Of course they can and they've had the ability to do so for a very very long time. Why don't they? Because they are part of the child trafficking. That's why the Epstein case was and is clearly never going to be fully investigated.
But now "they" might care about child trafficking because they want to legally track and control every little thing that we do and say so if you care that much about child trafficking, then you will give up more of your rights.
The guise of protecting children will always be used to take away more of our rights. The idea that algorithms and AI can't be used to stop child trafficking and pedophiles is absurd. It's almost as absurd as believing Epstein killed himself and that the covid shots are safe and effective.
Here's a few reasons why 'they' can't track this sick, heinous industry:
1- It is by far the largest industry in the world. If you took it down, literally, the global economy would crash.
2- Epstein is/was only the tip of the iceberg. Around the world, there are 1,000's of Epsteins. See all the power players that are involved, including complete governments (like ours obviously) being 100% complicit.
3- This industry fuels downstream industries like the financial sector who 'quietly' deposits all those illegal proceeds through money laundering.
4- This industry also props up even more industries like prostitution, forced labor, an entire drug industry to support it, etc. through mafia style mercenary armies.
5- The tie ins and connections to every other illegal industry is irrefutable. Illegal arms trade, more illegal money laundering, creation of complete financial institutions to support it, etc.
6- And all this also assists the illegal transport of people industry, illegal housing of entrapped people industry. The list is literally endless.
But yes, type into your browser the word Ivermectin, Chlorine Dioxide or DMSO and the next industry (enforcers preventing illegal industries from facing competition) comes busting down your door.
There are literally 1,000s of orphanages around the world trying desperately to keep vulnerable children from being dragged into human trafficking circles (including pedophilia, prostitution, slavery, etc.). Good ones offer safety, meals, education, clothing, shelter, companionship, friendships, and if lucky, a future, away from the human trafficking world.
According to the 2024 census, 13% of Ugandan children have lost one or both parents, which means there are approximately 2.22 million orphans in the country (of a population of just under 53 million total inhabitants).
By doing a little homework you can help by finding an honest Orphanage and make a small, medium, large, or sustaining donation.
I donate to one in El Salvador and another in Uganda. Best charitable decision I’ve made in a long time.
For the cost of one of those star bucks “Vinte Soy & Oat Lattes with chocolate dusting on top of a whip” you could easily feed a kid for an entire month.
we, the people, are too busy feeling virtuous for voting on America's Got Talent or something, like that fulfills our civic responsibility to care about paying attention to what monsters we vote into office and then ignore what they do once there. Well, as long as they are in the party you favor. Its like people don't have bs detectors anymore, or at least forgot to change the batteries.
All the reasons you've given as to why they can't track this sick, heinous industry are probably 100% accurate. But I would say it's the reason they won't track because come on, they can track them.
You are over the target. What they will end up doing, as Australia is proposing, is set an age limit. Then that requires all people who want to use the internet to register with official documents and biometrics and tracking. But in reality they don't want to catch themselves doing it and prove the world right, THEY are the problem. The government and big tech.
IMO these are the most heinous and taboo crimes known to mankind. Powerful forces are covering it up to protect themselves. The Epstein Files provides the evidence. I will contribute to Tim Tebow’s foundation.
It seems to me that if Tim Tebow can see these dots and find the IP addresses, the FBI could find the users.
A friend’s kid bought concert tickets for a small group. Each kid in turn, repaid her. One wrote in the memo of his VENMO payment “for the assassination of the president”, as a joke. It was a $22 payment.
The FBI showed up at their door asking questions. It was the whole Men in Black routine.
Yeah. They went to all of the homes of the kids within the venmo circle— or whatever it may be called. The others weren’t home. They said if Taylor and her mom (one in bed, the other in her housecoat, no less) hadn’t been home, they were headed to the kid’s SCHOOL.
I think the kid just meant it as a joke. He is a good kid, and was raised well and all that. He was just being an 18 yr old joker. I never dreamed the FBI would show up over a $22 venmo memo and I’m sure he didn’t, either.
Besides, I’m pretty sure the FBI visit to his friend’s home was enough of a wake up call.
I say the take away here is that a comment on a $22 Venmo intended as a joke rustled up the FBI to not waste a second to pay a visit to the Venmo group when all the heinous crimes of child trafficking and/or sexual crimes against children barely conjures up the FBI to raise an eyebrow. As for a Substack trial on the teenager…how about we all say a prayer his parents address the seriousness of this with him, and that the young man realizes the mistake so not to do that again. Goodness knows I did a few stupid things way back in my teen years. And surprise!…I learned lessons without internet trials and came out the other side a better person. Life was so much better back then. I can’t help but feel sad for those who will never know what it was like pre-internet.
I guess you have never met any witty, snarky 18 year olds with a sense of humor.
That was a fairly benign comment, particularly considering the event and the $22 Venmo amount.
The bigger picture here is that the FBI used US taxpayers ‘resources’ to go after a group of kids who went to a concert. Don’t they have more serious ‘criminals’ to go after?
Not witty, not benign and not snarky. Sick. And yes, I have not met nor would I wish to meet an 18 year old that is that dark and stupid. Sounds like you are condoning such verbiage. Good luck with that. Next.
I had a friend supposed to go to Cuba in 2020, her trip got canceled… I had sent her $ for her trip.. used the name of the country and they’ve kept the $.. because I can’t tell them what she spent it on. Assholes.
Literally every evil thing the Government does, and they do a lot of evil things, starts out being ‘for the children’ or ‘for the old folks’.
I’ve often seen that when people make these claims it is just extreme exaggeration. I remember sitting in church as a kid hearing that half a million kids in our state went to bed hungry every night. My Dad told me to write down those numbers. So I did. When I got home he asked me how many kids I thought were in our state. Turned out at that time it was less than a million. His summary, “So, every other kid you meet should have gone to bed hungry every night. You know any of your friends or classmates who are going to bed hungry.” I replied, “no”. His lesson: they were lying.
