Week of December 18, 2005

There was no bigger or more disturbing story in kid-tech news this week than the one told by the New York Times after a six-month-long investigation…

Kids & Webcams: Terrible trend

The story begins with Justin Berry, who got his start at age 13 buying a Webcam to meet other teenage friends online. Within weeks he was getting paid $50 "to sit bare-chested in front of his computer for three minutes" for a man who helped him instantly set up a PayPal account.

Over five years, reports writer Kurt Eichenwald, Justin developed an audience of 1,500 that paid him "hundreds of thousands of dollars" for nude images and worse. The connected computer was in his room, and he hid the Webcams behind it during the day so his mother wouldn't see them, the Times reports. Justin's activities were part of the "Webcam Matrix," a term dubbed by another teenager cited by the Times, who, also for money, operates his own site of self-published child porn.

The Times article is the first I've seen in 8+ years of following reportage on kids and tech pointing to a trend or a generalized pattern of actions and genre of Web sites. The pattern of behavior and sites/blogs, on the teenagers' part, are about money, naivete, the need to connect, or combinations of the above. The pattern of actions on the adults' part are well known to law enforcement (one of the things that confounds prosecutors is that these kids are both victims and perpetrators).

What wasn't known is how wide-spread self-published child porn seems to have become, based on what Kurt's investigative reporting turned up (if there has been any public-sector or academic research on this, I'm not aware of it). However, there have been scattered reports of teens exposing themselves for intimate friends, before the friendship "goes bad" and photos are maliciously IM'ed, emailed, or file-shared around (e.g., see "India: Child porn by teens"  and "Self-published child porn") - the Times also tells of how this social type of kid-generated porn, too, ends up turning its subjects into "pornographic commodities" on the Web. And a few years ago, there was a brief swirl of reporting on "camgirl" sites, linked by their teenage subjects to retail sites' wish lists so people viewing photos of the site owners in various states of undress could send them gifts (see this news item in 2003).

But now we know those phenomena were only the tip of the iceberg. "Easy money" is way too easy for tech-literate kids aided "wittingly and unwittingly" by Internet services like free instant-messaging, blogging, image- and video-uploading, Webcam and other communities, "bank" accounts, and wish lists.

The Times says its reporting for this article has led to "a wide-scale criminal investigation." After a series of meetings, it "persuaded Justin to abandon his business and, to protect other children at risk, assisted him in contacting the Justice Department."

The long article has a companion video interview with the boy, now 19, which hints at what Justin's been through and the integrity that compelled him to tell his story for other children's sake. Here are some key points in the article parents might want to be aware of:

• "As soon as Justin hooked the camera to his bedroom computer and loaded the software [back in 2000], his picture was *automatically* posted [emphasis mine] on spotlife.com, an Internet directory of Webcam users, along with his contact information."
• Contrary to his intention, "no one Justin's age ever contacted him from that listing" and "within minutes he heard from his first online predator ... followed by another, then another."
• Video-hosting is offered by many services now, including blogging/social-networking sites, and IM services allow users to attach videos, but kids can also easily create their own video-enabled Web sites.

Further Info

• How grooming works. To be on the alert (or help your kids be so) for any tactic an online predator might try, see pp. 7-8 of the British Home Office Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet's "Good practice guidance for the moderation of interactive services for children". The title is a mouthful - just zoom in on those two pages.
• Vlogging is taking off. "In short video diaries and homemade reality shows, vloggers are using the power of cheap online technology to invite strangers into their lives," reports Agence France Press. An example is Rocketboom.com, a daily news vlog (2-person Web TV, kinda, or video podcast) out of New York City.
• The story's context: how writer Kurt Eihenwald happened upon Justin's story and the background on online child porn and the challenges it presents law enforcement .