calling it a younger age.
- lisper 12y agoI wonder if, instead of using this technology to catch pedophiles it might be used to treat them instead. If computer-generated avatars are good enough to provide sexual gratification, maybe that would be enough to redirect their attention away from real kids. There is some evidence that pornography can reduce the incidence of (adult-on-adult) rape, so it seems not entirely implausible that it might reduce pedophilic abuse as well. [1] http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/04/porn-and-rape-the-debate-continues/ http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/04/porn-and-rape-the-debate-...
- jarin 12y agoWhile it could work, it would never ever be socially accepted as a form of treatment.
- lisper 12y agoMaybe not in the U.S. But the U.S. does not have a monopoly on pedophiles.
- ScottBurson 12y agoI think this is possible, and would support research into it.
- DominikR 12y agoI don't think it is right for a state to bait people into committing crimes. Not that I'd ever defend sex offenders, but by creating an opportunity that is strong enough you could get anyone to commit some kind of crime. That doesn't have to be a sex offense, it could also be tax evasion, prostitution, gambling, illegal file sharing (music/films), hate speech, speeding with a car or consuming illegal drugs. Most people have some weakness that could be exploited.
- moheeb 12y agoSo how do they prove how old the virtual child is?
- rosser 12y ago"My name is Sweetie. I am 10 years old. I live in the Phillipines."
- bunderbunder 12y agoRecently there was an undercover ATF operation near my neighborhood that failed rather spectacularly and, thanks to the local newspaper, publicly. In the final analysis one of the things that came out of it was the observation that very few of the folks who were arrested over the course of this operation were known to have been engaged in any serious (say, worse than just being a pot smoker) criminal activity outside of whatever the ATF agents had enticed them to do as part of the sting operation. Oftentimes this took the form of singling out people who weren't too bright, or were in a financial tight spot, and applying a lot of social pressure to encourage them to commmit crimes. In other words, the vast majority of the criminal activity people were being arrested for were crimes that the ATF had manufactured in the first place. The real burglars and drug dealers knew enough to stay away. I can't help but worry there might be a similar situation going on here. I'd be curious to know how many of the 1,000 individuals caught in this operation have any prior history of abusing children, and I'd be curious to know if the folks running this operation were using this child persona to actively solicit people. It's not just that I worry about police entrapment (which I do); it's also that I worry that these operations might ironically make life easier for the child pornography and trafficking industries because the investigators are trapping themselves in their own honeypot.
- tzs 12y agoI can see how being in a financial tight spot might lead me agree to commit a theft that I would not otherwise commit. I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of spot I could find myself in that would let me be enticed into paying money to have children sexually abused.
- milesf 12y agoWith a conviction rate of less than %0.000005 of those committing these acts, this is something governments ought to be pursuing. Signing the petition http://youtube.com/sweetie http://youtube.com/sweetie
- ScottBurson 12y agoI am really surprised at all the negative reactions in here. Let's get some things straight: () Entrapment is when the police induce someone to commit a crime they were not otherwise predisposed to commit. That did not happen here. The only reason anyone would have to visit these chat rooms in the first place (other than to see what was going on in there, as the author did) is to buy child webcam sex. () The individuals caught in this sting thought they were talking to a real child and had every intention to solicit a real child for sex. We are not talking about a thought-crime here. () They had almost certainly done it before, and will continue to do it until stopped. There are no difficult questions here. This is a good thing. EDITED to add: By the way, I don't think artwork -- drawings, paintings, computer animations, whatever -- should ever be illegal per se, no matter what it depicts. I don't think that artwork of any kind should be illegal to produce or to view, for any purpose including sexual stimulation, so long as no actual children or other unwilling victims were involved in its production. But that's not what we're talking about here. This isn't just about viewing synthesized materials. This is about people offering to pay for what they think is a real child to perform sex acts on camera.
- avalaunch 12y agoYou're making some assumptions that simply aren't backed up in the story. The story doesn't go into detail about where Sweetie was setup online or who initiated contact first or how the alleged pedophiles knew that Sweetie was only 10 years old. So entrapment may have occurred. And I have no idea why you believe that the alleged pedophiles had almost certainly done it before as that also wasn't mentioned anywhere in the story. What we're dealing with here is a vigilante organization running sting operations where they may or may not be operating in a diligent law abiding manner. As much as I would like to catch pedophiles, I don't think that's the sort of thing we should be encouraging.
