A somewhat dissenting opinion, and from a lawyer, no less. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 07:37:59 -0500 From: Philip Kingston <pkingston@beenelawrence.com> Reply-To: pigdog-l@bearfountain.com To: "'pigdog-l@bearfountain.com'" <pigdog-l@bearfountain.com> Subject: RE: [Pigdog] Child Porn - The Lies of Ashcroft (fwd) ]]]]]]"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.][[[[[[ Uhh...Mr. Reedy admitted in interrogation that he knew that 40% of his business was child porn, he had a link on HIS site that said "Click here for child porn," and two counts he was convicted on were for his personal library of child porn. I can see a continuum of behavior that runs between innocently providing access to illegal material and active child exploitation, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't really know where to draw the line. However, this case doesn't get near that line; it's just about child porn. Philip T. Kingston Yea Ft. Worth! It's right by Dallas! -----Original Message----- From: Eugene Leitl [mailto:Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de] Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 6:47 AM To: grisvalpen Subject: [Pigdog] Child Porn - The Lies of Ashcroft (fwd) -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 14:02:32 -0700 From: Eric Cordian <emc@artifact.psychedelic.net> To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Child Porn - The Lies of Ashcroft 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"