I don't find it at all surprising that Cohen is dispensing questionable advice.
Cohen always does this shit. His so-called ethical advice is always about what's legal and what's not, and contains tons of fat rationalizations for acting like an ass.
I'm not sure that I've ever seen a single Cohen column that seemed worth reading. He seems to slip from truisms and banalities to corrupt evasions to pious righteousness without ever getting anything right. He's seldom positively bad the way Tom Friedman and George Will are bad, but his lack of value-added is almost absolute.
Anecdotal. Limited dataset. This is on the rotten-egg principle. I stopped collecting data after about ten columns.
tons of fat rationalizations for acting like an ass.
Of course, if he gave suggestions that called on NYT sunday magazine readers to change their behavior, he probably wouldn't have lasted long.
What a stupid answer. What the tech should do is get some evidence of them on the President's computer, and then delete the folder. Then the President would know the tech guys knows, without the tech guy having to say anything. Then wait for the luscious promotions the boss will use as implicit bribes to stay quiet.
I'm sure possession of child pornography isn't a clear-cut leave-it-be case
But that's not what we're dealing with here. The first question is whether it is child pornography. How would you advise someone if that were unsettled? Cohen clearly knows more about internet porn than you do: lots of sites go out of their way to make their models look young, and if you're in the habit of downloading everything on a site or newsgroup or channel, it's pretty hard to avoid apparent or even actual nudie pictures of early teens. The ratio of people who have early teen nudes on their pc to those who want them is greater than one.
And given that calling the cops would absolutely ruin the president's life, I think Cohen's caution is appropriate. The only thing I would have added is some advice to the tech about letting the president know (anonymously) that someone was aware of what he'd downloaded (if the guy thought having them on his computer at work was "safe," he'll buy all sorts of cover stories, so the tech could remain anonymous). Odds are that that would scare him straight.
Man, this advice is horrible. I love how he says "he could be convicted for X many years" as if to say this is a reason not to report him to the feds. That's a great way to make decisions: "oh, no! Someone might suffer consequences!" Especially since the guy doesn't write in worrying about the consequences to his boss, but to his job. And saying that he may have not had any improper contact with children? Cohen doesn't know the law. Possession of child pornography is a form of improper contact with children, in that creating a market for child porn ensures that people will continue to make child porn. This guy's boss is an idiot, for a) possessing the stuff in the first place, and b) having it on his work computer.
Anyway, yes, of course the guy has no duty or legal obligation to turn his boss in. But should he? Probably.
Also, doesn't it seem like the tech guy was going through the President's porn? He was installing software, found a personal folder, with "a lot of pictures". He then looked through it enough to find that there was some teen porn.
...you should not subject him to such ferocious repercussions for looking at forbidden pictures.
God, what kind of an ethicist is this? He may as well just say "the law doesn't matter, just looking at pictures of sexualized children should not subject one to criminal charges." Fuck that. Even if the law sucks (which it often does, though, IMHO, not in this instance), we should still obey it.
Except for, um, the one instance in which I don't.
this: learly less than 18, possibly early teens. seems like it makes it more likely that the tech could be mistaken. He seems to be saying the girls look 15, or 16, or thereabouts. It can be difficult to tell whether a girl is 18 or 15 sometimes, even if the pornographers aren't being deliberately tricky.
And saying that he may have not had any improper contact with children? Cohen doesn't know the law. Possession of child pornography is a form of improper contact with children, in that creating a market for child porn ensures that people will continue to make child porn.
He addresses this, leblanc, when he says there's no evidence that the boss paid for the pictures.
I think I'm with ogged, particularly as people are prone to assuming that "bad things are being done to children," whether or not true. Also, look for a new job.
"Possibly early teens" means "maybe 12 or 13." And we know what that means.
Clearlly Michael is a pedophile.
oops, I didn't mean to endorse the end of Ogged's comment. Dude's gotta let the president know he knows, let the situation work for him.
there's no evidence that the boss paid for the pictures
I'm pretty sure that this is not a requirement for the possession to be criminal. I'd look it up, but I am going out to breakfast now.
17. Clearlly. But I marry them all, so it's OK.
19. But it would be a requirement for him to be, as you were arguing, in improper contact with children.
17. anyway, "possibly" i interpret to mean "if they are younger than they look". If they really looked 12 or 13, he would have said "probably".
Just to note: the tech is in Vancouver, so Canadian law applies.
God, what kind of an ethicist is this? He may as well just say "the law doesn't matter, just looking at pictures of sexualized children should not subject one to criminal charges." Fuck that. Even if the law sucks (which it often does, though, IMHO, not in this instance), we should still obey it.
It's just like jury nullification, except he's not on a jury.
Situation: Possessing child porn is illegal. The computer tech sees what he thinks is a violation of the law. Should he therefore report it, or should he take a mind-his-own-business approach?
Analogy: Theft is illegal. You see someone taking computer equipment out the back door of Fry's after the place is closed. It's possible that this isn't actually a theft in progress; maybe this guy is the manager and is just using his personal vehicle to take broken equipment to the dump, or to deliver special orders to a different Fry's location. Would you *on those grounds* decide not to call the cops?
The real ethical issue here is whether or not you think that the law against possessing child porn is an ethical law. Cohen doesn't even address that question; all he does is say, in effect, unless you *know for a fact* that harm is being done, you should mind your own business. It's like the Kitty Genovese style of ethical decision-making, and it completely dodges the issue.
28: What crap. You're telling me that if it is a mistake in each case, people will generally react the same to "they only looked liked kids" and "I was performing my job"? Not in my world.
Even if the law sucks (which it often does, though, IMHO, not in this instance), we should still obey it.
Not necessarily. In this case, I'm of two minds: part of the problem with the no-child-porn law is that (as I understand it) it's not like mere possession gets one therapy or anything: it gets one sent to jail. Another part is that we're hysterical these days about child sex abuse (which is part of why there's no therapy, presumably)--so much so that yeah, even if the guy can demonstrate that the kids in these photos are of legal age, his reputation is destroyed. I'm a little uncomfortable with the moral absoluteness involved in child porn legislation, and I can (almost) see a reason to ignore the computer files on those grounds.
I suspect Cohen feels the same way, which is why he casts about for rationalizations. But he doesn't actually come out and say it, because he's a fuzzy-headed wuss.
26: I wasn't talking about public reaction; I was talking about whether we should consider Ogged's and Michael's love of "barely legal" porn an excuse not to call the cops.
I think this is going from 0 to 60 awfully fast. First of all, there are intermediate steps the tech can take. Presumably the company has a written Internet policy. Presumably it has a board of directors. (Those may be the president's cronies, but that's a different problem.) If the company policy is being violated, it can be reported. That's before you even get to law enforcement.
Secondly, weren't we just talking about prosecutorial discretion? There are plenty of white-collar crimes (and I would include computer images as sometimes among them) that are handled discretely at the first level -- deciding whether to investigate further -- far before anybody's computer gets confiscated or rumors start flying.
It's a terrible thing to ruin someone's reputation through whispers or media headlines. And it's a terrible thing when economic insecurity makes us afraid to lose our jobs by speaking up and doing the right thing. But I honestly don't think there's a question about the "right thing" here. Maybe a logistical question, but not an ethical one.
(Comment too long already, but I agree with B on the way c.p. has become a witchhunt crime.)
Analogy: Theft is illegal. You see someone taking computer equipment out the back door of Fry's after the place is closed. It's possible that this isn't actually a theft in progress; maybe this guy is the manager and is just using his personal vehicle to take broken equipment to the dump, or to deliver special orders to a different Fry's location. Would you *on those grounds* decide not to call the cops?
Probably, unless the someone was looking especially furtive.
Was the tech violating a law by looking at the pictures?
I believe my friend R____ B___ was once arrested by the U. Michigan police at 2 AM for taking his computer out of the Department's building...
That said, I think Randy Cohen is being the *un-ethicist* here...
B makes a good point about Cohen's column: there seems to be some implicit thought that CP possession laws-- or the informal social sanctions associated with them-- are too draconian or unjust or something along these lines. But the column doesn't even make this explicit, let alone argue for it The result is unsettling: an argument that CP isn't such a big deal would be less unsettling than a wink-nudge suggestion to the same effect.
Dear Ethicist,
When confronted with a difficult decision, I regularly consult a friend of mine whose idea of reflection on the issues involves is to consult the relevant laws and engage in self-serving rationalization. Am I participating in anything more than a sham of moral life?
whose idea of reflection on the issues involves is to consult
I think I hear an oboe.
Now you know in which direction to fuck.
Ok, but don't fidget at the last second.
On the question of child porn, should I be worried if PK's response to frustration is to try to bury his head in my crotch? And if I try to prevent him by squeezing my legs together, and he says "harder!" should Mr. B. call the cops?:
34: I think the primary worry is the possibility of mistake.
What's the potential mistake? The tech has seen the porn; it looks like child porn to him, or *possibly* young teenagers, which is still illegal.
40: no, he should get a video camera.
I think we've discussed Cohen in the past, and actually wound up feeling kinda bad for the guy (it's not such a sweet gig, and he's really hard on himself). But those posts/comments seem to have been redacted.
It's easy to be hard on oneself in writing without being hard on oneself in any other way. And it's a not so sweet gig that was his idea, wasn't it?
I don't feel bad for him. He's getting paid pretty well, one presumes, for offering terrible advice.
42: Right, that it's not really child porn. Being wrongly accused of being a pedophile strikes me as worse than being wrongly accused of being a rapist. It seems like a clear case without that worry.
What's the potential mistake?
That they're not underage. He's not wondering if they're children or young teens, but whether they're adults or young teens. Wouldn't you want to be totally sure about what you were looking at before you ruined a guy's life, Torquemadette?
Well, none of us have seen it, but if the description is "child porn, or possibly young teenagers," I'd be very surprised if the models were over 18. And even more surprised if the boss had bothered to verify that before downloading the stuff.
I'm with B.'s reading in 49 -- he's describing it as "young children", with the caveat that they're possibly young teenagers. What's the status on Canadian c.p. law? Is it the anti-1st Amendment juggernaut that it is in America (not that Canada has a first amendment, but you know.)?
It's pretty clear that the tech thinks they're underage--look at what he says: "clearly less than 18, possibly early teens." It's not clear to me what he means by "possibly early teens" (as opposed to older teens or younger kids?), but he definitely seems certain that they're not adults.
And even more surprised if the boss had bothered to verify that before downloading the stuff.
