Apple wants to protect the children...but is that what would happen?

A couple of months ago, Apple announced Expanded Protections for Children*:

Apple is introducing new child safety features in three areas, developed in collaboration with child safety experts. First, new communication tools will enable parents to play a more informed role in helping their children navigate communication online. The Messages app will use on-device machine learning to warn about sensitive content, while keeping private communications unreadable by Apple.

Next, iOS and iPadOS will use new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM [Child Sexual Abuse Material] online, while designing for user privacy. CSAM detection will help Apple provide valuable information to law enforcement on collections of CSAM in iCloud Photos.

Finally, updates to Siri and Search provide parents and children expanded information and help if they encounter unsafe situations. Siri and Search will also intervene when users try to search for CSAM-related topics.

These features are coming later this year in updates to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and macOS Monterey. [Emphasis added.]

A footnote indicates the the new features will be available in the U.S. 

The protective feature that interests me most is the one that intends to limit the spread of CSAM. You can read many different interpretations of the technical ins and outs but the question I want to think about is not technical: Will it protect children?

People eager to punish those who look at illegal images will be happy. Those with collections above an unspecified "threshold" amount should worry that they will be discovered.

Collections? Yes. Apple cryptography will be looking at images on Apple devices, deciding if they include CSAM, and then deciding if the collection of images includes enough to report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). How many is enough? Your guess is as good as mine because Apple does not say.

To determine if an image is CSAM, Apple will see if any of the images on the device match images already in the NCMEC database of images. 

Let me restate that. Apple will identify images that have already been identified by NCMEC as CSAM. Those images might be of children who were abused at the time the image was created. This offers no protection for kids who are currently being abused. If an abuser is recording the abuse and uploading it to the internet for other viewers, those images will not be identified as CSAM because new images are not in the NCMEC database yet.

If I am able to figure out that new images are not going to be discovered and reported (yet), so can people who want to distribute child porn. Where will those new images come from? Is Apple inadvertently encouraging the production of new images? 

The NCMEC database makes possible arrests of people who look at those images, not of the people who are abusing children and recording the abuse. The distinction is important if you care about protecting children who are being abused. 

Unfortunately for those children, the focus is on arresting the viewers and not the abusers. Arresting, convicting, and punishing people who look at existing images does not protect children who want the abuse to stop.

If you want to be picky about it, the broad label of "CSAM" includes anything that is considered child pornography and many, if not most, of those images are not of children being abused. A revealing image uploaded by a minor can be distributed to viewers beyond the intended audience. Once that image is noticed by NCMEC, it will forever be tagged as CSAM, even though there was no sexual abuse involved. 

Back to the question: How does this protect children?

Since sexting is done with cell phones and millions of kids use them, how many sexting images of underage kids will be sent to NCMEC by mandatory reporters? How many arrests of teens will result? Are those kids protected? Their actions may have been foolish but should they be criminal? 

If we can agree that dumping kids into the criminal justice system for sexting is a bad idea, why is it a good idea to arrest adults for looking at those images? How does that protect children who are being abused?

When someone is arrested for possessing, receiving, or distributing child porn, the images remain available on the internet just as they were before the arrest. How does that protect children who are in the images of actual sexual abuse? Sending the arrested person to prison for looking at illegal images gives law enforcement something to boast about and something for people to feel good about (bad guy goes to prison!) but it protects no one. The arrest and incarceration of viewers have no effect on the child in the image.

The biggest thing to remember is that new images, perhaps of current, on-going abuse, will not be found via the Apple cryptography exercise. Kids who are being abused get nothing from the theater of child porn arrests. Do not let this news from Apple fool you into thinking that children are protected by their plans to scan devices for CSAM.

People are horrified by the suggestion, but what would happen if it were legal to view child porn? More people would see those images. Many would condemn the idea for that reason alone. The idea that someone could look at the images is so abhorrent that people stop thinking at that point. They insist no one should be able to see these images--but for a child who has been recorded during sexual abuse, a larger audience could be the key to exposing the abuser. As it is now, it would be nearly impossible for a person to come forward to identify children or abusers in the images, because that report would include an admission of committing the crime of looking at child porn. What is seen in child porn stays in child porn.

Parents who discover that pornographic images of their children have been uploaded to the internet have no way to track down those images, no way to ask for the images to be removed from web servers. Simply searching for those images could result in arrest and incarceration. 

Apple may have good intentions of stopping people from looking at child porn but we must recognize that arresting a viewer is not the same as protecting children. Children are not protected when it is illegal to see images that prove abuse.

Protecting children from sexual abuse is imperative. Arresting people who look at child porn is not protection from abusers. It is sound and fury, signifying nothing in the battle against child sexual abuse.

When we hear that an individual, a company, an organization wants to protect the children, we must stop to examine their actions and the effect of those actions on children who need protection. Making images illegal when those very images could prove abuse does not protect the children. Driving images of child abuse further underground makes new images more valuable and that does not protect the children.

Apple might mean well but they have bought into the idea that punishing people for looking at a certain category of images will protect children. Like so many others, they are promoting the idea that looking at images of abuse is worse than the abuse itself.

Let's keep our priorities straight.

* A note has been added to this article: 

Update as of September 3, 2021: Previously we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them and to help limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material. Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.

researcher creates virtual child porn

A researcher in Canada is using virtual reality with plethysmography. Interesting work, for those bent that way.

In a maximum security mental health facility in Montreal is a “cave-like” virtual reality vault that’s used to show images of child sexual abuse to sex offenders. Patients sit inside the vault with devices placed around their penises to measure signs of arousal as they are shown computer-generated animations of naked children. 

Patients in a maximum security mental health facility. Not volunteers.

“We do develop pornography, but these images and animations are not used for the pleasure of the patient but to assess them,” said Patrice Renaud, who heads up the project at the Institut Philippe-Pinel.

I must say, so far it sounds nothing like pleasure. Renaud says,

“It’s a bit like using a polygraph but with other measurement techniques.”

Ah. A bit like palm-reading, too, except palm-reading doesn't try to sound scientific.

The patients sit on a stool inside the chamber wearing stereoscopic glasses which create the three-dimensional effect on the surrounding walls. The glasses are fitted with eye-tracking technology to ensure they aren’t trying to trick the system by avoiding looking at the critical content. 

“These guys do not like going through this assessment,” said Renaud, pointing out that the results can be shocking for the patient.

They don't like being treated like monkeys in a lab? Well, there's a surprise.

“It’s not easy for someone to discover he is attracted to violently molesting a kid. He may have been using the internet for some masturbatory activities using non-violent images or videos of children – which is not a good thing. But being tested in the lab and knowing he is also attracted to violence may be something that’s very difficult to understand.”

