There's money to be made in combating the sexual exploitation of children online, if not in the actual exploitation itself. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning believes internet companies, not taxpayers, ought to be funding the fight. Bruning (pictured here with "Miss Heartland" Rachel Seidel) addressed the Nebraska Crime Commission this week, telling tales of how he created a fake teenage girl to solicit men on webcams to whip it out for an audience they never anticipated — state cops and senators. Says Bruning, "We had state senators about throwing up in their breakfasts, but we wanted to make a point and I think we did." But who will be picking up the check for his educational services? He wants Yahoo, among others, to do so:
I went to Yahoo in 2005 and said you basically set up a crack house with advertising. I asked them to cooperate and they looked at this request coming from Nebraska and refused.
When that line of argument didn't net him results, Bruning turned to one of his attorney-general pals for a little added muscle: none other than popular antivice crusader
Eliot Spitzer. "Now it's Nebraska and New York. That's when they got nervous." Bruning claims that when Yahoo asked what he wanted, he replied, "Pay us."
From the looks of the Nebraska State Patrol's program, no one's coughed up but the government. Maybe Bruning can hit up Microsoft for an annual grant to hang out in their new chatrooms pretending to be thirteen-year-old girls all day.
