Becoming Sweetie, The Computer-Generated Girl Who Took On Child Predators

http://www.fastcocreate.com/3031676/anatomy-of-a-cannes-contender-becoming-sweetie-the-little-girl-who-took-on-child-predators

by ozh • 12 years ago

28 97 12 years ago

fastcocreate.com

clubhi• 12 years ago

I'm so happy these computer generated little girls are now safe.

fixermark6• 12 years ago

I'm happy the real flesh-and-blood children who were accessible one screen name over from Sweetie are now marginally safer.

dllthomas4• 12 years ago

They're probably not. Unfortunately, I don't expect that enslaved little girls whose associated revenue stream dries up typically wind up safe little girls - the perverts on the other end of a bunch of wires aren't their biggest threat. I'm happy that there's less inducement to enslave new little girls...

dublinben3• 12 years ago

Is it really a crime to proposition a virtual child?

decad• 12 years ago

What if you are under the assumption that said child was real?

tinco3• 12 years ago

No, but if it is clear you do not know the child is virtual then it is clear evidence that you are the sort of person who would proposition a real child. That information can make cases against predators easier, and might even be valuable for the police to get a search warrant.

dublinben3• 12 years ago

So we're OK with raiding and arresting the "sort of person" we find undesirable on their potential to commit a crime?

I'm not sure if thought crime or pre-crime are more abhorrent concepts, but here we are.

rosser7• 12 years ago

If you know it's a virtual child then almost certainly not (except, perhaps, in .au, which I think at least had statute defining even obviously cartoon depictions of naked minors as child porn).

The caveat here is that these (alleged) perps all believed they were interacting with a real child. In Common Law countries, at least, criminality exists in the presence of mens rea — the "guilty mind" — and actus reus, an overt action.

Virtuality or not, if you think you're chatting up an actual, breathing, 8-year-old girl, and offer money for her to remove her undergarments, you are a criminal.

gambiting8• 12 years ago

This is going to be an extremely unpopular opinion,but I would like to actually have some meaningful discussion about this - am I the only one to think that chatting/flirting/talking about sex with a generated avatar, no matter what is it of, should not be a crime?

pitnips• 12 years ago

If you know it's an avatar, maybe not. But if you think it's a real girl, then yes, absolutely it should be.

gambiting8• 12 years ago

So...it's a crime to think about something? Is it a crime to think about murdering someone? Or about stealing a purse, but without actually doing any of these things?

JasonFruit• 12 years ago

It's probably the same principle as offering to kill someone for a cop; even though they didn't really have you kill someone, it still is enough to put you in jail. Here, the perverts thought they were trying to get a little girl to take her clothes off, even though there wasn't a real little girl.

Now, if they knew it was just a computer-generated image, I think you might have a point; they'd still be perverts, but maybe (IANAL) not criminals.

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

Can you be charged with anything further than "Conspiracy to do X" if all they have is intent?

johnchristopher4• 12 years ago

And yet no crime were actually committed. There are no victims.

ThomPete• 12 years ago

I am a father of two.

I am personally troubled by this approach for the simple reason it's very binary approach (no pun intended) to a very complex issue.

The articles language alone (predators) a formulation which will ensure that no matter what these guys did it will be understood in the worst possible way and inform public opinion.

I fact I believe that FastCoCreate is guilty of a form of sensationalism something we last saw during the Spanish inquisition.

And yes if someone did something like this to my kids I would want to worst possible sentence to those people, which is why it's good that we have a system where I am not going to be the judge.

digitalsushi• 12 years ago

If you try to pay a police officer costumed as a prostitute, do they let you go on the same technicality?

Which then, if you never offer to pay, leaves such a costumed officer frustrated - what if these webcam viewers literally just wanted to chat? (Treat that as a statistical experiment) Where they disconnected? Or entrapped?

delluminatus• 12 years ago

I would argue that there is a difference between having an undercover officer posing as a prostitute, and having a virtual prostitute. In the former case, by paying the officer, you are -- in a sense -- engaging a prostitute. In the latter case, you are paying for what amounts to a virtual service.

tseabrooks• 12 years ago

I'm with you - But in the US I believe this depends on the state. The "To catch a predator" show was specifically done in areas where the law included "intent" as a crime, rather than the actual crime IIRC.

dublinben3• 12 years ago

The arrests on that show also usually result in dropped charges or even the suicide of an alleged predator. We shouldn't be condoning these kinds of tactics anywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Catch_a_Predator#Criticism

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

If this group had openly advertised Sweetie as a computer-generated little girl avatar for sale, and then nailed anyone who responded, I would be a lot more conflicted. But all of these people believed that they were taking advantage of an actual child.

