What the Fast Food Diets Show

Some years ago an anti-corporate Lefty spent a month at McDonald's consuming vast amounts of food in a very short period of time—far more than the average person would possibly consume. He then produced a film about the evils of McDonald's, as opposed to the evils of moronic, self-inflicted harm. After this documentary became something of a fad on the Left other people went on McDonalds' diets but with different results.

Soso Whaley decided she would try the same thing but with different rules. For two months she only ate at McDonald's. Instead of eating more than average she paid attention to the calories, eating between 1,800 and 2,000 calories per day. Where the film producer, eating extra meals per day, gained 25 pounds in a month, Whaley lost 18 pounds during her experiment. She ate every item on the menu at least once and didn't restrict herself to salads either. Chris Coleson, of Virginia, at two meals a day a McDonald's over a period of some months and lost 86 lbs. Merab Morgan went on a McDonald's only diet for 90 days and lost 37 lbs.

I tend to eat two meals a day and only do three when i have long days at conferences. And, according to various calorie calculators I can have somewhere around 2,000 to 2,100 calories per day without gaining weight. Based on that it would mean I could have two Big Mac meals per day at McDonold's without gaining weight. The average Big Mac is 540 calories, the average large fries is 500. I drink diet Coke at McDonald's which is zero calories. So two Big Mac meals per day would put right in the zone where I'm supposed to be. I could do worse with a salad actually, depending on the dressing I use. A Ceasar salad with chicken and salad dressing could be 560 calories, or 20 more than a Big Mac.

Similarly we have seen people eat at Subway and lose weight and eat at Taco Bell and lose weight.

My schedule is such that during the day I tend to stop for fast food but usually make dinner at home in the evening. About nine months ago I weighed myself and was a bit shocked. I hadn't done so for some time and discovered that I was about 30 lbs heavier than I had assumed. So I started paying attention to calories. I still do fast food every day but I changed how I eat.

My work week is pretty much the same. I like variety so I have five different restaurants I frequent for lunch. I have roast beef sandwich with regular chips and a side salad one day per week. I have a salad bar one day per week. I eat a foot-long sub at Subway one day per week, and eat four tacos at Taco Bell one day per week. And I repeat one of these on another day. Every couple of weeks I even have a large Big Mac meal.

Everywhere I went to only diet drinks with zero calories, which actually helps a lot. I also started drinking non-fat milk at dinner. I cut out doughnuts, except as a rare treat, stopped having bowls of ice cream and chocolate bars. Again, all of this I will eat sometimes. And the result, without any extra exercise, has the lose of between 37 lbs and 38 lbs. Yet I eat at one of those evil "fast food" establishment almost daily.

What all this tells me is that the anti-obesity crusaders, like most prohibitionists, have it wrong. Food doesn't cause weight gain, people do. We have entire campaigns blaming inanimate objects for what people do. Porn doesn't rape. Guns don't kill. Big Macs don't cause weight gain. All these things are what people do. Thinking, rational human beings, make decisions as to how they will use inanimate objects and some make bad decisions. But the fault doesn't lie with the object acted upon but with the human making the choice.

You can lose weight at fast food restaurants if you choose to do so. And you can grow morbidly obese eating only the "healthiest" of foods.

The salad bar I frequent once a week attracts some very obese individuals. And it is something to watch them eat and eat and eat. I get a large plate of salad and add carrots, cucumbers and olives and use the low-fat French dressing. I take two small bowls of grapes. I have three garlic bread sticks and two pieces of a blueberry bread along with diet Coke. That is my meal there.

The beached whales however, frequently end up with two or three plates full of selections from the salad bar. They might consume four or five whole eggs along with copious amounts of breads, pizza slices and the like. Their plates tend to be piled high with foods. I would estimate that some of these people consume more calories in that one meal than they should consume during the full day. Of course, one excuse the obese use to justify their self-destruction is that they are "eating healthy" while ignoring the amounts of food they shovel into their mouth at each meal.

When my weight shot up it was my fault. And when I realized what I had done I changed how I acted and that changed the results. I take responsibility for it.

People are responsibile agents. Objects are not. You can lose weight on fast food diets and you can gain weight on them as well. To blame McDonald's for your obesity, to blame porn if you are a rapist, or to blame guns for crime, is just so much bullshit. Rape is the responsibility of the rapists, not a magazine. The crime is caused by the person holding the gun, not the gun. And it is the piggy shoveling copious quantities into his gut who is responsible for his obesity—not the food that is on his plate.

And now, for me, I'm going to head out for a late lunch at whatever fast food place I can find that is open.

Is porn good for America? Seems so.

Porn is good for America, good for women and a lot more fun than church. Okay, I overstate my case, but just slightly.

The Internet has brought about an explosion of porn. It has reduced the costs significantly—actually for most people they can access all the porn they want for a few cents per day.

The would-be censors, religious nutters and radical feminists, all decried porn as the incubator for sex crimes. Alas, more rational people saw porn, not as a tool for incubation, but for masturbation. The net result would be the diminution of desire not its inflammation.
There are two different sets of assumptions used in analyzing the impact of erotica on people. The censorship side claimed that porn got men “sexed up” and thus encouraged them to rape women, children, vulnerable poodles and random chipmunks. In their view individuals who viewed porn did not have their sexual desires inflamed until them watched Debbie Does Dallas or Danny Does Dallas, depending on one’s tastes in such matters. Once inflamed the porn-addict would then lurk in the dark until a victim came along.

Normally this censorship crowd would assume that man (that is all humans, not just men) was morally corrupt and inclined toward sin. This, they said, was the natural state of humanity even absent the presence of any porn. A turned ankle, or bulging crotch, was all that was needed to turn the most innocent of people into a raving sex maniac.

What these people didn’t want to do was actually appraise human sexuality accurately. Few people watch porn to get inflamed. The opposite is far more likely. Humans have sexual desires that are largely driven by biology. Pornography is used as substitute for the real thing. Instead of going out hunting for a sexual partner the horny viewer can take matters in hand.

Men, more so than women, tend to find visual depictions of sex exciting. And men, more so than women, tend to be involved with real sex crimes—by which I mean the violation of the rights of another person, not merely violating some piece of Puritanical legislation. If pornography acts as a substitute then wide access to porn should reduce the number of sex crimes over what they would have been in a regime of censorship.

Some years ago the studies I read on sex crimes indicated that men guilty of serious sex crimes had less exposure to pornography than other men, saw the porn much later in life, and tended to have very conservative values in regards to sex. I joked at the time that the government, instead of banning pornography, should be disseminating it for free. Well, as usual, the market beat the government to the task.

The Internet has made porn virtually free of charge. Whatever you want you can find and you can indulge until your blow-up sheep explodes. The net also meant that individuals, who previously could not afford or access pornography, now had it at hand instantly. This includes some of the horniest members of our society, who politicians had previously banned from the material, adolescent males. The randy teen at home, who couldn’t quite hide his magazines where mother wouldn’t find them, discovered that the Internet meant he didn’t have to store anything in view. And, with encryption protecting his stash of erotica from mother, his solitary vice could remain undiscovered.

We do know that since the rise of Internet pornography the level of sexual violence has declined significantly. This would seem to indicate that the masturbation theory was more correct than the incubation theory. But that need not be the case. There could be other factors involved. Prof. Todd Kendall, at Clemson University, has authored a paper exploring the role of the Internet in regards to rape rates. He says, of his study, “this paper considers a major decline in the price of such materials, brought about by the growth of the world wide web, and of the graphical browsers used to access it. Using state-level panel data on the rise of the Internet, I find that Internet access appears to be a substitute for rape. Specifically, the results suggest that a 10
percentage point increase in Internet access is associated with a decline in reported rape
victimization of around 7.3%.”

Kendall says that his study showed:

• States that adopted Internet usage quicker saw greater reductions in rape rates than states that didn’t.

• This reduction is heaviest in states “with a higher ratio of male to female population, suggesting that men are substituting pornography for rape when potential mates are in low supply.”

• The reduction remains even when “controlling for a wide variety of other factors.”

• The impact of the net on other crimes is non-existent. That is net usage doesn’t reduce property crimes or violence but it does reduce sex crimes.

• He found “a significant negative effect of internet access on rape arrest rates among men ages 15-19—a group for whom pornography was most restricted before the Internet. “

• He found evidence “between internet adoption and several other measures of sexuality, including teen birth rates, prostitution arrests, marriage and divorce rates, and HIV transmission.”

We have to understand that the Internet led to a sexual explosion—so to speak. Kendall writes:

By many accounts, pornography was crucial in the development of the Internet,
fueling demand for streaming video and credit card acceptance applications. Due to the decentralized nature of the internet, definitive statistics on internet content are necessarily error-prone. However, there is no doubt that the rise of the internet has led to significant increases in the consumption of pornography in the U.S. By October, 2003, Nielsen Net Ratings surveys indicated that one in four internet users admitted to accessing an adult web site within the month, spending an average of 74 minutes on such sites, and these figures do not include time spent on “amateur” porn sites nor downloads from peer-to-peer services, such as Kazaa, on which 73% of all movie searches in a recent survey were for porno films. According to Ropelato (2006), 12% of all internet websites, 25% of all search engine requests, and 35% of all peer-to-peer downloads are pornographic.