Is the point to find out what turns people on or to find out whether they will commit a sexual assault?

If they showed VR images of gay porn and aroused someone who previously thought he was straight...would that mean that the guy is likely to commit sex crimes against gays? We had better hope not, since a large number of heterosexuals watch gay porn.

If this study were trying to learn something interesting, it would test a control group of people who have not been arrested and have not suffered from mental illness.

The article discusses the fear that the child porn Renaud develops could find its way into the wild where it could entertain the wrong people.

The lab is under intense scrutiny from ethical committees and the police in Quebec. The computer-generated imagery must be encrypted and stored in a highly secure closed computer network inside the maximum security hospital so that the material doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. 

However, at a time when virtual reality pornography is on the rise, it’s not unreasonable to assume that someone will – if it hasn’t already happened – create virtual reality child abuse images designed explicitly to arouse rather than diagnose pedophiles. 

Thanks to advances in computer graphics, such experiences could be created without ever harming or exploiting children. But even if no children are harmed in the making of such imagery, would society tolerate its creation? Could the content provide an outlet to some pedophiles who don’t want to offend in real life? Or would a VR experience normalize behavior and act as a gateway to physical abuse? [My emphasis, throughout.]

If we are more interested in stopping child sexual abuse than in punishing those who look at illegal images--and that seems to be a big 'if'--then those are good questions. Is there a good application for virtual child porn?

Ethan Edwards, the co-founder of “Virtuous Pedophiles”, an online support group for people attracted to children but who do not want to molest them, argues virtual reality could help prevent real-life offences. 

Edwards believes that, provided the imagery of children is computer-generated and doesn’t involve any real victims, it should be legal, as should life-size child sex dolls and erotic stories about children. 

“I have a strong civil liberties streak and feel such things should be legal in the absence of very strong evidence they cause harm,” he said.

Nick Devin, a pedophile and co-founder of the site, called for thorough scientific research. “The answer may be different for different people. For me, doing these things wouldn’t increase or reduce the risk to kids: I’m not going to molest a kid whether I fantasize or not.” 

It’s a view echoed by Canadian forensic psychologist Michael Seto. He believes that VR could provide a safer outlet for individuals with well-developed self control. 

“But for others, such as those who are more impulsive, prone to risk-taking, or indifferent about the effects of their actions on others, then access to virtual child pornography could have negative effects and perhaps increase their desire for contact with real children.”

It’s a risk that concerns Renaud, who describes VR child abuse imagery and child-shaped sex robots as “a very bad idea”.

He says this as he develops VR child abuse imagery.

“Only a very small portion of pedophiles could use that kind of sexual proxy without having the urge to go outside and get the real stuff,” he said. 

Any research to show that this is true?

It’s not just child sex abuse experiences that are concerning to Renaud, but violent first-person sexual experiences including rape and even entirely new deviances “like having sex with monsters with three penises and blue skin”. 

Mr. Renaud has a very active imagination, it seems.

“We don’t know what effect these sexual experiences will have on the behavior of children and adults in the future,” he said.

Maybe he should put on the VR goggles, strap a device around his penis, and see what his own reactions would be.

child porn investigation damages the whole family

A story from Nebraska:

...Paul Nader was arrested, charged with seven counts of child pornography and held in the Sarpy County Jail for almost a month. His arrest was reported on TV and online, along with his booking photo. Reporters talked to his neighbors about how he interacted with his kids. 

Then, seven months after the arrest, the charges were dismissed. 

Now the Naders have filed a federal lawsuit against Papillion, Sarpy County, Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov and several Papillion police detectives, citing the anguish and embarrassment of the episode.

 An arrest on child pornography charges would cause anguish and embarrassment to anyone, guilty or innocent.

On March 17, 2015, Papillion police searched the Nader home and questioned Paul Nader. During the search they found chemicals and books on terrorism. Nader said the chemicals were used to polish jewelry. According to the lawsuit, he spent more than 15 years in the Air Force, where he worked in counterintelligence. At the time of the search he was getting his doctorate in strategic security, the suit says, which he said accounted for the books. But police called in a bomb squad before confirming that the chemicals were legal.

Papillion police found none of the images identified by the tips during their search, according to the lawsuit. Nader was arrested based “solely” on the tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the couple’s suit says. He was charged with six counts of possession of child pornography. The charges later were amended to seven counts, then later changed to three counts.

Eventually, the charges were dropped. No harm done?

No.

The Naders’ children were placed with a relative. And after Nader posted bail and left jail, he was denied contact with his children for 79 days.

Nader's wife, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, suspects that she was passed over for promotions because of her husband's child porn charges.

Police seized computers, tablets, cellphones, thumb drives and hard drives, among other items, from the Naders. The seized items included equipment on which Nader had stored his thesis and research, which he spent four years working on. That work was “irreplaceable,” according to a motion he filed in Sarpy County District Court to have his items returned. Much of this property was destroyed, the documents indicate. It is not clear if Paul Nader got his thesis work back.

Think about the data stored on the digital devices in your home: contact information, tax and other financial records, photos, videos, music, business records. How much damage would it do if a tornado or a flood snatched all of that away from you?

For the Naders, it wasn't a tornado or flood that did the damage and it could have been reversed if the investigators or prosecutors had completed the examination of the confiscated equipment quickly and returned the "clean" equipment back to the family. The damage could have been lessened if copies of important files had been returned to the family.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that Nader was guilty. We could argue about whether he deserves to have the equipment returned to him but does his family? 

His wife and children were not charged with any crime and yet they suffered enormous losses. Removing children from the home without evidence that they have been terribly mistreated--and without evidence that the wife will also mistreat them--is inexcusable. Keeping children away from their father even though none of his charges were for contact offenses, let alone contact offenses involving his kids, is also inexcusable.

Criminal investigations ought to be done while treating innocent family members as if they are innocent.

The government caused great unnecessary damage to the Nader family. I hope they win their lawsuit.

Utah declares pornography a public health crisis

Utah officially passed a resolution declaring pornography to be a public health crisis. Sounds good, right? People need to recognize that using pornography can have lasting negative effects.

S.C.R. 9 Concurrent Resolution on the Public Health Crisis says, in part:

WHEREAS, pornography is contributing to the hypersexualization of teens, and even prepubescent children, in our society;
WHEREAS, due to advances in technology and the universal availability of the Internet, young children are exposed to what used to be referred to as hard core, but is now considered mainstream, pornography at an alarming rate;
WHEREAS, the average age of exposure to pornography is now 11 to 12 years of age;
WHEREAS, this early exposure is leading to low self-esteem and body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and an increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior;
WHEREAS, exposure to pornography often serves as childrens' and youths' sex education and shapes their sexual templates;

Yes, porn can do serious damage.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah, the Governor concurring therein, recognizes that pornography is a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislature and the Governor recognize the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation. 

