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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.'"
Possession of bits of any source or type out not be a crime. What you have here is a thought crime, and it doesn't actually deter actual abuse against children to criminalize or attempt to criminalize the thoughts or track down the bits. Chasing bits does not keep flesh and blood children safe from flesh and blood predators but I suppose it keeps pictures (bits) safe from creepy thinking adults.
A lot of laws are going to have to change with the advance in technology. Neuroscience will soon reveal all about the brain, making our paranoid about child predators seem about as effective as the paranoia about witches or communists. It's 2012 and at this time Google probably has everyone's thoughts...*cough* search records in a database. At the same time with neuroscience and in specific FMRI we will know what other humans are thinking, this technology does exist and ought to completely change the justice system.
The main problem with crime in the past is we assumed we would never know what anyone else is thinking, never have complete understanding of motives, never know the best forms of deterring certain events but imagine for a moment that its some point in the future and we know what everyone's thoughts were before they committed the criminal act? Would we view the acts in the same way if we knew the exact thoughts behind the act? If a criminal could not lie and an FMRI lie detector test has 100% accuracy could we change the justice system completely? What about detecting psychopaths, sociopaths, and others who aren't capable of remorse, empathy or guilt prior to sentencing? As far as I'm concerned we should be moving toward abolishing prisons altogether not because we wont have dangerous people but because eventually our understanding of human behavior will be such that we wont need so many prisoners and also if we wanted to we could probably just use house arrest on the non-violent.
We have to do away with the concept of good and evil. There is no good and evil. There may be smart and stupid or competent and incompetent but there is no good and evil. A sociopath or psychopath is not evil, they are simply retarded in a particular physical area of brain development. It hinders their decision making in the same way that any other disorder can hinder decision making in that it makes them less emotionally intelligent. This has been proven by neuroscientists when under FMRI we can see sociopaths brains aren't capable of experiencing empathy, remorse, and have trouble detecting or interpreting fear in the face and body language of others.
If we were talking about artificial intelligence we'd be talking about it like it's a bug that the AI cannot detect fear, or cannot properly make use of the empathy functions or subroutines, but because it's a human being we call the problem sociopathy and in human beings the problem is physical and not a matter of programming so it cannot be easily fixed. For these sorts of individuals we need prisons, but according to most estimates they only represent 1% of the general population yet 20% of the prisoners. This would mean 80% of prisoners aren't sociopaths or psychopaths, even if we assume 50% of that 80% are violent it still leaves 40$ or so of prisoners who aren't sociopaths or psychopaths and who aren't violent.
The most radical idea I'm going to propose is that we get rid of the idea of criminal responsibility. This probably wont happen until far into the future but if we make it into the future with powerful AI and technology, and we understand human thinking and feeling, at least theoretically we will eventually know the true motivations behind all actions. If the universe is predetermined and a lot of actions are based on genes, consequences, what brain type you have, environment, and situations, none of which an individual has full control over, just what is responsible for crime? The role of suggestion, of subliminal triggers, the role of desperation and poverty, the role of lack of intelligence, a lot of different things can convince a person that
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:
Just possessing it, regardless of the reason, intent, etc is criminal. The law is very unbending on it. It gets applied pretty draconian at times too. A good example is a teenage couple sent naked pictures of themselves to each other via e-mail. They got out, and both were tried and convicted of child porn charges (and it was upheld on appeal). Doesn't matter that the pictures were of themselves, it is illegal, intent and any other factors are just not part of the law.
One likes to think the person would be considered a hero rather than be charged, but I can see it going wrong for them.
These are the same people who brought you marijuana residue on walls not being evidence of past use or possession, but the vanishingly small amounts of THC in the wall residue was possession in and of itself.
These are the same people who, when presented with more intrusive powers to track terrorists, claimed, golly, no, we will never, ever, not no way, not no how, ever use it for anything but terrorism, then, immediately after the law was passed, started using it against drugs, saying, "The law doesn't specifically state terrorism only, sorry!" They didn't even bother trying to conjure up the meme that drug selling is "a kind of" terrorism. They didn't have to.
These are the same people who are trying to get teenagers registered as lifelong felony producers of child porn who must register as sex offenders wherever they go for the rest of their lives because they took a nude shot of themselves and sent it to friends.
So...with these common horror stories as the tip of the iceberg, I wouldn't put it beyond some prosecutor to try to jail a guy who accidentally filmed a child rape then took it to police as a producer of child porn.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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
Consider this: if you stumbled across some child pornography, whether on the internet, or if you found a tape in the desert, or CDs in the attic of the house you bought a few years ago, you would be guilty of possession of child pornography. Say that these images depicted the brutal torture, rape, and murder of some number of toddlers. ANYONE would want to turn these over to the police so they could track down the monsters who hurt those children. But you realize that you are criminally liable, with the potential to wind up on a sex offender registry, lose your job, your family, your home, EVERYTHING, if the police or prosecutor decide that you might have wanked off while watching them or something. Rather than trying to help catch those monsters, you instead destroy the evidence, with tears in your eyes, because you aren't willing to endanger yourself or your family.
How you wish that the children had only been tortured and murdered on tape. Then you could have turned it in without fear. Stop confusing possession of evidence of a crime with COMMISSION of a crime. Also stop confusing recording of a crime with the crime itself.
Legalized possession of images of child abuse allows a market for such things to grow larger that it would be otherwise, creating a demand for more child abuse. There could still be laws against profiting from child abuse, but the drug market has proved that where there is money to be made there will be supply.
Someone who has evidence of child molestation could also be considered an accessory if they don't alert the authorities.
That said, the article raised a point that's not at all hypothetical. Not long ago, here on Slashdot, an ISP mentioned occasionally finding kiddie porn on their servers. At first they tried notifying the police. After getting threatened with prosecution, they switched to a policy of quietly deleting it.
Another key point that should be beyond argument is that the rape of a young child has *nothing* in common morally with a 17.9 year old sexting and the law should treat them separately.
The author then invents a fairy tail where a person with eye glasses with a built-in camera turns a corner and records a child being raped. He then makes the erroneous conclusion that video recording a crime in process would be a crime itself. It would be illegal if the person who caught it with his camcorder just walked away and didn't report it or worse yet posted the recording on the Internet.
Given that people have been arrested for illegal firearm posession for reporting a gun dumped on their property, your dismissal of the hazards here are, frankly, absurd.
However, if turned over to the police it would NOT be pornography it would be evidence of child molestation. It would only become pornography if it were kept by the individual.
ALL posession is illegal without special dispensation given. All possession. If you have some, for whatever reason it's up to the good grace of the police and prosecutor not o nail you for it.
You are a very trusting soul if you are heppy for them to have that power.
SJW n. One who posts facts.