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Mystery Solved: FBI Closed New Mexico Observatory to Investigate Child Porn (washingtonpost.com)
"The mysterious 11-day closure of a New Mexico solar observatory stemmed from an FBI investigation of a janitor suspected of using the facility's wireless internet service to send and receive child pornography, federal court documents showed..."
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: In July, FBI agents investigating child sexual exploitation traced the location of several IP addresses linked to child pornography activity to the observatory, according to a 39-page search warrant application. During an interview with federal authorities on Aug. 21, the facility's chief observer said he had found, on a number of occasions, the same laptop hidden and running in various seldom-used offices around the observatory. He described the contents of the laptop as "not good," according to court documents. A federal agent immediately went to the observatory, located deep within Lincoln National Forest, and took the laptop into evidence...
Aside from continuing to "feverishly" search the facility, the documents state that the janitor said, "it was only a matter of time before the facility 'got hit,'" and that he "believed there was a serial killer in the area, and that he was fearful that the killer might enter the facility and execute someone." In response to the janitor's behavior, the management of the observatory, without input from the FBI, shut it down and evacuated its personnel. The facility's cleaning contract with the janitor's parents was also terminated.
The warrant application specified that the janitor "has a key to the building and unlimited access to the building, and is familiar with which offices are used only a handful of times a year."
It also says that the janitor was the only person in the facility at the time of the alleged downloads.
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: In July, FBI agents investigating child sexual exploitation traced the location of several IP addresses linked to child pornography activity to the observatory, according to a 39-page search warrant application. During an interview with federal authorities on Aug. 21, the facility's chief observer said he had found, on a number of occasions, the same laptop hidden and running in various seldom-used offices around the observatory. He described the contents of the laptop as "not good," according to court documents. A federal agent immediately went to the observatory, located deep within Lincoln National Forest, and took the laptop into evidence...
Aside from continuing to "feverishly" search the facility, the documents state that the janitor said, "it was only a matter of time before the facility 'got hit,'" and that he "believed there was a serial killer in the area, and that he was fearful that the killer might enter the facility and execute someone." In response to the janitor's behavior, the management of the observatory, without input from the FBI, shut it down and evacuated its personnel. The facility's cleaning contract with the janitor's parents was also terminated.
The warrant application specified that the janitor "has a key to the building and unlimited access to the building, and is familiar with which offices are used only a handful of times a year."
It also says that the janitor was the only person in the facility at the time of the alleged downloads.
Why? If they were searching for and found child porn, why hasn't the man responsible been charged?
Couple of things come to mind, but only because I've heard and seen similar cases. When children are being actively abused, they'll delay charging the person so that either the person/people/group doesn't get tipped off. The fucked up thing on this is they will kill the kid(s) and attempt to flee. The absolute worst thing that you can see out of this is it isn't just "a kid" or "kids" in a local area, but a wide-network of this spanning multiple countries, provinces, states, and so on.
Give you an example, a couple of years back ~350 people were arrested all on the same day for child porn. The person who got caught initially wasn't charged. The were groups as large of 40 people(men and women) abusing children, trafficking children, engaging in child prostitution and other absolute degeneracy. ~400 children were rescued from those 350 people, that was just the bust in Canada. That led to another 200 in the US, 80 in the UK, 150 in Thailand...
Om, nomnomnom...