This explosion is most clearly seen among teens. Prior to the Internet it was far more difficult for teens to view sexually explicit material. Adults had no such problems. They could purchase the material rather easily. But teens could not. Kendall explains:

While the fall in the pecuniary price of pornography due to the internet may have been constant across all groups of users, the fall in the non-pecuniary price has likely been highest among the young, who typically live with their parents. Before the arrival of the internet, these consumers’ access to, and ability to discreetly store, sexually explicit materials was thus highly restricted. The privacy in consumption and storage allowed by electronic distribution increased the availability of pornography to younger age groups significantly. According to the internet traffic measuring service comScore, 70% of 18 to 24 year-old men visit adult sites each month. Statistics from Ropelato (2006) find that the 12-17 age group is the largest demographic consumer of internet pornography, and that 80% of 15-17 year olds admit to multiple exposures to hard-core pornography on the internet. By comparison, in most states, children under age 18 are prohibited from entering adult film houses or renting pornographic videos.

This is the nightmare scenario of the prudes and puritans. They predicted that widespread porn access by adolescents would lead to an explosion in teen pregnancy, increased abortion rates, higher VD rates, etc. In truth, as teens have become more adept at accessing pornography the reverse has happened. Teen pregnancy is down, abortion is down and VD rates are down. Teens today are more sexually active when it comes to porn and masturbation and less active when it comes to sex with others. Pornography did not increase teen sex, at least not sex with other people. It delayed sexual experimentation.

The Internet has changed sexual attitudes and sexual behavior. I suggest that young people today are more liberal (in all senses of the word) in regards to sex. But they are more conservative in their physical expression of sexuality. They may send each other nude photos or masturbation videos but they are less likely to actually have sex. They are using virtual sexuality as a substitute for real life sexual encounters. And that means lower rape rates, lower pregnancy rates, and lower VD rates.
Popular website for teens with webcams are well known as places where teens put on “private” sex shows for others. Sites that cater to adults are forced to constantly police their web services because adolescents are frequently sneaking onto the site and putting on sex shows for the entire world to see. As shocking as that might be for many adults they should consider that these teens are often using this as a substitute for actual sex. There is a trade off involved. Even teen males have limits to the number of orgasms they can seek in a day. And an orgasm achieved one-way means they are less likely to seek the same thing another way.

Kendall’s study backs up what numerous other studies have shown. Access to erotica reduces sexual crimes. The presence of pornography means that rape is less likely, not more likely. While Kendall doesn’t discuss “sexting” per se I have to note that the same theory, applied to “sexting,” would indicate that the practice makes teens less likely to have sex with another person not more. Sexting is where teens send each other erotic photos or videos of themselves.

The impact of the new technology on sexuality is interesting, especially for teens who grew up with it. I would argue that the following appears to be true:

1. Teens are more liberal in attitudes about sex today than before.
2. Teens are less likely to have physical sex with another person today than before.
3. But teens are also more likely to engage in technologically induced masturbation. Less sex doesn’t mean fewer orgasms.

The evidence calls into question the idea that censorship helps reduce sex crimes. Erotica, if it were a substitute for actual sex, would actually reduce sex crimes. Censorship, by removing the substitute, would thus encourage the very crimes that it was meant to prevent. Think about it.

New porn law includes older adults as "child porn."

Even an old cynic like myself has to be astounded by the utter stupidity of government now and then. And this is one of those times.

I have argued that America is really screwed up when it comes to sex. Due to the influence of fundamentalists, Catholics and Mormons our society seems to live in continually panic about sex. The specific form that hysteria takes may vary from time to time but antisexualism is endemic in American culture. In the civilized world this attitude is pretty much exclusive to the United States. It isn’t that other cultures don’t’ exhibit such raw antisexualism, certainly Islamic cultures do so, but then I don’t consider them part of the civilized world.

Of course, the problem in Islamic nations is the same problem that infests the United States: that a significant portion of the population takes religious mythology seriously and literally. I like to remind people that when you can’t find a rational explanation for something, such as this hysteria, the next best thing to look for is an irrational explanation and that is where religion comes in.

Precisely what astounding act has government done to warrant my attention today? In Massachusetts a couple of political morons are attempting to introduce new legislation to ban erotic images of anyone over the age of 60! I am not making this up. In my wildest imagination I couldn’t make up something as ridiculous and absurd if I tried. Truly this sort of stupidity is only possible to those who have spent a lifetime inside the halls of government—there even the most absurd and ridiculous ideas sound sane after awhile.

The Boston Herald said the new law “would add seniors and the handicapped to kiddie porn laws.” A rather scary woman, in a Janet-Reno-burn-down-the-damn-building-even-if-there-are-children-in-the-building sort of way, Elizabeth Scheibel is pushing for the law. As this sex Nazi puts it, she wants “to protect our two must vulnerable populations.” That would be, I assume, children and older adults. Apparently this imbecile thinks that older people are just like children with all the rights of children. But let’s be truthful here, it is likely that Herr Scheibel believes that of everyone. She is Big Mother here to regulate our sex lives for our own good. Perhaps she is just jealous that other people have sex lives.

Scheibel, who is a district attorney helped craft the legislation. Of course, Herr Scheibel points to cases where an elderly person, or a handicapped person, was actually abused against their will. But, as one attorney pointed out, those acts are already illegal.

Law professor Eugene Volokh has looked at the legislation and says that it is so broadly written that what it really does is make it illegal for older adults or the handicapped from consenting to a sexual activity they may enjoy: erotic photos. He says the law “is not limited to people who are mentally handicapped and thus unable to consent, or who are photographed against their will by their caretakers… The operative provisions cover people over 60 and the disabled whether or not they are incompetent.” Volokh says:

Note that the law isn't limited to making pornography for commercial purposes (since the child pornography law that it builds on covers noncommercial child pornography, too). That means that if 60-year-old spouses or lovers — or spouses or lovers of someone who is disabled — decide to photograph each other naked with "lascivious intent," they would be committing a crime.

Under the law a person can “punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of not less than ten nor more than twenty years, or by a fine of not less than ten thousand nor more than fifty thousand dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”

Political creeps, like Herr Scheibel, engage in political creep: that is where they constantly work to expand laws, in small increments, to cover more and more territory. Eventually the law is distorted beyond all recognition and people sit around, their jaws dropped open, wondering what the hell happened. That is what they did with child porn laws. No one is opposed to protecting children from exploitation but now we are imprisoning teenagers as "child pornographers" for taking nude photos of themselves. Laws meant to protect children from molestation are now defined so broadly that teens making out in car, on a date, can be charged with molesting each other. And they can all be forced to join the government’s favorite list of pariahs: the sex offenders list.

I’m not aesthetically anxious to see granny porn, but if grandpa does, then I don’t see how that is any business of Herr Scheibel. Clearly the law already protects anyone who is incapable of consenting to erotic acts. So there is no justification for this new law. The string of stories that Scheibel belts out are mere excuses, they are the raison d'être or perhaps I should say, raison d’état.

At every turn the political process is a war on the liberties of the people. Politics, and thus politicians, are inherently imperialistic. They are constantly searching for excuses to expand their powers, their privileges and their perks. And each expansion must come at a price to your liberty and your welfare. Certainly, before democratic elections, the political class was explicit in their desire to rape, pillage and plunder the populace. Such honesty today would be a PR problem, so they couch their expansionary moves in terms of “protecting” the public from some danger, usually an imaginary danger. And in those cases, where the danger does exist, they magnify it all out of proportion. Today’s politicians are as predatory as those that were thrown off the backs of the people in the past. But they have learned to hide their predatory nature under a cloak of concern and care.

The most dangerous predators, the ones who threaten all of us, are those who hold elected office. The Founders attempted to limit the ability of these predators to do harm by "chaining" them down with the restraints of enumerated powers. Unfortunately, the predators have broken through those chains long ago. Now, no one is safe, the politicians are lose.

Photos: Apparently our first photo, of an older woman who apparently likes to dress up and pose, would be illegal. The second photo, of Herr Scheibel, is far more disturbing and scary, but would remain legal though beastiality provisions may apply. (No, I'm not nice to people like her, so don't whine about it.)

Warning message for Harvard classes needed?

Here is a tasty bit of circular reasoning used by a feminist from Harvard’s law school, Diane Rosenfeld. Ms. Rosenfeld “teaches” a course on feminist theory. Rosenfeld went up against civil libertarian Nadine Strossen to “discuss” pornography.

She says that the students really want to discuss pornography but never “have the space to do it” except, apparently, in her alleged course. She claims, “There’s not a good way to talk about it, there’s not a forum in which to really talk back to pornography, to the extent that we consider pornography as speech.” Of course, this is rubbish. There have been endless discussions of pornography, endless conferences, forums and debates. There is no shortage of academic article, hysterical feminist diatribes, preachy sermons and energetic defenses of the material. What could Rosenfeld mean when she says no place exists to discuss the topic? In my experience what such comments tend to mean is that the other forums are not entirely controlled by feminist ideologues.

Right at the start Rosenfeld defined pornography as violence. She said: “Most pornography, as opposed to erotica, has an element of domination in it, or sexual coercion. And it usually, almost always, in studies that I’ve read, portrays women as always consenting to sex and if they didn’t consent initially coercion, or violence, or force is used.”

Her reasoning is that pornography depicts women as either willing to have sex of, if unwilling, that they are coerced into it. Considering that the depictions being discussed were, by definition, sexual then no other option was possible. If you depict sexual activity then that depiction must show either willing or “unwilling” (that is willing participants pretending they are unwilling) individuals. Nothing else is possible.

