i dunno. they drove up and swarmed and apparently had already confiscated his home computer. I was just glad they werent there for me. i thought maybe my mp3 collection had gotten too big.
"This past March, 14 men were arrested for operating a child pornography image distribution network that federal authorities said had 27,000 members who had access to images of around 250 children from 39 states and five countries outside the United States" Internet porn rings are almost always international. DHS has THE most money and technology access of any federal department. They also manage ICE, FEMA, SS, TSA, and Science and Technology. Leaving something this extensive and massive requires the reach of DHS. Local law enforcement would screw it up and never be able to really catch who they need to.
Probably yes. But they wouldn't even have to swap pics with someone in a different country to technically be part of an international ring. Much -- though certainly not all -- child porn is produced outside of the US so simply by obtaining it the person has become part of an "international" ring.
Not to bag on the locals, but man can they be incompetent. About a year ago I had a client charged with several counts of possession of child pornography. Part of his defense was that the pictures and video were placed on his computer by a vindictive soon-to-be ex-wife. The state attorney general's office had investigated and, during a preliminary hearing, I asked the investigating agent if she could tell the court when the files were created on that computer. She looked at me like I had started speaking ancient Greek. Ok, so is it a Windows or Mac machine? Windows. Ok, did you right click on the icons, open properties and see what date the file was created? You can do that? was her response. At that point the judge piped up, "Hell, even I know that."
There was a case sort of close to that scenario I heard about not long ago. Wife tried to frame her soon to be ex with child porn. They did exactly what you just said and figures out he was nowhere near that computer when the porn was accessed. She went to jail
In my case the defense ultimately didn't pan out. And before I started this job I would have said there's no way one spouse would do that to another spouse. I know much better now.
So, did your client get convicted of something he didn't do or did you come up with another defense? Just curious, would you have taken the case if you weren't convinced of his innocence? I realize you can find anything on the internet, but I would think that Google and most of the popular search engines would filter out that type of content and/or track those searching on it. My wife (nor I for that matter) wouldn't even know where to look for that even if she did want to frame me. And even if she did, she would be too scared to search on or access a page with that type of content. Besides a pedophile, who wants to see that, even if they are trying to frame someone? You can't unsee it and those images are not anything I want rattling around inside my head.
Like the vast majority of my work, this one ended in a plea deal. Much of my work is not about guilt or innocence (though that occasionally is a consideration) but about assessing a position, evaluating evidence and mitigating risk. I've probably had five or so child porn cases. In every one, I've gotten a disk with the files at issue. I've also gotten a list of file names (and the names are almost as bad as what the files contain). I always go over the lists with my clients and ask them if there is any reason to believe what's in the name isn't in the file. Only once has a client denied (to me) that the files would contain child pornography. I only had to look at one file and it was enough. For both of us.
See my post in this thread about google and gmail. And your wife could always hire somebody else to do the dirty work
With all the TV commercials that personal injury attorneys run one can only imagine the commercials of a lawyer specializing in child porn and pedophiles