- ScottBurson 12y agoThe article is maybe not as explicit about some of these things as it should be, but I've read about this operation before. My understanding is that they set Sweetie up in a chat room, just like the room that the author describes. The people they caught had to come to that room intentionally. I am reasonably certain Sweetie's operators were well aware of entrapment concerns and structured their interactions carefully to avoid them. (It certainly would have been a phenomenal waste to have gone to all the trouble involved in creating Sweetie and then to have blown everything by doing something stupid in the chat rooms. I don't think these people are anywhere near that stupid.) > And I have no idea why you believe that the alleged pedophiles had almost certainly done it before Then you know nothing about child sexual abuse. Perpetrators who are not caught are extremely likely to keep doing it. Even among those who are caught and prosecuted, recidivism is extremely high. "Vigilante organization"? All they did was collect information and turn it over to the police. A "vigilante" is someone who attempts to enforce the law themselves, by violence. The term does not apply here.
- johnchristopher 12y agoWhen I was younger (a late teen) I used to hang out on IRC and forums. I got in touch with many nicknames, few I ever got to know anything more about them than their music preferences or opinions on trivial stuff (games, arts, politics, etc.). And some, I used to play on-line game with them. Fast forward ten years later (which is 2 years ago) and there is that 14 years old Norwegian girl popping up in my MSN list. I never added her, I think we somehow got into each other's buddy list because of those multi-chat layers some tried to implement over MSN. In my country, Belgium, we got a huge scandal over abducted girls in the 90's. That changed a lot of things for some of my friends who were chief of boyscout and the like: they couldn't handle children the same way as before and every physical contact was suspicious, some told me they didn't take children in their arms anymore when they were crying because they feared people might misinterpret it. Back to that Norwegian teenager: Had I been a teen I guess I would have chatted a bit more with her (aah those days when some random nicks on the deftones forum would send us postcard of his european trip.. on our REAL PO Box) but all I was concerned about was: Am I being targeted as an on-line pervert by some agency ? If I keep on answering her "who are you ? how did you get in my list ?"... will that be turned against me later for god knows what ? So I told her to not contact me because she doesn't know who I am which is the adult thing to do but at the end of the day I am sad that the internet land isn't as open and as welcoming as before. But it's the same in the real world: One day I am at the mall and there is that 4 years old crying and asking "mama ?". I asked here "are you lost ?" "yes" "Well, can you see your mom around you ?" "No". So I told her "Well, come with me at the information desk and we'll ask them to tell your mom to meet you there". As she grabbed my hand I saw a woman cashing her groceries 2 meters away and of course she was the mom. That was awkward and it shouldn't have been.
- xenadu02 12y agoWhy do these stories always bring out the white-knight nerds crying about "entrapment" or questioning if a crime was truly committed? Entrapment would be if undercover agents stopped you on the street and hassled you to come inside and proposition a kid for sex and refused to let you leave, or even just kept getting in your face over and over. Or maybe even more subtly, if they kept messaging and pestering you in online chat, suggesting you could see "them" (fake kid) naked for money, even though you expressed reluctance about it. That did not happen here, these were just the super easy people who jumped easily and quickly at the opportunity to pay to have a child perform sex acts on video Secondly, in every jurisdiction that I know of, this is the crime of Intent to Commit. It doesn't matter that the avatar was virtual, it's no different than an adult cop using picture of a model as bait. You aren't interacting with a virtual chat bot, you're interacting with an adult human being who happens to be using a computer-generated avatar. Again, this is no different than buying fake cocaine from an undercover cop, or attempting to steal a bait car. Let us not forget that it is statistically improbable that even half of these 1000 people are doing this for the first time. Which means most of them have paid money to someone to force a kid to perform sex acts on camera, and so enjoyed the experience they went and sought it out again. I think more police departments should have officers on staff and hackers as consultants to engage in consistent and ongoing honeypot operations, not just for these sorts of crimes, but also for things like online fraud, etc.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoOf course its different - the avatar isn't a real person, not in any meaningful sense. So what if they witness a person propositioning a poster, or a blow-up doll, or a DVD on pause with a sexy actress on screen? Its not a crime, period. I don't apologize for criminals; just counseling caution when painting everything with the crime brush.
- z3t4 12y agoThese losers wouldn't even dare to touch a RL girl. Even though it would be perfectly legal to have sex with someone as young as 16 or even 12 in many countries. So why make their lives any more miserable? Those who abuse girls IRL should burn in hell though.
- patcon 12y agoInteresting, to say the least. One of my first concerns is whether this tactic might eventually weaken the ability to prevent child abuse. To clarify, this is arguably an effective honeypot right now because it supposedly would not occur to a predator that the child is digital, and so they can be presumed guilty of engaging with a real child... But what about when body-scanning gets cheaper, and a foreign website claims to be offering the services of digital avatars, but is actually sourcing real children. Would this not give predators plausible deniability, and greatly challenge the prospect of prosecution? This feels cynical of me to say, but I don't see this as an omen of future technological solution to social ills, but rather of uncomfortable future ambiguity