(CyberAngels Director : Colin Gabriel Hatcher) writes:
Child pornographers encrypt their hard drives so that law enforcement cannot gather crime evidence - that is certainly a state of greater security for the pornographer, but it does not improve our Community, and as child pornography increases, the law is by definition broken more and more, and so the Community becomes less free than before.
This is silly on several levels. First, given that a finite amount of resources are available to combat the sexual exploitation of children, law enforcement should concentrate their resources on the production of such material, and not on the incidental evidence of its production long after the fact, and in a context completely unrelated to any economic link back to the original producers. Someone who has an encrypted file on their hard drive from some motheaten child porn magazine published 20 years ago is no more guilty of the exploitation of the models portrayed than someone who downloads the Simpson crime scene photos from alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless is guilty of killing Nicole and Ron. If anything, such a picture is little more than historical documentation of a bygone era and an expensive distraction for police officers who might better spend their time. Indeed, if encryption inhibits the ability of the government to create exceptions, based solely on irrational public hysteria, to the First Ammendment right of citizens to communicate amongst themselves on any subject, including via the use of visual material, then encryption is serving a valuable purpose. Now before anyone accuses me of advocating a thriving market in child porn, let me say that I have no objection at all to laws which set a minimum age for working as a performer in the sex industry, and to enthusiastic prosecution of individuals who violate those laws. I just think the police should concentrate their resources on real children experiencing real abuse, and leave their prurient interest in the contents of libraries and other peoples computers behind when they go to work. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $