Webcams' darkside

Webcams - and how they're used in the sexual exploitation of online kids – were the focus of a high-profile hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday. "The lead witness at the hearing [of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee] was Justin Berry," the New York Times reports, "who was molested as a teenager by people he had met online, and then went on to run a pornographic Web site for five years, featuring images of himself." Justin, 19, started using a Webcam to make friends online when he was 13, the Times reported in a front-page story last December (see my summary, with links), and he has provided help in "the prosecution of some of the 1,500 people who had paid him to perform on camera" in what another testifier, a pediatrician at the University of North Carolina described as "real-time child exploitation" (Justin discovered the very first day he put his photo in a Webcam directory that there simply were no friends to be found there, only people with exploitation in mind). Internet News reports that "congressional estimates put the online child pornography business at $20 billion a year and growing." It added that yesterday's hearing was "sparsely attended," though it was covered by news outlets nationwide and in South Korea, India, Ukraine, and other countries. The Louisville Courier-Journal and CBS News focused on Justin Berry's testimony at the hearing. The CBS piece links to an audio interview with Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center of Missing & Exploited Children, who also testified at the hearing, conducted by CBS tech reporter and SafeKids.com publisher Larry Magid.

Speaking of child exploitation, a Department of Homeland Security official, Brian Doyle, was the same day arrested and "charged with 23 felony counts, including using a computer to seduce a child and transmitting harmful materials to a minor," the Los Angeles Times and hundreds of other news outlets reported.