Utah isn't all resolution and no action, though. They also passed HB0155, creating a law that:

• requires that a computer technician who finds child pornography in the course of the technician's work shall report the finding to law enforcement or the federal Cyber Tip Line for child pornography; ...
• provides that the willful failure to report the child pornography is a class B misdemeanor;
• provides immunity for a computer technician who reports in good faith or acting in good faith does not make a report

As if we don't have enough people in our criminal justice system already, now we are going to add computer technicians who don't report images that are or could be considered child pornography.

The law provides immunity for a tech who...acting in good faith does not make a report. How do they decide if the tech is acting in good faith? 

The law says:

good faith may be presumed from an employee's or employer's previous course of conduct when the employee or employer has made appropriate reports

...which means, the more people a tech reports, the safer the tech will be if he or she decides not to report someone.

What child pornography will computer technicians most likely encounter? In a world where nearly every teen carries a phone with a camera and in a world where, as the Utah resolution says, there is an increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior, it is probable that computer techs will discover nude selfies of teens.

Yes, that is considered child pornography and someone in possession of those images can be charged with receiving, distributing, or creating child porn. Serious crimes that carry serious mandatory minimum sentences if charged in federal court. If computer techs report the images to the federal Cyber Tip Line, it is likely that the "crime" will be a federal crime.

How badly do we want to punish teens for what is, for better or worse, normal teen behavior? Do we want a world in which teens take nude selfies ... or a world in which teens take nude selfies and have criminal records?

Is criminalization the only way to discourage unwanted behavior? We saw what happened during Prohibition, when criminalization drove the booze industry underground where violence was the only enforcer. We have seen what forty years of the War on Drugs has gotten us: the recreational drug industry is driven underground where violence is the only enforcer and where illicit drugs are still widely available, less expensive than ever, and often more powerful. 

We know what the outcome will be and yet legislators still try the same failed trick of making unwise and unwanted behavior illegal.

pulling misused images of a child off the Internet

How would you react if you learned that pictures of your kids were available on child porn websites? Most of us would be desperate to stop the abuse, desperate to find out who the abuser is, and desperate to pull those photos from the Internet.

Here is the story of a mother chasing down photos of her daughter, photos that were not pornographic. The little girl was photographed with Hillary Clinton and Clinton opponents turned the photo into a meme that included statements the mother didn't want associated with her daughter. The mother fought back against what she saw as offensive use of her daughter's image.

...more than a year later — the day after Clinton lost the election and as Jones was processing her own grief over the loss — their treasured photo was turned into something sinister. Someone had taken the photo, originally uploaded to the Clinton campaign Flickr page, and turned it into a meme that was then shared thousands of times across social media. 

Bold white type across the top of the image read, “I AM FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS!” Then halfway down, text covering the lower half of Sullivan’s body accused Clinton of accepting money and refugees from countries “that would mutilate this girl’s genitals, marry her to a Muslim pedophile, and stone her to death if she doesn’t wear a bedsheet.”

The message turned the little girl's picture into something ugly and by the time her mother realized how it had been used, much time had passed.

...she searched for the photo online and found thousands of blogs and feeds on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook that shared the image. She believed what she’d always been told: Once something is on the Internet, it’s there forever.

“I felt like I failed her,” Jones said. “As a mother, your job is to protect and fix things, and I wasn’t able to fix it. I’ve never felt so low in my life with this image being out there that I had no control over.”

Parents who learn that a pornographic image of their child is available on the Internet surely feel a similar helplessness.

She traced one photo to a Facebook page, “Men for Donald Trump,” which has more than 200,000 followers. She implored them to take it down. At first they resisted, but after dozens of her friends bombarded them with messages, they obliged. It was a victory, but a small one. That was only one site. There were countless more. Was it even possible to go to each one and make the same request?

If a parent tried to search out pornographic images of his or her child, the parent would be committing the crime of downloading child pornography.

Several days later, she posted about it on Pantsuit Nation, the Facebook group of more than 3 million that started as a secret pro-Clinton page and has morphed into a massive online community where people share stories and seek support. Jones asked if they could help her report the image one-by-one. 

Imagine asking millions of people to help you find images of your child on child porn websites. How quickly do you think law enforcement would be at your door?

Soon messages poured into her inbox offering help. This person knew someone at Pinterest who could help; another had a contact at the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Then she got a message from Shaun Kozolchyk, the San Francisco director of development for the Anti-Defamation League. 

“I am a mother of my own two daughters. I was so horrified and deeply affected by that post and knew the work we do at ADL could be a space that could be helpful,” Kozolchyk said. 

She contacted a colleague who works on cyber-hate response issues, who immediately verified that the Clinton campaign held the copyright to that photo. Any unauthorized use of it was against the law. The ADL sent a take-down notice to the originating sites and, soon after, it disappeared from the Internet.

What a relief that must be--a relief that parents of children in child porn images will not feel. After a child porn user is arrested, the child porn images are still available. When child porn sites are discovered, law enforcement may not shut it down immediately, allowing users to continue downloading images.

“When I got all this response from all these people from all over the country, it’s going to sound cheesy, but it felt like this giant blue blanket of love wrapped over me, and I didn’t feel alone anymore,” Jones said. “There were so many people, who said, ‘we got you.’” 

But what happened next gives Jones reason to believe her fight had a wider cause. When she shared again on Pantsuit Nation what the ADL had been able to do, others started coming forward saying their child’s image had been used in a meme. They just didn’t think there was anything they could do about it.

This mom is spreading hope to other parents who want to fight back against those who misuse images of their children. Parents who want to do the same with pornographic images of their child are out of luck. No hope for them.

Child porn laws prevent parents from stopping the dissemination of images of their children. The images, which may be the only evidence of child sex abuse crimes, are driven underground, making it harder to find them and harder to identify who created the images. Children who are abused for porn production are left with no protection, no giant blue blanket of love, no one who says we got you.

The laws concentrate on punishing those who would use child porn; the lawmakers ignore the dangerous consequences of driving the images underground.

Which is more offensive? The knowledge that someone is using the images for sexual gratification or the knowledge that someone is abusing a child?

What awful helplessness is caused by well-meaning laws.


