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Perverted Justice

Submitted by silversprung on 12 December 2006 - 9:00pm. |

I ran across yet another serious use of blogs while reading the news today. It seems like our friend the blog, whom we tend to think of as fun-loving, gossipy, and a bit ADD, has a serious side, too.

This article in the New York Times is talking about how a grassroots organization, Perverted Justice, which runs a blog by the same name (http://perverted-justice.com), has been remarkably effective in catching pedophiles. They have a group of 65 trained adult volunteers who pretend to be underage girls and boys in chat rooms, and when a pedophile agrees to meet the "child" in a certain location, he ends up meeting (and being arrested by) the police instead.

Perverted Justice has received a lot of publicity because it allowed Dateline NBC to film 11 of its sting operations and broadcast them. The programs have been very widely-watched. And it looks like Perverted Justice has been really successful-- they've caught and convicted 113 predators so far. Blogs fighting terrorism and sexual predators-- who'da thunk it?

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or blogs can be the impetus

Submitted by Frabby on 13 December 2006 - 3:56pm.

or blogs can be the impetus for serial murder...I just finished watching an episode of Dexter (the hot new Showtime series about a sociopath who is trying to find his heart). On it an accused murderer claims that blogs (and podcasts of all things) have made people feel unspecial in a world where everyone thinks and says the same things. To him, severing bodies seemed like a good way to combat that feling of unspecialness.

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