A porn trap to steer clear of

Date: September 08, 2004
Source: ZDNet UK
By: David Berlind

For two years, an immigrant has been trying to get me to tell his story -- one in which he was fired from his job, sent to jail, permanently saddled with a sex offender's record, and threatened with deportation after his system was confiscated and later found to have child pornography on it. He first contacted me when it looked as though his employer was building a case against him. Two years later, the story of Jack, whose life is now ruined, has since appeared on Wired.com and in The Register. Though I can't possibly attest to his innocence, Jack swears to me that someone in his company had the motive and the means to place incriminating images, including child pornography, on his system. Let's face it: If someone at your place of employment has it in for you, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to place incriminating images onto your system. For Jack, the rest is now history.

Something else is wrong with this picture. Given the very justifiable sensitivity to child pornography, I have questions: First, how can consumers of "legal" pornography accurately pinpoint the ages of the people in the images they're viewing? And if a consumer of "legal" pornography mistakenly opens an image only to discover something that's undeniably child porn, what proof must be offered to convince a judge that there was only interest in "legal" pornography and not child pornography? Is deleting it enough? Or could that be viewed as a cover-up attempt? How about deleting it right away?

I could go on, but you get the picture. These aren't just thorny problems for computer users, but also for employers looking to build cases against certain employees, and courtrooms where the role that technology plays in creating the scene of the crime is generally not very well understood.
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