This reminds me of what David Simon called the thesis of "The Wire", that institutions inevitably corrupt and destroy the individuals within them. It's possible that just about everyone in the system (except the original person who makes the accusation, though he/she may just have been made overly paranoid by the system) is a very decent person who, at any point, could've looked at the photos and called bullshit on it. But that opportunity doesn't arrive once the momentum of bureaucracy is involved.
Of course there's the poor grandfather here within our institution of justice. But his arraignment was the result of a chain of bumbling actions. At some point, someone in authority made a terrible decision. But the decision involved something that generally, almost no one wants to be on the defending side of ("Oh, but are you sure it's child pornography?")...and soon, you have the momentum of one bull-headed decision just propagating to other agencies and departments until anyone with the decency to stand up in the bureaucracy and say "Wait a minute" will already have been deterred by the mountain of echo chamber-derived evidence.
The incident as described here is abhorrent. But I can see why most of the actors here did what they did...certainly, no one at CPS wants to be the one who says, "Let me see those pornographic pictures just to double check"...And no one in law enforcement wants to be on the hook when a real child pornographer is caught, and it's learned that police had investigated him months/years before and did nothing about it.
A good piece of advice I got from a lawyer once:
If you are ever arrested, don't say a word especially if you are innocent.
The cops never arrest anyone unless they think they're guilty, so anything you say -- as the saying goes in America -- can and will be used against you. It'll be filtered through that cognitive bias.
Part two of his advice was: even if you are guilty of something, don't assume you're being busted for what you're guilty of. (So again keep your mouth shut.)
He related a case of someone busted for trafficking drugs. (Turns out he was.) He wound up being charged with murder. (He didn't do that!) Apparently someone had been killed in a way that made the police suspect it was drug-related, and there was circumstantial evidence linking the suspect to the scene, so...
It is a pretty weird world we live in where nudity is automatically pornography. But that doesn't compare to the recent prosecutorial practice of trying to avoid a trial at any cost, including innocent lives, which has become a truly disgusting game, and now includes trying to bullshit the process of discovery. How many innocent people, with worse legal connections, went to jail over similar mishaps?
Any crime or supposed crime involving children always brings out the worst in society and demonstrates just how flawed the justice system in this country is. These problems exist with most crimes but they're exacerbated when children are involved because people have this innate need to prove they care about children, to prove that children are the most important thing in the world and anyone that doesn't sacrifice everything to protect children is sub-human scum. If the police hadn't tried to prosecute this man and a year later he was caught with actual child pornography the police officers involved would have campaigns against them, demanding they're sacked, demanding they lose their pensions and some would go as far as to demand they are put in prison.
Ask the average person what a paedophile is and they'll say someone that rapes children. Ask the average person what should happen to paedophiles and they'll say they should be given the death penalty. People are not rational in normal circumstances, add children and abuse to the mix and any semblance of rationality is lost. A justice system built on the values of a society that acts like this can never be good and will always have problems like this.
The book "How to bbe invisible", by J.J. Luna[1] gives stories like this as one of the (many) reasons why privacy is important. The media jumps on stories like these and the victims are labelled in some way. When it later turns out that they are innocent, no amount of apologies will remove the label. For this reason (and many more), one should not make it easy for others (media or whoever) to find out things about you without your knowledge and consent, even for seemingly innocent purposes...
Having said that, I'm not nearly as anonymous as I'd like to be. In fact, its pretty easy to find out who I am and lots about me.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/How-Invisible-Revised-Protecting-ebook...
I guess I'm struggling with a) Computer technicians view photos and are distressed enough to call the police. b) Police view photos and believe it serious enough to press charges and prosecute. Yet the photos are simply of naked children playing in a back yard with a hose and buckets? And it was drop dead obvious to the Crown prosecutor upon first look but not at all to the shop technicians and police etc? The police were just gunning to go after an elderly man with a completely clean rap sheet? I suspect we're missing some key piece of this story - not surprising given the author.
He took it to his local computer repair shop. The geeks there went to work. In the course of their work they found a number of images of naked children.
I want to believe that the blame is on the image thumbnails on the Desktop or some folder that is difficult to circumvent. But still, such privacy violation and lack of professionalism from the technicians is not ever mentioned again in the OP.
Somebody needs to plant child porn on the supreme court justices' computers, so that judges understand the implications of "possession is 9/10ths of the law."