It worries me that someone is teaching law students with such bad reasoning. How can porn depict women “as always consenting” yet depict them as sometimes not consenting. Apparently “always” doesn’t actually mean “always”. It is equally bizarre that Rosenfeld thinks that her statement has any significant meaning. Since porn must depict either consenting or non-consenting individuals to state this adds nothing to the discussion. If I were to speak of a “towel that is either wet or dry” I have said nothing. I could say: “Ms. Rosenfeld is either in class or she isn’t.” That is verbiage, it conveys a thought of some kind, but it actually says nothing of importance or significance.

Rosenfeld also just lies about things. She said: “In the landscape of women’s legal rights to challenge male sexual violence we’re in really bad shape.” This is blatantly false unless one redefines “sexual violence” to mean something entirely different from what it actually means. But this is precisely what ideologues like Rosenfeld do. Because of this apparent cultural disregard for sexual violence she doesn’t think that complete bans on porn can be accomplished (oh, there is also that little matter of the First Amendment). Instead she says: “What I’m thinking we should do right now is have messages on pornographic websites that say, that are like warnings similar to warnings on cigarette packages… and have some kind of message that says this will perpetuate objectification of women and bad attitudes and might contribute to violence, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I’m working on the message right now.”

Somehow I don’t think a message about perpetuating the objectification of women will impact the desire to see sexual images. But I rest better knowing that Ms. Rosenfeld is ready to Nanny the rest of us with her silly message. I might be willing to swap with her, however. If she puts a warning message on her so-called courses then I won’t oppose her Nannyism. I’m working on the message right now. It should say something like this:

Warning this course is taught by an irrational profession, unable to follow logic or reasoning. It perpetuates a radical, feminist point of view disguised as social science cloaked in the law and surrounded by lies, falsehoods and gender stereotyping of men. It is dangerous to your civil liberties, First Amendment rights, and limited government. Consumption of the ideas in this course will not contribute to real life and are merely a propagandistic tool for the professor.

Rosenfeld says, “pornography eroticizes domination.” Alas, I fear evolution did that first. Humans evolved from species where domination and sexuality were intertwined. To a large degree humans have moved away from that form of sexuality. But pornography depicts domination, though not as persistently as Rosenfeld pretends, because humans already find it erotic. That is, people are not into domination because porn exists. The porn exists because people are already aroused by it. Rosenfeld has the cart before the horse.

She does admit “that message” is in music videos and popular culture as well. As she sees it, this message is pervasive through society. If its “all over”, why this obsession with pornography?

At another point Rosenfeld implies that erotic depictions are not “speech”. Yet she constantly harps about what she says is the “message” of pornography. While dismissing pornography as speech she is deriding the message it conveys. If it conveys a message then it is speech. For it to be “not speech” it must be void of any message. But that would give Rosenfeld nothing to say. At the core her problem is that she does believe it is speech but that it is speech that she wishes wasn’t speech.

A third bizarre statement made by Rosenfeld was that the “issue of pornography comes up in every class I teach”. The way it is worded she is saying that this is such an overriding concern of the students that they can’t wait to discuss the evils of porn. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that all her courses are in feminist ideology and nothing else. She leads a course pushing “Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice” as well as the panicky sounding “Child Exploitation, Pornography and the Internet” (a bugaboo that has been debunked by several major in-depth studies).

I won’t go into more of the discussion. If you are interested give it a listen. I will note that Nadine Strossen was excellent, and that she, unlike Rosenfeld, actually kept within the time limits given.

Born again and porn again: Is there a connection?

Who consumes porn? My immediate answer would have been: “Everybody.” By that I mean there would be few differences in the consumption or use of erotica between various groups. I would have been wrong.

One of the largest providers of erotica in the country allowed a study(pdf) of their credit card receipts after names and addresses and the card number were stripped out. The data that was left indicated the zip code of the purchaser. The company in question “runs literally hundreds of sites offering a broad range of adult entertainment.” The study controlled for the “amount of broadband access available in each region” since broadband is pretty much a requirement to download a lot of film material.

After all the controls were put into place what did they discover? In particular, are there any trends in the consumption of porn that we would find interesting? I think the answer is yes.

One state seems to subscribe to porn channels more often than the other states. I won’t leave you waiting—it was Utah. Yes, the Beehive state, the Deseret Kingdom of Mormonism has more porn subscribers than any other state. No doubt they are all fantasizing about their future multiple wives in the afterlife —or not. In second place is Mississippi, home of countless fundamentalists. The next tier of states in porn consumption are all Bible-belt states, but one: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida. The one exception is North Dakota, which at least has an excuse—it’s pretty lonesome up there.

The third tier of states tend include West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, New York and Maine. The top ten states in porn consumption were as follows:

Utah
Alaska
Mississippi
Hawaii
Oklahoma
Arkansas
North Dakota
Louisiana
Florida
West Virginia

You might notice that 8 of these states are considered Republican states while a ninth, Florida, is a toss-up with very strong Republican representation outside the large urban areas. It would be interesting to know if porn consumption within Florida increased in Republican areas.

Of the 10 states with the lowest consumption of porn, six of them went for Obama in the last election.

The trend seems to imply that conservatives, with their moralistic agenda, are more likely to buy porn than those who lean to the left. Other aspects of the study tend to confirm that. So far 27 states have passed laws against gay marriage, an issue conservatives find very important these days. Those states have 11% more subscribers to porn than the states that haven’t passed these bans.

Now these church-going, god-fearing, gay-hating, Bible-thumping types are not entirely hypocritical. The study found:

...a 1 percent increase in the proportion of people who report regularly attending religious services is associated with a 0.10 percent reduction in the proportion of purchases that occur on Sunday. This analysis suggests that, on the whole, those who attend religious services shift their consumption of adult entertainment to other days of the week….

When porn consumption is compared to the percentage of adults expressing conservative religious viewpoints, porn subscriptions are also more prevalent in states with more "traditional" values:

Where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality. In states where more people agree that “Even today miracles are performed by the power of God” and “I never doubt the existence of God,” there are more subscriptions to this service. Subscriptions are also more prevalent in states where more people agree that “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage” and “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior.”

I think back to a discussion I had in Pretoria, South Africa, with the then sitting head of the board of censors. He was surprisingly forthright during the conversation. At the time, South Africa was trying to save apartheid by creating ostensibly independent homelands for blacks. Pretoria didn’t regulate the homelands the way they did the rest of the country. One result was that the homelands, which had no real border between them and South Africa, had gambling, adult video shops, and open prostitution.

The chief censor, who was himself an Afrikaner, joked about the homelands. He noted that it tended to be the fundamentalist-inclined Afrikaners who made the trips to the homeland to gamble, buy porn and have sex with black women. I also remember having a chat with a Afrikaans game ranger from the very rural Free State. He was gay, which I thought led to problems in finding sexual partners in the tiny town where he lived. This was compounded, I assumed, by the fact that the town was almost 100% Afrikaans, with very few English present. He assured me that the Calvinist Afrikaners were far more interested in the sins of the flesh than their English counterparts.

Prof. Benjamin Edelman, who conducted the study, offers a possible explanation for this trend. “One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you’re told you can’t have this, then you want it more.” Hmm, if that is true, what does it mean for the school abstinence programs? Could that be the reason teenage pregnancy is higher in the Bible-belt states?

Photo: In fairness, while the Catholics have their own unique sexual problems, porn consumption doesn't trend upwards with Catholicism. But the photo was simply too cute to leave out.

The kids are just the excuse: you are the target.

One of the last legacies of the disastrous Bush Administration is an attempt to close down most adult web sites through new regulations that fly in the face of the First Amendment. But considering this man hasn't respected any of the other amendments, why should he worry about this one?

Let us look at some changes pushed through previously by the odious Attorney General Ed Meece in the 1980s. First, the age of consent for adult material, at that time, was 16 years of age, which is consistent with the dominant age of consent for sexual activity throughout the US and consistent with the ages set in Europe as well. Meece argued that some 16-year-olds looked younger making it difficult to prevent 15-year-olds from engaging in sexual performances. To stop individuals under 16-years-of-age from doing this he proposed the federal government raise the limit to 18.

It was long after that they were arguing that some 17-year-olds look 18 so the limit should be raised to 21. That time the argument didn’t fly as easily. One result of this new age limit is that some erotica, that was previously legal, became illegal quite literally over night. Most people were unaware of the change in the law and millions of new criminals were created instantly and unknowingly (to them). In addition a lot of publications from Europe, that were legal when they were ordered became illegal in transit.

The Meece police announced there was a spike in child pornography offenses and that the feds had to increase their powers to deal with it. In fact the spike was the creation of the redefinition of the offense. If you redefine speeding to driving faster than 10 miles an hour you will quite easily find that there is more speeding.

One way of dealing with the definitional problem was U.S.C. 18 Section 2257. This law required the producers of erotica to keep detailed records regarding the names, addresses, pseudonyms, etc of anyone who performs in, or poses for, erotic material. This included copies of two forms of photo ID. And this information was to be kept in one location, that is announced, and open to public inspection.

Now Section 2257 has been changed under the “Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act” -- which was pushed by John Walsh, the authoritarian who is reacting to the murder of his son 25 years ago. That abduction had nothing to do with pornography or any of the issues that Walsh campaigns about and has built a lucrative career over.

The new legislation drastically expands the burdensome regulations that are mandatory. And remember, that while this is all allegedly to stop child pornography, the actual target of 99.99% of the regulations is legal, adult erotica. Nor would the absence of these regulations open the door to child porn which would remain illegal regardless.