If Tim Tebow can find this stuff so can the police. They just need to look. Or maybe Tim found stuff that wasn’t really what he said it was. I’m sure TT is earnest, but my childhood experience leaves me wondering. And this is just an excuse for more surveillance and more censorship. You know it. I know it. Let’s not fall for the ‘but, it’s for the children’ dodge. That’s how we become the Yookay.
When they took down your post about ivermectin, the people who did that, especially the government people, should be punished in a way that makes them an Example for the Ages. When legislators violate the Constitution, or their bureaucrats, they should also be punished. Not thrown out of office, but actually criminally prosecuted. Want an example of what happens when this is not done, just look at what is going on in Virginia. The legislature and the government is doing one unconstitutional thing after another.
If we want to retain our freedoms we will have to fight for them. And we have to quit falling for the ‘it’s for the children’ dodge.
Why would Tim Tebow exaggerate? That would question his integrity, which can’t be questioned, in my opinion. He’s an upright man. I would think that his numbers are actually too small. In this day of the Internet where downloads are instantaneous, everything can be verified. I’m not discounting your experience with your father, he was a wise man, but things are vastly different now than when we were kids.
Because he’s engaged in a virtuous project. And maybe because he doesn’t know any better.
The people who lied to me in church when I was a kid were engaged in a virtuous project. They just wanted the congregation to lobby the legislature to fund a school lunch program and in the meantime wanted the congregation to fund their efforts. Maybe they knew they were exaggerating and maybe they didn’t care whether they were or not.
So how many pedophiles do you think that there really are in your community? Is it a 1 in 100,000 problem? A 1 in 1000 problem? A 1 in 100 problem? Or is it really a 1 in a million problem. I live in a county with 2M people and we’ve had maybe two prosecutions for CSAM in the last year. And here, the police look. And publish their arrests. Like I said, if TT can find them so can the police.
We don’t need any Congressional help. This is just a play to increase the surveillance state. Next thing you know the cops will be pulling up to your house to discuss your ‘defamation’ of those illegal immigrants who are raping the teenagers. Just like in England. Not just no. But absolutely freaking not.
Literally every evil the government does is ‘just to protect the children’. A recent example: the Trans scam — in your kids schools.
I'm not sure I understand your first sentence. TT has no agenda except to save the children. As far as the rest of your post, I agree. And of course, if TT can find them... that was Jenna's point, so yes.
Well, Lori and CatsRtheBest, congratulations! You’ve fallen into the trap.
What were TT’s numbers? “338,000 independent IP addresses”. That’s presumably 338,000 individuals, in a country of 330,000,000. Quick calculation says that we have 1 pedophiles for every 1000 people (at least) and that 1 pedophile acts on his impulses for every 2000 people.
But I live in an urban county (with a number of illegal aliens — it’s a sanctuary county) of about 2 million people. So we should have higher incidence of pedophilia here than in other parts of the country. Our police department pursues online CSAM very aggressively. They only arrest about 1 or 2 people a year for this crime (note: arrests not prosecutions; that’s a different problem). That’s roughly 1 in a million. Do you think that the PD is ignoring 999 cases and only pursuing one? Or maybe they only go after one of the 500 who take overt action. I don’t. In fact I know different. So across the country this is about a one in a million problem, but TT is claims it is a one in one thousand problem. That seems a bit odd.
So, how did he get his numbers? Did someone give them to him? Well, probably. Did he or the provider do any due diligence to ensure that their numbers were correct? Probably not. After all they’re making an argument for something.
What is it that they are arguing for? Why it’s more surveillance and more censorship. Reducing their numbers by investigating them only makes their argument more difficult. So, no they didn’t do ‘due diligence’. Is this a form of lying. It certainly is.
Is more surveillance and more censorship a good thing? No, it’s not. Especially if we want Jenna to be able to tell us that ivermectin can be very helpful in fighting a Covid infection.
Can TT say, “Hey I’m just being righteous and trying to solve a problem. I can’t be blamed if I just slightly misrepresented it” ? Yes, he can and probably would if he’s ever challenged.
And here you are. Instead of looking at the real problem; the pros and cons of possible solutions; and considering that someone might be using this claim to get you to support something nefarious, you’re comment is that “TT is a good guy, he wouldn’t lie.”
And that, Lori & CatsRtheBest, is the problem. In fact, that is the entire game. They do this all the time.
And maybe Tim is a righteous guy who is just being used. In fact, I strongly suspect that is the case. And now that you’ve seen this example you should be on the alert.
“Do you think that the PD is ignoring 999 cases and only pursuing one? “ Yes. Yes I do. The corruption runs very deep and our judicial system is compromised.
You easily believe TT is trusting liars but can’t consider the possibility you are too? You “just know” and are so sure based on your area? And he can’t be? That right there is a red flag tell.
I believe it’s somewhere in between, that TT is telling the truth because the FBI is FINALLY doing its job and has all the numbers, and they have started to share them with us. Patel has said whatever they report the truth is far worse. But yes, other actors are trying to use this issue to get us to allow more surveillance. I see that too. I don’t believe TT is doing that at all, and I don’t believe he is being used as a tool by those who want to infringe more.
And hell yes, I believe 1 in 1000 are pedos in this day and age! What rock are you living under?
I believe there are two extremes here, and you are clearly on one side of them.
The truth is in the middle. We DO need to protect children better from predators.
How we go about protecting them is what the debate should be, not the character of Tebow that you threw under the bus. He’s either a liar or a gullible mindless blob. You gave no other possibility. Sheesh 🤦🏼♀️
Don’t reply. You’ve MORE than explained yourself enough.