What does this mean.
My impression is that Canada has stricter laws about this stuff than we do. I don't know for sure, though.
What's more disturbing is that Cohen's so quick to reach for the implausible responses: someone else put it there, they aren't really children, you don't know that he's a sex offender-- as if a computer tech would, or as if it's a prerequisite for calling law enforcement-- and the always-decisive but something bad might happen.
I'm disappointed in you people. The obvious lesson here is that Cohen loves the teen porn. Because seriously, who the fuck responds to a question about kiddie porn in this fashion? "Someone other than your boss may have downloaded the pictures."? You've got to be kidding me.
"some of young children -- clearly less than 18, possibly early teens."
That's not wondering if they're adults. And he says "clearly," which indicates that he, having viewed the pictures, has no doubt. I don't think there's a moral imperative to be absolutely certain beyond a reasonable doubt before you report something for investigation; this isn't a trial, it's a report.
The issue isn't doubt. The issue is "ruin someone's life." If you find someone with what is "clearly" child porn, should you report them, knowing that child porn = witchhunt, or not?
Has Cohen studied runaway-trolleycar mouse-orgasm ethics? Would it help him if he had?
including some of young children -- clearly less than 18, possibly early teens
Ok, I was reading this differently, but I think you guys are right: they're children, maybe as old as young teens, but no older. That's a much more difficult situation, since it's less likely that one would acquire those in any significant number by accident, and because "powerful man who likes kiddie nudes" pretty much screams "molestor." Uhh...lemme think about this...
That column is like some kind of dipshit throwdown. The nosy fucking tech who "happens" across porn in the guys personal directory vs. Richard "Those were planted" Cohen.
53: It means that, and now we're talking morality rather than law, the boss has pictures that look like child porn. The models may, in fact, be of legal age, but on the evidence, the boss likes to whack off to pictures of people who are not of legal age (or who he can at least pretend are not of legal age). I'm going to assume that, like most people who download porn, he hasn't gone through a stringent process of researching the bona fides of the individual models. On those grounds, I'm going to go further and say that the boss has pedophilic fantasies. Which supports my contention that the issue at hand is "do you think pedophilic fantasies and porn should be prosecutable," not "maybe they aren't *really* under 18." That is to say, I don't think that whether or not the models are under 18 is something the boss has concerned himself with.
because "powerful man who likes kiddie nudes" pretty much screams "molestor."
That's the issue. Do you make the leap from "kiddie porn" to "molester," and is that leap necessary for you to think the guy should be investigated?
The relevant selections from Teo's link:
shows a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of eighteen years and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, including any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years. Punishable by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or "summary conviction," whatever that is. Moreover, It is not a defense to charge under subsection (2) in respect of a visual representation that the accused believed that a person shown in the representation that is alleged to constitute child pornography was or was depicted as being eighteen years of age or more unless the accused took all reasonable steps to ascertain the age of that person and took all reasonable steps to ensure that, where the person was eighteen years of age or more, the representation did not depict that person as being under the age of eighteen years.
Booyah.
"That's a much more difficult situation,"
No, it's a much less difficult question.
Ogged's and Michael's love
it's OK when i make grammar mistakes, but you're an english teacher.
Does anyone think someone should be prosecuted for their fantasies? That strikes me as beyond belief.
I'm on leave, and I'm not acting in my capacity as an English prof when I post here, except when I lecture people on the intentional fallacy.
Plus I'm pretty sure that's correct. Also, "I" is usually capitalized.
Gswift, for the record, he's not Richard, he's...Randy.
Also, his NYT gig is part-time, no benefits.
Does anyone think someone should be prosecuted for their fantasies?
No, but that's not quite what's going on here.
Perhaps this is a good time to broach the question of whether the age of consent and other age-based sexual dividing lines are artificially high, such that very serious crimes and relatively unserious (if creepy) matters are unfairly grouped together for the purposes of punishment and public infamy.
65: Well, look, Tim. The kiddie porn argument, in the U.S., is that to produce kiddie porn real kiddies have to really make porn. Possessing such material means that you're creating a market for the sexual exploitation of minors.
In Canada, obvs., it's proscuted under obscenity law: therefore, even a story about fucking little kids (that'll make for some nice google hits) is prosecutable, since it violates community standards or something. Okay, fine, you don't think that should be prosecutable; neither do I.
But we're talking about pictures here. I'm inclined to feel that yes, possessing actual pictures of actual children actually posing for porn should damn well be illegal. I think I'm inclined to feel that possessing (say) non-pornographic family pictures of naked kids that you managed to find on people's blogs, and whacking off to them, probably shouldn't be. And I also don't think that people should be as fucking Puritanical as they are about such fantasies, or accused sex offenders. But that is a separate issue.
Unlike Ogged, I don't think that having fantasies of that nature means one is probably a molester. I'm bothered by them, but then I'm bothered by a lot of people's sex fantasies. I do think, though, that the law should protect real children from real sexual exploitation, which includes photographic kiddie porn.
I'm not acting in my capacity as an English prof when I post here, except when I lecture people on the intentional fallacy.
Actually, that's not true. I'm just acting in my capacity as an insufferable bitch when I do that. The English professor thing doesn't need to come into it.
I'm inclined to feel that yes, possessing actual pictures of actual children actually posing for porn should damn well be illegal.
I don't think anyone disagrees; I think you're seeing an issue where there's a consensus.
Ok, let us recall that the highest ethical precept is Don't Be A Rat. (Conclusive proof of this principle lost, coincidentally, in those previous redacted Cohen threads.) But there's a non-trivial chance here that the prez is a kid-diddler, and there's also an obligation to put a stop to that. So this become a practical/logistical problem: what's the best way to stop him, and is there any way to verify that he's done so. I think I'd still go with the anonymous message, letting him know that someone was on to him and would be monitoring his activity (you could tell him he'd been "flagged" and that any further abuse would result in an automatic referral to the authorities or something).
I'm with SCMTim here. Maybe this guy deserves to get caught in a FBI raid on the records of who bought child-pron pictures from an exploitative website, but the techie who rummaged around in the guy's personal file shouldn't ruin the guy's life based on what he thinks he knows.
If a personal assistant opens up a drawer of the boss's desk and finds a gram of cocaine, should she or he feel morally obliged to report the boss to the DEA?
How is "hide your child porn searches" going to stop the guy from hanging out in the park with candy? If anything, being deprived of his fantasy access might frustrate him to the point where he's driven to rape the neighbor kid.
Not to mention that the anonymous message is more likely to get the tech fired than reporting the boss to the cops will. Once he's embroiled in a kiddie porn investigation, the guy'll be too busy to have time to figure out and fire the tech.
73, 74: see #76. I don't trust the techy's ability to discriminate ages, and a mistake has a massive consequence.
79: Okay, so your argument is that you don't believe the evidence of the letter. That's cool, even if it is a massive weaselling out of the problem as presented.
But that's the only issue (ignoring employment). If we know it's child porn, tell someone.
My hope would be that the anonymous message would put the fear of God into him. Do anyone have a better idea?
Clearly, I revert to the street talk of my youth when the issue of rats comes up.
Holy shit... Is anyone else disturbed by Don't Be a Rat?
Maybe it's just very disturbing to me after watching season 1 of The Wire. I was so sad to see Wallace go.
82: Report him and let the feds determine (1) if it's child porn; (2) if he's also raping the neighbor kids.
Alternatively, if your concern about ruining someone's reputation outweighs your concern over anonymous child porn models (which might be valid, on the grounds of proximity) or (in your case, since you seem to assume that possessing child porn = being a molester) if your concern about the guy's reputation outweighs your concern over his probable molestation, you could use your mad tech skillz to monitor his computer activity and see if he's trying to seduce kids online before reporting him. Or you could send the evidence to, say, his wife and let her make the decision. Or you could anonymously send an email, purportedly from either The Authorities or from some Kiddie Porn Site, warning him that he's being investigated *not only* for kiddie porn, but also for possible sexual activity with minors, and hope that that scares him straight.
But I really think that 75 just amounts to "hide the evidence, man, so I don't feel like I have to get dragged into this." Admirable ass-covering, but not exactly ethical.
Ogged's "don't be a rat" shit is just stupid.
Seriously, you people scare me with your "rat him out" talk.
Or maybe it's a half-digested mixture of the idea that one has special duties to friends and family, and the desire to stay out of trouble.
(Being only half digested, it's not yet fully shit, you see.)
Or you could anonymously send an email, purportedly from either The Authorities or from some Kiddie Porn Site, warning him that he's being investigated *not only* for kiddie porn, but also for possible sexual activity with minors, and hope that that scares him straight.
Yeah, that's the kind of thing I was imagining.
Let it be known that in every user-visible way I've thus far encountered, FF2.0 is inferior to FF1.5.
There really is a consequentialist problem here, though, in that simply the fact of being investigated on these charges is enough to ruin a person's entire life.
Dude, I'm almost sure that I've cost myself significant money at work because I've taken the blame for stuff that I knew was someone else's fault. But there's no such thing as honor among the American bourgeoisie.
(I'm 95% serious about this comment.)
FF2.0 is inferior to FF1.5
On this, we agree.
Report him and let the feds determine (1) if it's child porn; (2) if he's also raping the neighbor kids.
Because as we all know, sex crime/ kiddie porn investigations tend to be carried out with the utmost discretion, and covered with the greatest reserve by a thoughtful press.
Honor isn't the kind of thing that you can do by yourself, ogged. Even if you've taken the blame for things not your doing (but why?), that doesn't mean you've behaved honorably. Behaving honorably might not be, and probably isn't, feasible in your situation.
93: You're a nut, and worse yet, you're fucking up the American economy. Thanks, terrorist.
Ogged's "don't be a rat" shit is just stupid.
"Don't be a rat" is stupid as a general principle. But "string the fucker up, now now now," as a response to the discovery of material which may not, in fact, actually be kiddie porn, strikes me as pretty grotesque. You may now accuse me of harboring a secret desire to diddle twelve-year-olds.
I think it's probably best not to get into this discussion.
Did Rex Grossman really pass for 34 yards today?
Vince Young wrecks another Manning. Watch yer ass, Archie!
Which discussion: Don't be a Rat? You're not in the anti-snitch video with Carmello, are you?
Being a president is a privilige, not an entitlement.
If this were the custodian's computer, he "wouldn't have so far to fall" and the consequentialist argument would be weaker.
I think the president should not get soft treatment, just for being in a priviliged position.