The purpose of this sort of legislation is to regulate erotica to death. This tactic is used by moralistic politicians frequently. For instance, it is a violation of the First Amendment to ban adult shops entirely. So petty politicians pass zoning regulations which regulate where they can be located. With a few provisions they can then accomplish the ban they wish to impose without calling it a ban. One can first forbid them within 1,000 feet of any church, school, park, or playground -- to protect the children. Next you can forbid them from being within the same distance of any residential area. Just those regulations alone would accomplish the ban in most places. And many towns have done this. If that isn’t sufficient you can forbid any adult business from being within 1,000 feet of any other adult business including bars. You can toss in bus stops as well. With a few minutes of careful planning you can find zoning restrictions that accomplishes an act, which in its raw form, would be illegal. Welcome to backdoor censorship.

The same thing is happening in the U.S. with erotica. The Theopublicans, and no small number of Democrats I should add, are pushing for an intricate web of regulations that make it difficult, if not impossible, for someone to engage in publishing erotic material.

The main target of this new regulation is the internet. Let us say that you operate a blog or web site of some kind. Let us say that this includes some sort of erotic visual depiction on the site. Since it can included “simulated sex” it need not be explicit. Most such web sites or blogs copy photos from other sites. You can now be jailed for doing this, and knowing the morons in the Bush Administration it wouldn’t surprise me if they decide they can torture you in the process. (Sarcasm for the brain dead Bushites who will take that literally.)

If a photographer takes erotic photos he must have forms filled out and filed regarding each model. These are open to warrantless inspections by government agents anytime they wish and must be available without notice. This law only applied to the primary producer. Under the new law “secondary producers” are required to keep the same records and make them available to federal agents and police the same way -- without a warrant and without notice.

So let us say that you post an image from one of your favorite erotic publications on a blog -- again it need not be explicit sex just simulated sex. The producer of that magazine would have the records which federal agents may inspect whenever they wish but you wouldn’t have them. Under the new legislation you are deemed a criminal (perhaps a child pornographer) because you don’t have copies of those records on your premises. If you don’t have these files, and you won’t have them, you can go to prison.

If you are one of millions of adults who has posted an erotic image of yourself onto a site, like a dating site or XTube, then you must keep these records, regarding yourself, on your premises.

You may not think this is difficult or problematic. But remember those records are open to inspection, on the premises, by federal agents, anytime they wish, as often as they wish. There is no need for probable cause or a warrant to conduct such searches. In essence this means that everyone who has posted an adult image or video of himself on the net has forfeited his constitutional rights to avoid unreasonable search.

The only way around this, that I see, is if you maintain a separate office to conduct you “erotic” business. You would have to maintain an office, with staff to admit federal agents, in order to post your own images online. If you don’t have said office then you will be required to keep these records in your home. If you keep them in your home (or fail to do so) the feds have the right to demand immediate access to your home anytime they wish. They would have no need for those pesky search warrants and won’t need to have a reasons to search your premises.

There are some things here which I’m unclear about. While the law covers digital images what does it mean to distribute them? If you send an erotic photo of yourself to another person is that distribution? Does that require you to keep these records and forfeit your Constitutional rights? I suspect if it doesn’t explicitly require this, that it is implied and power hungry prosecutors will make this claim at some point.

There is no doubt that child porn is a real problem but it is only a tiny part of the erotica industry. But child porn is not the real target here. Child porn is the bin Laden of erotica -- it is the excuse used to launch a war that targets more than the excuse. As noted these regulations don’t make child porn any more illegal than it already is. The target is all erotica of any kind. These regulations are an end run around the Bill of Rights by an administration that has proven, over and over, that it has utter contempt for the Constitution or any limitation on its powers. The great tragedy of politicians is that they use real problems as excuses for power grabs. This happens both on the Left and the Right. And rarely do these power grabs actually solve the problem that was was used to justify them. The kids are just the excuse -- you are the target.

You can take action (which I suppose will be ignored). You have until September 10 to protest the expansion of Section 2257. Send those protests to Admin.ceos@usdoj.gov and say it regards Section 2257 Docket No. CRM 104. I suggest you keep it brief and to the point -- simply tell them you oppose the revisions of section 2257.

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They couldn't win in court so they smear a teen in the press. The Matt Bandy case returns.

I have posted extensively on the attack by the Maricopa County Attorney’s office on teenager Matt Bandy. You can read our posts here, here and here. If you know nothing about the case you will need to read these before this makes sense.

Our report was picked up by Wendy McElroy on Foxnews.com. She ran a very critical article on the case of her own. ABC News ran some very critical material including a rambling interview with Country Attorney Andrew Thomas where he bumbled his way through with nary a coherent sentence. All the bad publicity is hurting his political ambitions so out comes one of his lackeys to defend his reputation.

Rachel Alexander is the deputy county attorney In Maricopa, which is basically Phoenix, Arizona. That means she works for Thomas, who is basing his political ambitions on a reputation of being a hard ass. Well, he’s half right at least!

Alexander has written a long, deceitful attack on those who question the actions of Thomas and his department (her department too). This is no longer a legal matter. The case is over and Thomas didn’t get what he wanted. Matt Bandy is not in jail. Matt Bandy is not a registered sex offender. Thomas lost! He got a token admission that the boy showed a copy of Playboy to some friends. Stop the world! That’s worse than the ovens of Auschwitz!

Since this is not a legal case anymore, what is Ms. Alexander doing here? She is not doing the work she is paid to do. She is doing Public Relations work for Mr. Thomas -- again.

And who is paying for that? Where was she when she wrote her “rebuttal?” Was she at work? Was it on county payroll time? Did she run it past the ambitious Thomas in his office for his approval? Was he on county time when that was done?

All interesting questions. Don’t expect her to answer any of them. But, I would hazard a guess that there is a very strong likelihood that Mr. Thomas and Ms. Alexander both were involved in this PR campaign and both were being paid by the taxpayers at the time. That really would amount to theft in my view. But, thinking of Mr. Thomas merely as a thief would raise him several notches in my estimation.

Let us look at what Ms. Alexander wrote. She says this whole incident is “the result of the juvenile defendant’s parents denial of the evidence of their son’s guilt and unfortunate initiation (sic) of a media disinformation campaign.” Oh. A media conspiracy, maybe even a “liberal media” conspiracy, "liberal" like the column at FoxNews.com.

Matt’s parents believe him innocent. So do I. In fact Matt is legally innocent. That is what Thomas and Alexander don’t want to acknowledge. In the end they couldn’t convict him on the charges their department wanted to use. They had their chance in court and they failed!

Even the judge was appalled at how they were acting. Oh, wait, that must be one of those “activist judges” in cahoots with the “media” to defame the hard ass county attorney. No doubt ABC even scrambled the interview with him so as to make him appear incoherent, illogical and stupid. When he stumbled all over himself on camera that couldn't be real.

Most of Alexander’s tiresome rebuttal is a repetition of what Thomas’ team claimed in court. They didn’t win in court. So I don’t see how repeating the claims clarify things. In publicAlexander doesn’t have to prove her case, just sound plausible. In court she would have to prove her case. And it was in court that her office lost and in court where the judge very openly slapped them down for their actions.

Alexander lies in her rebuttal. She says that the experts who write on the Bandy site “were not given the specific facts of Bandy’s situation; they were simply asked broad questions about viruses hijacking a computer.” That is a lie! I mean a lie, a outright, total, intentional lie.

Who is the expert that is quoted on the Bandy web site? It is Tami Loehr. Alexander claims the experts quoted were only asked broad questions. Loehr was not just asked some broad questions. After the Bandy’s fought for access to the computer, which Country Attorney Thomas was trying to deny them, Loehr actually inspected the computer. It was not merely some broad questions but a forensic on-hands examination of the actual evidence. Why did Alexander lie about this?

Ms. Alexander is not under oath in the court of public opinion. So she is free to invent lies to make her ambitious boss look better in light of the fiasco of the Bandy case. In court she would not be allowed to make this statement. You can read Loehr’s detailed report regarding the computer. (PDF) This proves Ms. Alexander is a liar. You will also read in this report how the office of Thomas and Alexander kept trying to delay Loehr so she couldn’t examine the evidence.

Alexander says that her, and Thomas’, office had “overwhelming evidence” that Matt was guilty. So overwhelming that they were unable to secure a conviction! Evidence so “overwhelming” that they tried to make the case go away by pleading the matter down to him showing a copy of Playboy to some friends.

She is clever with her wording, clever in the way attorneys can be, so as to say one thing but make it appear that something else was said instead. Matt “admitted to detectives that he visited pornographic web sites as well as an online group known for sharing pornographic images of children.” The first part is irrelevant. The second claim is not. But, what is she actually saying? More importantly, what is she not saying? Aware of libel laws, she is being very careful. She doesn’t want to actually accuse Matt of downloading child porn, but she wants to make it sound as if she has. She is planting an impression with the reader.

She says he visited a web group. She says that somewhere someone on this group traded child porn. She does not say Matt knew it was being done or was involved in doing it. Let us take another example. You walk into a restaurant in “Little Italy” for some lunch. Some men in dark suits, who look rather threatening, are eating across the room. You don’t really notice them. You finish and head off back to work. The next day some petty bureaucrat says “you ate lunch at a known Mafia hangout.” The implication is that you are a criminal. The actual wording only says you ate at the restaurant. The statement is devoid of any importance but gives the false impression that it is very important. Alexander’s statement about Matt visiting a Yahoo group where child porn is alleged to have been traded is the same kind of statement.