I don’t believe that 1 out of every 1000 of the inhabitants of this country are engaged in pedophilia. There are about 6000 prosecutions and the FBI estimates that they bag at least 1 in 10 offenders. I think the FBI has it about right. So that means maybe 60,000 out of a population of 330 million.
These days I think that there is a lot more talk about pedophilia than there is actual pedophilia.
And I think there is a lot of people who abuse a problem to take advantage of the taxpayers. To return to my original example regarding the hungry children — that effort turned into the Federal School Lunch program that losses about $2 Billion to fraud every year.
Just because I like to do ‘due diligence’ I looked up the source of these numbers. It’s the FBI. And you know what? They said that there were ***between 111,000 and 300,000 independent IP addresses*** that *might* be involved in CSAM.
What was presented? ***338,000 that are involved***
And what are we after here? To eliminate anonymity on the internet. And that gets you directly to having the police visit your house because they don’t like what you posted online, just like in England.
Well, here’s the summary. They did exactly what I said they did. They greatly exaggerated the problem to make a point. And what’s worse they’re trying to use the ‘protect the children’ ruse to compromise our freedom. Just say NO.
Really…can’t manage to read through a few well presented and reasoned posts from The Great Santini? I don’t recall that they were the length of a novel. It wasn’t even the length of your favorite Danielle Steel romance novel, which would have hundreds of pages and thousands of words. 🤔🕵🏼♀️📚
And we keep hearing about all these kidnapped children supposedly being rescued, but where are they? Where are all these children being held? Where are the joyful reunions with their parents, and their families?
And where are the perpetrators? Where are the trials and their convictions?
I imagine there are children who were brought (bought?) across by “sponsors,” (incidentally? paid for by the Biden administration) and remain in detention centers. I was surprised to read recently that (and don’t trust these numbers; going from a rough memory) there were already some 40k immigrants already in custody when Trump took over, and it’s only increased another 30k. Have no idea if it is true, and where I read it. Anyone?
The fact that the movie "Sound of Freedom" had to be crowd funded and ran into such strong headwinds on the way to release speaks volumes. Most of us don't want to believe that a problem this evil could be this widespread. Please pray for justice.
The only people who are punished for crimes are the people whom the government wants punished for crimes... or the unlucky few that can be used as scapegoats.
I believe you hit the nail on the head! Have hammer, hit nail. Seems simple, doesn't it?
I see selective enforcement every single day of my simple life.
Primo example in my Cobalt Blue Coastal Mecca. We have a homeless population which is selectively enforced. There is one particular family parked at a world famous beach. Been parked in the same spot for well over 7 years! It is clearly posted as a tow away zone between the hours of 12-5 am. This particular SUV has NEVER been removed ❌
I can give so many more examples of selective enforcement relating to a multitude of infractions, permits, etc., etc.
The law is simply selectively applied by those miscreants sitting on their Cheeto ballooned arses on City Council. How did they get their fat arses in those seats you ask? Thank you for asking! A combination of Blue Checks and election fraud.
Selective enforcement really annoys me, however I count my self fortunate in being a white male earning an above average income - that seems to keep me out of a lot of trouble.
"Raise your hand if you're exhausted [due to the time change]"
Not me! I do not change the clock. Why should I stress my body to conform to a ridiculous antiquated "standard" that serves zero purpose in this day and age, and that takes us out of more biologically appropriate time? Nope. Nada. No thank you! Anyone can do it. I won't double, triple dog dare anyone as a challenge...but rather a gentle nudge to consider the possibility to go rogue 😊
I’ve got bigger problems than that. My appliance and wristwatch clocks were turned forward Saturday when I went to bed. But of course, you can—my dad did but he didn’t have a device that automatically changed. It was a glorious day Sunday. I enjoyed the extra time in the sun before the dark. I’m sure you were tracked in some way because you didn’t. 😵💫🤣
Tell me you don’t have a job without telling me you don’t have a job. 😁 What's more, tell me you don’t ever go anywhere that requires your being there at a specific time without telling me. Either that, or you’re constantly doing math.
The time change never affects me. I occasionally have a bout of insomnia or get to bed late and have to drag through the next day until I catch up on my sleep. This is really no different.
I wouldn't worry. Digital IDs will be here soon enough and getting rid of child exploitation and fraud etc is how it will be sold to us.
It sounds pretty good but it's probably some sort of slave world with zero privacy. They can stop a lot of things right now if they wanted to but I think they want it to get bad enough that we are begging for their "solutions".
I do believe there are some that are doing this. There ARE ways to stop child exploitation online without having to go big brother extreme. It’s common sense. But yeah, there are evil people that will exploit it.
Just like Reagan said, if you want to know why something is happening, follow the money. Deeper than even the money is the kind of society that breeds pedophiles.
The tech companies could easily give a govt agency a superuser account to monitor and remove offensive material.
Would you trust them to use it responsibly 100% of the time and never overstep into authoritarian overreach? I know I wouldn’t, especially when a dem is in the White House.
But I’ll upvote anything with a Dr. Cox gif. That actor is a genius.
They basically did that with anything Covid related that they didn't want people to know about. And as related to child abuse, I would want them to prosecute the perpetrators and not just remove their material and access.
I think prosecuting was a given. The question was why they couldn’t take down the criminal material that continues to haunt the living victims. They can, but it’s costly. And in our “we live in a society of laws” mindset, who has authority to remove material believed to be criminal…the tech platform, the government pre-trial, or the government post-trial? Arguments can be made for or against every level, but all that matters is stopping the victimization. Personally, I’m fine with not waiting for govt to do stuff we know is right, even if it means civil war.