(Willing suspension of disbelief, since custodians don't necessarily have computers.)
Yes, but Brad Johnson only passed for 73 in the same game. I blame Boreas.
If this were the custodian's computer, he "wouldn't have so far to fall" and the consequentialist argument would be weaker.
I disagree. No matter how far up or down you are, an accusation of child-fancying puts you at great risk for being unemployed and unemployable. Just the accusation and investigation will put your family through the wringer. If you're actually convicted of a sexual offense--say, one of those young-seeming girls in the pictures actually was only 14--then your name goes on that public registry, no matter what position you may have held, and at that point you're fucked, basically.
If anything, the custodian is at a much greater risk of suffering from accusation of this sort.
B, your 85 is horrifying. "Trust the feds to sort things out"?
Nancy Grace (on TV) was a prosecutor for 10 years (not federal). She's batshit crazy and always prejudges every case. The head federal prosecutor in Portland, OR got her position from Bush as a reward for her role in the Clinton impeachment.
Prosecutorial discretion can be a good thing, but in part it just means that prosecutors get to express their own kinks for punitiv indignation. They can't be trusted on drug cases and civil liberties, and I suspect that porn is another area where they can't be trusted.
Probably Brad Johnson's personal best this year.
I'm with JM. The social and legal repercussions for even the tinest whiff of this stuff are enormous, and not to be trifled with.
Hmph. 112 yeards total offense and 24 points.
Minnesota has some weak spots, but their defense is good. They should just leave the defense on the field all the time to deal with punt returns and interception returns.
88: ...one has special duties to friends and family
One doesn't? Pose me one of those hypotheticals concerning my familiy vs a few billion other people and watch the world's population drop instantly and dramatically.
As for the issue at hand, this decade's kiddie porn hysteria is the few decade's back satanic rituals, it's a way for DAs to get re-elected and the media to increase ratings. I wouldn't bother with it unless I could clearly see children involved and there was no debate over whether they were 18 and made up to look younger, etc.
On the other hand, someone putting porn of any kind on their computer at work is too stupid to remain as the CEO. That might be a reason to act.
Doesn't Becks do some IT-ish work? And she hasn't commented yet? Hmm…
I was in a similar situation to this one. The pictures in question were of Traci Lords, in a collection of other celebrity nudes. I knew (or at least thought) they weren't part of the handful of photos from after she turned 18. I told the person in question that the photos were illegal, but gave him the opportunity to say that he didn't know that. He took it.
I never claimed that one doesn't have special duties towards friends and families.
Am I going to jail if I google "Tracy Lords"? And wasn't that the name of the Hepburn character in Philadelphia Story?
The person you're thinking of, Tim, was called Traci.
107,110: Fair enough. I guess when I was reading the comments I felt like people were cutting the president extra slack for being a high-up, as though they'd be more likely to turn in a less prestigious Joe. I agree that Joe's life is likely to be wrecked if he's convicted.
(On the other hand, if he's convicted and the trial proceeds fairly, etc, then Joe should suffer consequences. I don't think fear of exaggerated consequences should trump pursuit of balanced consequences.)
I guess when I was reading the comments I felt like people were cutting the president extra slack for being a high-up
Not I. And I think the lives in question are generally wrecked well before conviction.
"wrecked if he's convicted" s/b "if accused"
Here's how to handle it. Copy the files, and strip from one version of your copies any metadata which would indicate where they originated. Send the cops, via a new anonymous email account from a publically accessible computer (or whatever you have to do to avoid having your IP and other addresses traced), an email asking them to verify whether these files are illegal child pornography.
At the same time, send your boss an anonymous email (using the same methods) or snail-mail, for that matter, stating what you've done so far and that if it turns out those files were of minors, you're going to turn him in. Note that destroying the evidence won't help him, since you have a copy of it. This will let him manage his interactions with the police, if he chooses to do so, and hence avoid the harms of a reputation-destroying investigation.
I remember winding up at a dinner party once next to some folks I didn't know. Asked em what they did for a living. "We both teach in a philosophy department," was the answer. So I asked them what their philosophy was.
Well, they wouldn't come right out and tell me that, but they did let on as how they were both ethicist (he & she). So I searched around for what do you say to ethicists, and came up with having read columns by this Cohen guy, he's an ethicist too, right?
Man, wrong thing to say. They ripped him several--up one side and down the other. Has no training, doesn't know the literature, makes it up, superficial, thoughtless, confused, etc. etc.
Dunno what the psychologists among you think, but these two ethicists thought he was about the sorriest excuse there is.
I happened on a lot of pornographic pictures in the president's personal directory, including some of young children -- clearly less than 18, possibly early teens.
Based on this description, it seems to me that neither Cohen nor anyone on this thread has enough information to justify a recommendation that will certainly fuck up some dude's life. All we know here is that some subset of unknown size of pornographic pictures seemed to this tech, an unknown person of unknown judgement, to contain underage persons; how underage is unknown.
Ogged is right that some porn is specifically designed to make the models look underage - icky, but not illegal, and more immoral than other types of pornography only if you believe in thoughtcrimes. If this tech is someone who is not accustomed to looking at pornography, it is easy to believe that s/he could misjudge the age of the models.
It's terrible, immoral, and illegal if this executive is consuming child pornography, but it would also be terrible, immoral, and reckless to encourage the tech to proceed with humiliating the executive (at the very least) without knowing more about the situation.
And I honestly can't believe that 's not the prevailing opinion on this thread; the moralism and judgement here is surprising to me.
So I asked them what their philosophy was.
Every day you've been alive since this moment is a gift from God; be thankful.
Kid B, that's what I was getting at with my question about runaway trolleys and mouse orgasms. I suspect that what Cohen lacks is guts, common sense, and integrity, rather than philosophical sophistication.
y'know, I bet this isn't a very rare occurence. I bet there are IT guidelines for what to do when someone's personal directory has suspect content - be it defrauding the company, gossip about other employees, etc, etc. IT people?
Every day you've been alive since this moment is a gift from God; be thankful.
A little on the nose, no?
Company IT policies do not necessarily equal sound ethical practice, of course.
What he could do is delete the kiddie porn and reload his computer with lots of normal porn of adult women.
Does it change the ethical dillemma if this happens all the time to IT people? Because then it's no longer a one-time deal, but asking them to police people's directories.
129 - Or just cut and paste adult bits and pieces over the child-sized ones.
This whole thread may need a touch of RTFA. Labs has abridged Cohen's response in a way that creates some of these objections. He explicitly makes the "child porn laws are unjust in cases where no harm is manifest" argument.
The letter writer didn't help with "clearly less than 18, possibly early teens." Whether "early teens" is an upper or lower bound is competely unclear. I think we can all agree the relevant threshold here is "obviously/not obviously pre-pubescent," where "post-pubescent" implies "not necessarily possible to visibly distinguish between 13 and 18."
Let it be known that in every user-visible way I've thus far encountered, FF2.0 is inferior to FF1.5.
On Linux, FF2.0 offers to reload your session after a restart (i.e., it re-opens all your tabs and re-load all your pages), which I am quite pleased with. There is no other way in which I can ascertain a difference.
What he could do is delete the kiddie porn and reload his computer with
images of a giant handlettered sign reading: "Don't keep your porn--especially your borderline illegal porn--on your work computer, genius-boy! P.S.--Seek help."
121 sounds like a very sensible approach, although it's legally very dicey.
122: A former philosophy professor of mine lies when asked what he teaches, just to avoid the "So what's your philosophy?" question (or worse, having people tell them their own "philosophy").
He claims he teaches math, because the usual reply to that is "Oh, I never was good at math," and the conversation ends there.
The solution is obvious. The techie should tart up his own kid, and have him/her spend a weekend with the president. If the kid comes back intact, nothing more need be done.
134: You mean the part where the IT guy comes into possession of the images himself, right? Because the rest of it is fine.*
*My ignorance of Canadian law is total.
122: Mr. Cohen will freely cop to not knowing "the literature." He is not an Ethicist in the academic sense. He is an advice columist. Like Dan Savage, he's just trying to muddle through with a sense of humor and some common sense.
I do teach math, and I *hate* that response. I should tell everyone I teach philosophy.
"Oh, my philosophy of life? Practice safe sex and wash your hands after using the bathroom."
137: Yeah. Seems like the investigation could pretty easily end up focusing on Mr. IT Guy, especially if his email is not as anonymous as he hoped.
137.--Also the part where his actions start to resemble extortion.
135, 139: I'm a computer scientist. Which makes me a certified tech support representative for all Microsoft , Apples, and AOL products, the World Wide Web, the Internet, and whatever computer happens to be sitting on your desk, in your lap, pocket, palm, or living room. Go complain to somebody else.
Oh, perfect, Chris! See 126 and weigh in! (Joke, joke.)
No, he's fine there, as long as he's telling the truth and not waiting for a counter-offer (which with anonymous communications would be impossible anyway).
No one's taking my bait, but really -- would Cohen do a better job if he were a real philosophical ethicist?
Well, I would do a better job, and I have more training in philosophical ethics than Cohen does.
Would you do the runaway trolleys?
The washerdryer approach just seems rife with pitfalls and overcomplications to me.
126: IMX it's not rare or I'm just unlucky. I saw two instances in a not very large company AFTER the upper management sent around a notice telling everyone they were monitoring internet access and also had the right to read email.
Clearly, Darwin has been mis-interpreted. It's "survival of the barely adequate".
Thinking about it some more, I think I would probably look into my company's IT policies for misuse of a company computer and let them handle it, something I might not do in the case of Just Plain Porn. Carmelo can go ahead and call me a rat.
112 - The chief difference is that the Satanic ritual abuse cases were 100% unmitigated bullshit. Despite the fact that the West Memphis Three remain in jail, I'm not sure that I've read an account of a single one of those cases that resulted in a conviction that actually strikes me as, on the merits, correctly decided. On the other hand, there really are child pornagorphy rings out there.
116 - Tim, she went on to make a number of legit movies (she was in a couple John Waters films, I think). Look her up on IMDB.
123 - Until relatively recently, it was against the law (in the US) to have porn that mimicked child pornography. It was one of those things, like the Boiled Angel/Mike Diana case, that was probably okay in terms of reducing the overall creepiness of the world but always struck me as indefensible. I think the Supreme Court eventually ruled that you couldn't prosecute someone with a bunch of drawings of non-existant children under kiddy porn laws.
