Utah's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force leader is stunned at the audacity of child porn traders on the popular website Pinterest, where users "pin" pictures, ideas and products to virtual walls and exchange Web links. That anyone would publicly post such material suggests "real evil at work," the task force leader says. But it's far from an isolated incident. The material was first brought to the task force's attention after Pinterest itself reported the material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which collects and organizes such data. The Center's CyberTipline, to which companies like Pinterest and Facebook are federally mandated to report potentially exploitative material (individuals can also contribute reports,) during the week of May 27 to June 2, there were 13,012 reports of child pornography submitted along with dozens of other potential cases of online exploitation of children. Since its establishment in 1998, the center's CyberTipline has received more than 1.8 million reports.
Back when I was doing porn, before the Internet, the sickest sects in the porn industry, those dealing with child-porn, rape, bestiality, etc., would set up these bizarre makeshift flash-underground market-places to sell their illegal wares. Once, I went to one of these hell-holes with a friend of mine, he was completely crazy, but totally endearing, (he died of AIDS in 1998,) that dropped-down in some Oakland dump. The purveyors were nondescript, but the material they sold was horrendous. A lot of the men wandering about reminded me of the caricatured dirty-old man. Some were slumming middle-class white-collar perverts in baseball caps. My friend was buying something for a rich client of his who lived in the City. I just wanted to get out of there. Nowadays, the danger, risk, and unpleasantness is gone. Men sit in the comfort of their homes, and trade in the ultimate evil. Unless they get caught, their safety and reputations remain intact. As my friend was doing, for his wealthy employer, only, the Internet is the new courier.