Yet they can scrub any derogatory information about themselves from the internet quite easily. Most elites and CEOs can. Even a minor arrest record for college days … boom. Gone.
But this? No reason they can’t remove it from the internet.
I see it as I do free speech. Not all speech is protected. Openly threatening the life of someone or inciting violence is not protected. Neither is defamation and slander. So why can’t this be worthy of an exception to our freedom of information?
Nope, big tech should never be trusted to respect our privacy on the internet again. That being said, surveiling then prosecuting online users might not stop orphaned kids from being trafficked.
Jenna, One thing stands out in your article. All of those censorship things we hate (music in the background, utterances about "killing the president" made in jest, etc.) are VISIBLE TO ANY USER and thus to ANY AI or other screening system.
There are likely things to be done, but they are tangential to the thrust of your article as I read it. Let us understand why.
Most of the illegal pornography is fully encrypted. Properly encrypted data is virtually impossible to decrypt -- and with quantum computing actually will be absolutely impossible to decrypt. Each encrypted item on the Internet (or anywhere else) could be child pornography but is likely something else entirely -- commercial secrets, your bank account number, people organizing for various purposes about which they do not want people to know, etc. (104M images seems like a lot but is likely a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent of total encrypted documents traversing the 'Net). Your financial data for EVERY transaction is encrypted is the perfect example of how ubiquitous this all is. Otherwise you would have no money left.
Can these elements be decrypted? Of course, if you have the key. This is the foundational security and privacy issue on the Internet. Are you willing to give the ISPs (and therefor almost certainly the government) the key so that EVERYTHING you or anyone else sends can NEVER be hidden from them? Once you get past the "well I have nothing to hide from the government" idiots, most people's answer is a strong no...I know I am not willing to do so. But it is a pretty binary choice. Of course, you could write a law that says "all illegal pornography must be sent in plaintext or with the key visibly attached" but I expect that would be a non-starter.
Every censorship decision involves removing YOUR rights. Every time I hear "it's about the children" (generally not in discussions about child pornography) I know someone is using that to take something away from me and it usually is not too hard to find. The horror of child pornography causes many people to put it into some different class, but even if one does that, the foundational arguments remain the same.
In the same way that some people with guns do bad things with them (including shooting children) some people with the Internet do bad things with it. Are you going to take all guns away to stop the shootings? Are you going to remove the last vestige of ensuring privacy to stop the child pornography? These are really difficult questions and pretending that "there must be technical solutions to only decrypt child pornography" are not helpful.
One other technical note: Tebow's 338,000 dots is almost certainly a significant overcount. These are mostly hashtag matches to known pornography that has already been decrypted and hashed by the government by IP address --but many IP addresses change continuously while not changing the underlying user, meaning that each dot may be multiplying the actual person involved by a factor of 10 or 100 or who knows how much. Still way too many people, but not 338,000 either.
Having said all that, the vendors (and really law enforcement/justice) could chase down the IP addresses for already-hashtagged content and reduce them to individuals. (You cannot indict a hashtag nor an IP address -- it has to be a person). Tebow's point, which I strongly support, is that the investment in doing this piece of work (and this is all government, really not IPs) is small and should be larger. That piece can be done without looking for a "technical" solution which would certainly involve giving others keys to your domain -- it just involves law enforcement and justice doing more in that space. And that is absolutely worth supporting.
There are more than 42 million survivors of sexual abuse in America. (National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse)
1 in 3 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. (The Advocacy Center)
1 in 5 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. (The Advocacy Center)
1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the Internet before the age of 18. (National Children’s Alliance: Nationwide Child Abuse Statistics)
30% of sexual abuse is never reported. (Child Sex Abuse Prevention and Protection Center)
Nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults (including assaults on adults) occur to children age 17 and under. (Children’s Advocacy Center)
90% of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way. (U.S. Department of Justice)
Approximately 20% of the victims of sexual abuse are under age eight. (Broward County)
95% of sexual abuse is preventable through education. (Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute)
38% of the sexual abusers of boys are female. (Broward County)
There is worse lasting emotional damage when a child’s sexual abuse started before the age of six, and lasted for several years. Among child and teen victims of sexual abuse there is a 42 percent increased chance of suicidal thoughts during adolescence. (American Counseling Association)
“More than 90% of individuals with a developmental delay or disability will be sexually assaulted at least once in their lifetime.” (Valenti-Heim, D.m Schwartz L.)
“There are nearly half a million registered sex offenders in the U.S. – 80,000 to 100,000 of them are missing.” (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
“A typical pedophile will commit 117 sexual crimes in a lifetime.” (National Sex Offenders Registry)
Of course they can and they've had the ability to do so for a very very long time. Why don't they? Because they are part of the child trafficking. That's why the Epstein case was and is clearly never going to be fully investigated.
But now "they" might care about child trafficking because they want to legally track and control every little thing that we do and say so if you care that much about child trafficking, then you will give up more of your rights.
The guise of protecting children will always be used to take away more of our rights. The idea that algorithms and AI can't be used to stop child trafficking and pedophiles is absurd. It's almost as absurd as believing Epstein killed himself and that the covid shots are safe and effective.
Here's a few reasons why 'they' can't track this sick, heinous industry:
1- It is by far the largest industry in the world. If you took it down, literally, the global economy would crash.
2- Epstein is/was only the tip of the iceberg. Around the world, there are 1,000's of Epsteins. See all the power players that are involved, including complete governments (like ours obviously) being 100% complicit.
3- This industry fuels downstream industries like the financial sector who 'quietly' deposits all those illegal proceeds through money laundering.
4- This industry also props up even more industries like prostitution, forced labor, an entire drug industry to support it, etc. through mafia style mercenary armies.