139 - But I would ask you about the Perelman proof of the Poincará conjecture! At which point you would probably give me the hairy eyeball and tell me you're a statistician or something.
149 - I believe part of the reason for that is that a defined policy on Internet use can be useful in hostile environment cases.
145: Do you think Peter Singer would last 2 weeks in the job before being sacked?
145: I think the right professional ethicist would at least be more interesting than Cohen.
For example, what would Peter Singer advise this guy to do?
"You should use this knowledge to blackmail the company president, but rather than having him pay you, you should have him donate large sums of money to Oxfam."
Peter Singer has been referenced in previous Cohen columns (in which Cohen consults him) and wrote an essay which appeared in a Cohen edited book. Wait, I appear to be repeating myself.
But there's no such thing as honor among the American bourgeoisie.
No doubt. Which is not to say there's never an exception, but have a code people. I've been hauled off a couple times because of chickenshitss who couldn't just keep quiet when the cops showed.
I remain unsatisfied by this discussion. We have good though not conclusive reason to believe that the company president is in possession of child pornography. This strongly suggests that he's involved in extremely immoral transactions. I find it remarkable that some people think the correct response to this is to do nothing.
One useful aspect of Kant's discussion of the murderer at the door is how it focuses our attention on the responsibilities we take on by getting involved in various situations. Computer Tech guy didn't want to face this choice, but he's in it now, and it does no good whatsoever to back slowly away from the computer pretending that he didn't just see a big folder of illegal porn. Yes, President's life gets much worse if the police get involved, illegal porn or no; on the other hand, there are a lot of young women whose lives are very much worse because there is a market for underage pornography.
The ratting considerations don't move me here. If it were closer in nature to a "self-regarding" action-- one that harms only the agent-- I would be happy to let it go. But it isn't, and the "no snitches" line gives short shrift to the victims, who, I would think, have a legitimate complaint against tech guy should he not act. (This thought is inspired by TM Scanlon's discussion of relativism; more on that on request.)
I should think about the ratting thing and do post on it. I hate how every time it comes up I start to feel like people I like are budding Mukhabarat informers.
"So I asked them what their philosophy was."
"Every day you've been alive since this moment is a gift from God; be thankful."
I didn't ask *you* what *your* philosophy is, ogged.
But now that you've told me what it is, I'm not that surprised--you know, be grateful to God, appreciate life, all that stuff.
I mean, fair enough. But is that what you teach in class, too?
150 - I have actually attended a seminar, over the course of a semester, where the geometry profs in my department worked through Perelman's proof. This was a few years ago. I didn't get much out of it.
What Labs said. Not only the victims, but society as a whole, rely on people to say something when they see what they believe is exploitation of children.
That is a *separate issue* from the fact that society goes apeshit when someone is suspected of exploiting kids. Or the fact that the feds aren't really discreet about this stuff. Tech guy has control over whether or not he does the right thing, based on what he knows (or thinks he knows). He does not have control over whether, as a consequence of his doing the right thing, the Feds/coworkers/etc. react properly.
Sure: he should, if he reports it and it gets out of hand, keep his goddamn mouth shut about what he saw and why the cops came in to take his boss's computer away. He should, if the information gets out anyway, make a point of saying that the guy *could be innocent* (whether or not his own role in the thing has come out). He should not claim to know more than he knows to the Feds, and (to the extent that he has any control over this, which is surely nil), he should ask that whoever he tells handle the thing discreetly.
Beyond that, we should all try not to be paranoid assholes about this kind of thing. But I don't think that the grounds that people are paranoid assholes makes it okay to ignore something that you think is not only *illegal* but also unethical and immoral.
I wouldn't report someone for speeding, but I would report someone for driving dangerously. I wouldn't report someone for having porn on their hard drive, but I would report them for having *child porn*. My saying "let the feds sort it out" doesn't mean I trust they'll do so; it means I recognize that that's the consequence of my advice, which is *since the tech guy thinks it's child porn*, he has an ethical duty not to ignore it, one that goes beyond just warning the guy that he should do a better job of hiding his child porn.
Crap. Thanks anyway, HG. I almost certainly wouldn't understand it at this point anyway, if I would have at any point.
I wouldn't report someone for speeding, but I would report someone for driving dangerously. I wouldn't report someone for having porn on their hard drive, but I would report them for having *child porn*.
This analogy doesn't really follow, since pornography is not illegal.
Although I suppose it might be against company rules.
The point being she reports people to the beat of an ethical, not legal, drummer.
127, 160: Did everyone actually misread 124, or is this one of those pretend misreadings for the sake of a joke?
Ogged, I'm not mr run-to-the-authorities, but I think we have to be careful to avoid the mistake of being too sympathetic with the nearby and vivid President while downplaying the interests of the anonymous and distant thirteen year old who's on the receiving end of abuse partly because President has a taste for teh imm0r41 pr0n.
B votes with the Kafka-esque state. Surprising. I think responses here probably vary with the individual's belief that the tech might be judging ages badly.
159 gets it exactly wrong. The route to not becoming an informer is to retain your own sense of ethical judgment, rather than to quibble over what is or isn't legal. Not reporting someone who is doing something that is clearly (for the sake of argument) unethical is also a route to enabling totalitarianism: if (say) I notice that the Kuwaiti kid in PK's class is treated as a pariah and don't say anything because I might have the situation all wrong and don't want to make a federal case out of it and after all they're only kids, I'm not exactly standing up against the forces of oppression, am I?
164: Assuming pornography is officially Not Allowed on company-owned computers, does the IT Guy have an ethical or moral obligation to report (consenting adults only, legal but NSFW) pornography to his employer? Does the liability of the company if Mr. President shows those pictures to a female employee change his ethical or moral obligations?
157: This kind of situation is precisely why I didn't go into tech support as a career.
172 - I think it really depends on how common it is. If half the computers have something like that on them, then the IT guy needs to have Porn Police in her job description.
too sympathetic with the nearby and vivid
I don't have any sympathy for the president (assuming he's guilty). Seriously, whether he paid for the pictures is relevant, isn't it?
164,5,6: Right, I'm thinking in terms of it being against company rules.
169: Kafkaesque state my fine fat ass. I made a point upthread of trying to parse the issues involved in the child porn witchhunt problem. I happen to think that child porn of the kind that I understand the tech to have seen *should* be illegal. That doesn't mean I'm also going to report the guy if I run across email he's sent someone in which he's talked about assassinating President Hillary, even though that's also illegal. Or if I know he has a radar detector in his BMW, which is also (I think) illegal. There are ethical issues in the child porn situation other than "dude, don't rat the guy out to The Man."
But there's no way he kept the receipt.
Why is whether or not he paid for 'em relevant?
with the individual's belief that the tech might be judging ages badly
I don't see why there's an assumption that the tech is judging ages badly. It's likely that the tech himself has looked at porn, a lot of which features 18- and 19-year-old women. He probably thinks that the people featured in the porn he found are underage because they look different than what he's used to seeing. And considering how much porn features young-looking people, that's probably saying something.
Why is whether or not he paid for 'em relevant?
Whetherhe's contributing to the market for child porn.
Is it a worse crime to contribute financially to the child-porn ring than to just contribute website hits?
You can contribute to the market for child porn without paying for child porn. In fact, that's the basis for there being a law against possession, if I recall correctly.
On the other hand, I feel the force of the intuition that the tech guy is a jerk when he gets someone in trouble for blogging/reading SI/maybe generic porn-viewing. Like, don't be *so* concerned with rule-enforcement. Granted, "don't waste your employer's resources" is much further down than "don't exploit/abuse children."
If he downloaded 'em for free from an ad-supported site, he's still supporting the child porn market. You guys don't think all that free porn you have is free just because folks provide it out of the goodness of their hearts, do you?
Ogged, I think the pay cash vs. contribute hits only is a difference of degree, not kind, but it might be a large degree.
Wow, so you people haven't actually ever downloaded porn. Most of it really is there just because someone uploaded it out of the "goodness" of his heart. In fact, the tech guy should be able to tell exactly where the files came from.
I only visit faith-based charity child porn rings, to keep my soul clean on the financial ethics.
Also note: I'm totally holding it against all the guys who are leaving me hanging as the internet porn expert.
186: Dude, what are you talking about? I have downloaded a lot of porn, and it's either ad-supported, or supported by trying to trick you into paying for it. Where the hell are you getting your porn from?
I want an example of a site where porn is procured without some kind of ad support or other source of revenue.
Where the hell are you getting your porn from?
Oh, now she wants advice.
Porn doesn't grow on (most) trees, you know.
Also, ogged, my understanding (from reading the NYT, you perves) is that child porn networks are much different from, say, regular for-free sites with ads.
194--
now *that* was funny.
(otherwise, I'm with the "alert the FBI" crowd, but I've got nothing original to add.)
Yeah, SnackyCakes is on fire tonight.
I'm going to hell for laughing at 194. (I think Ogged is saying he gets all his porn from BitTorrent because he's too cheap to shell out for what's on dudeswithgoats.com.)
I was just thinking, "Where's Teo when I'm being this sily?" (really!)
child porn networks are much different
Yeah, which makes me more curious about just what this guy saw. Pictures of naked teen-ish girls are everywhere (just check out the "nudism" or "naturism" sites), but in all the years I've been on the internet, I think I've only come across something that was clearly child pornography a couple of times--you really have to seek it out. So if was indubitably child porn, like I said above, there's a real problem here and the guy has to do something, though, of course, I'm loathe to say that he should go to the authorities...
I have not yet read the thread but just wanted to give an immediate gut reaction to the post and the top couple of comments. This advice from Cohen is the exact opposite of what I expect from the Times and I think it is good advice. Turning people in to the authorities when you find questionable material on their hard drives is a bad practice. Who among us is not familiar with stories of (for instance) people taking rolls of film with pictures of their children naked to the Wal-Mart photo lab and having the pictures given to the police and the children subsequently removed from their parents custody? I don't want to carry water for child molesters but I think the advice is pretty much right.
I'm totally holding it against all the guys who are leaving me hanging as the internet porn expert.
Heh. Maybe not enough people here know about Shareaza, torrents, etc.
Thank you, gswift and (grudgingly) snarkout.
Hypothetical concession 199 lends support to theory of 169?
I have to say that I come down mostly on Cohen's side, mostly because of how I look at the question, which is: Must I call the police.
