Your medical professional can break confidentiality if they think you are a serious danger to yourself or others. You would think someone with mere ‘urges’ who hadn’t harmed a child would be safe seeking treatment but you’d be wrong. As I said before, pedophilia is not well understood and the knee-jerk reaction of most people is “ewww, burn it or lock it up” Medical professionals are hardly exempt from cultural bias. The fact is, with pedophilia there is the very real chance a mental health pro would simply call the police on the patient, rather than potentially having to face any share of responsibility if said patient later harmed a child. Getting treatment for the condition is iffy at best. So, for the pedo, there is a definite disincentive to seeking treatment. 

I agree with you on drug prohibition, I also agree that it might be more important than this issue, but if someone mentally ill is treatable, I think they should be treated, not put in jail, especially if they have not yet done harm to anyone. I’m not saying pedos don’t belong in jail – many of them do – but there are others out there (like the one who wrote into Dan Savage) who hate what they are and are motivated to change but don’t have any safe avenues for doing so.

The point Carl was trying to make originally is that Xeni should maybe try for that extra bit of professionalism by saying “alleged dirtbag” instead of just “dirtbag” – I happen to agree. Whether this is a ‘news site’ or a ‘blog’ hardly matters. It’s a question of respect for the rule of law and the unfortunates (whether guilty or innocent, they’re all unfortunate) who have to deal with the justice system.

Many are behind VPN and using onion and other methods. You realize the documented ones are the ones that either act out or take bait from the FBI. Meaning this problem is actually WAY bigger than most people probably realize. Which is pretty upsetting.

I spent most of my IT career (I’m now retired) working in an environment where everything was encrypted all the time.  I’m accustomed to working with it and consider it perfectly normal.  For well over a decade, all my home computers have employed, at minimum, full-disk encryption to protect data at rest.  I only turn on my computer when I’m using it and only use it while I’m at home, so I consider my data safe from anyone who breaks into my house while I’m gone.

I’ve also (yes, I’ll admit it) seen an occasional pornographic image.  On purpose, even.

Here’s what I don’t understand: Why was the guy using an unencrypted computer?  If he had time to stab it, he had time to unplug it, making the images on it (in practical terms, certainly for the regular local-police-level forensics team) impossible to recover.

I ask this NOT to help pedophiles; I assume the smart ones already know how to protect themselves.

I ask this for the benefit of anyone who consumes any type of pornography and uses any sort of automated downloading tools.  There are folks who get their jollies inserting child porn images on web boards, into usenet groups, into any place where files are stored or shared.  If you point your newsreader to any high-traffic unmoderated usenet porn group and tell it to grab all the binaries for the last seven days, if you click then shift-click to select a few thousand files from whatever-Mule, if you use any type of web spider to vacuum up binaries from virtually any porn-showing page on the web and tell the spider to go more than 3 link-levels deep, you’re vulnerable. 

Kick off any of the tools I’ve mentioned, set it to just grab *.jpg files, and leave your computer connected to a solidly fast connection for a day.  You’ll get 100,000 pictures or more.  You will have no idea what’s in those pictures.  I guarantee some of them will be child porn.  I further guarantee that there are prosecutors in this country that don’t care you didn’t know that stuff was on your machine.

Anyone who keeps porn on their computer should employ full-disk encryption, pull the plug if the cops ever show up, then shut up and get a lawyer.  It doesn’t matter what you’re “in” to, there may be child porn on your computer whether you know it or not.

Don’t go to jail just because you’re smart enough to use automated tools to fetch porn.

It gets more difficult when you’re dealing with children who weren’t harmed, but possibly may have been exploited, and that’s one place where the debate should be. If a mother took a picture of her toddlers in the bathtub, I don’t think she should go to jail just for that. But if it was her intention to sell the pictures later, then maybe it’s not so benign anymore.

If this man was supporting direct harm to children then he deserves his punishment, no question. But if no children were harmed whatsoever, I think he has the right to free speech, as deplorable as the speech might be.

As for the “Girl with a Dragoon Tattoo,” it’s relevant because I’m talking about offensive speech regarding a sexual act where someone is exploited. One is protected, the other is not. And it doesn’t make sense in the context of free speech.