Related, a post from October 2013: when embarrassing pictures go viral

porn addiction can lead to an interest in child pornography

Fight The New Drug tells the story of a teen in Mustang OK arrested on child pornography charges after cops found a large collection in his home. The article includes good information about the effects of addiction to pornography.

For some consistent porn viewers, after a while, “regular” porn just doesn’t do it for them anymore. Just like any other drug or behavioral addiction like gambling, research has shown that porn is a behavior that escalates. And for some people, porn use can eventually evolve into a curiosity or an appetite for violent porn or child pornography.

Someone who looks at child porn may have had a longtime interest in legal porn. The fact that he has looked at child porn does not mean that his sexual interest has changed from an interest in adults to an interest in children anymore than looking at gay porn means the viewer is now gay or looking at straight porn makes gays straight.

Every day, children are filmed while they’re sexually abused and the content is then distributed worldwide. It’s a booming underground industry that continues to grow year after year.

Driving child porn underground may seem like the best idea for something we wish were not available at all but if we care about the children in the images who have been abused, we should be making it more possible to see those images, to keep the evidence of those crimes visible. Abusers count on their crimes going undiscovered and that is no way to put an end to the abuse.

We cannot let our distaste--our horror--of those images stand in the way of stopping the abuse.

While some child-porn viewers can be classified with a diagnosable disorder of pedophilia, others find themselves attracted to children after years of legal porn use.

Attracted to children or drawn to illegal images of children? The distinction is important and usually ignored.

Not only is child pornography damaging to the viewer, it creates a demand and when there is a demand there will always be a supplier ready to make money off of it.

There may be some sites that charge fees but most child porn available through the Internet is free.

Child porn viewers do not appear out of thin air, they develop with a history of “regular” pornography use. Porn use is a slippery slope to ideas and behavior that negatively affect the individual and our society as a whole.

Fight the New Drug is a non-profit whose mission is...

...to raise awareness on the harmful effects of pornography through creative mediums.

Their website is full of information about the effects of pornography. It is worth spending some time there.

lessons to be learned from teens charged with child porn felonies

In Bellevue NE, four teens and an adult have been charged with child pornography crimes. The article says the 20-year-old set up "an account online" and then lured a 17-year-old girl to send him sexually explicit photos of herself. The images were then passed around among the four teens.

Definitely nasty behavior, if this is truly what happened. The article gives very few details.

Amie Konwinski, of Smart Girl Style, was interviewed for the story and she has advice for parents.

Konwinski said it's a relatively new story but it's one she's heard before. Konwinski teaches teens and parents about the power of social media. 

"We really need to tell our kids that hey, this is a thing. Predatory sextortion is a possibility, and how easy it is for somebody to create a fake account and ask those girls for those pics," Konwinski said.

Predatory sextortion might be a thing but getting charged with a felony is a thing that might be more likely to happen and will do as much if not more damage to the teens involved. Konwinski ought to be educating teens and their parents about felony charges that can result from what teens see as private behavior.

Konwinski said parents need to have conversations with their children and keep an eye on their social media. She said one way to do this is making sure teens can't download apps without parental permission and to be aware that they may have accounts they don't want the parents to see. 

This is ridiculous advice. Teens using social media for private communication that may include intimate photos--no matter how unwise that is--need to know the dangers involved. They could be arrested, go to prison, and be on the sex offender registry for the rest of their lives.

"Parents need to sit down and say, 'Hey, what's your secret Instagram account?' And see what your kid says. If their eyes get big, you got them there," Konwinski said.

Well, there you go. Now that you know they have a secret account, you got them there. What are you going to do with that information? Parents who do not already know how easily kids can set up accounts without telling Mom and Dad are way behind in the game.

Instead of gotcha questions for teens about secret Instagram accounts, parents must educate kids about how impulsive behavior can be charged as a felony, how easily those crimes can be discovered, and the terrible weight of the punishment that can follow.

Instead of clinging to the belief that child porn always means unspeakable images of toddlers, parents need to tell kids that child porn can include images of teens who are definitely not children. Barring developmental issues, a 17-year-old is not a child.

Instead of teaching them the usual lesson that social media can be used to harm girls, teach them that both boys and girls can be charged with felonies for producing, sending, or receiving images meant only for significant others.

Instead of trying to catch kids at wrong-doing, educate them about how private behavior--exchanging naughty pictures or videos--can land them in serious legal trouble. Tagging kids with a sex offender label will hinder their ability to finish high school, go to college, get a job, raise a family of their own.

Perhaps most important of all, talk to your legislators about how easily kids can be caught up in the criminal justice system and how the laws need to change. Tell them that labeling kids with a label that will affect them for the rest of their lives is a grave injustice that must be righted.

Remember, too, that many families are already living that awful reality. Getting arrested as an adult instead of as a teen does not make the registry a more just punishment.

Tell your legislators that no family deserves to live on the registry. Tell them to abolish the registry.

Law and Order: SVU surprises me

I wrote a piece for the National RSOL (Reform Sex Offender Laws) website: 

A friend asked me to watch this week’s episode of Law and Order SVU, a show I stopped watching years ago because its enjoyment of perversion–what awful crimes can we detail for our audience this week?–was disturbing. My friend told me this episode, “Collateral Damages” (season 17, episode 15), was about child pornography, so I expected the show to get the details all wrong. Television so often does. 

Stop reading now if you do not want spoilers. 

The episode begins with an undercover operation in which the cops set up a popular local celebrity so that he will commit a sex crime against an undercover cop posing as a girl “almost 16 years old.” In a bare few minutes, the celebrity meets the “teen,” tells her she is a bombshell, gives her alcohol, convinces her to pose topless for him, photographs her, and begins to unbuckle his belt. That’s when the cops move in to arrest him for producing child pornography and for attempted rape of a child. 

I rolled my eyes and settled in for more simplistic nonsense. Then the show gets interesting. 

The celebrity makes a deal to help the cops nail a “pedophile ring” in exchange for a lighter sentence. (The word “pedophile” is tossed around in the show in a facile way that makes it obvious the writers did not bother checking the definition.) He provides information that helps the cops identify IP addresses, and they move in to arrest several men. In a twist, one of the members of the pedophile ring turns out to be one of their own, the Deputy Commissioner no one likes. 

The Deputy Commissioner’s wife, though, is well-liked, and her work as a children’s advocate attorney is respected. She and her husband have two children. 

We watch as their home fills up with cops. We watch the cops take the husband and father away. We watch the confusion of the wife and kids. We watch as they are told to go to a hotel so the cops can search the apartment. 

I wasn’t rolling my eyes anymore. My heart was pounding. I remember this. 

