Someone's funding must be up for review, because the by now extremely old
Reedy case has magically appeared on all newspaper front pages this
morning with headlines like "Feds Bust Gigantic Child Porn Ring."
Odd, since we've been discussing the case since April 15th, 2000, around
the time the Feebs raided and shut down the Reedys' servers.
To recap, Thomas and Janice Reedy ran a popular age verification service,
which offered the AVS and KeyZ codes to 250,000 subscribers who could then
access over 5,000 adult sites. Typically, an age verification service
will keep some of this money, and give another part of it to the sites
that you visit. Anyone could sign up to be a webmaster under the program,
and the Reedys were assured by their lawyers that they were not
responsible for content.
The service prospered, and the Reedys lived very comfortably.
Well, apparently an enormous TWO of the adult sites in question, located
in the non-internet-porn regulating jurisdictions of Russia and Indonesia,
offered material featuring people under the age of 18, which was illegal
in the United States, and the bowels of the governmental child-protectors
were soon in a gigantic uproar.
Now the Feebs are very careful never to prosecute a child porn case they
are not absolutely sure of winning, because they want to push the envelope
in their desired direction, and not end up with precedents and case law
where their doctrine is reversed.
Holding an age verification service accountable for two of over 5,000
sites located in a foreign jurisdiction had never been done before.
Still, this is America where all the papers will print whatever outrageous
bullshit the government says about child porn, without questioning it.
So lead prosecutor Terri Moore, a woman in love with the Sex Abuse Agenda,
who can rattle off adjectives like "chilling", "frightening", and "feeding
the hunger of pedophiles," at breathtaking speed, decided to prosecute the
case. Armed with a 87 count indictment from a secret grand jury (the
favorite rubber stamp of prosecutors), and comments from other Sex Abuse
Agenda proponents like Parry Aftab, who compared the age verification
service to the World Trade Center bombing, Ms. Moore put her assault
vagina in gear, and headed to the courtroom.
Lost in the shuffle were the 250,000 holders of the AVS and KeyZ codes,
who found them worthless after the Reedys' servers were seized, and were
damn pissed they had been collectively cheated out of millions of dollars.
The over 5,000 Adult Webmasters offering perfectly legal porn were also
less than amused.
The trial was a circus of metaphors, with the Reedys being compared to the
madam of a whorehouse prostituting helpless little children. In the end,
the jury bought the performance, and returned a guilty verdict. The Feebs
had pushed the envelope even further, and age verification services were
now responsible for the content of all Web sites that used their codes.
Thomas Reedy got life, even though he had never produced a single piece of
child porn. His wife got a lesser sentence.
But the Feebs were not done yet. They had conducted a sting operation,
over a period of two years, trying to induce people to purchase child porn
videos, CD-ROMs, and magazines, and had incorporated the Reedys' list of
250,000 age verification service subscribers into the hunt. In the end,
when they went public, they had gotten an astounding 144 search warrants,
and made an absolutely unbelievable 100 arrests.
Bear in mind the Feebs had never brought charges against anyone for having
visited one of the two alleged child porn sites. All the arrests were
people the Feebs had independently trolled to buy material offered by the
government, completely apart from the Reedys' operation.
But that was only the beginning of the lying. The government propaganda
machine spun into full gear, and newspapers began to write stories which
by the usual mixture of juxtiposition, innuendo, omission, and just plan
untruths, told the public the following.
That the age verification service was "the largest commercial child porn
operation in the history of the United States."
That the age verification service was itself the "child porn operation"
and that the Reedys were "child pornographers."
That the 250,000 subscribers to the age verification service were child
porn purchasers.
That the 100 people entrapped by the Feebs had purchased child porn from
the Reedys' operation.
That all the revenues of the age verification service were from child
porn.
That the government had just "shut down a gigantic child porn ring and
arrested its users." In reality, the Reedy case was by then old news, and
the arrests of people the Feebs had entrapped had happened slowly over the
prior two years.
The press, which had originally told some the truth about the case, now
simply began reprinting Ashcroft's press releases...
Here's one such story... I will correct the more blatant lies in [].
-----
Texas Couple Convicted in Porn Case
[suggestion that all of this is breaking news]
By DAVID KOENIG
Associated Press Writer
August 9, 2001
DALLAS -- Thomas and Janice Reedy lived in an upscale Fort Worth
neighborhood where neighbors say they threw all-night pool parties and
where luxury cars would pull into their half-moon driveway at all hours of
the night.
They told neighbors they were in the computer business, which was partly
true: They sold access to child pornography on Internet sites with names
like "Cyber Lolita" and "Child Rape."
[They sold age verification codes, anyone could sign up as a webmaster,
and they did not police content. Only two of over 5,000 adult sites that
used their service contained material illegal in the United States.]
Authorities say it was an international operation with 250,000 subscribers
that grossed as much as $1.4 million a month.
[All the age verification subscribers, and the total revenues of the
business, now magically become the numbers for the "child porn ring.]
This week, the Reedys were sentenced to prison for conspiracy to
distribute and possess child pornography
[Conspiracy is the usual way the Feebs proceed when they don't have an
actual case based on evidence you committed the crime in question.]
On Wednesday, authorities announced the arrests of 100 of the couple's
subscribers in what they called the largest child-pornography business
discovered in the United States.