The question, as I read it (althouh Cohen's final paragraph makes this less than clear) is not may I call the police or would it be Ok if I called the police or even (but see Cohen's final paragraph) would it be the most ethical thing to call the police, the question is am I ethically obliged to call the police. As bad as the exploitation that leads to child pornography is, is the IT person obliged, on this evidence, to call the police? Even though it is possible that he might be wrong and ruin someone's life and career and even though even if right it may jeopardize his job? It seems like a strong statement to say that he is obligated to call the police.
Look, if it's really child porn, he has to go to the authorities. But I have no idea why people are assuming the tech guy can make those sorts of judgments. I'm not sure that I can tell the difference between a fifteen year-old and a 22 year old; they all just look young. Plus makeup and staging for age--who knows?
I also find it unlikely that someone would store child porn on their work hard drive. That seems like a whole different level of crazy.
198: I'm always here for you.
199: Yeah, I'm kind of wondering if maybe he meant "possibly early teens" as a lower bound, because he describes the pictures as "probably illegal" when surely there would be no doubt about the illegality of pictures of prepubescent kids.
Wait: the "must I" question is sort of silly. You're never obliged to behave ethically, you just have to answer to yourself.
But I have no idea why people are assuming the tech guy can make those sorts of judgments. I'm not sure that I can tell the difference between a fifteen year-old and a 22 year old; they all just look young.
But if these are pics of, say, eight-year-olds it would be easy to tell. I'm increasingly thinking that's not what they are, though.
186: My understanding was supposedly "free" product is usually accompanied by spyware/malware.
Also, to whoever said the techie might end up being Porn Police: Uh, yeah. Talk to any public librarian about how much it stinks to be the enforcer. But again, separate problem.
The tone of the tech guy implies that he is not in doubt of the age of the kids.
"You're never obliged to behave ethically, you just have to answer to yourself."
huh-boy. a comment like that and you've got a lot to answer for. (to yourself, natch).
202 - Aww, ya big lug, I'm sure you're really too cheap to pay for beautifulnakedladiesofbreedingreadingproust.com.
210: His words seem to indicate a range of ages.
FL: Labs, my hesitation for advising the technician to call in the Feds is concerns about his or her epistemic situation.
The technician writes that the pictures are "clearly" of minors, but how much weight are we to give this? People aren't great judges of their own epistemic situations, and Cohen's (and our) position is once-removed from that.
Unfortunately, the technician isn't in a good position to try to get better evidence before he or she acts. It would be extremely awkward, to say the least, to ask someone else to look at the pictures and judge whether they're of minors or not. (Of course, it would to be pretty awkward going to the Feds as well.)
To me, the whole question lies in the proper interpretation of "clearly."
206: And I for you, emoticontinually.
206b
"Probably illegal" need not signal any doubt about the *age*, merely about the complexities of the law.
He's a computer tech, not a lawyer, much less an internet-porn-first-amendment lawyer.
I think that the child-porn-specific regulations in the US have most likely led to a situation where child porn is pretty easy to distinguish from real porn, for the following reasons:
- People who acquire it are aware that it is illegal and therefore they don't store it with their other porn
- It is much more likely to cost money, because being illegal makes it much harder to find people who will distribute it without receiving some sort of reward.
In other words, 193. If the guy is uncertain whether the law would regard it as child porn or not, it's probably not anything to worry about. There's no way a porn producer would knowingly use 14-year-olds when he could just as easily use 18-year-olds who look like 14-year-olds.
I don't know if this situation is likely to produce a small-scale parody of Orwellian posturing, but it's possible.
211: who do you answer to?
214: But we're not actually acting out the situation. We and Cohen are supposed to tease apart the ethical consideration, so that this guy can make his own decision. Thus we should take him at his word that it's clear.
"Probably illegal" need not signal any doubt about the *age*, merely about the complexities of the law.
The law is pretty clear-cut on this issue, though, particularly in Canada (where there are no first-amendment issues).
Basically, it seems like far too many people are willing to cry "child abuser" at the merest hint of any evidence (I had a very nervous day of being accused myself once), so when Person A's instincts don't lead him in that direction, it's unlikely that Person B, who knows less about the situation than Person A, should advise him to become alarmist. It's not hard to convince oneself to be alarmist.
218a
the kingdom of ends, baby. the noumenal community of self-legislating rational agents.
plus the man, of course.
I saw my neighbor smoking marihuana, which I know to be illegal in the state of New Jersey. I suspect he might possibly be growing several plants in his basement. Am I under some obligation to report him to the authorities? Or can I allow this scourge of lawnorder to continue -- if I don't report him will it be on my head when he gets my daughter addicted to pot and breaks up my happy home?
I agree with SCMT's 205. I'm inclined to read "young children -- clearly less than 18, possibly early teens" as 14-16ish, mainly, I think, because he says that it is "probably illegal." I mean, if they're 8 year olds it's obviously illegal. And I suspect that absent the sort of signals that help one judge the age of a young girl in real life -- whether she's with parents or friends or a boyfriend, her companions' apparent ages, what she's wearing, whether she's driving a car, etc. -- and taking into consideration all the devices available for manipulating appearances in photography, very few people could decisively make the call between ages 15 and 19.
212 -- are you talking about the English Courtesan again?
"Scourge of lawn-order"...you mean he's really smoking weeds.
I also find it unlikely that someone would store child porn on their work hard drive. That seems like a whole different level of crazy.
Tim, I mean this in the kindest possible way, but man you have led a sheltered life. I have only worked for four companies, three of them very small (n=30) and I have run across several examples. Most notable were seriously creepy images on a laptop that was shared with other colleagues.
More seriously: When people are in emotionally heavy-duty waters (disease, addiction, other problems) they not in a good position to avoid acting stupidly.
Uh, 223 cross-posted with 206 through 222.
218: Is that really what Cohen is supposed to be doing?
Despite the title of his column, it's really just a run-of-the-mill advice column, right?
And if someone came to me for advice about whether to report someone for child pornography found on a computer, my first instinct would be to say "Dude, are you sure?"
Total agreement with 228.
228: Hmm, good question. I really don't know. It does seem more, uh, ethical, to decompose the pieces and hand them back to the actor. But it seems more like good entertainment to just answer the damn question.
207: Don't confuse 'obligated' with 'compelled.'
So, I'm not sure. Except to say that I think Cohen's gone and confused 'legal' with 'ethical' again.
But here's the things I would like to know:
1) "Clearly under eighteen" and "possibly pre-teen" doesn't give me a good sense on how to read it, but I'm inclined to think that the tech probably saw some pictures whose subjects looked young to him, but not obviously pre-pubescent. There isn't always much difference in appearance between 15 and 18, and I think our sense of that is further skewed as on TV shows, the '18 year old' might be 24 or 25.
2) I'd also want to know how experienced the tech is with looking at porn. If she's someone like my mom, who still blushes at Desperate Housewives, she'd be so shocked that she would see 'evil and destructive child pr0n' whatever the subject matter.
3) So if was indubitably child porn, like I said above, there's a real problem here and the guy has to do something, though, of course, I'm loathe to say that he should go to the authorities... If the tech is certain it's child porn, bringing in the authorities seems to be the only smart thing to do. I can't think of a way to resolve the problem that doesn't complicate life for the tech. Talk to the guy personally? Talk to the higher-ups? Gossip?
4) I think we have to be careful to avoid the mistake of being too sympathetic with the nearby and vivid President while downplaying the interests of the anonymous and distant thirteen year old who's on the receiving end of abuse partly because President has a taste for teh imm0r41 pr0n.
This gets it exactly right. If it is child porn, I can't boo-hoo too much for the boss. Wah, wah, not only do I exploit children, but I'm too moronic to keep it somewhere besides my work computer.
What's making me feel icky about Cohen's article is that it seems to veer awfully close to the sort of rhetoric used to convince a date-rape victim that she shouldn't talk. He's such a nice boy, and he's going to be a doctor, are you sure you didn't really say yes? You want to ruin his life because maybe you were drunk and don't remember?
Ok, I've been thinking about this in terms of what I'd advise, rather than what I'd do. This is what I'd do:
Any kind of porn with girls who look like they might be younger than 18: nothing.
Nude pictures of girls who are clearly under 18 frolicking in fields: nothing.
Nude pictures of girls who are clearly under 18, posed suggestively, or otherwise clearly erotically: I'd go talk to the president, and tell him to get rid of the pictures and ask him if this was an issue with which he thought he needed help.
Pictures of children being molested: I'd talk to the president, and tell him that if he didn't check himself into some kind of serious therapy, I'd go to the authorities.
I keep reading this thread as if President Bush was the one with child pr0n found on his computer.
What's the difference between obligated and compelled, if you're talking about an ethical dillemma?
234 - I will start spreading the rumor at once, as you request.
Cala and Becks are both gone all day, then both show up within two minutes of each other? Maybe they really are the same person.
) I think we have to be careful to avoid the mistake of being too sympathetic with the nearby and vivid President while downplaying the interests of the anonymous and distant thirteen year old who's on the receiving end of abuse partly because President has a taste for teh imm0r41 pr0n.
I'm not sure this is empirically true. Does anyone think that the availability of drugs is effected by the imprisonment of a number of users? I suspect that, for pedophiles, child porn is at least as addictive, and that the percentage caught is not greater than the percentage of drug users caught.
Huh. One of my first reactions to this is to recall that there's something of a spyware/botnet epidemic out there, and because of it I don't trust that a given illegal pile of bits was placed there by the actions of the computer's owner. If one were to run a network to distribute such materials, wandering over to your friendly neighborhood black-hat community and buying some botnet resources for the purpose would seem like the obvious thing to do.
Figuring out whether that was the case or not should be something that an investigation does. I'm not confident that it is, though.
I dunno, you're the one parsing 'obligated', and 'answer to yourself' weird. No one's going to force this guy to tattle, most likely, but he could be obligated to do so all the same.
last paragraph of 232 -- but the technician is not a victim in this scenario.
If the tech has seen lots of porn, it seems like s/he would sound a lot more certain about whether the problem pictures are actually child pornography, for reasons ogged has discussed. The root of the uncertainty here is the contrast between the descriptors "young children" and "clearly less than 18, possibly early teens." Would YOU use the term "young child" to describe a 14 year old, in this context? Again, I think that neither Cohen nor any of us has enough information to recommend throwing the executive overboard, because the tech has not provided enough information for us to judge, and has not given the impression that his/her own judgement is reliable in this case.
Also - does anyone think that the fact that out of lots of pornographic pictures, "some" are of maybe-children? Does this tell us anything useful about the situation? Like, that the consumer of this porn isn't a full-on pedophile? Or is the important issue just the market for child porn?
