Written by Dallas Hyland
“Child pornography destroys the lives of everyone it touches. We must do everything we can to both prosecute the crime and help the victims. The Amy and Vicky Act will help ensure that child pornography victims get real and timely restitution to help them obtain the care they need to recover and move on with their lives.”
Sounds right on all fronts at face value. But serious questions are arising as to the nature and reach of this new legislation, and even some before it with regards to how exactly justice is carried out in prosecuting criminals sometimes arguably, who have not in fact committed a crime.
Sometimes a euphemism is used often enough that it loses the veracity of its meaning in context with its comparison. This may be the case for the tale of Pandora’s box, but in the case of the new legislation regarding child pornography, the lid is wide open and the unseen ripple effects while not yet tangible, will be severe I’d wager.
I knew a fellow who once worked on the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC)task force. While on a camping trip he explained to me how perpetrators were apprehended.
Specially designed software was used to flag IP addresses who used known child pornography sites. An administrative warrant was obtained and the agents would show up at the address of the IP address location and conduct a “knock and talk.”
Knowing full well that the administrative warrant had severe limitations and was not in fact an official search warrant, the idea was to see if the resident could be persuaded to let them in to search. People were told that suspicious activity was happening from their IP address and the agents were there to get to the bottom of it. If access was granted the investigation was now conducted with the permission of the resident who likely did not know they could require the agents to go get an actual search warrant.
If however, the resident did not wish to comply, the agents would tell the resident they were going to stand there at the door until a search warrant was obtained citing that reasonable cause was being established by the residents refusal to allow them in. In other words, they would trespass and intimidate.
Let’s stop here for a minute and take a breather from the host of police state like intimidation tactics and engage in a mutual disclaimer that applies quite level across the board for most people. Child pornography is a heinous, despicable crime and those who would willfully produce it deserve to be summarily disposed of in a Vermeer wood chipper feet first.
Agreed?
Back to my agent friend, I asked him if the people they conducted the knock and talks on were producing the material. He said usually not. They were downloading it however and watching it.
I queried further. What exactly is their crime?
He told me engaging in child pornography.
Again, feeling I was missing something I queried further. You are charging people with a crime for watching a crime?
He gave me some details basically saying that they were very careful and judicious in their approach but that the reason why someone several steps removed from the actual crime of producing the material was culpable was that statistics showed that those who viewed criminal porn were more likely to eventually engage in the act itself.
Can anyone say “Minority Report?”
If I have to explain to you how completely dangerous this approach to protecting citizens is, you missed civics class in high school. The fact that victims of this crime suffer irreparable physical and psychological harm goes without saying but making them the victim of every single person from the actual perpetrator to any and all possible people who see it is not only unrealistic, it is despotic.
Imagine if enough people were to surmise that people who read religious books had a tendency to say shoot up newspapers, coffee shops, and wayward settlers. Furthermore imagine that in addition to the actual perpetrators of such shootings, it became lawful to also imprison people who also read said books but had never shot anyone?
Tell me you see the danger in this.
I have first hand experience in putting myself on the line to protect children from heinous crimes. I also have first hand experience in putting myself on the line to protect the rights of our citizens, even the unsavory ones.
I have to believe we can come up with something more intelligently framed and effective than this. It’s worth discussing, no?
