A firefighter who works at the Miami-Dade fire department in Florida was arrested for sharing what authorities allege are underage girls engaging in sexual acts on Twitter. Authorities also determined that most of his sharing was done from his work computer.
Gabriel Diaz is a 38-year-old father of two and was arrested on Thursday on 16 counts of promoting the sexual performance of a minor. He has worked at the Fire Department for 17 years, and has been place on administrative leave pending the outcome of the case.
Diaz’s lawyer claims that his client had no idea that the girls depicted in the photos were under 18, and that he “[was] in no way knowingly involved in child pornography.”
Some media outlets have reported that the girls in question were between the ages of 14 and 17. Meanwhile, the judge reportedly stated that some of the girls in the photos were clearly under 12. That may go a long way in determining how plausible Diaz’s story is.
Unlike most other major social media sites, Twitter does not specifically ban pornography. It has been cracking down on child pornography however, recently employing PhotoDNA to recognize known images of child pornography. Twitter tagged Diaz’s photos and passed them along to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who confirmed that two of the flagged images included minors in what can be considered sexual content in the state of Florida. An additional seven contained minors but not in provocative enough photos to be considered illegal.
This allowed law enforcement to search Diaz’s twitter account more thoroughly, allegedly revealing sixteen different illicit photos.
Diaz posted under the online handle “ot_a_ku2” before his arrest.
[Photo Credit: Miami-Dade Department of Corrections]
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