In Praise of Indecency by Paul Krassner

Author:Paul Krassner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781573446143
Publisher: Cleis Press
Published: 2011-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

MEET AN FBI PORN SQUAD AGENT

MEET AN FBI PORN SQUAD AGENT

In October 2006, a historic event occurred in the world of porn. Seven FBI agents sat down to engage in a dialogue with a group of “adult businesspersons,” as Mark Kernes wrote in AVN. The purpose of this meeting at FBI headquarters was to discuss plans to implement federal regulation 2257, which requires producers to obtain two forms of government-issued identification from performers, keep them on file indefinitely, and refer to those records on the labels of all videos and DVDs. How mundane.

One of the attorneys who was present—Jeffrey Douglas, chairman of the Free Speech Coalition—says that complying with the rules has buried porn producers in paperwork. One of his clients employs a staff of eight who work full-time to maintain and organize the required records. “If you were so incredibly crazy to film a minor,” he observes, “you surely would not get a copy of their junior high school ID.” He points out that although the FBI said its “primary concern” is underage performers, it inspects all the records for the video features on its list, creating a report that it forwards to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Another attorney, Paul Cambria, recalls, “They said they created a database of producers, they fed it into a computer, and the computer spit out, randomly, companies to be inspected. The FBI agents then review that company’s product. They then select certain individual actors and actresses, then go to a [place of business] with the list, and look for the required records as to those people.” Cambria asked the assistant director of the criminal investigation division, James “Chip” Burrus, “whether it was based on any particular content, and he said no. So I said, ‘There are certain movies, for example, that are of a sort of geriatric genre; why would you waste your time?’ And he said, ‘No, we include those because we want to keep it all random at this point.’”

In AVN, Kernes wrote that “Any violation of the 2257 regulations may result in federal charges being brought, with penalties including fines and years in jail for each violation.... So while the FBI’s function is merely to inspect the 2257 records to ascertain whether they are complete and accurate, the report the bureau files with the Justice Department could easily form the basis for decisions as to which companies the DOJ may choose to prosecute for obscenity, knowing that a bona fide 2257 violation by a company would be an incentive for that company to cop a plea.”

Three months later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the FBI has stepped up raids on porn studios, “saying it wants to ensure that children are not being sexually exploited. About a dozen pom production facilities... have been taken by surprise in the last three months by a barrage of federal agents at their doors.... The Justice Department has prosecuted only one company to date under the new law... the founder of the Girls Gone Wild video empire, Joe Francis.

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