Attempted murder is a crime. Trying and failing to steal a car is a crime. I see no reason why attempted child abuse shouldn't also be a crime.

gambiting8• 12 years ago

>Attempted murder is a crime. Trying and failing to steal a car is a crime. I see no reason why attempted child abuse shouldn't also be a crime.

So should stabbing a mannequin should also be treated as murder, if the person doing the stabbing was 100% convinced that it was a real person? Or an attempt to break into a car made out of cardboard treated as an actual robbery,if the thief was 100% convinced it was a real thing before trying it?

I want all child molesters to rot in prison forever. I really do. But there was no children present here.

avalaunch4• 12 years ago

I don't think attempted murder of a person that doesn't exist or failing to steal a car that doesn't exist is a crime.

Attempted child abuse should be a crime, but for that, there'd have to be a child.

roeme• 12 years ago

I think the generated avatar only serves as a 'honeypot', so to speak. A colleague of mine provided me with some interesting information in a discussion quite a while ago: His company a few years back provided text-only chatrooms for their customers. Being an ISP, and the fact that they also marketed it, led to quite a huge audience (also, the Internet 'rush' began).

'Predators', though not yet known under this moniker, became a problem quite soon. So what did they do? They set up automated bots, which had just enough logic to fool a human into thinking it's speaking to it's own kind. If someone engaged them in a conversation, and IIRC, asked for some sensitive information (though I'm not sure of the latter), they generated an alert and a real, human police officer took over the bot.

But either an avatar or other human being - I'm still not sure about the legality of the whole thing; a long time ago I learned something along the lines that law enforcement is not allowed to 'bait' someone into doing something illegal; as the whole situation could be doctored to force somebody to do something they wouldn't have done otherwise. I think it's related to your question; but unfortunately I can't recall what the concept is called, or if I'm completely off-track here anyway.

Though in the end; the person still did something illegal, and I can't think of this line of reasoning to work well in court.

dllthomas4• 12 years ago

"I'm still not sure about the legality of the whole thing; a long time ago I learned something along the lines that law enforcement is not allowed to 'bait' someone into doing something illegal; as the whole situation could be doctored to force somebody to do something they wouldn't have done otherwise. I think it's related to your question; but unfortunately I can't recall what the concept is called, or if I'm completely off-track here anyway."

The concept is "entrapment".

anon4• 12 years ago

In this specific case, as I understand it, the persons were chatting with what they believed was a real child. I think it's ok to judge based on intent in this case.

If there were a site where legally adult people posed as children using virtual avatars and voice-altering software selling sexual services and the site was advertised as such, then the issue becomes a lot more complex.

My opinion is that as long as a person doesn't show clear intent (and this is a very slippery slope, I realise) to cause harm to a minor, they should not be persecuted for their actions. And if intent is clearly determined, but no harm was actually done, I'd prefer that the individual be not punished (including not having their communications monitored, though this might only be acceptable for first offenders), but asked to attend a form of therapy. On the other hand, if harm was done, the measures to be taken should depend on presence or absence of intent, as is in other cases.

aroch4• 12 years ago

I wonder if, had this been done by the police instead of a private charity, if this would constitute inducement or if any arrests would hold. And if a affirmative defense could be mounted -- often there is nothing overtly illegal about text or computer generated imagery.

It would have been fascinating to be the fly on the wall at the various meetings to decide the legality of arrests based on this information.

alayne2• 12 years ago

Why is some non-government agency organizing stings?

tinco3• 12 years ago

Because they could. Why wouldn't they?

alayne2• 12 years ago

Because it sounds like a witch hunt with an added smell of entrapment instead of due process.

gress4• 12 years ago

I'm in no way defending anyone who takes advantage of anyone who's age they are unsure of (or really anyone who is vulnerable), but I notice that nowhere do they talk about the age of the person they are modeling.

I'd be curious to know what age a randomized blinded panel would rate their avatar at. If this was a psychological test, that would be a requirement for it to be considered valid.

fixermark6• 12 years ago

"My name is Sweetie. I am 10 years old. I live in the Phillipines."

~ from the video

gress4• 12 years ago

Thanks. That answers part of it, but it doesn't answer the question of what age people would rate the Avatar at. The two should be consistent.

gress4• 12 years ago

Why is this downvoted to zero? Doesn't anyone else find the whole thing creepy?

lisper2• 12 years ago

I wonder if, instead of using this technology to catch pedophiles it might be used to treat them instead. If computer-generated avatars are good enough to provide sexual gratification, maybe that would be enough to redirect their attention away from real kids. There is some evidence that pornography can reduce the incidence of (adult-on-adult) rape, so it seems not entirely implausible that it might reduce pedophilic abuse as well.