Be aware that almost any group used for file sharing can be used to exchange pornography -- legal or forbidden. And thousands of people may be using this group. It may be “known” to someone that a few of those people traded such images. That doesn’t mean you knew it or that you traded them. A lot of people were in Dallas when John F. Kennedy was shot. That doesn’t mean they were involved. A lot of people go to file sharing groups, that doesn’t mean they share every file that someone may put there or exchange there.

The Bandy’s had a CD in their computer. Some images appeared on that CD. Alexander contends “that a virus could not have burned those images to a CD” and the “fact that child pornography was found on the CD at his home cannot be ignored.” Sounds strong. So why no conviction on those charges?

First, she is correct to say a virus couldn’t do this. But no one every claimed it could. Again she is intentionally dropping context in her PR campaign. A virus didn’t do it. But “zombie” software could do it. In other words, other problems with the computer could have done it.

Alexander has sent us on a wild goose chase after a virus while knowing the virus was never the object of interest. She conveniently ignores the ways in which this could have happened to concentrate on a way it didn't happened. She’s not interested in facts just the reputation of her boss and her department.

It is quite possible that a trojan could put the images there. I’m not expert, but I’ve had numerous experts explain it to me several times. Surely Ms. Alexander has access to the same information -- even if she would rather ignore it.

As I understand it, if a trojan gives a remote person control of your computer they can write files to various drives. One place that might appear as a drive is a CDRom. This person may write his files to that drive thus placing them on the CD. And, if the CD spends most its time in the computer, he could come back and use the computer to send those images to others. One day you might come along and take the CD out. Unless you open the CD and inspect everything on it you wouldn’t even know his file was there. And, if the file he planted is buried several layers deep, as it was on the Bandy computer, you would never know it was there. So again, I think Alexander is being dishonest.

She intentionally focuses on a claim not made while ignoring the actual claims that were made. She did not do this unknowingly. I think that is Lie #2.

She claims that the police detective who conducted the investigation for the County Attorney “is certified by the International Association of Computer Investigative Specialists.” Who are they? Some prestigious association of computer experts perhaps? Nope.

According to the Association itself the IACIS is “composed of law enforcement professionals dedicated to education of police officers”, that is people working for the prosecution. And they are so dedicated to their work that their next conference is being held at Disney World! Just in case they might want to skip a few sessions to spend time with Mickey Mouse. But, then if you work with Andrew Thomas, time with Mickey Mouse would be a bit redundant.

Let us be clear here. This is a group of cops who certify other cops. They are not independent experts at all. Alexander doesn’t mention that fact does she? She gets more absurd by attacking the expert the Bandy’s hired because her “resume does not indicate she is certified with IACIS”. Since one must be a “law enforcement professional” (apparently with a passion for Disney World) then it is obvious that the Bandy expert would not be a member. In fact, it would be almost impossible for the Bandys to hire a member of the IACIS, since they are cops working for police departments and prosecutors.

To attack Tami Loehr for not being a member of the IACIS would be like attacking Matt’s defense attorney for not being a county prosecutor.

Again, Alexander is being deceptive. I think it is an intentional deception since the IACIS is a group of cops. She couldn’t say the following and be taken seriously: “The Bandy expert is not a police officer therefore she doesn’t have credentials.” That statement would be ludicrous on the face of it. Instead she made the same statement in a roundabout way. I think that is another lie on her part. Lie #3.

Remember that viruses can do nasty things to your computer, but the problem with placing images on the machine would also be related to having trojans on the computer -- software that allows others to control your computer. We have covered this in our earlier posts on this topic.

Alexander says that Bandy is guilty because the courts “upheld the child pornography conviction of a defendant who blamed a virus for placing child pornography on his computer. In that case, the prosecutions’ forensic analysis of his computer indicated there were viruses on his computer, but they were not capable of downloading child pornography.”

How is this relevant to the Bandy case? It isn’t. This is Alexander blowing smoke as part of her PR campaign. First, not all viruses are alike. Your computer could have 50 viruses and mine could have 50 viruses and we might not have the same viruses at all. It is possible to have a virus on your computer that does one thing while I have a virus that does something entirely different. It is irrelevant what viruses were on this other computer. Again she is ignoring the trojans. Interesting how she forgets them in her rebuttal.

Alexander is practically weeping crocodile tears by the end of her PR piece. She implores people to understand that her office didn’t plea bargain down so far because “we did not have a strong case. This too is not accurate.” No, not at all. They did it because they had a strong case. Okay the Bandy’s didn’t think so. Neither has anyone in the media who has looked at the case. Oh, and the judge wasn’t very impressed either. But really they had a strong case -- they are just old softies. See, Thomas isn’t a hard ass but a soft ass.

And Alexander informs everyone: “Our office never intended to ask for a sentence of 90 years in prison, as has been so greatly exaggerated.” Yes and no. She’s not be totally honest here -- again. The law says that if they file these charges then Matt will be sentenced to 10 years in prison, consecutively, per image if found guilty. When the prosecutor files these charges he does so knowing these are the only penalties that can be incurred.

Thomas and crew filed charges that would have put Matt Bandy in prison for life! They knew that would happen if he was convicted. For Alexander to say that the County Attorney never intended to ask for the sentence is more deceptive smoke. You decide whether she is being deceptive enough here for it to be classified as a lie. I think it is.

Then she goes into political rhetoric with lots of smoke and lots of bull. “The victim in this case is not Matt Bandy. The victims are the children who are exploited and made virtual sex slaves.” Excuse me, but the only child in this case was Matt Bandy. These other children were not in the case. They were not participants, witnesses or involved, though photos of them were -- photos which could be 50 years old for all we know. And Matt Bandy had nothing to do what may have happened to these children somewhere else. He did not make any children into “sex slaves” as Alexander drags up. The most she claimed was that he downloaded those images and even that charge didn’t stick when it went to court. Now, she makes it sound as if he was out enslaving small children to gratify his sexual desires. Shameful.

She is trying to divert attention away from the victim in the case. Matt Bandy was a child abused by her department. She and Thomas are, in that sense, child abusers. Since Matt did not take those photographs, and did not enslave any child, she is muddying the waters with emotive rhetoric to distract attention from the questionable actions of her own department. Shame on her.

She says “This case is not about pornography, it is about child pornography.” Well, sort of. But let us not forget that they were running into real problems when they made that claim in court. Those problems were sufficient enough that they dropped the charges of child pornography against Matt. If you drop the charges of child porn, and instead convict him for showing a copy of Playboy, well, then it is about pornography, not child pornography. At the very least she is being deceptive -- yet again.

She says: “Our office did what it thought was right in this situation...” No doubt they did. That’s what is so scary. The worst tyranny is always done in the name of a greater good.

Alexander laments that a “media disinformation campaign cannot change the overwhelming evidence of Bandy’s guilt.” Again that “overwhelming evidence” failed in the end. Matt Bandy was not convicted of the crime for which she claims they have “overwhelming evidence.” That means that he is “innocent until proven guilty.” They haven’t repealed that yet, have they? So Matt Bandy IS innocent in every legal, and I think actual, sense of the word. For Alexander to say he is guilty is once again deceptive.

She then whines that “the court removed the sex offender registration terms from Bandy’s guilty plea so he will not receive the treatment he needs to avoid this happening again.” Why would the court do that? Oh, yes, they thought the prosecution was full of crap! Apparently they were unconvinced by the “overwhelming evidence.” What is needed to make sure this doesn’t happen again is for Thomas, and I dare say Alexander, to both lose their positions. Thomas should go work as a rodeo clown. The costume fits and he’s used to working with lots of bull. And Alexander could sweep up the bullshit after the show. Much as she is doing now.

One final word as to why I am so disgusted with Alexander’s PR tactics for her clownish boss. She once again smears Matt Bandy as a “sex offender” in need of psychiatric help. She implies that if he doesn’t get that “help” he will attack children. She is smearing a teenager who has not been convicted of any crime remotely similar to that of attacking children.

This is a vile, libelous attack on his character. Her department could not win the case in court, where facts count. Instead she mounts her own “media disinformation campaign” to publicly smear Matt Bandy in the worst way possible. That is a disgusting thing to do to a teenager. It is unprofessional and inhumane. Rachel Alexander is not fit to hold the public trust. In fact, she isn’t fit for most things. What she has done is disgusting to the hilt. I would be tempted to give her our Moron of the Week award. But this is far lower than being a moron. There literally are no words that adequately describe the moral character of someone who would do this. No words at all.

Now for some facts on Ms. Alexander. She is a Right-wing partisan. A Right-wing web site she runs says: “Rachel Alexander and her brother Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual Conservative.” (Talk about a contradiction in terms.) She is identified on the site as a “Deputy County Attorney with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.” No wonder the expose of her office’s antics on Fox News so unrattled her. It was Fox News after all. That had to hurt.

We also get some insight into possible reasons they were so anxious to prosecute Matt, in the end, for showing Playboy to some friends. Rachel has something of a passionate hatred for the magazine based on her religious beliefs. (Anyone want to lay odds on whether or not she is a fundamentalist, or at least a Mormon?). I suspect the former, more than the latter myself.

Rachel wrote an essay as to why men shouldn’t look at Playboy. She knows men don't buy it because they read the articles, she says. She uses herself to explain why. She notes that she likes men. Oh, good! I can sleep better knowing that. And she doesn’t look at male bodies “for three very simple, obvious, important reasons: 1) it is immoral from a Biblical perspective, 2) the men I date do not approve of it, and 3) it has been proven to destroy relationships and become an addiction transforming the brains neurons.” Rachel Alexander lives in The Twilight Zone. She then mentions an additional reason, I guess that is reason 3A, it would be embarrassing “if anyone found out.”

