Recently an
older article from Forbes, from 2014, about John
Grisham, crime thriller novelist (“The Firm”), was recirculated on Twitter. The
article indicated that many older men convicted of possession of child
pornography, apparently with honey pot stings online (likely P2P), have never personally
disturbed children and would not, and are often 60 years old or more (and
usually white).
So this is a crime of
bad karma, where the sin is said to be the demand (like with drugs).
It’s true that most cases that make the local media involve
people found to have large “collections” after police get warrants.
New Years morning, I received a private Facebook message
with a photo from “Happy Nude Year”, probably as a joke. The photo showed young men, in full frontal
nudity, which would have been illegal (under federal law in the US) if any nudity
occurred on anyone under eighteen at the time of photography. I saved it offline on a USB thumb drive but
not on the computer. Trend Micro did not
object to the JPG file. Theoretically, a
hidden impression could still exist on the solid state drive.
It is generally considered “safe” to view adult porn sites
if from lawfully operated content providers who are required to verify ages of
all actors (as at least 18) if in the US, Canada, or most other western countries.
Likewise, bars and discos, with age
admission restriction policy related to alcohol consumption anyway, can
normally show nude videos safety as long as the films come from reputable
providers who obey these laws.
I would be less sure about a random photo provider, when a
Google search did not identify any particular source.
A possibly noteworthy oddity about the photo was that none
of the men (all white) showed chest hair, which statistically implies that some
of them were likely under 18 unless all had been waxed or otherwise depilated. It that the hidden and ironic point of a photo
like this? This gets quickly to sensitive
stuff about race and identity and the law.
I would suspect that eventually cloud providers will check
for watermarked images, whose NCMEC count has increased because of recent international
busts (some connected to trafficking).
But the risk could be that some Internet users could get “infected”
without realizing it. A coming problem?
This deserves further checking.
Facebook ordinarily
does not permit even adult nudity on public posts (except for special purposes like medical or breast-feeding).
For this post, I picked a picture with no people.
