Brantley
GBI busts Upson woman for child porn
Dawn Brantley, 44, of Upson County has been arrested by a specialized unit of the GBI on child porn and other charges.
What follows is the official news release from GBI public affairs officer John Bankhead:
Agents with the GBI’s High Technology Investigations Unit (HTIU), along with deputies from the Upson County Sheriff’s Office, executed a search warrant yesterday at 535 Meadow Drive in Thomaston and discovered images of suspected child pornography on a computer belonging to Dawn Brantley. During the search, methamphetamine and meth smoking devices were found in the residence.
Agents charged Brantley with Possession of Child Pornography and Upson County Sheriff’s Deputies charged her with Violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act. The search warrant was a result of a Peer to Peer investigation in which the IP address associated with this location was observed sharing images of suspected or known child pornography.
Brantley, 44, was transported to the Upson County Jail. Three children at the residence were turned over to Upson County Department of Family and Children Services (DFACS). Brantley, who is unemployed, is a former school teacher and licensed nurse. The investigation into this matter is continuing with additional arrests possible.
This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the HTIU, to identify those involved in the child porn trade. The ICAC Program, created by the U. S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child pornography, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.
In 2008, the Georgia ICAC Task Force made 109 arrests and in 2009 made 164 arrests. Through July of this year, the Task Force has made 112 arrests.
Agents with the GBI’s High Technology Investigations Unit (HTIU), along with deputies from the Upson County Sheriff’s Office, executed a search warrant yesterday at 535 Meadow Drive in Thomaston and discovered images of suspected child pornography on a computer belonging to Dawn Brantley. During the search, methamphetamine and meth smoking devices were found in the residence.
Agents charged Brantley with Possession of Child Pornography and Upson County Sheriff’s Deputies charged her with Violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act. The search warrant was a result of a Peer to Peer investigation in which the IP address associated with this location was observed sharing images of suspected or known child pornography.
Brantley, 44, was transported to the Upson County Jail. Three children at the residence were turned over to Upson County Department of Family and Children Services (DFACS). Brantley, who is unemployed, is a former school teacher and licensed nurse. The investigation into this matter is continuing with additional arrests possible.
This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the HTIU, to identify those involved in the child porn trade. The ICAC Program, created by the U. S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child pornography, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.
In 2008, the Georgia ICAC Task Force made 109 arrests and in 2009 made 164 arrests. Through July of this year, the Task Force has made 112 arrests.
She was a former teacher and a nurse, of gods sake.
It is a sad day in America when you must look at both sides of the Coin of Justice.
Free biscuits Sunday morning ya'll know where.
Mathew 7:1 is probably the most misquoted and misused scripture in the Bible.
in fact, we are required to make judgment about sin in order to avoid sin ourselves.
"Judge not" here does not mean we are not to judge ever. That verse clearly explained that before we try to tell someone else about himself or herself, we had better first cast out the beam out of our own eye. God is trying to get us to understand that our own walk had better be straight before we go around telling other folks what His laws and commands are. Otherwise, we would just be foolish hypocrites. It says, "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and THEN shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." God obviously wants us to cast out our brother's mote, and He even tells us when we can do it: after our own eyes are beam-free!
If she is covering for a child, maybe she shouldn't be and maybe she should be getting that child the help he/she needs. Maybe she should be trying to find out what has happened to that child in order for he/she to turn to child porn. She should be doing a lot of things other than protecting sick child molesters.
Either way, she's sick.
If you cover for a person who is exploiting children sexually, you are no better than them.
Throw them all in prison together.
God, I am telling you right now that I think child molesters, child pornography watchers and their enablers need to go. I have no sympathy for them. Bring their actions done in the dark to light. PLEASE LORD, I BEG YOU TO JUDGE ME FOR THIS ON JUDGEMENT DAY!!
She should get a mom of the year award!
"Investigators are working to see who else may be involved. However, it was her computer, It was her ISP. It was in her house and she DID have knowledge of it, so she's been charged."
SHE KNEW IT WAS THERE.
IN GOD WE TRUST
Teenagers engage in many types of illicit activity both in the real world and the online world.
If she had an always on internet connection, DSL or Cable modem, and did not properly supervise her children's online activities or at least have some sort of monitoring software installed there is no telling what kind of crapware her kids or she could have downloaded. If her kids had any peer to peer file sharing software such as Limewire, Bit Torrent, Gnutella to name some, her computer could have been wide open to the internet for other people to use at their whim.
It is ENTIRELY possible for a non savvy computer user to have their computer completely compromised to the point that a malicious hacker can use that persons computer as a "drone" to do the hackers bidding. It could then be used for any purpose such as launching denial of service attacks on other computers, be used as the source of SPAM e-mails, it could have file space on the hard drive commandeered and used as off site storage for another persons files and that computer be the file server.