This is just another reason I am very scared about the Government's proposals to push through the "Snoopers' Charter" giving government agencies a record of all emails and SMS messages sent, web pages visited, and phone calls made.
The problem here wasn't that he was accused, but that the entire case was seemingly going through based on an interpretation of the primary evidence, as opposed to the evidence itself, which seems ridiculous to me.
There is an interesting story in "Three Felonies a Day" where an employer discovers child pornography on an employee's computer [1]. They contact their attorney, and the lawyer deletes the offending content to protect the company since simple possession of child pornography is crime in the United States. He then alerts authorities to the employee. The attorney is eventual prosecuted for evidence tampering.
Paul Graham wrote an essay that fits the peadophilia scare quite well - http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
I don't know if this is some quirk of the UK system of justice, but in the U.S. federal system, people don't even get charged, let alone go to trial, unless the prosecutor has reviewed all the evidence and determined that the case should go forward.
Reminds me somehow the story of my friend, convicted killer.
His ex got pregnant and he did not want the child but she did not want to abort. You talking about state where abortion was legal for many years (side issue to many including me its immoral). So he was at the party with bunch of friends drunk. One of his friend asked him about her and they start talking. My friend was drunk and angry and said to him: "damn I wish someone would just punch her in the stomach that would solve my problem". I know him long enough to know he wasnt serious but he was drunk and upset and let's be honest -- who has never wished another person bad in their mind or outspoken while drunk? Next morning he got cops knocking at his door. Long story short -- because of his friend testimony and his ex testimony that she "is afraid of him", he is sentenced for more than 10 years for a solicitation of 1st degree murder. A decent good guy with nothing on his record. Its been 20 years ago and he was released after couple years for well behave and never broke the law again, but honestly shake someone's hand and tell them: hey, I am ex-con convicted of 1st degree murder, nice to meet you.
Last year I wrote a story based on my real life experience which revolved around my love story. It did contain some implicit references to the protagonist sleeping with his girl friend on a bed.
My wife however said that I should not publish this story as it was based on my life and I was a minor at that time and people might conclude that I had sex with another minor girl (which I did not).
The story is still in my drawer.
Off topic:
One thing about US that competently baffles me is that you pay a woman for sex and it is crime. You pay a woman for sex and film it and publish it as a movie and you are in porn industry.
The scariest thing about the anti-pedo craze is that it is incredibly easy to get falsely convicted. If you don't like someone, you can download some child porn on their computer, call the cops on them, and there is absolutely no way for them to prove themselves innocent (which they shouldn't have to do, but in our system this is the case.) Yes there are measures you can take against this, but if the person knows what they are doing and has physical access to your work place or computer, then all but the most paranoid of individuals is vulnerable. I remember reading a case where a sociopath did this just to get rid of an employee whose parking place she wanted (who knows how many others have done the same and gotten away with it.)
It's also easy to accidentally download or access a site with it, or have a suggestive picture or drawing, etc. Not to mention teens "sexting" and stuff like that.
Years ago many people were falsely convicted of child molestation by unreliable child witnesses who were basically told what to say.
Many of the people who did get falsely convicted were heavily abused in prison by guards and other inmates because of the stigma associated with pedophiles. If you ever get out, being a registered sex offender can destroy your life. Even if you aren't convicted, just the accusation can destroy families and reputations.
And yet on the other hand child abuse is absolutely terrible and I want to do everything possible to stop it. But way too many innocents are sacrificed for it.
To me, this really doesn't have to do with CP, but with police that over reach and are not punished for that. It happens in non-CP cases, and the result is the same, no punishment.
I am from India. Recently Indian government wanted to pass a law legalizing consensual sex between people above 16 years old (the current limit is 18).
I wrote a lengthy blogpost supporting the move.
I was also applying for US immigration during that time and my attorney advised me that I better take it off my blog before applying because if the US authorities search for my name on Google and find it they might think I am a pedo.
One day I hope to bridge law enforcement and the tech community over the massive CP problem. I know there are many talented people here that would contribute solutions if they only had access to the right information and knew they could build something to help.
For now you'll have to take my comment at face value, but you would be shocked at the number of major offenders in each community - and I'm not talking about the Sex Offender Registry. Too few sheriff's offices take advantage of funding for internet crimes against children, and just as few prosecutors pursue these cases. If your local law enforcement doesn't make it a priority, you won't hear about CP arrests in the paper. That doesn't make it any less of a problem.
I encourage tech companies on HN to send someone to http://www.cacconference.org in Dallas to join the likes of FB, Google, and Yahoo! for education on the topic, or contact me. In the future there will be more I can share.