5- The tie ins and connections to every other illegal industry is irrefutable. Illegal arms trade, more illegal money laundering, creation of complete financial institutions to support it, etc.
6- And all this also assists the illegal transport of people industry, illegal housing of entrapped people industry. The list is literally endless.
But yes, type into your browser the word Ivermectin, Chlorine Dioxide or DMSO and the next industry (enforcers preventing illegal industries from facing competition) comes busting down your door.
🎯🎯🎯
But what can we do?
There are literally 1,000s of orphanages around the world trying desperately to keep vulnerable children from being dragged into human trafficking circles (including pedophilia, prostitution, slavery, etc.). Good ones offer safety, meals, education, clothing, shelter, companionship, friendships, and if lucky, a future, away from the human trafficking world.
According to the 2024 census, 13% of Ugandan children have lost one or both parents, which means there are approximately 2.22 million orphans in the country (of a population of just under 53 million total inhabitants).
By doing a little homework you can help by finding an honest Orphanage and make a small, medium, large, or sustaining donation.
I donate to one in El Salvador and another in Uganda. Best charitable decision I’ve made in a long time.
For the cost of one of those star bucks “Vinte Soy & Oat Lattes with chocolate dusting on top of a whip” you could easily feed a kid for an entire month.
we, the people, are too busy feeling virtuous for voting on America's Got Talent or something, like that fulfills our civic responsibility to care about paying attention to what monsters we vote into office and then ignore what they do once there. Well, as long as they are in the party you favor. Its like people don't have bs detectors anymore, or at least forgot to change the batteries.
All the reasons you've given as to why they can't track this sick, heinous industry are probably 100% accurate. But I would say it's the reason they won't track because come on, they can track them.
🎯🎯🎯
You are over the target. What they will end up doing, as Australia is proposing, is set an age limit. Then that requires all people who want to use the internet to register with official documents and biometrics and tracking. But in reality they don't want to catch themselves doing it and prove the world right, THEY are the problem. The government and big tech.
IMO these are the most heinous and taboo crimes known to mankind. Powerful forces are covering it up to protect themselves. The Epstein Files provides the evidence. I will contribute to Tim Tebow’s foundation.
God bless Tebow for sharing the ugly truth. Pray for his protection to stop this horrendous evil.
It seems to me that if Tim Tebow can see these dots and find the IP addresses, the FBI could find the users.
A friend’s kid bought concert tickets for a small group. Each kid in turn, repaid her. One wrote in the memo of his VENMO payment “for the assassination of the president”, as a joke. It was a $22 payment.
The FBI showed up at their door asking questions. It was the whole Men in Black routine.
If they’re
tracking venmo memos…
OMG!!!
Yeah. They went to all of the homes of the kids within the venmo circle— or whatever it may be called. The others weren’t home. They said if Taylor and her mom (one in bed, the other in her housecoat, no less) hadn’t been home, they were headed to the kid’s SCHOOL.
Again, if you can find all that…
Glad they showed up. What normal kid would write such a thing. Kid needs a shrink and be detoxed.
I think the kid just meant it as a joke. He is a good kid, and was raised well and all that. He was just being an 18 yr old joker. I never dreamed the FBI would show up over a $22 venmo memo and I’m sure he didn’t, either.
Besides, I’m pretty sure the FBI visit to his friend’s home was enough of a wake up call.
A shrink and detox seems — extra.
I say the take away here is that a comment on a $22 Venmo intended as a joke rustled up the FBI to not waste a second to pay a visit to the Venmo group when all the heinous crimes of child trafficking and/or sexual crimes against children barely conjures up the FBI to raise an eyebrow. As for a Substack trial on the teenager…how about we all say a prayer his parents address the seriousness of this with him, and that the young man realizes the mistake so not to do that again. Goodness knows I did a few stupid things way back in my teen years. And surprise!…I learned lessons without internet trials and came out the other side a better person. Life was so much better back then. I can’t help but feel sad for those who will never know what it was like pre-internet.
👏👏👏
Certainly!
That is an unfortunate lesson learned. One that will not be forgotten.
I don't know anyone at 18 that would make such a "joke". Something is not right there so I will respectfully agree to disagree with your take on it.
I guess you have never met any witty, snarky 18 year olds with a sense of humor.
That was a fairly benign comment, particularly considering the event and the $22 Venmo amount.
The bigger picture here is that the FBI used US taxpayers ‘resources’ to go after a group of kids who went to a concert. Don’t they have more serious ‘criminals’ to go after?
Not witty, not benign and not snarky. Sick. And yes, I have not met nor would I wish to meet an 18 year old that is that dark and stupid. Sounds like you are condoning such verbiage. Good luck with that. Next.
Are you a troll here…never have seen y’all around these parts?
To borrow what seems to be your FAVORITE word…NEXT! 😉🤪
GOOD GRIEF!!
I had a friend supposed to go to Cuba in 2020, her trip got canceled… I had sent her $ for her trip.. used the name of the country and they’ve kept the $.. because I can’t tell them what she spent it on. Assholes.
Literally every evil thing the Government does, and they do a lot of evil things, starts out being ‘for the children’ or ‘for the old folks’.
I’ve often seen that when people make these claims it is just extreme exaggeration. I remember sitting in church as a kid hearing that half a million kids in our state went to bed hungry every night. My Dad told me to write down those numbers. So I did. When I got home he asked me how many kids I thought were in our state. Turned out at that time it was less than a million. His summary, “So, every other kid you meet should have gone to bed hungry every night. You know any of your friends or classmates who are going to bed hungry.” I replied, “no”. His lesson: they were lying.
