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Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
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------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 08 Aug 2001 17:49:23 -0400 To: politech@politechbot.com From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: Transcript of DOJ "Operation Avalanche" child porn announcement Send reply to: declan@well.com
News coverage:
Child porn conviction brings life sentence Aug. 8, 2001 05:29 ET http://www.pioneerplanet.com/news/nat_docs/105192.htm
Child porn brings life term Aug. 8, 2001 04:41 ET http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/08/08/national/CHILDPORN08 .htm
U.S. Govt Probe Smashes Online Child Porn Ring Aug. 8, 2001 15:35 ET http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168834.html
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From this morning...
ATTY GEN. ASHCROFT: Let me thank all of you for coming today, and good morning.
As we speak here together, more than 125,000 Department of Justice employees are working to provide a safe, free, just America. In neighborhoods and communities across the country, the men and women of the Justice Department are securing our borders, investigating and prosecuting offenders who violate our laws, and ensuring that all our citizens can participate in the full measure of our nation's opportunities.
All of this work is important, but none is more important than the effort we undertake to provide a safe America for our children.
Today we are announcing the results of Operation Avalanche, a major initiative that combines the investigative resources of the department of justice, the Dallas Police Department, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. More than merely another successfully prosecuted case, Operation Avalanche stands as a model of federal, state, and local cooperation in the investigation, prosecution, and -- perhaps most importantly -- prevention of the sexual exploitation of children.
Regrettably, the work of the Department of Justice to provide a safe America for children now extends well beyond the physical world into the electronic universe of cyberspace. Few would disagree that the World Wide Web offers unparalleled educational and recreational opportunities for our young people, but there are back alleys and dark corners of the Internet where our children can be exposed to inappropriate material or even become susceptible to offenders who view them as sexual objects. These offenders leverage the technology and anonymity of the Internet to trade and produce child pornography, explore their sexual interest in children, and to identify youth susceptible to manipulation and exploitation.
Large numbers of young people are encountering sexual solicitations they did not want, they encounter sexual material they did not seek, and in the most serious cases, are targeted by offenders seeking children for sex.
Today's Internet has also become the new marketplace for child pornography. In their efforts to stop the electronic proliferation of these obscene materials, our law enforcement officers are often out- gunned and out-teched by the profit-driven purveyors of child pornography.
To help make the Internet a safe place for children to play and learn, the department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has been working to build a national network of state and local law enforcement agencies to respond to child pornography and cyber enticement offenses. The cornerstone of our efforts is the National Center's cyber tip line, which encourages citizens to report suspicious online activity to law enforcement. Under the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program, we are providing training, equipment and funding to nearly 60 city, county and state law enforcement agencies. These agencies coordinate the efforts of more than 140 law enforcement agencies in 35 different states. In just over two years, they have arrested more than 500 offenders, seized more than 900 computers, and reached thousands of children, teenagers and parents with information about safe Internet practices.
This successful coordination of all levels of law enforcement builds on the ongoing work of the Department of Justice, in addition to other federal agencies, in battling child pornography. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Innocent Images National Initiative is a nation-wide effort to investigate those who traffic in child pornography and those who travel to commit sexual offenses against children. The United States Customs Service battles international child pornography, much of which originates in the United States. In addition, the legal experts in the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section provide innovative, technology-based training for investigators on the federal, state and local levels.
Today we are announcing the results of Operation Avalanche, a first of its kind initiative involving unprecedented cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement. Operation Avalanche combined the investigative resources of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Co-managed by the Dallas Police Department and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and coordinated through the ICAC Task Force Program, this operation offers a blueprint of how federal, state and local law enforcement agencies can work together to protect children in cyberspace.
In a few minutes, Chief Inspector Ken Weaver will provide you with some specific details of this initiative. But before he does, I would like to recognize the co-managers of this investigation, Lieutenant Bill Walsh (sp) of the Dallas Police Department, Postal Inspector Ray Smith (sp), and to thank them for their hard work and their leadership. In addition, investigators worked closely with attorneys from the Department of Justice's Criminal Division Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. They provided critical legal guidance at the undercover design stage and throughout the operation of this particular effort. We thank them as well for their dedication and their expertise.