I remember the chaos, the anger, the fear, the confusion. 

Law and Order gets the bad guy, as usual, but this episode, too close to real life, is not neatly wrapped up. 

To protect the children from the media firestorm, they are sent to live with grandparents. The wife is told to take leave of absence from her job. She moves to a hotel to avoid the press. 

The husband tries to kill himself. The wife wonders how she could have missed seeing that her husband was sick. 

The celebrity who actually did sexually assault kids? He will serve about six months. 

The Deputy Commissioner heads to prison for four years as part of a plea deal that includes heavy duty treatment and registration. His anguish and shame and self-disgust is obvious. This time it is clear that he, while disliked by the cops and while guilty of looking at child porn, is also a beloved father and husband. 

A good man whose family will suffer because of what he did. And his family is my family: collateral damage.

When TV shows begin to show the inequities in the criminal justice system and the effect on the families involved, change is on the way.

how it feels to register

How does it feel to have to register? Sosen.org carries a piece written by a registrant and he includes registration stories from other people. 

The writer tells us what it is like to register every three months:

The last week before I must register my family notices that I am irritable and tend to snap at them a lot.   I lose interest in most everything and do not eat very much.  I look at the date as many as twenty times a day.  I can’t be late.  I get sick often and I don’t sleep. Depression set in and I find it hard to concentrate.

About two days before I have to register I start playing the what if game.  What if the law has changed and I didn’t know it?  What if they change it to a strict 90 days and not the three month calendar date?  What if they arrest me for something I don’t know about?

Is he paranoid? Not a bit. Laws change and often registrants are not notified of the changes.

The same scenario plays out every time.  I take my wife into my office.  I make sure she has all my internet passwords and accounts.  I make sure she has our lawyer’s phone number close at hand.

Four times a year, he prepares to leave his family. Just in case.

The registration routine varies. Every jurisdiction does things a little differently. This man goes to an office where he has to go into the jail to register.

While the jailer retrieves my paperwork I look around the room.  Concrete block walls, brown in color.  It is cool around 65 degrees.  There are three holding cells behind me and a shower in the open [cell] to my left.  On more than one occasion I have been there when a prisoner was stripped and showered by force, once it was a woman.  I felt so badly for her.  She cried as they removed [her clothes,] showered her and threw her into a holding cell.  The jailers, one man and two women laughed and made comments about her body.  I was sickened by it and ask myself, Who are the sex offenders?

I know a man who, when registering for the first time, was asked to describe the child porn he downloaded. The officer asked, what race were the girls in the videos? None of those details were needed for the registration record; the officers entertained themselves by humiliating the man in front of his wife. So, yes, one does wonder who the creeps really are.

The writer tells the stories of other people who register or have a family member who does.

A mother says:

Every 90 days when my child is forced to register as a high risk, violent predator, for consensual sex at age 16, I feel a fire burn through my veins at how callously his life has been destroyed not only by the ignorance of the politicians but the citizens of this country who are under the myth that registries protect children. As a mother, parent and citizen I realize I have a responsibility to educate others with the truth on these laws and find ways to truly prevent child sexual abuse by using facts, statistics and education and treatment.

States that adopted the Adam Walsh Act assign tiers based on the crimes. Everyone convicted of this crime belongs to this tier; the tier assignments are automatic. No one looks at each registrant to decide if he or she presents a risk to the community. Lives of registrants and their families are profoundly affected, and unfairly affected, by that automatic tier assignment.

A man says:

It feels like I have no rights, my country is waging war against me and my family, and nothing I have done in 23 years counts for anything. 

A woman writes about her husband:

As he gets older, he slips further and further away from feeling like he’ll ever find any kind of redemption on this earth.  He’s also distanced himself more and more from his family because they’ve given him little opportunity for redemption.  It’s very difficult to watch on a daily basis.

Registry laws do not offer redemption; instead the registry keeps them from finding it in the community. When someone is given the label that generates fear and disgust from the community, how is he ever to live down his past?

The rest of us get to move beyond the mistakes we made, big and small. For registrants, the country is waging war against them, passing laws willy-nilly, with no regard to the effect on the families of registrants...and no regard for the fact that those laws protect no one.

No one except politicians. When you vote for a candidate because he or she promises to keep your children safe, you aren't protecting children, you are protecting the politician's job.

Abolish the registry.

in the interests of justice, a 5-day child porn sentence

In Brooklyn, a man plead guilty to possession of child porn. Federal guidelines recommended a 6.5 to 8 year prison sentence. The judge sentenced him to five days.

Five days.

U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein wrote a 98-page decision explaining why he bypassed the guidelines and chose not to put the man in prison for possessing two dozen photos and videos — some showing men sexually assaulting girls as young as 3 years old, according to court papers.

 Ninety-eight pages! This judge wants to be understood.

"Removing R.V. from his family will not further the interests of justice," Weinstein wrote, using the defendant's initials. 

Not the interests of retribution or the interests of disgust and fear, but the interests of justice.

"It will cause serious harm to his young children by depriving them of a loving father and role model and will strip R.V. of the opportunity to heal through continued sustained treatment and the support of his close family."

The judge recognizes something important: the defendant's five children would be at risk if their father went to prison, he would not get needed treatment in prison, and the man is not a danger to society.

The existing guidelines, Weinstein wrote, do not "adequately balance the need to protect the public, and juveniles in particular, against the need to avoid excessive punishment."

Protecting juveniles includes the defendant's kids as well as kids who sext. Kids who sext, as foolish as they might be, should not be considered producers of child pornography nor do they deserve the long sentences called for in the guidelines.

...Weinstein thought [6.5 to 8 years] was too much time for an offender who did not make, swap or sell child porn or try to abuse children. He said the five days the man served before making bail, plus seven years of court supervision and a fine, were punishment enough.

Seven years of court supervision may not be prison but it is not a light sentence by any means.

The judge noted that the man was undergoing sex offender treatment and was deemed unlikely to relapse and that a psychiatrist testified he was not a danger to his own or other children. He also noted that the Internet has made child pornography accessible to a much wider group of Americans who might not otherwise have been exposed to it.

More and more people seek out pornography because it is so easily--and so privately!--available on the Internet. Mandatory reporting laws make certain that those who want help to stop looking at child porn have no sure way to get help without being turned in to law enforcement.

Those who favor tougher sentences point out that while many consumers of child pornography may not never [sic] lay a hand on a child, some do. And all, they say, play a role in a system that promotes the abuse of children.

Yes, some do. Why not punish them for what they did instead of punishing all child porn downloaders as if they did?

"The viewing has a market-creation effect," Cassel said. "It ends up leading inexorably to the rape of children."

