It would be much easier to send the guilty among these to prison:
This problem is a serious one, and I would hazard to guess that this statistic is only the tip of the iceberg of the problem in America today. Fighting the pornography aspect of it doesn't fight the root cause of the issue. The root cause is child molestation, which has been proved time and again to create new generations of offenders. The key to fighting it, I think, is to find a constitutional means of executing people on their first offense against a prepubescent child, and to execute them quickly.
Through the existing Fairplay system, investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines. The Fairplay software allows the investigator to obtain the IP address of the file's sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.If the ATF and DEA were dismantled, their investigators merged into the FBI and their budgets put toward this, just think of how many investigations they could perform every year. The prisons wouldn't be overflowing with drug offenders, but rather with sex offenders. Granted, many of these cases, probably most of them, are not actually guilty of breaking the law because you cannot go on the file name to determine guilt. Stuff on P2P networks is misnamed all the time, as pretty much everyone who has used the software has seen from time to time.
Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. It's not clear whether any wiretaps are also conducted to monitor ongoing file-swapping.
Through that process, investigators have identified more than 600,000 unique computers allegedly trafficking in child pornography and traced them to the United States. But Biden and others have voiced dismay that they're only equipped with the resources to investigate about 2 percent of those potential cases.
This problem is a serious one, and I would hazard to guess that this statistic is only the tip of the iceberg of the problem in America today. Fighting the pornography aspect of it doesn't fight the root cause of the issue. The root cause is child molestation, which has been proved time and again to create new generations of offenders. The key to fighting it, I think, is to find a constitutional means of executing people on their first offense against a prepubescent child, and to execute them quickly.
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Due to my stance regarding the death penalty, and my current employment status, I would do the deeds for an automobile, lodging and food expenses, and gasoline. And, I believe in service with a smile. I, personally, would prefer to combine hanging and electrocution, and I would video tape the event. Of course, I would require exclusive rights to the recordings.
I am sure some might argue that such recordings are immoral, I claim it to be artistic (better than urine on a crucifix). And, though the (too rich, they would be pricey) teens who would purchase the recordings for their rave parties would seemingly be merely entertaining themselves (in theory at the expense of some poor saps life, though not really because he was going to die anyway), they would actually be receiving entertainment with a moral. Hmm, I think I could do that.
Oh, and being this is the enlightened age, and I am such a fan of equal rights, I would cook a sky dancing woman just as well as a man. As a fact, because of so many years of lagging equal treatment in this arena, I say ladies first.
Mike,
There is a HUGE disconnect between this post and the one immediately prior to it. In the prior post you push against the slippery slope and in this one you are an advocate of it.
Where is the slippery slope? Executing people who molest children? It's a proven fact that not only do many victims go on to become offenders themselves, but that offenders are generally highly recidivist. From a moral POV, there is nothing wrong with executing people who go after prepubescent children, and there is plenty of historical precedent for it in our own scripture as being the righteous punishment.
I'm not advocating taking away rights. Far from it. I'm saying that instead of focusing on the small battles, the governments of this country should reform the legal system so that it can provide a quick, just and powerful punishment to people who rape little kids. You know where I stand on prosecutorial conduct and such, so you should give me the benefit of the doubt that I am not calling for measures that would give ambitious prosecutors more rope to hang people with.
While I admire your entrepeneurial tendencies, I think that if your suggestion ever comes to pass, that execution is outsourced to government contractors, that that will be the surest sign that we need to literally dismantle the entire government, at all levels, fire every employee, and start over.