If Tim Tebow can find this stuff so can the police. They just need to look. Or maybe Tim found stuff that wasn’t really what he said it was. I’m sure TT is earnest, but my childhood experience leaves me wondering. And this is just an excuse for more surveillance and more censorship. You know it. I know it. Let’s not fall for the ‘but, it’s for the children’ dodge. That’s how we become the Yookay.
When they took down your post about ivermectin, the people who did that, especially the government people, should be punished in a way that makes them an Example for the Ages. When legislators violate the Constitution, or their bureaucrats, they should also be punished. Not thrown out of office, but actually criminally prosecuted. Want an example of what happens when this is not done, just look at what is going on in Virginia. The legislature and the government is doing one unconstitutional thing after another.
If we want to retain our freedoms we will have to fight for them. And we have to quit falling for the ‘it’s for the children’ dodge.
Why would Tim Tebow exaggerate? That would question his integrity, which can’t be questioned, in my opinion. He’s an upright man. I would think that his numbers are actually too small. In this day of the Internet where downloads are instantaneous, everything can be verified. I’m not discounting your experience with your father, he was a wise man, but things are vastly different now than when we were kids.
Because he’s engaged in a virtuous project. And maybe because he doesn’t know any better.
The people who lied to me in church when I was a kid were engaged in a virtuous project. They just wanted the congregation to lobby the legislature to fund a school lunch program and in the meantime wanted the congregation to fund their efforts. Maybe they knew they were exaggerating and maybe they didn’t care whether they were or not.
So how many pedophiles do you think that there really are in your community? Is it a 1 in 100,000 problem? A 1 in 1000 problem? A 1 in 100 problem? Or is it really a 1 in a million problem. I live in a county with 2M people and we’ve had maybe two prosecutions for CSAM in the last year. And here, the police look. And publish their arrests. Like I said, if TT can find them so can the police.
We don’t need any Congressional help. This is just a play to increase the surveillance state. Next thing you know the cops will be pulling up to your house to discuss your ‘defamation’ of those illegal immigrants who are raping the teenagers. Just like in England. Not just no. But absolutely freaking not.
Literally every evil the government does is ‘just to protect the children’. A recent example: the Trans scam — in your kids schools.
I'm not sure I understand your first sentence. TT has no agenda except to save the children. As far as the rest of your post, I agree. And of course, if TT can find them... that was Jenna's point, so yes.
You obviously don't know TT. You are an idiot for suggesting he is a liar.
Well, Lori and CatsRtheBest, congratulations! You’ve fallen into the trap.
What were TT’s numbers? “338,000 independent IP addresses”. That’s presumably 338,000 individuals, in a country of 330,000,000. Quick calculation says that we have 1 pedophiles for every 1000 people (at least) and that 1 pedophile acts on his impulses for every 2000 people.
But I live in an urban county (with a number of illegal aliens — it’s a sanctuary county) of about 2 million people. So we should have higher incidence of pedophilia here than in other parts of the country. Our police department pursues online CSAM very aggressively. They only arrest about 1 or 2 people a year for this crime (note: arrests not prosecutions; that’s a different problem). That’s roughly 1 in a million. Do you think that the PD is ignoring 999 cases and only pursuing one? Or maybe they only go after one of the 500 who take overt action. I don’t. In fact I know different. So across the country this is about a one in a million problem, but TT is claims it is a one in one thousand problem. That seems a bit odd.
So, how did he get his numbers? Did someone give them to him? Well, probably. Did he or the provider do any due diligence to ensure that their numbers were correct? Probably not. After all they’re making an argument for something.
What is it that they are arguing for? Why it’s more surveillance and more censorship. Reducing their numbers by investigating them only makes their argument more difficult. So, no they didn’t do ‘due diligence’. Is this a form of lying. It certainly is.
Is more surveillance and more censorship a good thing? No, it’s not. Especially if we want Jenna to be able to tell us that ivermectin can be very helpful in fighting a Covid infection.
Can TT say, “Hey I’m just being righteous and trying to solve a problem. I can’t be blamed if I just slightly misrepresented it” ? Yes, he can and probably would if he’s ever challenged.
And here you are. Instead of looking at the real problem; the pros and cons of possible solutions; and considering that someone might be using this claim to get you to support something nefarious, you’re comment is that “TT is a good guy, he wouldn’t lie.”
And that, Lori & CatsRtheBest, is the problem. In fact, that is the entire game. They do this all the time.
And maybe Tim is a righteous guy who is just being used. In fact, I strongly suspect that is the case. And now that you’ve seen this example you should be on the alert.
“Do you think that the PD is ignoring 999 cases and only pursuing one? “ Yes. Yes I do. The corruption runs very deep and our judicial system is compromised.
You easily believe TT is trusting liars but can’t consider the possibility you are too? You “just know” and are so sure based on your area? And he can’t be? That right there is a red flag tell.
I believe it’s somewhere in between, that TT is telling the truth because the FBI is FINALLY doing its job and has all the numbers, and they have started to share them with us. Patel has said whatever they report the truth is far worse. But yes, other actors are trying to use this issue to get us to allow more surveillance. I see that too. I don’t believe TT is doing that at all, and I don’t believe he is being used as a tool by those who want to infringe more.
And hell yes, I believe 1 in 1000 are pedos in this day and age! What rock are you living under?
I believe there are two extremes here, and you are clearly on one side of them.
The truth is in the middle. We DO need to protect children better from predators.
How we go about protecting them is what the debate should be, not the character of Tebow that you threw under the bus. He’s either a liar or a gullible mindless blob. You gave no other possibility. Sheesh 🤦🏼♀️
Don’t reply. You’ve MORE than explained yourself enough.
I don’t believe that 1 out of every 1000 of the inhabitants of this country are engaged in pedophilia. There are about 6000 prosecutions and the FBI estimates that they bag at least 1 in 10 offenders. I think the FBI has it about right. So that means maybe 60,000 out of a population of 330 million.
