A big-time federal-state bust featuring G-men posing as child-porn-delivering UPS workers and adult bookstore owners identified 1,500 smut suspects worldwide, New York's attorney general has announced in a move a courtroom opponent speculates is an attempt at saving face.
On Monday, Denis Vacco said the 18-month "Operation Rip Cord," which involved New York cops and federal Customs Service agents, yielded 31 prosecutions so far, with an additional 120 cases being assessed. Among those nabbed on child-porn charges: an Albany college student training to become a kindergarten teacher, a New York City school janitor, and a pizza delivery man.
At a news conference, Vacco said investigators amassed 200,000 child-porn images, believed to be the largest such collection in the world. To demonstrate the availability of porn online, a state investigator then signed onto America Online, entered a chat room, and within 10 minutes was sent child pornography.
Many of the cases involved in the sweep have been publicized in the past several months. A student at a state university in Albany was busted in May after allegedly sending online photos depicting infants and small children engaged in sex acts in return for promises of a pornographic videotape. He was arrested in his dorm room by an undercover agent posing as a UPS delivery man when he signed for the tape.
Vacco decided to go public with the case because "this problem was getting to level that people needed to know about it," said spokeswoman Brandee Schwalb.
Robert Flores of the National Law Center for Families and Children, a group that strongly supports government efforts to crack down on cyberporn, said the sting is notable mostly for its state-federal cooperation.
"A lot of state people have said, 'This is an overwhelming issue, the federal government must deal with it,'" Flores said, "and the federal government says, 'This stuff is probably in their house and violated [state law], so let them deal with it.' The best approach is to bring both sides of the law enforcement into a whole."
ACLU lawyer Ann Beeson, who was victorious in her battle against Vacco's staff to get New York's Net porn law struck down, speculated that the attorney general had a not-so-visible agenda in his sting announcement.
She noted that the state has only until Thursday to appeal US District Court judge Loretta A. Preska's decision striking down the state law. Vacco's high-profile news conference "may be a way of setting up that there will not be an appeal - that we won hands down," Beeson said. Such a declaration of victory on the kiddy-porn front would ease the sting of backing away from the court fight, she said.
Vacco was not available for comment.
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
