Rick Falkvinge On Child Porn and Freedom Of the Press

bazorg writes "Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party blogs on the subject of freedom of the press and foresees how users of Google glasses could be charged for possession and distribution of illegal porn. 'Child pornography is a toxic subject, but a very important one that cannot and should not be ignored. This is an attempt to bring the topic to a serious discussion, and explain why possession of child pornography need to be re-legalized in the next ten years.'"

Comments

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't there existing protections limiting prosecution to knowingly and intentionally committing crimes? I can't see how legalizing possession completely will "fix" the "problem" of accidental prosecution in an effective way. Baby/bathwater and all that.

FTFL:

UPDATE: Some people have complained that no court would ever convict in this scenario, since you also recorded your unintentional approach. But possession of child pornography is a strict liability offense, like possession of cocaine, at least in the entire United States, as well as several other countries. Intent, mens rea, is irrelevant: if you have it, no matter why, you're guilty.

Re:Some good arguments, some bad arguments.

[Jiro]

It's a paranoid fantasy (involving some kind of uber-nerd/uber-hipster cross) about the government coming down harder on witnesses of a crime than the actual perpetrator.

If you also read the comments they mention two cases where this actually happened. They are in Swedish, but Google Translate does a fairly good job on them.

Relying on government's discretion to prevent people from being prosecuted for something that the law says is illegal will only work until you run into someone with an agenda, or a mindless bureaucrat. or a fanatic who happens to be in government.

Here's an example in english

[Anonymous Coward]

Simon Walsh: How bodged arrest and 'profoundly damaging' false charges have ruined my City Hall career

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/simon-walsh-how-bodged-arrest-and-profoundly-damaging-false-charges-have-ruined-my-city-hall-career-8046087.html

Re:lolwut?

[Skapare]

It happened when they made the law that was poorly worded to do exactly this.

Sure, judges will sometimes be smart enough to realize the law is wrong. But consider this ...

I read about a case many many years ago when PCs were just becoming common, and some internet thing was just emerging. A man had trouble with his PC not working so it takes it to the PC store to have it fixed. They find his hard drive died so they put in a replacement. Being cheap bastards they grabbed a HD known to be working from another PC (not sure why) and put it in the PC to be repaired. The man got the PC back, and there was still another issue, so he went for repairs again. This time they detected child porn on the HD that had been replaced in the previous visit, and called police (as the law required them to do). This man's life was ruined. He wife divorced him. He lost his job. He spent a few weeks in jail. His finances were wiped out by legal fees. In the end after a couple years the judge cleared him of all charges. He never even saw the child porn until a printed copy of one was shown in court. He never even accessed the files involved. He didn't even know they were there.

It is wrong to have a law that even allows this to begin to happen, since we can't have a law that makes everyone forget that it did. There are real things that are wrong enough that we do needs laws against them. But the laws need to be written by people who can thoroughly figure out all the effects. Our existing politicians aren't spending the time to even try, if even they were smart enough to do so (I'm absolutely certain 99% of them are not).

Re:On a philosophical level its just bits

[Shoten]

RTFA. He's right: child porn is one of the situtations where mens rea is not necessary. You are absolutely 100% wrong on this one. Possession, regardless of means, circumstance or intent, is a criminal act. I know this first-hand, from engagements where we deployed network-centric DLP solutions in a consulting role and were briefed in advance by a law enforcement official AND a lawyer as to what to do if we came across child porn in our systems. It's you who needs to learn about criminal law, not him.