She does what every authoritarian I’ve ever met in the Republican Party does (and she is a Republican--but you guessed that didn’t you?). She plays up how she is “fairly libertarian” followed by a real explanation of why she isn’t remotely libertarian at all. She says “naked pictures” are not speech and not protected by the First Amendment. Strictly speaking she could be right on that (she isn’t), but she is no libertarian even if she is right. She clearly wants the images banned and that disqualifies her from the libertarian label. Ms.Alexander, I have known libertarians all my life. I am an libertarian. You are no libertarian. You are not even “fairly libertarian.” To be precise, you are socialist of the soul, a collectivist when it comes to one's private life, an advocate of big government and the Nanny state. You just want Nanny to do different things than your comrades on the Left.

Of course, right after saying she is fairly libertarian, she begins attacking libertarians. She also says that erotica is: “Trying to show through pictures that some people are stupid enough to allow themselves to be exploited so others can feel superior to them is not something the founders intended to protect.” Now, you don’t have to like erotica. But, that has to be the lamest psychologizing I’ve ever seen concerning why erotica is produced.

She mentions that she had “dated a man 12 years ago who had” who read Playboy and she didn’t like it one bit. Now, I wonder how much of a role Rachel Alexander had in the Bandy case. We might have an explanation for why he was banned, even when he turned 18 years of age, from looking at any erotica as part of his probation (for the crime of showing Playboy to friends.) I said at the time that it was clear that the probation requirements were part of a campaign against adult erotica. If Rachel Alexander was part of the case we may now know why. It is immoral according to the Bible, and she doesn’t like it. But, then she and Thomas a ideological peas from the same pod and I suspect his whole department is now riddled with Theopublicans.

Ms. Alexander, according to one Right-wing group does “pro bono” work for a Religious Right outfit called Alliance Defense Fund. You can find the outfit here. They promote a video interview with a teen who is claiming his religious faith was under attack because of a “religious” T-shirt he was wearing. The video never tells anyone that the t-shirt was an attack on gay students. His “faith” was wearing a t-shirt which attacked other students for being gay. What would happen if teens wore t-shirts to school attacking people for being black, Jewish, Catholic or such? Of course the school would forbid it, as it is really an attempt to pick a fight by flinging insults. The Fund is a major group promoting a theocratic Religious Right viewpoint. One of their law suits is to try to force the Michigan Family Independence Agency to place abused children with “Teen Ranch a Christian-based facility.”

The state agency asked Teen Ranch to stop religiously indoctrinating children placed there by the state with state funds. The group refused to comply and the state stopped placing children there. Apparently Teen Ranch could only survive on state funds and without access to children and funding from the state it closed down. Rachel Alexander, the “fairly libertarian” attorney gives “pro bono” work to the group that is fighting this case. Seems she got the definition of libertarian wrong again.

Photo: The photo is the "intellectual conservative" Rachel Alexander herself.

UPDATE: See our post on Alexander and her role as PR frontman for Thomas.

Computer security expert confirms for us on Bandy case.

I sent my report on the Matt Bandy case to a computer security expert asking him about the boy's defense and what he thought about the case. Here is his report to me. This reconfirms just how dangerous the situation is for all of us.

I'm familiar with the case. It's been on all the web new sources. Unfortunately, this is much more common than people realize. The boys defense is 100% reasonable. It is very easy to hack into a computer and leave files on it. People who are into illegal pictures like child porn, beastiality etc... frequently use innocent third party computers to store their collections. I have personally consulted on half a dozen cases where this has happened. A friend of mine discovered a beastiality server running on his 80-year-old mother-in-law's computer. Not only did she not have either the inclination nor the skill to set this up, but the banners were Cyrillic!

Unfortunately the average person is at a fairly high risk of this happening. This is why I never run Microsoft operating systems on my home computers! If you run Windows, you really need to turn on the firewall. You also need to install anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Even then, running a Microsoft operating system is risky.

I've worked in the computer field for over twenty years. In that time, I've been a programmer, database administrator, system administrator and information security architect. My experience in information security includes being responsible for a network of 70,000 computers. I have worked on local, state and federal forensics cases. One of the cases I worked on was the largest child pornography case ever prosecuted.

The real threat here is not that the law does not seem capable of taking reality into account. When you combine the rising police state powers of the government in the U.S. with the incredibly long prison sentences that are handed out for such things together and then add in the ease with which any citizen can be targeted it becomes apparent that this is a very, very dangerous situation indeed. The hackers and Russian gangsters may be annoying but it is Big Brother than makes this a threat to you.

You could be next! What was done to Matthew Bandy can happen to you.

The article we wrote about Matthew Bandy has spread far and wide on the internet. It generates a large number of hits per day and I have found it being debated on numerous web sites. Most people seem to believe Bandy but a few die-hards are pro police on this matter. So I am starting to look into the issues a bit more deeply.

Here are a few points to consider. At no point did the prosecutor describe the images. We don’t know what they contained. Some individuals have thought that since there were only nine images there that they were not of sufficient quantity to have been planted there by a commercial distributor of such images looking for a safe place to hide them. But then we don’t know if the distributor is using a hundred different computers where each stores a few images. Diffusion of inventory means that unless something happens there is no obvious anomalies that the computer’s owner is likely to notice.

It could well be that they sell the photos to a client and then send a message to their hosts computers, each of which send the few images they store to the client. If it detected then only one storage computer is compromised and they can continue to work with the others. And with hundreds of computers infected then police resources are wasted investigating victims of this sort of activity and not perpetrators.

But I have sent my story to an expert on computer security and asked him to appraise it and, if he consents, will post his comments here. But I have done some looking into this issue.

Here is an article from CastleCops on “child porn planting spyware” from 2005. They report that one companies forensics service grew by 70% in one year because of “viruses and spyware which can download pornography and other inappropriate material without users being aware of it.” Such things can change your bookmarks, steal information from your system, or download images onto your hard drive. They claim that 90% of Windows computer “harbour an average of 28 malicious programs” and that an audit of 1.5 million computers found “more than 41 million instances of spyware, Trojans and other malicious programs.”

The article notes that more and more private business is realizing that inappropriate images on a computer may not be the work of an employee at all but because the computer was infected. In other words the private sector is catching on but the police are still light-years behind the times. The tell of a school computer that was found with many such images. And no one was sure who to blame. It could be staff, teachers or students. In the end it turned out to be none of them.

The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada reports that organized criminals “are forming more and larger botnets, or networks of computers with broadband Internet connections that are compromised by malware and are thus “software robots or zombies. ”These remotely-controlled attack networks undertake a variety of crimes: sending spam or phishing e-mails, hosting spoofed web sites for pharming scams, and distributing viruses or trojan horse software to facilitate on-line extortion or compromise more home computers for larger botnets.”

And not even Apple Macs are immune anymore.

Spamhouse has listed the 10 worst spammers around. And what is interesting is that several are involved with using botnets to send out porn spam and child porn spam. They give you names, and in some cases the photos of the culprits. Six of them are in Russia or the Ukraine, one in Hong Kong, one in Israel and two in the US.

Now if there was a child porn spam operation using a botnet going around then it is entirely possible that Matthew Bandy’s computer was hijacked for that purpose. The zombie computers would be told to send the images along with a solicitation to purchase them to the spam list. There would not necessarily be a large number of images required for this. In fact the only images that “subscribers” might ever receive would be those in the spam.

Consider this possibility. A Russian gangster runs a scam with computers. Using malware he hijacks control of thousands of computers. On those computers he stores a few images. He then contacts those computers with a list of names to receive e-mails containing those images. No one computer is given too many names as that triggers spam blocks. Bandy’s computer could have been one of them. It may have sent out the images to 100 names and then stopped sending the message until told to do so again with other names.

Recipients get this e-mail with 9 illicit photos and a solicitation to subscribe by credit card. Most people throw it away fearful that having these images would make them vulnerable to police investigation (and they would be correct). Some of the people would report it. But investigations don’t lead to the original source but to individuals who didn’t know they were involved in the process of spamming.

The few people who subscribe find money being taken out of their account, maybe repeatedly and in sums higher than they agreed upon. They may cancel their card but they won’t go to the police. They can’t without incriminating themselves. The Russian gangster is able to pull in money, delivers no product at all, and used a network of zombie computers to send out his solicitations. The funds vanish quickly. Accounts used for this purpose get closed. Names turn out to be bogus. And the operation continues under a different name with a different account. In Russia violence and bribery are a very powerful force (just ask Putin) and the gangster now control the country.

One expert on the subject, James Coombs, says that anyone convicted of child pornography solely on the presence of items on their computer hard drive should be released from jail immediately. He says: “There is simply no way for law enforcement to know the difference between innocent and guilty persons based on hard drive data circumstantial evidence."

One botnet operator can control hundred of thousands of computers without the knowledge of the owners. Jeanson Ancheta was just 20 years old but in his first year of operating a botnet he pulled in over $60,000. The U.S. Attorneys office said: “Ancheta admitted... directing more than 400,000 infected computers that were part of his botnet armies to other computer servers he controlled where adware he had modified would surreptitiously download onto the zombies.” Included in Ancheta’s army of zombies were computers owned by the US military.

Others have been able to do the same thing for their own personal use. Adrian Ringland would hang out in chat rooms and text teenage girls while pretending to be a boy of a similar age. He would then trick them into downloading some malware, “which surrendered their PCs to his control. He subsequently swiped personal information from compromised PCs. Ringland then attempted to intimidate the youngsters into sending revealing pictures by exercising his control over their PCs to perform functions such as opening and closing disc drive. Using threats that he'd send this embarrassing material to girls' parents or friends, Ringland blackmailed his victims into sending more and more explicit pictures of themselves.”

He was caught. But this also seems to indicate another way in which Matthew Bandy could have been used. There may be no criminal gang selling or pretending to sell child porn. There could be one individual who managed to get control of the Bandy computer and used it to store the nine images he actually owned. Now and then the actual owner might view the images and then put them back into storage removing them from his system. It could be one individual wanting to find a safe place to store illegal images where he would not be directly implicated.

I don’t pretend to be an expert but it seems to me that there are many legitimate reasons why Matthew Bandy may have had no knowledge of the nine images found on his computer. Most of us who use computers are not knowledgeable enough to prevent having our system hijacked and turned into a zombie. And few of us would notice if this happened.

That your hard drive can so easily be hijacked, and that millions have been, seems to indicate that the laws on possession of illicit images turn innocent people into criminals without their knowledge. Instead of concentrating on possession, which is what law enforcement is doing -- because it is easier -- their emphasis ought to be on production. The criminals who produce the material ought to be the targets here. Possession on a hard drive indicates very little. Yet in many places, especially the United States where many Constitutional protections have been eroded, possession is flimsy evidence on which to hang a conviction especially when so many U.S. states send people to prison for such long terms. Remember Matthew Bandy was being charged with nine counts each worth a 10 years consecutive sentence. Had he been convicted he could be held in prison until he was 106 years old.

There is also something worrisome unless you are someone who has total trust in the government. It is relatively easy to target individuals who are troublesome to you, plant images on their computer without their knowledge, then arrest them and send them to prison based on the contents of their hard drive. And it need not be just the government doing this as part of some campaign against dissidents. Anyone who might have access to your computer for more than a minute or two could do the same thing. One anonymous phone call later and you could find yourself facing life in prison.

UPDATE: A computer security expert has confirmed for us the reasonableness of Matt Bandy's defense. You can read his report to us here.

Prosecutor tries to force teenage boy to register as sex offender for showing Playboy magazine to a friend.

ABC News tells the horrifying story of the legal assault on the life of 16-year-old Matthew Bandy.

He is described as a pretty typical 16-year-old who never got into trouble -- well maybe not so typical after all. Maybe above average.

Police burst into the Bandy home accusing the boy of possessing child pornography. If found guilty he could have been sentenced to prison for life! Each image in one’s possession could lead to 10 years in prison consecutively. In most Western countries owning 10 images are considered one offense but in the U.S. it is 10 separate crimes.

Matthew’s mother, Jeannie, says when the police first attacked the house she thought “someone’s trying to break in our house. And then there were police officers with guns pointed at me, telling me to get downstairs.” This is exactly how innocent people, and not so innocent cops, get killed.

We have made this point repeatedly. The police are not going out to arrest people anymore. They are acting like an invading military force. They don’t announced who they are. Jeanne Bandy didn’t know. She thought they were burglars breaking in. In other words she never heard them identify themselves. They could have been rapists or killers (that wouldn’t have been far off the mark unfortunately). And if she did what any sane person would do -- defend herself she or a police officer, or both, could have ended up dead.

Maricopa district attorney Andrew Thomas, who was behind this arrest, gave evasive answers as to why the police broke into the house at 6 am with guns drawn. He said it was a police action and his office “wouldn’t have had control over that” and that “I frankly don’t know the exact facts...”

The police insisted that the boy had downloaded erotic images of minors. He said he hadn’t. Like many other adolescents he admitted he had viewed some adult porn.

Police walked off with the family computer. Police claimed that nine images were found and each image meant a 10 year prison sentence for the boy. They say it was to stop pedophilia yet there is no indication the boy was a pedophile. In fact by a clinical definition, and pedophilia is a clinical term, the boy wouldn’t qualify as a pedophile at all.

Matthew was placed under home arrest and forced to wear a monitor so the government could pinpoint his location 24 hours a day. He told ABC: “It was terrifying. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know why it was happening.”

He found it difficult to go to school. He was under severe stress. It was only fortitude that kept him alive as many people placed in this situation just end their own lives due to the trauma. ABC reports: “Matt’s dreams had been destroyed and his mother was crushed. And even though there was no proof that Matthew personally downloaded those nine pictures, it would be difficult to prove his innocence. Novak said that the pictures alone were practically all the evidence the police needed.”

The entire case that would send the young boy to prison for life was built on the claim that he had accessed a Yahoo account and the account supposedly contained child porn. Grand Inquisitor Thomas said that there was evidence “linking that computer to a yahoo web site “ and that the his office got search warrants: “And uh, they in and uh, conducted that, uh, uh...that investigation.” Articulate bastard isn’t he?

Thomas said: “The juvenile admitted that uh, while he…or he said…the juvenile said that uh, while he did not access child pornography, he did uh, access adult pornography as…as part of uh, a…a group…a web site that he uh, went onto on the Internet. So you have all of that evidence plus some incriminating statements. And as a result of that, the…the case was brought. But as is…” The “incriminating statements” which the district attorney is throwing about were the boy’s admission that he had looked at adult erotica and nothing more. Apparently in the warped mind of Thomas looking at a Playboy is the equivalent of being a child molester. The boy had made no statements that were incriminating in regards to the crime that Thomas was trying to charge him with.

ABC could see the holes in the prosecutors logic and pushed him to explain exactly what were the incriminating statements that indicated the boy’s guilt. Thomas lamely replied that the boy admitted it was his computer, that he was on the internet, and that he accessed some adult porn. In one statement Thomas repeated the “evidence” that it was the boy’s computer three different times as if each rewording of that claim was a new piece of evidence.

But police would not identify a specific user. The question is not if the boy ever looked at erotic photos. The question was whether he downloaded the photos in questions. And for that there was no evidence whatsoever. When Thomas was asked about this he gave another incoherent, evasive answer: “Well, the…there…there may have been other people in the family who used it, but here…here's the thing. Uh, the…and I…I began…or at some point, I started to talk about the individ…the need for individualized justice.” Well, that certainly clears things up!

ABC says “prosecutors were determined to send Matt away.” That is frightening. The idea that prosecutors were “determined” to incarcerate a young teenage boy for the rest of life for nine images is beyond belief.

Matthew said: “"They didn't care that I denied it, they just kept on asking me and kept on thinking that I did it,. They just had it built in their mind that this kid is guilty, and we're going to make sure that he's convicted. No matter what the means are."

The family says that the prosecutor “was on a mission” and didn’t care about facts. He ignored the boy’s stellar record as an upstanding young man. He ignored the fact that Matthew voluntarily took, and passed a lie detector test, he voluntarily underwent psychiatric evaluations which also cleared him any “perverted tendencies”.

But Thomas only had images of sending the boy to prison dancing in his head. Apparently he didn’t care what happens to young teens sent to prison. Of course the rapes would end after a few years, perhaps Matthew would get lucky and a violent inmate would have killed him putting an end to the life sentence that Thomas was seeking.

The family finally turned to a computer expert to explain the images. Tammi Loehrs told them something that ought to worry every computer user in the United States. “If you have an Internet connection, high speed, through, let’s say, your cable company, or through the phone company, that computer is always on, and basically you have an open doorway to the outside. So the home user has no idea who’s coming into their computer.” When Loehr looked at the Bandy computer she found 200 infect files “so-called backdoors that allowed hackers to access the family computer from remote locations.”

It is possible for such bugs to be placed on a computer and there are some unscrupulous web sites that do this. Once this is done they can store images or files on your computer without your knowledge. And if they wish to send the images to someone else they can use your computer to do it. And you may never know it is happening. But if police search your hard drive you will be the one who will go to jail as a convicted pedophile, perhaps for life.

ABC pressed Thomas again. They noted the boy’s clean record, the lie detector tests, the psychiatric reports and now the evidence from the computer expert. They wanted to know what Thomas “put him [Matthew] through two years of hell” in spite of all of this. Thomas stuttered and stammered and evaded the question. At one point he started laughing and referred to the expert he used. But the expert he used only said that the images were there. He made no statement as to how they turned up on the computer.

Thomas tried to justify his actions saying “You’ve gotta look at all the evidence” and then the only evidence he pointed to was that the computer, not necessarily Matthew, accessed a “yahoo account where there was child pornography.” Note the account had the pornography. It is not claimed that the handful of images fond on the Bandy computer was downloaded from this account only that the other account had them.

If you access a web page, and unbeknownst to you that web site contains, elsewhere, perhaps even hidden, images of children that can be enough for the police to conduct a military-like dawn raid on your home. And if you have the bugs on your computer allowing others to access it, which is highly likely as well, then someone else could use your computer to store illegal images. And then morons like Thomas will send you to prison for life and feel good about himself for doing so.

ABC kept pressing Thomas to give them something of substance. He couldn’t. Instead he distorted the facts, that is when he could get a coherent sentence out. thomas said the evidence was that Matthew “admitted at least partially the substance of the crime, which was yes, he used the computer to go on the internet to access pornographic sites.” NO! It is not a crime to access porn via the Internet Mr. Thomas. Matthew admitted he accessed legal porn he did not partially admit “the substance of the crime” which was that he downloaded child porn. Thomas is lying.