Further, I note that the discussion in this thread assumes the pictures are of girls, although the tech does not provide that information, either. Does it make a difference? (not to the morality of the case, obviously, but to what we think about the tech's judgement)
What's making me feel icky about Cohen's article is that it seems to veer awfully close to the sort of rhetoric used to convince a date-rape victim that she shouldn't talk. He's such a nice boy, and he's going to be a doctor, are you sure you didn't really say yes? You want to ruin his life because maybe you were drunk and don't remember?
Cala puts her finger on it. Yes, it's appropriate to understand that your actions will have consequences and they may be life-altering, so you don't want to toss accusations around lightly. But Cohen is doing far more than that. He's essentially giving a greater benefit of the doubt to this guy than I suspect he would in a less white-collar situation.*
*I don't know this for sure because i stopped reading his column some time ago.
Nude pictures of girls who are clearly under 18, posed suggestively, or otherwise clearly erotically: I'd go talk to the president, and tell him to get rid of the pictures and ask him if this was an issue with which he thought he needed help.
Pictures of children being molested: I'd talk to the president, and tell him that if he didn't check himself into some kind of serious therapy, I'd go to the authorities.
See, to my mind, this just is likely to create more headaches than involving the authorities. Now you're his enabler, counselor, blah blah, no thanks.
240 - Look, I'm rubber and you're glue, okay?
243: If Cala thinks she might have been date raped, I'd advise her to figure it out before she called in the cops. If she had been, of course she should. The difference here is that Cala's pretty well situated to give the definitive answer to the question. The tech guy isn't.
last paragraph of 232 -- but the technician is not a victim in this scenario.
I said the rhetoric was close, not identical.
244 - Not only could the authorities think you're his enabler, that would give the dude the opportunity to retaliate. Getting fired is a big enough worry - what if the President went after the tech's character so he couldn't go to the authorities by, say, making a phony call to child services that the tech was molesting his own kids? People are fucked up, especially when they're desperate and panicked.
247: It seems to me like a key distinction.
A key distinction in whether or not his advice is icky?
242 (and I guess 77 in passing) - One of the claims about child pornography (actual child porn involving pre-pubescents, not nudie shots of 16-year-olds) as bad beyond the obvious exploitation of the children is that consumers, when supplied with it, tend to escalate from viewing the porn to actually initiating encounters with children. On the one hand, I've seen this claim repeated by people in the popular press who didn't strike me as having obvious axes to grind; on the other, it sounds both reminiscent of Dworkin's more generalized claim in Pornography (which I find unconvincing) and scare stories about pot. I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure, and I'm basing this on a couple of stories I remember from the New York Times, not controlled studies of abnormal psychology.
Pictures of children being molested: I'd talk to the president, and tell him that if he didn't check himself into some kind of serious therapy, I'd go to the authorities.
This one is probably where I go into "exception" on my narc code. Primarily because some people just can't be rehabilitated, and there's not insubstantial evidence that this is the case with child molesters. Once someone's collecting the molestation pics, it's time to look into isolating them from society, and that means the authorities.
246: I think I wasn't clear. It's not that whether the tech should call or not, or whether the date-rape victim should press charges or not. It's that the Cohen article gives the impression that most important thing to worry about is the boss's reputation, and that reminded me of the sort of bullshit 'sure, you may have been assaulted, but he would get kicked out of Ivy U', where charges would be pressed in a heartbeat if the date rapist were a townie.
Judging the tech's epistemic situation is hard, but whether the pron collector is the boss or an underling really shouldn't affect whether to go to the cops, if it should be the case that there's really child porn.
some people just can't be rehabilitated, and there's not insubstantial evidence that this is the case with child molesters
Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I suppose it's possible that he'd be put away for a while because of the pictures, but any company president is going to be able to afford an attorney who should be able to make enough of an issue of the files' provenance that he won't be convicted.
252 gets it exactly right. If we mock Ted Haggard's claims that he plans to take some time off and be cured of homosexuality, then we shouldn't have some sort of idea that therapy will cure pedophilia.
Wait, Ned, I don't think pedophilia is something you're born with.
consumers, when supplied with it, tend to escalate from viewing the porn to actually initiating encounters with children.
I feel pretty certain this is false, in the same sense that people viewing gore on rotten.com don't escalate to going out and hacking people up. In fact, I think the cause and effect and precisely backwards, similar to the argument that marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin. People who are predisposed to molest children probably start with imagery because it's far less risky to obtain, but it doesn't follow that people who look at nudie pictures of teenagers are skipping down Molestation Avenue.
253: You know what else it reminds me of? All of the Catholic Church abuse scandals. Literally decades of paper trails of people basically making the same argument. "We can't turn him in, because think how embarrassing."
(N.b. Not saying people here are making this argument.)
what if the President went after the tech's character so he couldn't go to the authorities by, say, making a phony call to child services that the tech was molesting his own kids?
This is why there was a distinction between what I'd do and what I'd advise. But to flesh this out a bit, if I were going to talk to him, I'd write something up about what I planned to do and why and save it so that I could authenticate its date--and I'd tell a couple of people I trusted about what I planned to do. That way, I'm not without cover if he decides to go after me.
253 -- I'm not getting that vibe from Cohen's reply. As heebgb pointed out above, a blue-collar worker (with an office computer, whatev) would be at the same risk of loss of reputation as the boss in the article.
256 was supposed to be a joke - "because it's peer to peer at that age"
260: Yes, but if it were an underling, I suspect the advice would be more along the lines of 'invoke company policy and fire his ass' or 'talk to his supervisor and take appropriate action' or 'if you're sure it's child porn, call the cops' not 'be quiet, you probably don't really know.'
but any company president is going to be able to afford an attorney who should be able to make enough of an issue of the files' provenance that he won't be convicted.
Which brings us to, are there situations where vigialnte justice is justifiable, or even preferrable?
doesn't follow that people who look at nudie pictures of teenagers are skipping down Molestation Avenue.
I remember back when it was called Sesame Street.
The neighborhood's really gone downhill.
Specifically, it was this sentence that bothered me:
Even if your boss were acquitted of criminal charges, the accusation itself imperils his job, his reputation and the company.
Imperilsfuture of a young man from a good family Harvard's reputation the Church the company?
I detect a consensus developing, so it's time for frivolity.
You are all now directed to click on the link in comment #217. Trust me.
Shoppers were sure -- these Santas were Nazis.
Priceless.
205:
There was a professor (tenured) in a university I once attended who did precisely that. He got caught and he is in jail now, for a long time (there was more than stuff on his computer to his case, I think).
Ogged, RE: 180, see Wickard v. Filburn
To help ogged out a bit, I've seen a lot of porn in my day, and there's apparently a big market for naked pictures of women who look younger than 18. Some guy who goes by the name Steve Lightspeed has constructed a porn empire based on this very principle, and you have to assume that if he wasn't 2257 compliant, he'd be in jail already. The guy didn't say that he saw pictures of little kids, he said "clearly less than 18, possibly early teens", but if you Google for any number of female first names along with "Lightspeed" as their last name (Erica, Ashley, Faith", what have you), you'll see pictures of girls that out of context would fit that description. Given that it's not clear a crime was commited, and you can't un-accuse someone of having child porn, I don't see any justification for calling the cops.
And after comment 273, crickets will be audible in the silence at Unfogged...
I can't wait to see what the Unethicist does with this tomorrow.
I've never been particularly keen on retribution. Particularly, I've never seen the justice is saying that we should make the lives of a few randomly selected unlucky people into a living hell in order to send a message to some distant and nameless malefactors.
I'm also dubious of the connection between possessing kiddie pron and encouraging the actual abuse of children. I see the connection (it's simple Econ 101), but it strikes me as attenuated and distant. Yes, someone who buys GMAC corporate bonds is contributing to global warming, but that doesn't mean we should come down on the bond buyer rather than the SUV maker.
The date rape analogy is inapt, both because of the directness of the harm and because of the likelihood of repetition. I'm not at all sure that one who possesses pictures is particularly likely to molest children.
I suspect that we have draconian penalties for the kiddie pron because of a social attitude that says that people who posses pron of any sort are *bad people who should suffer* and that if it weren't for that pesky and misguided 1st amendment we could clean up this country.
So when looking to balance the almost certain badness to one named person against the slim possibility of possibly preventing harm to distant nameless kids, when the real agenda is creeping christo-fascist puritanism - I'm thinking to keep my mouth shut unless the evidence is really really clear. This isn't quite like ignoring laws that restrict swarthy people to the back of the bus, but there are some similarities.
Because of my paranoia, I'm taking the liberty of not appending my name to this comment.
Steve Lightspeed
Yeah, I was going to link to a picture of Jordan Capri (or here) and ask people what they'd have guessed her age to, had they seen it outside of this context. But then I didn't.
Both pictures are work-safe, btw.
Hah. Actually, it's even worse than that. At my day job, I make tools used by people who see lots of porn on a regular basis. Including actual child porn. And listening to their descriptions, there's a clear distinction between "sketchy barely legal porn" and "child porn." The description in the article is solidly the former.
And like someone said upthread, given the demand for this stuff, if people can legally provide pictures of girls who look 16, why would they risk taking pictures of actual 16 year olds?
Both pictures are work-safe, btw.
That's my problem with this late night stuff. It's not that I'm averse to research, it's that getting fired right before Christmas is bad times.
See, my thinking was that the guy wouldn't have brought up the child porn angle if it was a bunch of girls (or boys) who looked 16, but the letter is sufficiently unclear that you could read it either way.
re: 157 I may be the only one, but I want to hear more from labs about how Scanlon's discussion of relativism bears on this. Also, I think one driver of the difference is how serious people think the crime discovered here is (or perhaps, the relationship between how sure the tech can be with how serious the crime is). Per ClownA's 222, we can imagine the tech stumbled on evidence of other crimes. I suspect if it were *murder* everyone would say go to the cops. When the crime in question is variously a) heroin use, b) selling heroin, or c) selling heroin to little baby kittens, maybe different people give different answers.
apostropher: I guess 16. I'm wrong, right? She's 35?
I suspect if it were *murder* everyone would say go to the cops.
Let's not be so quick to get our narc on. A little context would be in order. Who was killed, and why? Did he/she have it coming? etc.
If you were wrong, would widdle pwesident lose his company?
See, my thinking was that the guy wouldn't have brought up the child porn angle if it was a bunch of girls (or boys) who looked 16, but the letter is sufficiently unclear that you could read it either way.