Now, understandably, today's announcement may alarm some parents, but I want to caution those with children who use the Internet not to immediately yank the cord from the family computer. The Department of Justice is not saying that you should deprive your children of the educational and recreational opportunities of the Internet. In this, as in so many other areas, exercising caution is the best course. Parents may want to talk with their children about possible dangers online, set out rules for their online activities, and encourage children to tell parents when they become alarmed or disturbed by something that is seen online which is inappropriate.
Today's announcement emphasizes the resolve of the Department of Justice to make sure that cyberspace does not become a fire free -- or a free fire zone to target children. It notices that there are no free rides on the Information Highway for traffickers or child pornography. To those in the sex industry who illegally prey on America's innocents, the Department of Justice will use every resource available to identity, investigate and prosecute those who violate the law to the fullest extent of the law. With the help and cooperation of parents, we will not only identify and prosecute those who seek to victimize children in cyberspace, but we will prevent future children from becoming victims as well.
It's now my pleasure to introduce Chief Postal Inspector Kenneth Weaver, to provide the details on Operation Avalanche.
I want to thank all of you for your concern and your participation in this event as I call upon Chief Inspector Weaver. Chief?
MR. WEAVER: Thank you, Attorney General Ashcroft, and good morning.
Sexual abuse and exploitation results in physical and emotional suffering, ruined lives, and shattered dreams. The use of the mail to traffic in child pornography continues to be a tragic problem in our society. Of even greater concern, more and more child molesters and child pornographers are turning to cyberspace to seek out potential victims, communicate with others, and locate sources of child pornography.
This morning I would like to announce the results of a two-year- long undercover investigation into this murky world. The multi-agency effort was called Operation Avalanche. It started out with the shutdown of the largest known commercial child pornography enterprise in the history of the United States and continued with the arrest of 100 individuals for trafficking of child pornography through the mail and via the Internet.
In early 1999, postal inspectors uncovered a Fort Worth company called Landslide Productions, Incorporated. Landslide advertised and conspired to distribute child pornography, primarily through the subscription of Internet websites. The names of the sites will give you a feel for their content.
Use of the Internet indicates it truly is a World Wide Web. During the course of this investigation, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received over 250 complaints against this company from American citizens and from individuals around the world. Those complaints were forwarded on to investigators.
Landslide took in as much as $1.4 million in a one-month period. It was clearly a multi-million-dollar enterprise. The vast majority of this money was from subscriptions to the child pornography websites. As you can see from this e-mail message, more than $98,000 was transferred to one webmaster for just one month's business. An operation of this magnitude was previously unheard of in the United States.
The investigation was worked in partnership with the Dallas Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and revealed that Landslide customers could subscribe to child pornography websites through a Fort Worth post office box or via the Internet.
In September 1999, the business was shut down when a multi-agency task force served federal search warrants obtained by postal inspectors on Landslide's office building and the residence of Landslide owners Thomas and Janice Reedy. The Reedys were living very well, enjoying a spacious home, driving highly priced automobiles, and living a grand lifestyle at the expense of children who were sexually exploited.
An 89-count federal indictment was returned against the Reedys in April of 2000. Five international webmasters were also indicted. Efforts continue to locate and bring to justice the international co- conspirators.
Following a jury trial in December of 2000, the Reedys were convicted as charged. And just this past Monday, Thomas Reedy was sentenced to life in prison and Janice Reedy was sentenced to 14 years in prison. And to be technically correct on this, Mr. Reedy was sentenced to 15 years for each of the 89 counts, which totaled 1,335 years, to be served consecutively.
But putting Landslide out of business was not enough. Those who created the demand for this child pornography, the consumers, were still out there. The consumer or user of child pornography is no less responsible for sexual exploitation of children than is the producer or distributor. And it has been our experience that many of the consumers are also child molesters.
Postal inspectors nationwide combined forces with the 30 federally funded task forces located throughout the United States and launched an aggressive, proactive undercover operation targeting some of the most egregious offenders identified through intelligence gained from this investigation. Over the last year, postal inspectors and task force investigators conducted 144 searches in 37 different states. The vast majority of these search warrants were executed immediately following controlled deliveries of child pornography ordered by the suspects. Prosecution of these cases -- (audio break) -- have been charged so far, and we expect many more arrests in the near future.
