child pornography laws

If you're so worried about who's watching clean out histories, lock things down, use proxies/freenet.

Luckily a lot of people committing such crimes get caught because of their stupidity.

I think they need to get both - the ones who make and distribute it and the ones who watch it.

If there was no market for it, then the ones making and distributing that disgusting stuff would not be making any money and wouldn't do it.

I think pop-ups are a whole different thing than people downloading porn to their computers. I'm not computer savvy enough to know if the computer whiz kids can tell the difference though.

I'm with Linda

I have quite a good filter on my laptop, but at work i won't open anything that has anything to do with porn, viagra etc...It goes straight into the trash can unopened.
IMO theres something wrong with people who's into things such as child porn

I agree with Linda.

I have never had any pornography or child pornography pop ups, but if I did get a child pornography pop up or even a link from someone online that was child pornography, I would be contacting the police immediately. I would never just say "ooops" and continue on with what I was doing.

You and i both Pam.

There are people working within the police force that are computer knowledgeable and can track people down by their screen name and IP, etc. They would probably be grateful for innocent people to let them know about these people so I'm sure they would pay attention.

I don't know about your police but we have one of the world's finest police forces and they do most often do things right. I don't believe they arrest "random kids" who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of the "random kids" they arrest are often well-known to the police. I've been at parties that have been raided by the police and because I wasn't doing anything I should not have been, I was treated with respect by the police and not hassled. I have seen and heard police hassling young people but only because the young people started mouthing off and hassling the police first so they should be prepared to take what they dish out.

They can track you through your ISP. You can clear your history file out every hour, but it's still on your hard drive. Nothing these days is fool proof.

Thats actually how they do find a lot of these sick people from just a screen name and they do find them.

Even my server provider would know if i was downloading material. I have the internet/e-mail only package, but they would know if i was to start downloading films, music etc because my neighbour was pulled by them and said if he carried on and extra £5 would be added onto his monthly bill.

Big Brother is watching, but i have nothing to hide so they can watch away for me

Although not professionally, I have a great interest in true crime and criminology, forensic psychology, etc. Most times, the people who have a downloaded collection of kiddie porn will or have done the actual deed themselves. They may or may not have taken pics or videotaped it. While there may be a few who search it out from some morbid curiosity, like some people search out crime scene photos, those who have a large collection of it aren't just curious. It's not the ones who "accidentally" download it, or some guy who likes the "barely legal" and accidentally gets pics of a girl who is 2 weeks shy of 18, that the cops are going after. The busts you hear of are of people with hundreds and thousands of these pictures and videos on their hard drives. That's not a mistake, an accident, or just curiosity. They are driving the market for this sick enterprise.

And yes, as others have said, with a record of a username/IP address, it is pretty easy to track people down, even if they are using proxies and all that. I've seen a website where you enter a static IP address (most broadband connections are static) and it will trace it down to the street location of where it originated. It's a hacker site, but you know the police and feds have the same or better technology.

As far as Casey Anthony's Google searches...well, she's an idiot. I mean, who searches for how to kill someone right before they do it on their own computer??? Seriously. Anyone with half a brain wouldn't do that. No one would have looked at her phone records either until she was suspected of murder, but you bet they pulled all incoming and outgoing calls to her home and cell phones around the dates in question.

But regardless...there's very little you can do on the internet that isn't recorded somewhere, by someone. There was a big to-do a while ago about Google keeping track of the searches on their servers. Ended up being settled with them saying that they just keep track of the searches for advertisement purposes and such, not who searches for what. But your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can also be keeping track of what sites you go to. Many have agreements not to, but some don't. Do you know what yours says? Many ISPs say that if you are found to be conducting illegal activity using their service, you will be cut off immediately. RIAA used the logs of ISPs to go after people they thought were file-sharing illegally. Everything you post here is logged into all of the search engines by their bots, as well as everything you post anywhere that isn't specifically a private space.

Please don't believe everything you read. Often it is slanted to whichever side the reporter wants it slanted and that's not necessarily the truth. In fact, I think it is a dangerous thing to believe something just because one has read it "somewhere".

I was going to say this last night, but simply felt to lazy at the time to bother.
Like with anything, if someone has an interest in something they're going to have something around and maybe even in large amounts that shows it. Whether it be an illegal activity or someone who likes having plants around. If you look, you'll find it.

There are ways around this, freenet and heavy encryption being the main way. Using someone else's network is another obvious way to hide a lot of your activity. And the other is friend to friend sharing of files only + the other two with it.
Freenet and similar options rather interest me because eventually the internet won't even be as "free" as it is now. Countries blacklists are just the start.

Rather O/T, but back years ago when WinMx was more popular I used to hang out on there in a couple chat rooms. This was before people were patching rooms against code flooding and nushi poison. There were well known (to people on WinMx) child porn rooms. I'm not ashamed to admit joining in harassing these people. Several of us would flood those rooms - which also disconnected those users clients, we'd hide under nushi poison and get IPs off of the people sharing lots of horrible files. Then would post their IPs and details about it in their room and in the hacker rooms. Ah, the good old days. Note: I don't suggest anyone ever engages in such behavior (my only excuse is that I was still at teen at the time). While it's mindless fun it did get someone PO'ed at me who was smart enough to retaliate - I was luckily in that I had my computer locked down and was firewalled.

Yes, there are definitely ways around it, but frankly you have to have quite a bit of computer/hacker type knowledge that most people simply don't have and don't have access to. They wouldn't know how to do it even if they got straight step-by-step instructions!

Depending on which class it was for, it still may be totally biased one way or another. I'm pretty sure the reading material for Ward Churchill's (being the most well know, extremely biased ex-professor currently) classes didn't always have generally agreed upon "facts" either, but rather the "facts" that he supported.

I will agree with you in the fact that the stupid criminals are easier to bust than the career criminals and those who are actually organized. I do, however, take exception to the idea that the cops regularly coerce confessions to up their cleared-cases rate. I'm sure there are some who do, but the vast majority don't. Bad apples and all that. I have family in law enforcement, and I guarantee those men would not ever do that. And, unfortunately, I know people with real-world experience from the other side too. That's just not the case.

Again, I don't know about other police forces but I feel bad for ours. They bust the criminals and put their lives on the line every day, the courts and judges let the criminals go with a slap on the wrist. I realize the courts and judges are limited to what they can do by the laws, but I think they are often much too lenient and it must be very frustrating for the police.

Police have nothing to do with giving sentences so I don't really understand how they can give them lesser sentences.

A bit O/T but I think so many people sell themselves short. Most people can learn to do lots of things, if they stop telling themselves they can't first.

As for access to - anything can be found if someone looks.. as ut0pia has proved, you don't even have to look for it sometimes.

Getting back on topic, I think it's great that so many child porn offenders have been caught by police forces being able to get information from their computers. And the police that go online and pretend to be young kids to get to predators - wonderful. We need more of that. Those sick people think they can hide behind their computer and be anonymous - well think again!

As for ut0pia's example of building a bomb, why would the average person want to know how to build a bomb unless they were doing a research paper or something like that on such a subject. That would be easy to prove if that were the case. And why would someone be surfing porn sites if they were not into porn? In all honesty they would have to be getting some kind of titillation from those sites IMO (unless they were just doing research .