I was thinking that maybe the letter-writer was thinking "These girls look like they could be 14 or 20 or somewhere in between, and I'm offended by the presence of this stuff whether or not it's actually illegal. And now I think that if the girls turn out to be 14, I'll be in trouble for not reporting that I discovered this."
And if that's the case, it's probably not illegal.
277: Both poses are young, but I'm leaning to say 24 or 25.
If you were wrong, would widdle pwesident lose his company?
Nobody likes a tattletale.
I absolutely LOVE this thread. The funny thing is, when I read Cohen's bit this morning, I wondered if y'all would pick it up here. Sure enough!
For me, the technician's duty to report this discovery is as strong as the technician's certainty that the children in the porn were, in fact, under 18. There's a great deal of angst upthread about how such a technician might be able to judge the ages of individuals in a sexually-explicit image, but I like the analogy above about seeing a van being loaded behind a darkened Best Buy after 2am. It seems to me that the people who want to be concerned about the tech's ability to determine the ages of the folks in the image want to answer a different question than was asked -- after all, the tech said that they were "clearly less than 18." In my view, therefore, the tech "clearly" has a duty to inform the authorities.
At the very least, I would recommend Witt's #30 above, which suggested reporting the president to the company's board of directors (although in a closely-held company, that's likely to be the president and a few of his friend and relatives).
*gets onto soapbox*
One last thing. John Emerson's #108 makes my skin crawl:
> Prosecutorial discretion can be a good thing, but
> in part it just means that prosecutors get to
> express their own kinks for punitiv indignation.
> They can't be trusted on drug cases and civil
> liberties, and I suspect that porn is another area
> where they can't be trusted.
As a prosecutor, I can tell you that the public will never know how many cases I dismiss because the defendant was only 16, or because the bust wasn't righteous, or simply because I think the defendant deserves a break. The same is true for cases in which I reduce the charged offense to something much less serious. It's really easy to say that prosecutors "can't be trusted" in one way or another, but spend some time watching one in court and see if you can say the same thing.
Simply because the media and pop culture are currently in love with the "out of control prosecutor" meme -- and just because there are well-publicized cases of prosecutorial error out there -- doesn't mean that this is how all prosecutors behave. When defense attorneys commit misconduct, how often is THAT front page news?
Finally, let me just point out that most prosecutors aren't in their jobs for the power trip or the money or the excellent benefits. In North Carolina, prosecutors are the lowest paid government lawyers in the state, and our health plan is an absolute joke. We do this job because we love doing justice for our victims AND for criminal defendants. I understand that there are powerful counter-examples of prosecutorial misconduct out there, but those cases aren't the norm. If you can't or won't believe that, well, that's fine. But at least understand that you are walking around with a warped concept of the criminal justice system.
*gets off soapbox*
Of course, having said ALL of that, let me be the first to admit a complete and total lack of objectivity on the matter of how prosecutors act and are perceived to act. But that's the way it goes -- I can't change that! I am, after all, NCProsecutor.
Oh, and on Mike Nifong -- no fracking comment.
True. Better to be a vigilante.
I'm not necessarily endorsing vigilanteism, but I suspect there's circumstances under which someones death might not be my business and/or nothing I'd feel compelled to go tell the police about.
Heebie-geebie-
In philosophical ethics the terms 'obligated' and 'ought' mean, roughly, that a given action is morally required. So, to say that the tech is obligated to turn in the president is to say that if the tech fails to do so then the tech will have acted immorally.
This, again in philosophical ethics, contrasts with the term 'should', which sometimes has the connotation that a given action is morally praiseworthy but not actually required. To say that the tech should turn in the president is, then, to say that it would be a good thing to do but to admit that the tech would not have acted immorally if he does nothing.
(note, however, that 'should' is also often used in philosophical ethics to indicate that an action is the one that a rational maximizer would perform. Confusing? Thems the breaks)
As Idealist noted in 204, the questions of what the tech is obligated to do, what the tech should do, what the tech may do, and what it would be good for the tech to do, are quite different. As Cohen was clearly limiting himself to discussing the tech's obligations, Idealist appears to be right that the advice isn't quite as bad as some commenters have suggested.
286: Or why not simply take the technician at their word: they believe the individuals in the images are "clearly" under the age of 18 and unsure about the legality of possessing such images (through the use of the phrase "probably illegal"). IMHO, any other interpretation of the technician's words seems to be kind of sticking one's head in the sand and answering a question you'd rather answer than the one asked.
Of course, I could be full of shit. After all, I AM a prosecutor, and not to be trusted when it comes to porn. Just ask John Emerson... :)
I just find it unlikely that someone would be unsure of whether images involving individuals clearly under 18 were illegal.
294: Except for all the times that 'should' and 'ought' are synonyms.
Simply because the media and pop culture are currently in love with the "out of control prosecutor" meme
It should also be noted that the media and pop culture are obsessed with finding and shaming and permanently stigmatizing anyone who gets anywhere near child sexualization, be it abusive or consensual or entirely fantastical. And the categories are getting conflated all the time, with looking at a picture of a nude 16 year-old somehow becoming either equivalent to or on its way to becoming full-out prepubescent child rape.
Anyway, my instincts are probably not in line with conventional ethical thought. If I saw a dark van being loaded in a parking lot at 2am, I wouldn't call the cops, nor do I report any of the thousands of car alarms I hear going off when shadowy people (usually the owners) are meddling with the doors. I would, however, call the cops on abuse or harrassment or violence, and have done so.
I still think my answer from 121 resolves most, but not all, of the dilemmas people are having.
I think your answer in 121 is a terrible mess.
Could the tech not reporting child porn (for this Q I'm assuming it is child porn) be misprision of a felony?
1st time I encountered that, and there was a conviction on it, was in the OK City bombing cases. Seems like a big club for the prosecution to use and a handy way to get that plea bargain.
(The neat, nonoperational, Bold and Italic icons are gone. Sic transit...)
297: Well, yes. Which is why in practice the word 'should' should be avoided whenever one means to speak precisely. But, in any case, there is a clear meaning for 'ought' and 'obligation', and a contrast to be made with what philosonerds call the superogatory. And with 'compelled' and 'compulsion', of course.
295: because there is an long-established history of people confusing young-looking 18-year-olds with 14-year-olds. As can be seen regularly when either the police or vigilante organizations such as perverted justice try to catch suspected pedophiles with young-looking bait.
If he's certain that they're underage, he should report it. But he should be aware that if they aren't actually underage, he will certainly be fired for abusing his powers as an IT employee and getting the president in trouble, and should let that inform his opinion about how certain he is. His call.
It (at least attempts to) resolve the uncertainty about the actual illegality of the images and the problem of the guy's reputation being ruined just by being investigated, without taking ogged's strange root of thinking that counseling is the most extreme step that may be taken.
re: 77 and 257. This doesn't have anything to do with the question, but actually it's my understanding (conceivably mistaken, but I've got a textbook out here--Aggression and Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents--that at least in the case of media violence, which obviously could function differently than child porn, the catharsis theory is wrong wrong wrong (this to 77), and in fact people think there's enough evidence for the causal relationship between viewing media violence and violent behavior that the APA went ahead and endorsed it (this to 257). (My impression is not that the APA is inclined to be terribly overconfident in its judgments; not long ago I read about an amicus brief they submitted to the S.C. saying please don't let psychologists and psychiatrists predict individual recidivism; they can't do it and the S.C. didn't listen to them. But maybe that's not indicative of the broad organizational character). I think this conclusion comes from a bunch of correlational studies, lab experiments, field experiments that show that kids predisposed to aggression become more agressive after seeing violent TV in the home environment, but kids who see TV about cooperation become more cooperative and less aggressive, and some longitudinal studies, including one that showed that exposure to TV violence at 8 was linked to criminality at 30 (I presume they attempted to control for a bunch of stuff there). Anyway, there's apparent psychological consensus that a causal effect has been found; perhaps that's subject to criticism. I don't know anything about the research into the relationship between child porn and pedophilia, but people seem to think in the case of media violence the causal arrow runs from the exposure to the proclivity (though it could run the other way, too; there could be a feedback loop).
303: In these investigations, the suspected pedophiles in question believes that they are on-line with a 14 year old because the person (be it police investigator or otherwise) says they are, NOT because they use "young-looking bait." That's how we know that the suspected pedophile is interested in sexual contact with an underage person -- because they arrange to have contact with someone they fully believe is under 18 (whether or not that happens to be true).
I've observed a trained police investigator create an on-line identity for a chatroom (without a "young-looking bait" photo) which purported to be for a 13 year old girl. The investigator then logged onto the chatroom as the 13 year old girl and we sat back and watched users tell this girl what they'd like to do to her, when, where, how she might contact them, their own ages, etc. (Actually, I make it sound like I'm so cool and experienced to have seen this, but it's been on Dateline ad infinitum.)
I don't think you can credibly argue that these folks are simply mistaken. They're not. They are looking for underage people. You can argue that they aren't actually committing crimes, but in many states the law has been amended to make this specific fact pattern a crime (i.e., on-line solicitation of an investigator posing as underage).
The only other "long-established history of people confusing young-looking 18-year-olds with "14-year-olds" involves nearly every statutory rape defendant I've ever heard on the witness stand -- "Honest, she looked 18 to me!"
And don't accuse me of conflating possession of child porn with statutory rape. I'm not.
Of course, none of this is either here nor there when it comes to figuring out what the technician knew or could tell from the images. But I couldn't resist.
exposure to TV violence at 8 was linked to criminality at 30
The problem here is that a huge, huge majority of children in this country are exposed to media violence, but only a small minority of that group goes on to be violent or criminal in their later life.
Right, no one says that exposure to media violence necessitates future violent behavior, but that's different than saying the cause and effect is backward. It's not a sufficient cause by itself, but along with other risk factors, makes later criminality more likely.
If one were drawing an analogy to describe a possible similar relationship between child porn consumption and pedophilia (and I hasten to say I have no info on whether they function the same way), one might speculate that porn consumer isn't necessarily a pedophile, but it's possible that consuming the porn, and reinforcing fantasy through orgasm, etc., will make later molestation more likely. Not saying this has anything to do with the ethicist question.
kids predisposed to aggression become more agressive
The predisposition is key here. I doubt there's much controversial about the notion that aggressive kids get more aggressive with exposure to violent imagery. If these are pictures of honest-to-god children in a folder full of porn, that's really troubling because it probably does speak to a predisposition. If it's teenagers, I understand that it's just as illegal in terms of the law, but it's a much grayer area psychologically.