Let me give you an example of what we encountered in some of the cases. We searched the home of a 36-year old man in North Carolina. This man had worked as a computer consultant. In his home, Postal inspectors and investigators from the North Carolina task force found a collection of videotapes produced by this individual depicting the sexual abuse of a number of young girls. One of these girls was only four years old. The offender would record some of his illicit activities with a pin-hole camera hidden in a bedroom smoke detector. The camera was connected to both a VCR and a computer. Just yesterday, the man was sentenced to 17-1/2 years in federal prison, and additional state charges are pending.
It's only through investigations such as Operation Avalanche, where law enforcement agencies work together at all levels -- federal, state and local -- that we can have an impact on the staggering effects of child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children in this country. We are deeply indebted to the Department of Justice, the United States Attorneys, as well as state and local prosecutors for their efforts to prosecute the individuals we identify. We also owe a special debt of gratitude to the Dallas Police Department Task Force. Without their commitment and coordination of this effort, we would not have been able to achieve the results being reported to you today.
And finally, I would also like to thank Attorney General Ashcroft for his personal involvement in this effort.
Thank you very much.
STAFF: Thank you.
The chief inspector and the attorney general will now take a few of your questions, and we would like to keep them related to Operation Avalanche and the child pornography effort.
Pete?
Q Mr. Weaver, can you tell us, in addition to these arrests that you've already made, how many people are you still investigating because of this website, and how likely is this operation to continue to grow?
MR. WEAVER: The operation will continue to grow. There were literally thousands of subscribers to the websites. And as I mentioned, we took the most egregious -- those individuals who had a clear predisposition to violate the law and went after them. But there will be many more arrests in this operation.
Q Yes, these 100 people that were arrested, were they all affiliated with Landslide? Were they subscribers or were they subscribers to other places?
MR. WEAVER: They were subscribers to Landslide.
Yes, ma'am?
Q Can you talk at all about what efforts are being made to locate and help some of the children that were obviously used, abused on these child porn sites and the people who are responsible for using them?
MR. WEAVER: That's very important. And the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children devotes a great deal of their time in helping children and looking after the abused children. We also pay particular attention to this. Since 1997, we've tracked that of 100,000 investigations or arrests that we've conducted, we've saved over -- and we like to use that term, "saved" or "rescued" -- over 400 children from abuse.
Yes, sir?
Q Two of the facts that you presented here put together would seem to be very alarming to parents. If you determine that roughly a million and a half dollars a month was coming in from people who would pay money to view pornography, and you went on to find out -- and you've reported this before, and the FBI has reported it before -- that you found the link between consumers of child pornography and child molestation in the real world, well, a million-four-a-month would suggest that there'd be -- what? -- how many potential child molesters out there? Can you guesstimate, quantify the relationship between what you've discovered here in terms of the hunger for pornography involving children and the potential for maybe -- you termed it "unheard of dollar" -- how about unheard of numbers of child pornographers. Is that a concern?
MR. WEAVER: It is a concern, and that's why we're aggressively pursuing it, not only our agency, but Customs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And as the attorney general mentioned, it's got to be a coordinated effort, even with local law enforcement areas. So it is very important.
How many is out there? I don't know.
Q Can I ask follow-up?
MR. WEAVER: Sure.
Q You've got children who are victimized by appearing, being forced to appear and having secret pictures taken, and whatever, to go into these websites and into the videos and the pictures I presume that are mailed out. You've got children victimized by stumbling into this stuff on the Internet and viewing it and that kind of trauma. And then you've got children who are actually molested in the real world. Can you -- is there any way to quantify which is the bigger problem, to put numbers to those three categories of danger to the society?
MR. WEAVER: I know there are degrees of it, but I look at it all as the same problem.
The exploitation of children is vicious, in and of itself. And I heard at one point in my career somebody mention that it was a victimless crime. It's not. The children are victimized, and just the appearance of the children is -- leaves scars for life on these individuals.
Yes, sir?
Q About how many children were involved in this operation in terms of Landslide's involvement? And how many parents of these children were included in the 100 of those who were arrested?