These days I think that there is a lot more talk about pedophilia than there is actual pedophilia.
And I think there is a lot of people who abuse a problem to take advantage of the taxpayers. To return to my original example regarding the hungry children — that effort turned into the Federal School Lunch program that losses about $2 Billion to fraud every year.
Just because I like to do ‘due diligence’ I looked up the source of these numbers. It’s the FBI. And you know what? They said that there were ***between 111,000 and 300,000 independent IP addresses*** that *might* be involved in CSAM.
What was presented? ***338,000 that are involved***
And what are we after here? To eliminate anonymity on the internet. And that gets you directly to having the police visit your house because they don’t like what you posted online, just like in England.
QED
LOL. You wrote a novel. Not reading it. You are far gone. Next.
Well, here’s the summary. They did exactly what I said they did. They greatly exaggerated the problem to make a point. And what’s worse they’re trying to use the ‘protect the children’ ruse to compromise our freedom. Just say NO.
Really…can’t manage to read through a few well presented and reasoned posts from The Great Santini? I don’t recall that they were the length of a novel. It wasn’t even the length of your favorite Danielle Steel romance novel, which would have hundreds of pages and thousands of words. 🤔🕵🏼♀️📚
And we keep hearing about all these kidnapped children supposedly being rescued, but where are they? Where are all these children being held? Where are the joyful reunions with their parents, and their families?
And where are the perpetrators? Where are the trials and their convictions?
*...crickets.
I keep thinking the same thing! Where are the STORIES? Were they all orphans? It's suspiciously quiet out there...
I imagine there are children who were brought (bought?) across by “sponsors,” (incidentally? paid for by the Biden administration) and remain in detention centers. I was surprised to read recently that (and don’t trust these numbers; going from a rough memory) there were already some 40k immigrants already in custody when Trump took over, and it’s only increased another 30k. Have no idea if it is true, and where I read it. Anyone?
The fact that the movie "Sound of Freedom" had to be crowd funded and ran into such strong headwinds on the way to release speaks volumes. Most of us don't want to believe that a problem this evil could be this widespread. Please pray for justice.
The only people who are punished for crimes are the people whom the government wants punished for crimes... or the unlucky few that can be used as scapegoats.
I deleted my own comment to post it as a tier 1.
Two words: "selective enforcement"
That should worry everyone!
Hey John,
I believe you hit the nail on the head! Have hammer, hit nail. Seems simple, doesn't it?
I see selective enforcement every single day of my simple life.
Primo example in my Cobalt Blue Coastal Mecca. We have a homeless population which is selectively enforced. There is one particular family parked at a world famous beach. Been parked in the same spot for well over 7 years! It is clearly posted as a tow away zone between the hours of 12-5 am. This particular SUV has NEVER been removed ❌
I can give so many more examples of selective enforcement relating to a multitude of infractions, permits, etc., etc.
The law is simply selectively applied by those miscreants sitting on their Cheeto ballooned arses on City Council. How did they get their fat arses in those seats you ask? Thank you for asking! A combination of Blue Checks and election fraud.
Have a wonderful sleep deprived Monday!
"Cheeto ballooned arses on City Council" 🤣
You are competing with Jenna for clever phrases!
Selective enforcement really annoys me, however I count my self fortunate in being a white male earning an above average income - that seems to keep me out of a lot of trouble.
Thanks, John! I will accept the compliment with grace. Jenna will always be the queen of clever phrases!
Being a white guy and earning an above average income is great, but you must Iive in a sane place. 😎😂😇
Every now and then one of us gets lucky. Jenna cranks them out on a daily basis.
{laugh} Is there a place that is sane? I've become dubious that such a place exists anymore!
"Raise your hand if you're exhausted [due to the time change]"
Not me! I do not change the clock. Why should I stress my body to conform to a ridiculous antiquated "standard" that serves zero purpose in this day and age, and that takes us out of more biologically appropriate time? Nope. Nada. No thank you! Anyone can do it. I won't double, triple dog dare anyone as a challenge...but rather a gentle nudge to consider the possibility to go rogue 😊
What "time" the clock says really doesn't matter to me. But yes, I fully support stopping the nonsense of changing the time on clocks twice a year.
I’ve got bigger problems than that. My appliance and wristwatch clocks were turned forward Saturday when I went to bed. But of course, you can—my dad did but he didn’t have a device that automatically changed. It was a glorious day Sunday. I enjoyed the extra time in the sun before the dark. I’m sure you were tracked in some way because you didn’t. 😵💫🤣
Tell me you don’t have a job without telling me you don’t have a job. 😁 What's more, tell me you don’t ever go anywhere that requires your being there at a specific time without telling me. Either that, or you’re constantly doing math.
Were you late to church yesterday?
The time change never affects me. I occasionally have a bout of insomnia or get to bed late and have to drag through the next day until I catch up on my sleep. This is really no different.
No way, I'm leaving the 1st comment on this article. This just *never* is possible.
We’ve got to keep talking about this… and all things Epstein. It has to be the bone we don’t stop picking. And we have to vote THEM ALL out
I wouldn't worry. Digital IDs will be here soon enough and getting rid of child exploitation and fraud etc is how it will be sold to us.
It sounds pretty good but it's probably some sort of slave world with zero privacy. They can stop a lot of things right now if they wanted to but I think they want it to get bad enough that we are begging for their "solutions".
I do believe there are some that are doing this. There ARE ways to stop child exploitation online without having to go big brother extreme. It’s common sense. But yeah, there are evil people that will exploit it.
Everything evil started as good…
Just like Reagan said, if you want to know why something is happening, follow the money. Deeper than even the money is the kind of society that breeds pedophiles.