Wouldn’t punishment for distribution of CGI-made kiddie-porn be for a thoughtcrime?

(No, I’m not in support of vileness, I’m just acting the devil’s advocate.)

Sexual contact with children is rape.
Those are apples.

Not being able to suppress your urges is a weakness of character, particularly if there are victims. 
Most pedophiles are not child predators. 
Those two are not the same. 

If your robust moral compass is what keeps you from sex-acts with children, you are a pedophile. 
If you don’t have that moral compass and act out your desire you are a monster, a child predator. 

I couldn’t even force myself to look at children with sexual desire any more than at men, flowers or puppies. 
I wasn’t made that way. 
But if I did have lusty thoughts involving kids, I would still not act on that impulse. 
My moral compass would make that impossible.  I hope. 

I share your desire to brutally murder certain people and just like you, I mostly refrain from doing so for various reasons. 
Fear of punishment being the least of them. 
For example, I would sleep alright after killing a sexual child abuser.

No and the law would be more likely to come down hard on the person who sent it. If you had just that one image on your computer and no more, it is likely nothing would happen. The biggest punishments are for creation and distribution, not possession. This guy is alleged to have distributed it. Different kettle of fish.

I think it could be a crime if in the making of the child pornography, someone was harming and/or exploiting a child.

That is guaranteed. What do you mean ‘if’?

Your comments re Girl with a dragon tattoo are irrelevant. We are talking about child porn here, not rape. Apples with apples please. On top of that it’s not like the movie consisted of ONLY rape. It was one scene that was crucial to the storyline. Child porn OTOH consists solely of child porn.

Or people with a robust moral compass. I have a tremendous urge to brutally murder certain people on this planet but I resist it because I do not have the right to satisfy my desire. Pedophilia is no different. Each person is responsible for keeping their own selfish desires in check and that includes pedos. The disease is lack of self control and nothing more.

Sincerely,
-King of the universe

2) C’mon guys… really? Can’t we have this discussion in another crypto-related post that isn’t potentially gonna be read by someone who is hoarding images of this nature?

In any case there are legitimate sources for images of violence (police file photos/war photography) while there aren’t many legitimate sources for child pornography (the only one I can think of is *maybe* historical photographs). Some people include anime and manga as images of child porn but that’s just fucking retarded… usually no one gets hurt in the creation of a drawing.

http://www.ehow.com/about_6756687_therapist-code-ethics-reporting-crime.html

Drug addicts mostly just harm themselves. Drug prohibition harms people. Yet we keep prohibition and punish addicts while very few people fight for the rights or rehabilitation of those addicts. I think we should fix that before we start defending pedos.

That’s what they’re doing. He is alleged to have shared the images over p2p. Usually these seedy rings require users to SHARE before they receive because that way the person sharing is more confident the recipient is not law enforcement (which is spurious logic considering the FBI probably has the biggest collection around).

Other than those reasons – sure… knock yourself out presuming his innocence.

Foil (n): a flexible four-sided rapier having a blunt point

However, I don’t think it’s a crime to be in possession of it. If someone were to email you a child porn pic and you unwittingly opened it, do you deserve a criminal record and a lifetime status as a sex offender if you get caught (especially with the government poised to monitor everything you do?)

But even if the qualifications are more substantial, I still don’t think it’s in itself a crime. I think it could be a crime if in the making of the child pornography, someone was harming and/or exploiting a child. And that’s really the only potential crime here people should be worried about. But if it were a simulation or a characterization or a work of pure fiction, I don’t think it’s a crime. It shouldn’t be illegal simply because it’s horrible.

Sometimes horrible art is an important reflection of the ugly side of ourselves as human beings. I watched what looked like a young girl getting raped in “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.” I don’t think this means people who have this film in their possession are rapists themselves or think rape is a good thing. I don’t think the actress was actually raped in the making of the film. I do believe rape is a crime, and it was very difficult to watch a crime like that on screen. And perhaps I have a better appreciation of what a terrible, violent crime it is for having seen it depicted. But I don’t think scenes like this should be illegal, and that everyone who watches or possesses the scene are criminals, just because the scene depicts something horrible.