WWW- Pornography being smuggled into Massachusetts is getting more and more bizarre, just as the FBI is mobilizing to wage war with the flesh-fetish industry. In a recent span of two weeks, inspectors for U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Logan International Airport confiscated the following:
# A laptop computer containing films and photos of women performing sex acts involving dogs, horses and reptiles, taken off a passenger returning to Boston from Ireland; # One hundred copies of a DVD depicting “explicit” sex with excrement, seized from a Federal Express package shipped to Rhode Island from the Netherlands. It was intercepted in Worcester when the title “Domina and Caviar” raised a red flag. “Our main focus is on terrorism,” said Ted Woo, spokesman for the CBP’s Boston office, “but this is something our agents are definitely on the lookout for. If it’s so-called `normal’ pornography, it’s not going to be an issue, especially if it’s for personal use.” All other louche loot winds up in the custody of U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan’s office, where it is ultimately destroyed unless someone is willing to fight for the sordid contraband in court. “In some instances,” said Sullivan’s spokeswoman, Samantha Martin, “if the items are on a computer, the computer will be wiped clean, but they may want the computer back.” Martin said no one pinched with porn involving consenting adults has been prosecuted in recent memory. Virtually any material exploiting children, however, is expressly illegal. But just what gets a blush and a free pass versus a humiliating public file? Woo said officers defer to a checklist from Sullivan’s office. The office declined to share a copy of its list with the Herald. The Washington Post reported this week that FBI headquarters has put out a call to agents to join a new national anti-obscenity squad targeting the “manufacturers and purveyors” of porn. Gail Marcinkiewicz, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Boston field office, concedes pornography is a tough foe. “What may be considered obscene in Amish country,” she said, “may not be obscene in Los Angeles.”