[The 100 people were independently trolled by the Feebs to buy
Feeb-produced child porn. This had nothing to do with the Reedys'
operation, or the two foreign websites, apart from the Feebs stealing the
Reedys' customer list.]
"This is the worst kind of exploitation," said Ruben Rodriguez, a director
at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "To think of
the image of child pornography _ a child is being molested, raped, abused.
You're allowing people to pay to look at this victimization of a child."
[And now a word from NCMEC, a pseudo-governmental organization, founded
by the Department of Justice, and run by Ernie Allen, a close ideological
associate of both Ed Meese and convicted criminal and child abuser Mike
Echols.]
The Reedys' attorneys call them victims of an overzealous government.
[The attorney better watch out. The Feebs will get him next.]
Susie Boese, who lives next door to the Reedys' former Fort Worth home,
said Mrs. Reedy's young daughter spent a lot of time with her children.
[A not-so-subtle attempt to suggest that the children of neighbors were
in some sort of danger by being in the same community with the evil
Satanic age verification server.]
When the investigation heated up, the Reedys left Fort Worth for a small
home in nearby Lake Worth. They were arrested in April 2000. In court,
Mrs. Reedy, 32, testified that she met Thomas Reedy, 37, in South Texas
and moved to Fort Worth in 1997 with her daughter, who was then 6.
[Oh look, a paragraph of truth tossed in to confuse us.]
He was already working on a start-up Internet company, Landslide Inc. Mrs.
Reedy was trained to keep the company's books. She testified that she saw
offensive-sounding names of Web sites, but a woman training her in 1997
told her to ignore them.
"She said, 'Don't worry. They're just names. They don't mean anything,"'
she testified.
[Since Mrs. Reedy is a woman, she of course is a "victim" too]
For more than two years, Mrs. Reedy charged users a fee to view sexually
explicit sites, kept 40 percent of the money and sent 60 percent to
Webmasters in Indonesia and Russia. She said she learned the sites
contained child pornography when a former employee tipped her off in 1999.
[By now, the reader will believe that "sexually explicit sites" refers
only to the "child porn operation." And that the two webmasters in
Russia and Indonesia, out of over 5,000, constituted the Reedys' only
business associates.]
"I went to my husband, and he said he had contacted the FBI and it was all
being handled," Mrs. Reedy said. Less than a month later, police raided
the business.
[Some people are actually dumb enough to think that if they contact the
FBI about child porn, they won't make themselves targets.]
Thomas Reedy didn't testify during the five-day trial in federal court in
Fort Worth. His wife was the last defense witness. The couple argues they
were merely collecting money for other businesses.
[A fact, namely that they only ran an age verification service, is impuned
in the mind of the reader by not being simply stated, but labeled as
something "argued" by the now-convicted "criminals."
Attorney Steven Rozan, who is preparing their appeal, said the Reedys are
victims -- Reedy was sentenced to life in prison and his wife received 14
years.
"To lose 10 years of a person's life in prison is a helluva lot for a
crime that doesn't involve death, doesn't involve maiming, but is
basically a cybercrime," Rozan said. "These people were basically ticket
takers."
Investigators didn't believe Mrs. Reedy's claim to be ignorant of the
child pornography.
[It doesn't matter if the Reedys knew there was child porn on a few
websites, if they were not responsible for content. Most ISPs know there
is child porn on their news servers. That doesn't make them a child porn
ring. Charging for access doesn't make them the madams of a child porn
bordello.]
Ron Eddins, who helped prosecute the case, said Mrs. Reedy exchanged
e-mail messages with foreign Webmasters about irate customers who
complained they weren't getting all they paid for.
"The Reedys marketed adult-porn sites and kiddie-porn sites. They charged
more for the kiddie porn," Paul Coggins, who was U.S. attorney at the
time, said Wednesday.
[The Feebs are allowed to spin the Reedys' customer service email. Who
knows what the actual messages said, or how many of them there were.]
After raiding the Reedys' business, undercover agents took over the
Landslide Web site and contacted its users. When subscribers ordered child
pornography delivered to their homes, agents moved in. Investigators
focused on the most egregious U.S. offenders, authorities said.
[Again, the suggestion that all 250,000 customers of the age verification
service were child porn purchasers, and that the Feebs, rather than
simply stealing a customer list for an independent entrapment effort,
somehow "took over" an existing child porn operation.]
Among those arrested: a computer consultant from North Carolina accused of
producing videos depicting abuse of young girls, including a 4-year-old;
and a West Virginia man who worked at a psychiatric hospital for sexually
abused children.
[Lying by juxtiposition. None of this individual's cited activities
had anything to do with the Reedys' business. The Feebs are simply
looking for subscribers with outrageous unrelated criminal records, to
make the story sound more sleezy.]
Most of the Reedys' Lake Worth neighbors said they didn't learn of the
couple's activities until they saw Attorney General John Ashcroft talking
about the case on television Wednesday. "It kind of puts an eerie feeling
in you when you know it's that close to you," said neighbor Kenneth
Franklin, whose young granddaughters are often at his home. "We were
totally unaware."
[And what smear would be complete without the finishing touch of
interviewing the smearee's neighbors so they can be quoted saying how
"shocked" they are.]
--
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