There is no way short of surreptitiously installing key-logging software coupled with a webcam to determine who is sitting at a computer. You cannot tell who actually created or accessed the porn files. It would take a wiretap order to do such a thing to a person's computer.
Monitoring IP traffic can show both the logical address and even the real physical address of traffic but it can rarely show what human initiated it.
Essentially I am trying to both warn others and show what a possible legal defense may be.
If there are teenagers in the house, then
Short of finding her DNA or fingerprints on a meth pipe or being seen using she has a possible defense there as well.
Reasonable doubt people. Drug test her. That will happen in jail, if not she needs to do it as a first step. Then she needs a real good lawyer that knows what computer forensics experts to hire.
The catch is that merely possessing the computer storage device that has kiddie porn on it is the crime.
The scary thing is that it could get on there without your knowledge.
From the article itself.
That is a holdover from the days when 4 megs of RAM cost $200 a stick. Employees have been known to part out computers at work.
Look at the comment box at the bottom.
See the line "To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming"
Know what a "Bot" is?
Ever hit show code on a web page and actually read the HTML.
Programmers have done a decent job in the last few years making computers easy to use. That has in turn brought more people online and fueled the need to upgrade infrastructure. The increased user base has also brought along an explosion of internet predators that take advantage of users either from appealing to their carnality, ignorance of the system, or most effectively, both.
You would know when you physically drive into the Red Light District in a major city. Unless you are running TRACEROUTE in another window, you don't know where the data you are viewing is coming actually from.
The porn industry in this country is somewhat regulated......eyes roll. There are record keeping requirements that supposedly have proof of age of the performers on file with a legal firm. Not so overseas..
ISP's could block traffic to and from sites suspected of containing files with underage performers as well as violent content. They don't, it would take too much hardware and would slow down system performance. Companies spend MILLIONS of dollars each year trying to keep employees from doing, what this lady is accused of, with corporate owned assets. It is a real problem and the potential liabilities are staggering. What would a court ordered shutdown and confiscation of all the servers and storage devices in a large company cost in lost productivity? In the Public Relations arena??
It would make the cost of her criminal legal defense look puny.
http://www.gaicac.us/
I spent a couple hours reading through it and it is very thorough.
It has good tips for parents and even a Case Law section for the legally inclined reader.
There is lots of inter-agency cooperation and they even have help from GA Tech Research Institute.
That speaks volumes to me. If GTRI wrote the peer to peer analysis code it is looking at more than the IP addresses. I am going to guess that it is decrypting the data stream and determining the file type, .jpeg, .png , .giff or any other photo format, then opening the file and running a facial recognition algorithm on it to roughly determine the age of the persons in the contents.
GTRI is one of the best in the world at machine vision.
BTW they did over $200 mil in DOD research last year. There are some buildings on the Tech campus that foreign students can't get into.
http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/
interesting article here
http://gtri.org/casestudy/Teraflop-Troubles-Power-Graphics-Processing-Units-GPUs-Password-Security-System
logging of
have at it y'all
hypo
Sounds like you are only good for one liners rather than a conversation.
Yeah you are right on that Mayhem,not many in depth replies.
Of course the DA does know.
It was a technical investigation that lead to the charges.
I stick to what I know and would always take my lawyers advice. Taking things to court will get you the mandatory sentence.
Rolling the dice before a jury that is not up to speed is not wise. The charge is so repulsive that finding an unbiased jury would be about impossible. The jury pool around here leaves something to be desired in the education department. Not quite Amish or Luddites, since they are online, but haven't a clue as to how it works. So much for a technical defense even if it is remotely possible.
You don't have to be a mechanic to drive either do you?
She should plead ignorance, something the jury could relate too.
I've noticed a lot of that around here in the last ten years.
This concludes my cheap shots at those who think I am in some way on the side of child exploitation. Read for context folks.
I can consider both sides of a problem.
Like you, Mayhem, I'm to the point of thinking that the GBI wouldn't have made a move until they had a rock solid case. If the GBI had suspicious IP traffic data then they could have gotten a warrant for putting more invasive monitoring techniques into action. BF was probably a cam freak as well as a drug user. If she was too, then they are toast. That would be irrefutable video evidence.
For the children's sake I hope that they did not create original files...
Drug habits will drive people to depraved depths. They can also make you think you're invincible and smarter than you actually are.
The Uni-bomber was a Genius, but I'll bet on a team of above average investigators to win out over the long run. It took a while but they got him.
Knowing what is out there on the Internet and what capabilities the government has when it comes to surveillance, I am amazed that someone would even think they could play with that sort of fire and not get burned.
All I got to say bout that...
I feel like running now..
hypo