Again, those who rape anyone, adult or child, ought to be punished for rape. Someone who commissions a sexual assault against anyone, adult or child, should be punished.

Those who look at a video of a crime should not be punished for a crime already committed by someone else or for a crime yet to be committed by someone else.

Jennifer Freeman, an attorney who represents child-porn victims in efforts to obtain restitution, called Weinstein's opinion "a diatribe" and said he was using the particulars of one case to indict the entire sentencing structure.

The entire sentencing structure is built around the idea that every child porn case is the same and every child porn viewer is the same. The particulars of each case ought to matter.

Because those who create vile child porn are so difficult to find and prosecute, the criminal justice system comes down hardest on those who are easiest to find.

Punishment by proxy.

Judge Weinstein has long opposed the lengthy sentences recommended for child porn offenses.

FBI, distributor of child pornography: #3

The FBI is at it again. Pretending to protect the children by exploiting the children.

Motherboard has reported that as the result of an unprecedented hacking campaign, the FBI had seized the server of the world’s largest known secret child pornography database, “Playpen”, and collected the 1,300 or so IP addresses of its users.

First, only 1,300 IP addresses were using the world's largest child porn database?

Second,

...instead of shutting the site down right away, the FBI temporarily moved Playpen to its own server in Virginia and deployed a network investigative technique (NIT) in order to identify those logging in.

Taking over the site and letting it continue to operate means the feds were purveyors of child pornography. One of the men arrested is arguing that his case should be dismissed because the FBI itself was operating illegally.

"There is no law enforcement exemption, or statutory exemption for the distribution of child pornography," Colin Fieman, one of the federal public defenders filing the motion to dismiss the indictment claimed during a phone interview earlier this week, Motherboard reported.

I have blogged about other cases (one, two) in which the FBI continued operating a website that distributed child porn.

child, adult; victim, perpetrator...it is hard to keep track

Robby Soave writes in Reason about a North Carolina high school couple who sexted each other and the photos were discovered. They were both facing multiple felony charges but she plead to a lesser charge and was given a year of probation.

He, on the other hand,

...is still facing two counts of second-degree sexual exploitation and three counts of third-degree exploitation. As Ricochet’s Tom Meyer points out, the third-degree charges—which constitute a majority of the total charges—actually stem from the pictures [the young man] had of himself. 

In North Carolina, third degree sexual exploitation of a minor means a visual representation of a minor engaging in sexual activity.

He took a picture of himself and had it on his phone. That is what the third degree charges are about.

But consider this: North Carolina is one of two states in the country (the other is progressive New York) that considers 16 to be the age of adulthood for criminal purposes. This mean, of course, that [the young man] can be tried as an adult for exploiting a minor—himself.

Tom Meyer, in Ricochet, sums it up.

A few details make the case particularly noteworthy and offensive:

• There is no indication that the photographs were disseminated beyond the couple until the male student’s phone was seized as part of a separate investigation involving misdemeanor property damage.
• The two were charged with “exploitation of a minor,” despite each being a minor at the time they made the photographs. More bizarrely yet, most of the charges against the teens were for having pictures of themselves on their own phones; i.e., each was charged for photographing and/or storing images of his or her own nether regions.
• The laws they are accused of violating are not merely identical to those pertaining to genuine child pornographers, but are in, in fact, the very same laws that make child pornography illegal.

Old enough to have sex; too young to be photographed naked.

Young enough to be called a child when it serves the prosecution; old enough to be charged as an adult.

The kids aren't the ones who are exploiting minors. The courts are.

arrested for attending church

A North Carolina man was arrested for going to church. Why, yes, he is a sex offender. How did you know?

Deputuies said they began investigating registered sex offender Kenneth Lee Cagle, 53, two months ago when they received complaints that he was starting a church. 

Two months of Sundays! One would hope the deputies would have heard something in that time about mercy.

Cagle was convicted of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor almost a decade ago, officials said.

Third-degree sounds bad, doesn't it? Like a burn. Third-degree burns are the worst. And sexual exploitation...gosh. What in God's name did he do to that child?

Third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor in North Carolina means he looked at child pornography. He molested no one.

He was wrong to look at illegal images and he certainly ought to avoid doing that again. Turning to God seems like a good idea for someone trying to be a better man.

Deputies found that Cagle had successfully opened a church where he served as a church elder and led part of church services.

Perhaps not just a good idea but an inspired idea. The families at the church knew of the man's crime. Gathering once or twice a week to worship with him in their midst can be a gentle way to remind him--and each other--that there is a better way.

His involvement in the church is a violation of state law, according to deputies.  

Doesn't North Carolina want someone who once looked at illegal images to be a better man? No, North Carolina legislators made it a crime for registered sex offenders to be involved at church.

During a traffic stop after a church service on Sunday, deputies charged Cagle with sex offender employment violation and being a sex offender with a child on the premises. 

It is certainly understandable that North Carolina would not want children to be molested in church but what are they doing to protect children from people not on the registry? The truth is that it is more likely that a child will be molested by someone not on the registry. 

Two month investigation, though. That's still a mystery.

Microsoft PhotoDNA now free

For years, companies like Facebook and Twitter have been using Microsoft PhotoDNA to weed out illegal images from files uploaded to their websites. Now Microsoft is making PhotoDNA available for free to the little guys because small companies, like the big companies, want to make sure they aren't inadvertently hosting illegal images.

With an exponential increase in social media sharing, weeding out child pornography from billions of uploads is challenging. About 720,000 of the 1.8 billion pictures uploaded across the Internet each day are illegal child sexual abuse photos, Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

That's .04% of images uploaded, for anyone who wonders.

“The tool has amazing accuracy, and it has enabled us to find problematic content faster than ever before,” Facebook said in a blog post from 2011, when the company started using PhotoDNA. “And, because PhotoDNA has been so effective for us, we encourage other sites that allow photo uploads to use it as well.”

PhotoDNA identifies photos already known and tagged by organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as child porn. When someone uploads a child porn image to Facebook, PhotoDNA recognizes the photo as a match for a known image and the image will not be made available through that website.

Users can still upload an image that has not been identified and tagged as child pornography.

I blogged about Google's efforts to "eradicate" child porn here and here.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, large and small, do not want to be known as suppliers of child porn. Employing PhotoDNA to protect their sites and reputations makes sense.

What PhotoDNA doesn't do is get rid of child porn images, though it will stop some people from looking at some images of crimes that were committed in the past, sometimes decades in the past.

More important--and can we all agree that this is more important?--it doesn't stop the next instance of child sexual abuse.