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/04/porn-and-rape-the-debate-...

jarin• 12 years ago

While it could work, it would never ever be socially accepted as a form of treatment.

lisper2• 12 years ago

Maybe not in the U.S. But the U.S. does not have a monopoly on pedophiles.

ScottBurson7• 12 years ago

I think this is possible, and would support research into it.

DominikR• 12 years ago

I don't think it is right for a state to bait people into committing crimes.

Not that I'd ever defend sex offenders, but by creating an opportunity that is strong enough you could get anyone to commit some kind of crime.

That doesn't have to be a sex offense, it could also be tax evasion, prostitution, gambling, illegal file sharing (music/films), hate speech, speeding with a car or consuming illegal drugs.

Most people have some weakness that could be exploited.

moheeb• 12 years ago

So how do they prove how old the virtual child is?

rosser7• 12 years ago

"My name is Sweetie. I am 10 years old. I live in the Phillipines."

bunderbunder• 12 years ago

Recently there was an undercover ATF operation near my neighborhood that failed rather spectacularly and, thanks to the local newspaper, publicly. In the final analysis one of the things that came out of it was the observation that very few of the folks who were arrested over the course of this operation were known to have been engaged in any serious (say, worse than just being a pot smoker) criminal activity outside of whatever the ATF agents had enticed them to do as part of the sting operation. Oftentimes this took the form of singling out people who weren't too bright, or were in a financial tight spot, and applying a lot of social pressure to encourage them to commmit crimes.

In other words, the vast majority of the criminal activity people were being arrested for were crimes that the ATF had manufactured in the first place. The real burglars and drug dealers knew enough to stay away.

I can't help but worry there might be a similar situation going on here. I'd be curious to know how many of the 1,000 individuals caught in this operation have any prior history of abusing children, and I'd be curious to know if the folks running this operation were using this child persona to actively solicit people. It's not just that I worry about police entrapment (which I do); it's also that I worry that these operations might ironically make life easier for the child pornography and trafficking industries because the investigators are trapping themselves in their own honeypot.

tzs• 12 years ago

I can see how being in a financial tight spot might lead me agree to commit a theft that I would not otherwise commit.

I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of spot I could find myself in that would let me be enticed into paying money to have children sexually abused.

milesf• 12 years ago

With a conviction rate of less than %0.000005 of those committing these acts, this is something governments ought to be pursuing.

Signing the petition http://youtube.com/sweetie

ScottBurson7• 12 years ago

I am really surprised at all the negative reactions in here. Let's get some things straight:

() Entrapment is when the police induce someone to commit a crime they were not otherwise predisposed to commit. That did not happen here. The only reason anyone would have to visit these chat rooms in the first place (other than to see what was going on in there, as the author did) is to buy child webcam sex.

() The individuals caught in this sting thought they were talking to a real child and had every intention to solicit a real child for sex. We are not talking about a thought-crime here.

() They had almost certainly done it before, and will continue to do it until stopped.

There are no difficult questions here. This is a good thing.

EDITED to add: By the way, I don't think artwork -- drawings, paintings, computer animations, whatever -- should ever be illegal per se, no matter what it depicts. I don't think that artwork of any kind should be illegal to produce or to view, for any purpose including sexual stimulation, so long as no actual children or other unwilling victims were involved in its production.

But that's not what we're talking about here. This isn't just about viewing synthesized materials. This is about people offering to pay for what they think is a real child to perform sex acts on camera.

avalaunch4• 12 years ago

You're making some assumptions that simply aren't backed up in the story. The story doesn't go into detail about where Sweetie was setup online or who initiated contact first or how the alleged pedophiles knew that Sweetie was only 10 years old. So entrapment may have occurred. And I have no idea why you believe that the alleged pedophiles had almost certainly done it before as that also wasn't mentioned anywhere in the story.

What we're dealing with here is a vigilante organization running sting operations where they may or may not be operating in a diligent law abiding manner. As much as I would like to catch pedophiles, I don't think that's the sort of thing we should be encouraging.

ScottBurson7• 12 years ago

The article is maybe not as explicit about some of these things as it should be, but I've read about this operation before. My understanding is that they set Sweetie up in a chat room, just like the room that the author describes. The people they caught had to come to that room intentionally. I am reasonably certain Sweetie's operators were well aware of entrapment concerns and structured their interactions carefully to avoid them. (It certainly would have been a phenomenal waste to have gone to all the trouble involved in creating Sweetie and then to have blown everything by doing something stupid in the chat rooms. I don't think these people are anywhere near that stupid.)