The tech companies could easily give a govt agency a superuser account to monitor and remove offensive material.
Would you trust them to use it responsibly 100% of the time and never overstep into authoritarian overreach? I know I wouldn’t, especially when a dem is in the White House.
But I’ll upvote anything with a Dr. Cox gif. That actor is a genius.
They basically did that with anything Covid related that they didn't want people to know about. And as related to child abuse, I would want them to prosecute the perpetrators and not just remove their material and access.
I think prosecuting was a given. The question was why they couldn’t take down the criminal material that continues to haunt the living victims. They can, but it’s costly. And in our “we live in a society of laws” mindset, who has authority to remove material believed to be criminal…the tech platform, the government pre-trial, or the government post-trial? Arguments can be made for or against every level, but all that matters is stopping the victimization. Personally, I’m fine with not waiting for govt to do stuff we know is right, even if it means civil war.
Yet they can scrub any derogatory information about themselves from the internet quite easily. Most elites and CEOs can. Even a minor arrest record for college days … boom. Gone.
But this? No reason they can’t remove it from the internet.
I see it as I do free speech. Not all speech is protected. Openly threatening the life of someone or inciting violence is not protected. Neither is defamation and slander. So why can’t this be worthy of an exception to our freedom of information?
Nope, big tech should never be trusted to respect our privacy on the internet again. That being said, surveiling then prosecuting online users might not stop orphaned kids from being trafficked.
Jenna, One thing stands out in your article. All of those censorship things we hate (music in the background, utterances about "killing the president" made in jest, etc.) are VISIBLE TO ANY USER and thus to ANY AI or other screening system.
There are likely things to be done, but they are tangential to the thrust of your article as I read it. Let us understand why.
Most of the illegal pornography is fully encrypted. Properly encrypted data is virtually impossible to decrypt -- and with quantum computing actually will be absolutely impossible to decrypt. Each encrypted item on the Internet (or anywhere else) could be child pornography but is likely something else entirely -- commercial secrets, your bank account number, people organizing for various purposes about which they do not want people to know, etc. (104M images seems like a lot but is likely a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent of total encrypted documents traversing the 'Net). Your financial data for EVERY transaction is encrypted is the perfect example of how ubiquitous this all is. Otherwise you would have no money left.
Can these elements be decrypted? Of course, if you have the key. This is the foundational security and privacy issue on the Internet. Are you willing to give the ISPs (and therefor almost certainly the government) the key so that EVERYTHING you or anyone else sends can NEVER be hidden from them? Once you get past the "well I have nothing to hide from the government" idiots, most people's answer is a strong no...I know I am not willing to do so. But it is a pretty binary choice. Of course, you could write a law that says "all illegal pornography must be sent in plaintext or with the key visibly attached" but I expect that would be a non-starter.
Every censorship decision involves removing YOUR rights. Every time I hear "it's about the children" (generally not in discussions about child pornography) I know someone is using that to take something away from me and it usually is not too hard to find. The horror of child pornography causes many people to put it into some different class, but even if one does that, the foundational arguments remain the same.
In the same way that some people with guns do bad things with them (including shooting children) some people with the Internet do bad things with it. Are you going to take all guns away to stop the shootings? Are you going to remove the last vestige of ensuring privacy to stop the child pornography? These are really difficult questions and pretending that "there must be technical solutions to only decrypt child pornography" are not helpful.
One other technical note: Tebow's 338,000 dots is almost certainly a significant overcount. These are mostly hashtag matches to known pornography that has already been decrypted and hashed by the government by IP address --but many IP addresses change continuously while not changing the underlying user, meaning that each dot may be multiplying the actual person involved by a factor of 10 or 100 or who knows how much. Still way too many people, but not 338,000 either.
Having said all that, the vendors (and really law enforcement/justice) could chase down the IP addresses for already-hashtagged content and reduce them to individuals. (You cannot indict a hashtag nor an IP address -- it has to be a person). Tebow's point, which I strongly support, is that the investment in doing this piece of work (and this is all government, really not IPs) is small and should be larger. That piece can be done without looking for a "technical" solution which would certainly involve giving others keys to your domain -- it just involves law enforcement and justice doing more in that space. And that is absolutely worth supporting.
The Facts are Staggering:
There are more than 42 million survivors of sexual abuse in America. (National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse)
1 in 3 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. (The Advocacy Center)
1 in 5 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. (The Advocacy Center)
1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the Internet before the age of 18. (National Children’s Alliance: Nationwide Child Abuse Statistics)
30% of sexual abuse is never reported. (Child Sex Abuse Prevention and Protection Center)
Nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults (including assaults on adults) occur to children age 17 and under. (Children’s Advocacy Center)
90% of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way. (U.S. Department of Justice)
Approximately 20% of the victims of sexual abuse are under age eight. (Broward County)
95% of sexual abuse is preventable through education. (Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute)
38% of the sexual abusers of boys are female. (Broward County)
There is worse lasting emotional damage when a child’s sexual abuse started before the age of six, and lasted for several years. Among child and teen victims of sexual abuse there is a 42 percent increased chance of suicidal thoughts during adolescence. (American Counseling Association)
“More than 90% of individuals with a developmental delay or disability will be sexually assaulted at least once in their lifetime.” (Valenti-Heim, D.m Schwartz L.)
“There are nearly half a million registered sex offenders in the U.S. – 80,000 to 100,000 of them are missing.” (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
“A typical pedophile will commit 117 sexual crimes in a lifetime.” (National Sex Offenders Registry)
https://laurenskids.org/awareness/about-faqs/facts-and-stats/
And sorry, not sorry, every damn one needs to be put down. It's the only deterrence that works.
Wow, lots of shocking/horrifying/way-worse-than-I-thought stats in there. And I agree with your assessment!!!