The war against child porn has focused on those who download illegal images instead of focusing on protecting children who are at risk now.

Focusing attention on those who download makes it look as if something is happening--all those headlines! the harsh sentences! the registry!--in the effort to stop child porn but it doesn't. Old images are still available; new images are still uploaded.

The fight against child porn is not the fight against child sexual abuse. Not even close.

Our priorities need attention.

FBI, distributor of child pornography: #2

Last February, the FBI seized a website that distributed child porn and continued operating the site for another two weeks.

The search warrant, unsealed on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, showed that the FBI seized the website's North Carolina server on Feb. 20 but allowed it to remain operating for about two weeks while authorities investigated its users.

Allowed it to remain operating? We have heard that before. In June 2013, I wrote about another time when the FBI ran a child porn website:

Operating a child porn website is illegal. Distributing child porn is illegal. Possessing child porn is illegal. The FBI did all of this themselves in order to catch those who do the same. [My emphasis.]

Here we are again, with the FBI distributing child pornography. This time, the website they operated had 215,000 users. How many images were downloaded from that site and subsequently uploaded to other sites in those two weeks?

It is possible that links to child porn images on the FBI-run site were rigged so the images would not download successfully. Sorting out the illegal images and re-coding the links on an unfamiliar website is not something that can happen overnight, so the illegal images were definitely available for download for at least part of those two weeks, if not all. The article doesn't say.

The FBI clearly is not focused on stopping the production of child pornography or of stopping child abuse. The FBI wants to put people in prison for looking at child abuse images distributed by the FBI.

Some will point out that putting the 215,000 users into prison will surely slow down the child porn industry. Will it? How many of those users downloaded child pornography?

The Reuters article says there are "thousands of postings and messages featuring child pornography images." Thousands, not hundreds of thousands. 

If all 215,000 users were posting and messaging child porn images, believe me: the article would have said so. If the reporter didn't think to ask how many of the 215,000 were child porn users and if all 215,000 were, believe me: the FBI would have said so.

From the Reuters article:

The probe follows an earlier FBI investigation based out of Nebraska that resulted in the seizure of three child pornography online websites in 2012, two of which listed 5,600 and 8,100 members, respectively. 

How many of those 13,700 users were charged? Twenty-eight. Today's Reuters headline implies a horde of child porn users--FBI seized child porn website with 215,000 users--but 28 of 13,700 is no horde and probably no horde among the 215,000, either.

No matter how many images were distributed during those two weeks, some of them may have been evidence of child abuse. The FBI, though, allowed those images to be distributed for entertainment.

Those images will not--cannot---be obliterated. The FBI distributed them and cannot call them back. In those two weeks, who knows where those images scattered?

The supply of images is unchanged. They remain freely available through the Internet to the curious. The FBI is not trying to stop people from looking at the images at all. If they wanted to stop people from looking, they would have shut down the site and actually stopped people from looking at images the FBI controlled.

Two years ago, I said:

What is likely, is that if the FBI faces no consequences for distributing child pornography, the agency will continue on that course.  

Which laws will they break next?

Now we know. The FBI faces no consequences and will continue to distribute child pornography.

producing child pornography; you'll be surprised how easy it is

A lower court threw out charges of child porn production against a 17-year-old Michigan boy who downloaded child porn. Circuit Court Judge Mark Trusock reinstated those charges.

The kid did not photograph or record sexual images of children so how did the judge decide that the kid should be charged with production?

The judge bought the prosecution's argument that...

...because [the boy] moved the images from his screen delivered by an Internet server onto his hard drive, he was guilty of producing child porn.

Think what that means.

It means that by reading this blog post--which downloads it to your hard drive--you have produced it.

This blogger begs to differ.

The rest of the story is that the boy is also in trouble for making violent threats against people at his school. For the sake of argument, let's say that the kid was making actual plans to hurt people at his school.

His sentence for actual threats of physical violence against people within his reach could possibly be shorter than his sentence for downloading illegal images if he spends any time on the sex offender registry.

another search, another death...and no effect on supply or demand

Radley Balko the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, tells yet another story like many others he has told. He quotes from a news story about the killing of Derek Cuice:

A deputy shot and killed an unarmed man while attempting to serve a narcotics search warrant in Deltona, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said deputies were entering the home on Maybrook Drive when Derek Cruice, 26, allegedly advanced on a member of the SWAT team around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. 

“Volusia County Sheriff’s Office narcotics investigators and the Street Crimes Unit were attempting to serve a search warrant at a residence. They were met with resistance and a shooting occurred,” Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said. 

 Balko writes:

It seems likely that Cruice was dealing pot. The police say they found a ledger book, a scale, about a half-pound of marijuana and some cash. It also seems likely that if the police had simply knocked on the door and waited, or apprehended Cruice as he was coming or going, Cruice would be still be alive. This insistence on serving drug warrants by barreling into homes creates needless violence, confusion and confrontation. They’re designed to do this. I doubt that Cruice knowingly decided to take on a raiding police team armed only with his basketball shorts. It seems far more likely that he thought they were criminal intruders and was either trying to confront them, or was trying to escape. But there is no room for errors in judgment for the people on the receiving end of these raids — even though sowing confusion and disorientation are the stated aim. But it is only the suspects, the targets of the raids, who are expected to do everything right. When the police screw up and kill someone, they’re generally forgiven, owing again to the volatility of the situation.

Those who have been through a home invasion by the cops will recognize the truth in this. When law enforcement shows up wearing Kevlar and with weapons drawn, they are not protecting anyone but themselves. The chaos, no matter how unnecessary, is intentional.

So judging from the many, many prior incidents similar to this one, it’s probably safe to say that this officer will be cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s also probably safe to say that any investigation will determine that there’s nothing wrong with the police department’s warrant service policies. At least that’s how these investigations usually go. And if it is determined that the cops in these cases are following policy, and that there’s nothing wrong with the policies themselves, then the only conclusion we can draw is that the police agencies believe unarmed men getting shot in the face is an acceptable consequence of the effort to stop people from getting high on marijuana. [My emphasis.]

Balko sounds frustrated, angry. But after hearing so many stories like this, who isn't? 

Of course, even that is an illusion. If there’s one thing we can say with near-absolute certainty, it’s that it is no more difficult to buy pot in Volusia County, Fla., today than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down in his own home. And so we add another body to the pile.

It is no more difficult to buy pot...than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down... 

Violent, chaotic searches, arrests and convictions, long prison sentences. None of those have slowed down the supply or demand for recreational drugs.