And I have no idea why you believe that the alleged pedophiles had almost certainly done it before

Then you know nothing about child sexual abuse. Perpetrators who are not caught are extremely likely to keep doing it. Even among those who are caught and prosecuted, recidivism is extremely high.

"Vigilante organization"? All they did was collect information and turn it over to the police. A "vigilante" is someone who attempts to enforce the law themselves, by violence. The term does not apply here.

johnchristopher4• 12 years ago

When I was younger (a late teen) I used to hang out on IRC and forums. I got in touch with many nicknames, few I ever got to know anything more about them than their music preferences or opinions on trivial stuff (games, arts, politics, etc.). And some, I used to play on-line game with them.

Fast forward ten years later (which is 2 years ago) and there is that 14 years old Norwegian girl popping up in my MSN list. I never added her, I think we somehow got into each other's buddy list because of those multi-chat layers some tried to implement over MSN.

In my country, Belgium, we got a huge scandal over abducted girls in the 90's. That changed a lot of things for some of my friends who were chief of boyscout and the like: they couldn't handle children the same way as before and every physical contact was suspicious, some told me they didn't take children in their arms anymore when they were crying because they feared people might misinterpret it.

Back to that Norwegian teenager: Had I been a teen I guess I would have chatted a bit more with her (aah those days when some random nicks on the deftones forum would send us postcard of his european trip.. on our REAL PO Box) but all I was concerned about was:

    Am I being targeted as an on-line pervert by some agency ? If I keep on answering her "who are you ? how did you get in my list ?"... will that be turned against me later for god knows what ?

So I told her to not contact me because she doesn't know who I am which is the adult thing to do but at the end of the day I am sad that the internet land isn't as open and as welcoming as before.

But it's the same in the real world: One day I am at the mall and there is that 4 years old crying and asking "mama ?". I asked here "are you lost ?" "yes" "Well, can you see your mom around you ?" "No". So I told her "Well, come with me at the information desk and we'll ask them to tell your mom to meet you there". As she grabbed my hand I saw a woman cashing her groceries 2 meters away and of course she was the mom. That was awkward and it shouldn't have been.

xenadu02• 12 years ago

Why do these stories always bring out the white-knight nerds crying about "entrapment" or questioning if a crime was truly committed?

Entrapment would be if undercover agents stopped you on the street and hassled you to come inside and proposition a kid for sex and refused to let you leave, or even just kept getting in your face over and over. Or maybe even more subtly, if they kept messaging and pestering you in online chat, suggesting you could see "them" (fake kid) naked for money, even though you expressed reluctance about it. That did not happen here, these were just the super easy people who jumped easily and quickly at the opportunity to pay to have a child perform sex acts on video

Secondly, in every jurisdiction that I know of, this is the crime of Intent to Commit. It doesn't matter that the avatar was virtual, it's no different than an adult cop using picture of a model as bait. You aren't interacting with a virtual chat bot, you're interacting with an adult human being who happens to be using a computer-generated avatar. Again, this is no different than buying fake cocaine from an undercover cop, or attempting to steal a bait car.

Let us not forget that it is statistically improbable that even half of these 1000 people are doing this for the first time. Which means most of them have paid money to someone to force a kid to perform sex acts on camera, and so enjoyed the experience they went and sought it out again.

I think more police departments should have officers on staff and hackers as consultants to engage in consistent and ongoing honeypot operations, not just for these sorts of crimes, but also for things like online fraud, etc.

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Of course its different - the avatar isn't a real person, not in any meaningful sense. So what if they witness a person propositioning a poster, or a blow-up doll, or a DVD on pause with a sexy actress on screen? Its not a crime, period.

I don't apologize for criminals; just counseling caution when painting everything with the crime brush.

z3t4• 12 years ago

These losers wouldn't even dare to touch a RL girl. Even though it would be perfectly legal to have sex with someone as young as 16 or even 12 in many countries.

So why make their lives any more miserable?

Those who abuse girls IRL should burn in hell though.

patcon• 12 years ago

Interesting, to say the least. One of my first concerns is whether this tactic might eventually weaken the ability to prevent child abuse.

To clarify, this is arguably an effective honeypot right now because it supposedly would not occur to a predator that the child is digital, and so they can be presumed guilty of engaging with a real child... But what about when body-scanning gets cheaper, and a foreign website claims to be offering the services of digital avatars, but is actually sourcing real children. Would this not give predators plausible deniability, and greatly challenge the prospect of prosecution?

This feels cynical of me to say, but I don't see this as an omen of future technological solution to social ills, but rather of uncomfortable future ambiguity

Becoming Sweetie, The Computer-Generated Girl Who Took On Child Predators

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