MADISON, Wis. -Eric Szatkowski is a Wisconsin Justice Department special agent, but on that Sunday afternoon he entered an online chat room as a 14-year-old boy.
He claimed he was into weightlifting, AC/DC and muscle magazines. Then he waited.
Within hours, screen name Paul2u sent a message: "Hi. u realy 14?"
Over the past decade, agents and computer experts have gone after hundreds of people like Paul2u who solicit sex from kids or trade child pornography online. Police efforts around the country were all the rage with the media in the early 2000s, reaching a crescendo with Dateline NBC's "To Catch A Predator" series.
Despite the publicity then and now, the bad guys haven't gone away. They've quietly multiplied. Trading child porn online and grooming underage targets in chat rooms has exploded nationwide. With arrests more than quadrupling in 10 years, Wisconsin's agents and analysts feel overwhelmed.
"I don't think we've made significant progress at all," Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said. "Our community leaders don't even know how bad the problem is. The general population has no idea."
7 comments:
I found this topic was very interesting and relatable. All of us use instant messages and could be exposed to predators online. I loved how the author quoted part of the conversations. Also, I think the article was well summarized.
To improve, perhaps the author could have elaborated a little more on what is being done to remedy the situation. Also, maybe the author could have given his opinion on what should be done.
I had no idea that sexual predators online have multiplied.
I thought this article was interesting, and highly relevant. It was very descriptive, well-written, and accurate. However, it seemed a little brief and there wasn't much analysis. That being said, it was a good article because it seems to be a serious problem in today's society, as well as today's crime labs. For that reason, it was an excellent article.
This was a very interesting topic of choice and was very well written conclusion. I like how you gave an example to start out the article summary. I like how you chose this topic because people dont really know what is going on in the cyber world. I think that you should have told how they are using this in forensics and their discoveries and i also think that they should show ways to help stop the internet predators that are lingering online. I learned that the population of internet predators has quadrupled over the past 10 years. I thought that people had been working to get rid of these predators throughout the past couple of years.
I think John wrote a good article, which discussed a significant problem in today's world. It was well written and I liked how he gave statistics of how online predators have grown over the years. A way to improve the article would be how to help solve this growing issue and put an end to it. Otherwise, good job.
this was a vary well and interesting summery of the article. it has occurred to me that with all the txt and aim sending maybe someone can view what i an writing to someone. this summary had quotes from the article which help support the topic presented. i would have liked to have read a little more on the situation but other than that nice job.
This article was very relevant. There are manyu internet predators today that are hurting people. John did a nice job summerizing the article but should have put more detail in it and more of his own perspective. Besides this, the article was very interesting and quite well written.
I enjoyed the beginning to this review very much, and found that it really grabbed me as a reader, and enticed me into the rest of it. I found it very shocking that this is a growing problem and that more and more people do this now adays. Although this review was very well put together, I found that it did not really touch on forensics. It simply told a story. Also, the lack of association with forensics was a shame because you could have included much about how computer science is needed to monitor and catch these criminals. However, one spect of the review that I found to stand out was that arrests has more than quadrupled in the ;last 10 years.
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