The story is the same with child pornography. As I said here, discussing an interview of a man who had a collection of a million child porn images:

It is important to know that putting people in prison for possessing, receiving, or distributing illegal images does nothing to reduce the availability of child porn. 

Those million images? Still freely available on the Internet.

USA Today interviews child porn collector

Kevin Johnson, a USA Today reporter, interviews a man serving time for child pornography offenses.

The man's arrest uncovered

...the single-largest cache of child pornography — up to 1 million images — recovered in Florida history and one of the largest recent seizures in the nation.

This is a lot of child porn, by any measure. There was a time when collecting child porn was hard work because collectors needed to make contact with those who could provide the images. Now, however, the Internet and peer-to-peer software make collecting astoundingly fast and easy. So fast and easy that the reporter's wide-eyed astonishment at the size of the collection seems naive. The article does not report how many distinct images were found and how many repeats were in the collection.

State and federal authorities said such vast repositories of images are becoming increasingly common in exploitation cases across the U.S. Once celebrated as important law enforcement victories, the large seizures and the labor-intensive analysis required of each photograph and video are now complicating the search for victims pictured in the images and others who may have been physically abused by suspects.

Law enforcement will continue to find enormous stashes of illegal images, not because the collectors are that much more evil than pre-Internet collectors were, but because it can be done so easily. A collector who keeps everything is going to have a large collection.

In an estimated 75% of child pornography cases, actual physical abuse by the suspects is likely going undetected, said Michael Bourke, chief psychologist in the U.S. Marshals Service's Behavioral Analysis Unit. In a 2014 study of 127 child-pornography suspects with no known history of "hands-on'' sexual abuse, 5% admitted during traditional questioning to the sexual abuse of at least one child. Yet when investigators introduced tactical polygraph examinations to assist interrogations, another 53% of suspects admitted that they engaged in physical sexual abuse of children, according to the study co-authored by Bourke.

Relying on polygraphs as a tool to expose truth is odd when polygraphs are not allowed to be used as evidence in court...because polygraphs are unreliable, even when they are called tactical polygraph examinations. Using polygraphs as an investigative aid is nothing new.

Although the offender in the Florida case has denied any involvement in physical abuse, Bourke, who has spent years researching child pornography cases and interviewing offenders, said traditional interrogation methods and the enormously time-consuming review of large seizures are not proving effective enough in identifying those suspects who have crossed into physical abuse.

The Florida offender, contrary to Bourke's facile assumption that he has committed hands-on crimes, continues to deny any such activity. That doesn't stop the reporter from dropping fat hints that the man is hiding a history of hands-on offenses.

Research shows that using child porn can reduce the incidence of child sex abuse but the reporter ignores those studies.

Likewise, he ignores the fact that Michael Bourke was co-author of the firmly debunked Butner Study which tried to sell the idea that those who look at child porn have a long list of hands-on victims.

Perhaps instead of examining the million images for evidence of child sex abuse of which they imagine the collector to be guilty, the investigators should investigate the clear evidence of child sex abuse contained in some of those million images.

It is important to know that putting people in prison for possessing, receiving, or distributing illegal images does nothing to reduce the availability of child porn.

Those million images? Still freely available on the Internet.

punishing those who recognize that they need help

It has often been said on this blog that looking at images of child pornography is not the same as molesting a child and that those convicted of child porn possession are sentenced in court as if they have molested someone. Another point made here is that mandatory reporting laws prevent someone from getting the help he needs to stop looking at child porn.

California psychotherapist Leslie Bell agrees.

Beginning next month, however, I will be hampered in my ability to hear the full range of my patients’ desires and to assure them that they can discuss these feelings without fear. Under an amendment to California’s Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, psychotherapists and psychiatrists will be required to report to the authorities any patient who “downloads, streams, or accesses images of any person under the age of 18 engaged in an act of obscene sexual conduct.” In the same way that I am required to break confidentiality to report child abuse, I will be mandated to report consumption of child pornography.

Many other states already require therapists to report to law enforcement those who come to them for help to stop using child porn. Did California look at those other states and find that mandatory reporting reduced the incidence of sexual abuse of children? No, because that is not what those laws do.

On closer inspection, however, the law falls short on three fronts: First, it will not protect children from either the production or distribution of child pornography, which is its intent. Second, it violates therapist-patient confidentiality and decreases the likelihood that people will get the psychological help they need to stop accessing child pornography; if the goal is to undercut production by reducing demand, the law will likely have the opposite effect. 

This is all common sense, something found in short supply when legislators are trying to make a law--any law--to look as if they are doing something important.

Reporting people for looking at illegal images does nothing to reduce the incidence of sexual abuse of children and does nothing to stop someone recording that abuse. If it did, we would have seen a correlation by now.

No matter how many are arrested, the supply of child porn images is not diminished even the tiniest bit. Throw a guy in prison for looking at illegal images and the illegal images remain available.

Throw a guy in prison for looking at illegal images and there is no effect on another person's temptation to molest a child.

You know what could affect that temptation? The help of a good therapist.

Mandatory reporting laws make it much less likely someone will ask for help to control his impulses.

The third front on which mandatory reporting laws falls short? Bell says,

...it conflates desire with action.

Yes.

As a psychotherapist, I am not required to report any other illegal activity that a patient may report to me, including drug abuse, drinking while driving, stealing, sexual assault, assault or even a murder that has been committed. This has allowed psychotherapists and psychiatrists to help patients discontinue illegal or potentially harmful behaviors. And it has enabled patients to speak freely about their thoughts, feelings and desires without fear of exposure. Thoughts and feelings are not equivalent to actions. One of the desired outcomes of psychotherapy is that patients will understand precisely this distinction. [My emphasis.]

Looking at illegal images is not the same as doing what is recorded in those images. We do not assume that someone looking at legal adult porn will cross the line to sexual assault and yet that assumption is routinely made about someone who looks at child porn.

Mandatory reporting laws are less about helping to prevent crime or about protecting children than they are about punishing people who ask for help.

woman downloads child porn to frame her estranged husband

A Pennsylvania woman tried to frame her husband for child pornography possession by downloading the porn herself and turning the computer over to law enforcement. Her plan was exposed and now she faces up to two years in prison.

While the Pennsylvania Sexual Offenders Assessment Board determined Woods is not a sexually violent predator, she must register her address, workplaces and schools she attends for the next 15 years.

Carrying out a plot to put an innocent man in prison is not predatory?

In a world where simple failure to register is considered a sex offense, deliberately downloading images in order to destroy a man's reputation, if not his very life, could be considered violent.

What this woman did is despicable, of course, but even people who do something despicable do not deserve to have to register for public shaming.

Abolish the sex offender registry.