MR. WEAVER: I don't have those numbers available. Possibly one of the gentlemen in the back may have those numbers. They can furnish them to you. I don't know.
Yes, ma'am?
Q The site itself had something like 250,000 subscribers -- (off mike). Does that mean that it's possible to go after the -- you don't have the resources to track down all of them?
MR. WEAVER: Well, that may be part of it, but you've got to understand that a good part of these were also foreign-originating. So a lot of the subscribers or the subscriptions were from other countries. And many of them -- it wasn't clear whether they were interested in child pornography or adult pornography, and many of those were just interested in adult.
We focused on those that clearly demonstrated that they were interested in child pornography, in the sexual exploitation of children.
Yes, ma'am?
Q Yes. Given that the Reedys were the masterminds of this particular operation, General Ashcroft, are you satisfied with the prosecution and the sentencing that they received on Monday?
ATTY GEN. ASHCROFT: Well, first of all, let me just say that I'm glad we were able to apprehend them, and I think the sentences reflect the seriousness with which these offenses have to be understood.
On the other hand, let me say that I did not -- was not a participant in the trial and was not familiar with all of the facts and details. It was pretty clear, though, that a sentence for 1,335 years against Mr. Reedy is not to be taken lightly, and nor would a sentence for 14 years against his spouse be taken lightly.
I think what is clear is that we cannot take this major challenge to the safety and security of our children lightly, and for that reason, we are reaching out to cooperate with state and local authorities, and are very pleased to commend the U.S. Postal Inspection Service for its outstanding work in collaboration with the Dallas Police Department. When you look at that one poster over there, and it says one out of every five children last year was invited into inappropriate sexual activity on the Internet or encountered inappropriate sexual material on the Internet, that says that there are very high levels of risk for a person like me, with a 3-year-old grandson who lives in a house which is the equivalent of a computer lab -- his father and mother are both very active users of the computer -- it sends a signal to me.
And I would hope that one of the messages that we send clearly today is that we encourage parents to be actively involved in their children's participation in any Internet activity, because this elevates the capacity of parents to be a part of making sure that their children are unmolested and unassaulted with this kind of material and in activities that would be seriously harmful, so that from my perspective, the department is -- wants the concern and understanding about the nature of this problem to be well understood by people all around the country and to understand that far too many children -- I mean, any children being assaulted this way -- but this is a very pervasive problem in our culture, and we need to be alert to it.
Q Are you satisfied that existing laws are adequate and sufficient and that the existing penalties in the statutes are also sufficient, or, for example, in the case of subscribers, are there heavy penalties?
MR. WEAVER: Well, since the legislation was passed in 1990, the mere possession of child pornographer carries a penalty of five years -- up to five years in prison. The distribution and proliferation of it carries a much stiffer penalty.
But judging from the sentences that are being handed out, in many of these cases, I would say that yes, we are satisfied.
Q What countries are the five international webmasters from? And what is the status of the efforts to get them to the United States?
MR. WEAVER: I believe -- I know two of the countries, and there might be multiple webmasters in one of them -- but Indonesia and Russia. And we have been working -- our Forth Worth-based operation has been working intently with Customs to locate those individuals and bring about some extradition. But we also have contacted our counterparts around the world and worked with Interpol to try to identify and locate them.
Q (Off mike) -- undercover aspects of this operation, was the website taken down -- (off mike) -- in the way that aspects of this operation, was the website taken down -- (off mike) -- make any difference in the way that -- (off mike)? How did that work?
MR. WEAVER: Well, the whole operation was worked out with the Department of Justice, and we come up with a clear investigative plan, which did involve undercover inspectors making contact with individuals. I'm not going to go into the details of the investigations or the operation. We still have ongoing investigations that we have to conclude out there.
Q (Off mike.)
MR. WEAVER: It was operational.
STAFF: We'll take one last question.
Q For all of the progress that you say you've made in this operation, is this only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's out there?
MR. WEAVER: It may be the tip of the iceberg. But I think the results of this investigation should send a clear message that it's taken very seriously, and hopefully it's going to have a dramatic impact on those people who want to delve into this very vicious crime.
STAFF: Thank you very much, Chief. And thank you, Attorney General Ashcroft.
END.
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