With the evidence of the bugs on the computer allowing remote access persecutor Thomas had no way of showing the boy had done anything illegal. But he was reluctant to admit that he put a young teenage through hell for two years for nothing. Instead they dropped the child porn charges in return for demanding the boy admit he had shown a copy of Playboy magazine to another teen. (A crime that is no doubt committed millions of times by teens across America every year!)

As Thomas so eloquently put it, Matthew “was charged with solicitation to furnish uh... to furnish...sexual exploitation.” To furnish sexual exploitation???? ABC noted that meant he had a copy of Playboy and showed it to another boy. Thomas had a clear cut explanation, if you can make any sense out of it.

“And what you have to find is an appropriate uh, offense at that level of felony so that you can …can enter into the plea agreement. That's typically how the…the decision making process is done. So um, although I wasn't privy to that decision making process, it was a…a line prosecutor who handled tip…I've done that. And typically, what you do is you would find in this case, a classics on designated felony where there's a factual basis so that … I mean, you can't just pick any…uh, any classic felony."

"It has to be something that relates to the crime as alleged so that the defendant can go forward and admit guilt in court. And…and I should note, not to put too fine a point on this, but this defendant did plead guilty in a court of law.”

Note what Thomas was doing to the teen. He threatened the teen with life in prison. Instead he tells the boy to admit that he took a Playboy magazine and showed it to another teen. If the boy admits to that “crime” he wouldn’t go to prison at all. So the prosecutor offers him either life in prison or no jail time. Even the most innocent person would be a fool not to take the no jail time. But Thomas wanted this so he could do precisely what he did in this interview with ABC, claim “this defendant did plead guilty in a court of law.” Of course Thomas is again distorting reality by leaving out what it was he was guilty of doing.

And Thomas refuses to describe the actual crime. He keeps referring to it as a “solicitation charge” and an “class six undesignated felony”. That is a way to make it sound serious when it was not serious at all. In fact it is questionable whether it ought to be a crime.

So the guilty plea had nothing to do with child pornography. Instead it was the relatively innocuous act of showing another teenage boy a copy of Playboy magazine.

ABC noted that even the judge said the plea agreement was pushed through because Thomas couldn’t prove his charges. Thomas kept trying to slip around the facts in the interview and kept referring to the guilty plea by the boy. ABC reporter Jim Avila, who did a brilliant interview, said that: “What he [the judge] didn’t accept was exactly what you’re doing now... trying to stain the boy with child pornography charges.”

Thomas again distorted the facts saying: “I disagree. Well, with all due respect to the judge it’s his job not to accept a guilty plea if he really thinks that the person is innocent.” This is pure dishonesty on the part of Thomas. He is intentionally mixing too different issues. The guilty plea was of showing a Playboy magazine to another teen not about anything else. Thomas implies the boy is guilty of child porn charges as his “guilty plea” supposedly proves even though the guilty plea was forced on a boy facing life in prison. Read the entire interview yourself to see how Thomas constantly distorts the facts and how many times he find it a laughing matter to discuss how he tried to ruin the life of this young boy.

Thomas said something that ought to be scare the hell out of people in the interview. “But the ultimate outcome was what it was. And the defendant accepts that, the state accepts that, and I'm content that the appropriate sanction was imposed to hold him accountable, teach him a lesson, teach him that this isn't fun and games. If you're goin' to start playing around on pornographic sites, and you come across child pornography then, you know, you better accept the consequences of that.”

Thomas is saying this. If an adult looks at adult erotica and is not looking for child porn, but in the process they come across child porn by accident they “better accept the consequences of that.” So if they access a website that says “all images are of adults” and then open it to find a photo of a 17 year old (who is legally a child under US porn laws though above the age of sexual consent in most states) then Thomas feels that he is duty bound to send that person to prison. Thomas gloated about the “hard lesson” he taught this teen (not the obvious lesson that prosecutors can be assholes). Thomas said his actions would teach Matt “a good, hard lesson so he doesn’t do it again.” Do what again? Look at erotica! This is really what Thomas is saying. There is no indication that Matthew Bandy did anything but look at adult erotica and Thomas is saying that he wanted the boy to learn the lesson to never do that again.

What Thomas is doing is trying to find ways to prosecute people for looking at legal images! He is saying that if you look for legal erotica and unintentionally come across illegal erotica that he will prosecute you so that you learn not to look for legal images!

Thomas says the law on the books penalizing Matthew for showing a Playboy to a school mate is rarely enforced. ABC says they have not been able to find a case where anyone was ever prosecuted for such an offense. Thomas then says something chilling: “Maybe it’s on the books if only to allow us, in cases like this, to properly dispose of the case.”

What he means is that he had bogus charges against a young teen. It is embarrassing to Inquisitors to not find heresy in a victim. So they need laws that are not enforced in order to find some charge they can bring. They need to save their ego and be able to crow to the press that the defendeant accepted “guilt” even if the guilt had nothing to do with the actual crime that got the whole Holy Inquisition into full gear.

At this point the issue was over for Thomas but not for Matthew. In sex obsessed America the teen was now required by law to register as a sex offender! As ABC noted: “Under Arizona law and in most states around the country, sex crimes carry with them a life of branding. Matthew would be forced to register as a sex offender everywhere he lived, for the rest of his life.” One gets the impression that if every American who ever broke a law related to sex was listed on the offender’s registry that one could simple chuck out the registry and in it’s place write: “Please see census data.”

Matthew explained what this registration would mean: “"I have to stay away from children, I cannot be around any area where there might be minors, including the mall, or the movies, or restaurants or even church. To go to church I have to have written consent from our priest, I have to sit in a different pew, one that doesn't have a child sitting in it." In fact it is much worse than that. He would also be forbidden to live in certain areas including entire towns. He would be restricted from having certain jobs. His name and address could be put on the internet so any crazy could hunt him down and kill him (as has happened in several cases in the US). In some towns on Halloween individuals on the sex registry are rounded up by the police and held so that they wouldn’t be home in case children come trick or treating to their house! Every time a sex offense is committed in the area where Matthew lived he would be a suspect and subjected to police questioning. And the registry, while making his name and address public information, would only list that he had committed a felony of solicitation. It would not say that what he really did was show another 16-year-old a copy of Playboy!

The judge in the case accepted the plea bargain that Matthew had shown the Playboy. But he invited him to appeal. Thomas claims this was proof that judge was wrong. In fact it wasn’t. It was proof the judge thought what Thomas and his office had done was a miscarriage of justice. The judge couldn’t believe that Thomas’ office wanted Matthew to register as a sex offender. In the appeal the judge threw out that requirement. So Matthew barely escaped the heavy hand of the crusading prosecutor.

ABC reports that the family has disconnected their computer and no longer use it. Jeanne Bandy says: “I don’t want to have one in my house. Under, even under, the strictest rules and strictest security,, your computer is vulnerable.” ABC said, “the Web is simply too dangerous.” Here is the one mistake ABC made.

It was not the web that raided the Bandy home in a military style attack at 6 am. It was not the web that arrested this young boy. It was not the web that dragged him through court and made his life a living hell. It was not the web which forced hm to plead guilty to the “crime” of having a Playboy magazine. It was the web that tried to force him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. It was Andrew Thomas. Parents can monitor web use but there is little they can do to keep a someone like Andrew Thomas from legally abusing their children.

For the record Thomas is a hard Right Theopublican who is making a name for himself by attacking illegal immigrants, when he isn’t trying to jail children for looking at Playboy. Personally I would enjoy seeing someone raid the house and office of Mr. Thomas and confiscate his computers and do the same thorough search on them that he had done on Matthew Bandy. It wouldn’t surprise me to find something on his computer that he didn’t know was there.

Anyone who has used the internet knows how easy it is to have things like this happen. I have gone to open one page and suddenly find the link takes me someplace else entirely and suddenly page after page starts opening. I find pages listed in my browser, some rather innocuous, that I know I have never visited in my life. For instance just now I see that I supposedly visited “billboard.com”. I know I’ve never done that. Nor have I ever been to Disney.go.com. I have no idea why they are listed in my browser as sites I’ve visited recently.

There have been times when a visit to one page suddenly turns up several dozen pages all opening simultaneously. The only way I knew how to stop it was to crash the system. I don’t know what was on all those pages. I lost control of my own computer when this happened. And I know the computer stays linked to net even when I close it for the night. I know this because I often find when I open it up in the morning that it has downloaded emails throughout the night.

What we have here is a technology which is not entirely under the control of the user. That in itself is not a major issue. But when morons like Andrew Thomas go on their crusades it becomes an issue. People like Thomas have the legal authority to emotionally torture people for not controlling a technology which they can’t control entirely. It isn’t that the net is too power that causes the problem. It is that men like Thomas are too powerful. The problem is that the law requires people to do the impossible and then holds them legally responsible if they don’t. That is a perscription for power for mediocrities like Thomas. Thomas is our Moron of the Week.

Photo: The photo is of Andrew Thomas.

UPDATE: The response to this post has been incredible. I have now located an ABC video regarding this story. You can watch it here. If that link does not work (and it might not) then go to www.abcnews.go.com/2020/ and look under "20/20 IN TOUCH Webcasts and open up "Crimes Committed on Your Computer". That should open up the video. Thanks for all the links guys. Just remember this is what government power looks like! You may think giving the state more power can be done for good but once they have the power they, not you, determine how it will be used. Limit the state.

WARNING: If you want to see how easily this can happen to you then read our update here.