As the majority of this thread seems to be about the morals of pedophilia, I'd thought I'd chime in with the specific issue at hand here.
The cutting of legal aid will mean that only the rich or lucky will be able to afford justice. The crucial point is this: you are assigned a lawyer who will get a fixed sum regardless of the outcome. As a defendant, you will not be able to fire your lawyer if he/she is shit.
In the new system there is no need to specialise. All you need to be able to do is persuade your client to plead guilty as quickly as possible. Failing that finding a way to get the case dismissed as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of work.
It is a cruel and deliberately unjust system. Potentially it will be brought in without so much as a vote in parliament.
On the plus side, it will drag britian kicking and screaming into the 19th century, which is where most torys want to be.
One of the more outstanding part of the story I would claim is this:
> The geeks there went to work. In the course of their work they found a number of images of naked children.
In what way is looking at the customers files and images in line with the work of repairing a laptop? As a sysadmin, that looks to be both a breach of ethics, but also borderline illegal. If a car repairman would go and rumble in the glove box for letters/pictures/money, he could very likely be sued. If a handyman would do the same thing while fixing up something at someones house, he would without doubt be thrown in jail. Why do the police allow laptop repairmen to rumble in peoples private information without consequences?
Note: This article is set in the UK, and has limited relevance outside that jurisdiction.
hey, in Poland classmates who send each other nude self-shots get accused of distributing child pornography. have a good day.
Good to see lawyers sharing case information with their other halves.
For a bit more context you can learn more from the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0213yfh/live. They have an interview with Conservative MP Bob Neill and Sir Anthony Hooper, a former appeal court judge. The links to the interview and other useful info can be found at the bottom of the page.
Yay let's all go back to biblical times to try and explain our perversions! Seriously guys we have come a long way since then. Scientific discoveries, food, culture, skill sets, in fact almost everything has changed since then yet there are people among us the beat the dead horse still. "Oh it was OK in biblical times when women were just objects so it must be OK now!" Get a grip guys.
The problem is not with the finger pointing. The problem is with the awful process of "investigation" and prosecution that happened afterwards.
The short version (for anyone who is unwilling to view the link from work): Guy brings his computer in for repairs, techs discover pictures, he's arrested. In court he's finally presented with the evidence (apparently innocuous photos of naked children running around in the yard, playing) and announces that these are his grandkids.
So what computer repair shop actually called the police on him? Spyware typically injects all sorts of nonsense into somebody's computer and most of these shops are pretty jaded to the things they see and I doubt that the crazy images are almost ever actually owned by the person who is bringing their computer in for repair.
Oh another story about how the biggest problem with fighting child abuse and exploitation is all the innocent bystanders that are getting caught.
Too much big gumment.
If you throw a net wide enough you will catch plenty of fish. Some of it may even be the target species.
They're watching and they're stupid.
I never understood why all the paranoia with pedo...
I mean, I can see why it is a bad thing, but I saw even some really silly stuff, like a muslim friend that I know, being resolute that anyone having sex with a minor is evil and must be punished immediately.
Then I pointed that their prophet had a 9 year old wife (that by the way this girl also wrote good part of their holy book) and then she said that this does not count...
Why?
You know, my grandmother married when she was 14, and she is still married with the same guy, they make a great couple (last time I saw them, it looked like a typical teen couple, with my grandma JUMPING into my grandpa and hugging him like if it was a japanese anime or something, it kinda startled me to see old people do that, but then, why not?), and I have a hard time believing that a 14 year old girl is so dumb to the point of needing heavy-handed state protection in deciding her relationships.
Likewise I can say that I am a perverted evil man too... I started seeing porn when I was 14, and I found out girls of roughly the same age attractive, not some random aunt... Probably the hard-drives with that porn is still somewhere on my electronic quasi-junk stash... What happen if someone fiddle with my junk and find them? According to our current law I will go arrested for posession of child porn, even if I got it when I was a child myself...
Kinda child...
At least, Brazil only buckled to US pressure regarding the porn laws (That I think are absurd and silly, you should prosecute those caught in the tape abusing the kids, and maybe use the fact they filmed it as a aggravating factor, prosecuting random people for having any kind of porn or media is really stupid), the child sex laws make more sense... (here people above 14 can have sex, not 18 or 21... and if you think the law is wrong about that, then tell me how you will punish half of the 14 year old people in your area)