308: I thought that before the amendment of the law to make trying to pick up someone you believe to be 13 on the internet a crime, the typical law enforcement action was to entice the suspect to meet a young-looking LEO in the mall (or somewhere else public, so no expectation of privacy) to provide proof of criminal intent. Could be wrong.
The only other "long-established history of people confusing young-looking 18-year-olds with "14-year-olds" involves nearly every statutory rape defendant I've ever heard
I'll buy that. That range is easy enough to differentiate even in L.A. [Unless there's something going on in their brains akin to the anorexic seeing fat where there isn't any. I wonder if anyone has looked at that. (and no, I'm not confusing explanation with excuse. I'd have no problem shooting a rabid dog even while understanding the dangerous behavior isn't the dog's fault.]
In any event, I wouldn't report my suspicion that someone in a jpg might be under 18. There would have to be more than that. If all the sexually active sixteens out here were in jail the malls would be deserted.
I can't believe no one else has picked up on this:
I've only come across something that was clearly child pornography a couple of times--you really have to seek it out.
Uh. Huh.
We like this blog and don't want it to go away.
The problem I have with the whole "the tech guy isn't in a position to know if they're kids" thing is that that isn't the question. The question is (as NCProsecutor pointed out), does the tech guy *think* that they're kids--not maybe, not possibly, but that they *are* kids? His letter indicates to me that yes, he does.
From the point of view of the guy with barely legal porn on his computer, sure: the guy shouldn't report you as having kiddie porn if he doesn't damn well know. But from the point of view of the tech guy (which is what the letter asks us to consider), if he thinks they're kids, then yes, he should report. Precisely *because* he's not in a position to determine what the hell is going on: that's the job of the authorities.
If you have reason to believe someone has done something illegal, *and* you believe that that law is a just law, then you should report it. Not doing so because by some stretch of the imagination it's possible you're wrong, or because you're afraid of losing your job, is cowardly at best, and immoral at worst.
Uh. Huh.
What is that supposed to mean? Given that you've demonstrated almost total ignorance of how people acquire internet porn, you might be more careful with implying unsavory things about me.
Well, that was testy. I take back the testy in case you were kidding. If you weren't, I'm going to beat you up.
Dude, I've downloaded internet porn, so piss off with your "total ignorance."
It's meant to imply that you've said two apparently contradictory things: (1) You've come across child porn a couple times; (2) To see child porn, you really have to seek it out.
I don't blame you for your curiosity, and I'm not going to report you to the authorities, Ogged.
But maybe you should seek counseling.
I leave it to you to decide whether or not I was kidding.
Keep in mind that I utterly lack humor.
I don't blame you for your curiosity, and I'm not going to report you to the authorities, Ogged.
Report what? I've been here the whole time, and I didn't see anything.
(1) You've come across child porn a couple times; (2) To see child porn, you really have to seek it out.
Ok, seriously, for people who are wondering: if you look at Usenet (still the greatest repository of porn in the world), you'll see stuff with enlightening subjects like "Hot action!" You might decide that "hot action" is just what you're in the mood for, and well, often it's not hot action at all. It's something else entirely. But even so, it's almost never child porn.
Dude, you are so humorless sometimes.
I have been kinda grumpy lately. Not sure why, but I'm going to take it out on all of you.
Maybe you should try adjusting your meds. Either that, or eat some chocolate and take some Midol.
317: You're at a frat party. You see some very drunk girl go upstairs with some mildly less drunk guy. Odds of date rape occuring are distinctly non-zero. Do you report the potential date rape?
I dunno. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to consider the consequences of reporting something to the police if the person you suspect turns out to be innocent.
I think you have me confused with the other humorless denizen of this blog. And if that denizen teaches us anything, it's that those strategies don't work.
327: No; you interfere and make sure that the very drunk girl's friends take her home.
328: Ah well, Ogged. It's okay, we love grumpy you.
See how easy that was?
The idea that the guy is a pedophile when a few questionable photos are found amidst many images of adult porn is laughable, especially when the tech is pretty clearly referring to apparent younger teens as the "children" at issue. Pedophilia is an obsessive, pattern behavior. And to NCProsecutor, my experience working infrequently as a pro-bono computer forensic expert for defendents is that prosecutors look for easy wins, they don't have the resources or the motivation to try to clear people, especially when the subject matter of the crime is highly technical. child porn is universally reviled, so it is easy to shock juries with images found on hard drives no matter how they got there. Also note that our restrained AG Mister Gonzalez has made child porn one of his highest priorities.
>some people just can't be rehabilitated, and there's not insubstantial evidence that this is the case with child molesters
I don't think the recidivism rate for sex crimes is any worse than most other types of crimes.
I've sort of been in this situation, professionally.
In between my undergrad degree and grad school, I worked as a techie for an ISP. One of my occasional jobs was to go through web-sites hosted by customers on our servers and vet them for illegal or possibly illegal content.
In that time I don't think I ever saw anything that was definitely illegal, but I saw a lot of borderline stuff. In almost every case I had to contact the customer and ask them to pull the stuff. If there had been anything *clearly* illegal, I'd have had no choice but to phone the police.
However, the creepiest stuff I saw was a guy who had lots of images of semi-naked kids on his site -- nevertheless, the images were clearly from legal sources. Clothing catalogues, newspaper features on holiday destinations, that sort of thing. The content itself wasn't disturbing, it was the obsessive collecting of it all in one place that was downright creepy.
In that case, I removed his site and I phoned him up and warned him off. He was really irate, to say the least. Not a pleasant conversation to be having.
He was really irate
Probably because he'd thought a lot about how it was all legal. Talk about conflating the legal and the ethical...
re: 334
Exactly. He kept repeating, 'but it's not illegal'.
I don't think the recidivism rate for sex crimes is any worse than most other types of crimes.
Like it says though, basing this on arrests and confessions is sketchy, and it's going to be especially so with child molestation because so much of it is unreported, and even reported cases are often extremely difficult to prove.
I think that the whole recidivism thing just demonstrates that extrapolating from kiddie porn to molestation is problematic: if you think the tech guy isn't qualified to know if the pics he's seeing are of children, he *sure* isn't qualified to be making guesses about whether the boss is molesting kids, or if he's likely to benefit from therapy, or if he's likely to be incorrigible.
317: If you have reason to believe someone has done something illegal, *and* you believe that that law is a just law, AND you believe the enforcement of that law will be carried out in a reasonable manner...
Given the L.A. cop's willingness to shoot crazed little old ladies rather than risking getting a rip in a uniform, I'd not report one rummaging through the apartment dumpster even if she's noisy and leaves a mess. I would report the homeless guys starting a fire in the vacant building near mine.
I lost a long post. Summary:
I would not report this guy to the police unless I was totally creeped out and worried that the guy was a serious problem. I do not trust the legal system to untangle this kind of thing and do not understand B's point of view on this. I would operate under the assumption that if I reported him, there'd be a significant chance that his life might be ruined even if he turned out to be innocent or harmless.
If I chose to intervene in some less drastic way, I'd change jobs first and probably do it anonymously. I'd never assume that everyone else would do the right thing.
As far as prosecutors go, no matter how many good ones there are, there are lots of bad ones. What was Nancy Grace doing during her ten years? And kiddie-porn is the kind of high-profile high-hysteria issue that brings out the worst in people.
On recidivism stats, our custom these days is to express ideas in statistical form even when there's no actual study showing that 500,000 children have been abducted, or that our cities are full of superpredators, or that 71% of strippers were sexually abused as children, or that 0% of pedophiles are rehabilitated, or that single educated 35 year old women will get struck by lightning more likely than get married, or that women talk 3x as much as men, etc. Once a meme gets out there it proliferates even if it was never true at all. Statistics are our version of Bible quotation. Who cares if the Bible didn't say that or didn't mean that?
I've had close contact with people in the therapy community (2 masters, one PhD), and critical standards in the field are apparently nil. From what I 've heard, the criminal justice community is no better. (I've seen a criminal justice text which used fictional characters from books and movies to make its points.) People in therapy care intensely, they want to help, they're often heavily invested in their own recovery, but they're not critical thinkers and they just repeat professional scuttlebutt. (They also have a business stake in high stats). I've had some eerie conversations about these things.
Why does this have to be an either/or situation? Surely it would be possible to both not tell the police and use the information to ruin the boss's life? Use some imagination here people.
If you have reason to believe someone has done something illegal, *and* you believe that that law is a just law, then you should report it. Not doing so because by some stretch of the imagination it's possible you're wrong, or because you're afraid of losing your job, is cowardly at best, and immoral at worst.
Officially scared now.
If you have reason to believe someone has done something illegal, *and* you believe that that law is a just law, then you should report it
Yeah, this gives me the creeping jibblies.
Coming in way late, I read the guy's letter as pretty clearly saying that the images were of young-looking models, and he was pretty sure that some of them were minors, that is, this was 'Barely Legal' porn rather than little kids. In which case I think the answer is to back off and ignore it, because given the legal risks involved in making such porn, if there's any reasonable possibility about confusion over the age of a model, it is very very likely that they are over 18 these days. (This point has been made above, but I'm too lazy to confirm by whom.)
If I'm wrong in that reading, and the tech is certain that the pictures are of kids (and are prevalent enough to avoid the possibility of mistake -- that is, if there's an archive of hundreds of pictures of adults, with three pictures of kids in there, I'd tend to assume that they were the result of a bulk download) I'd turn the guy in without worrying about ruining his life. While I disapprove of the crazed witch-hunt reaction to any attenuated possibility of child molestation, as a reaction to literal ownership of actual child porn I don't have much of a problem with it.
Yeah, that's the thing, it really, really sounds like "Barely Legal" stuff to me, too. If we were talking about a hard drive full of photos of naked seven year olds, I'd feel differently, but I just don't buy that that's what the letter writer is talking about.
Already been said, but ownership of computer-generated kiddie porn is perfectly legal. So it's tough to know what you're looking at, no matter what you think you're looking at.
That being said, I vote report anyway. The risk that some real harm is being done outweighs the reputational risks of a potentail witch-hunt, at least in my moral calculus. My moral calculus might admittedly be different if I looked at a lot of CGI child porn.
341, 342--
I'm not getting why b's reaction surprises you. Seems like a good rule of thumb to me. Isn't this just an ordinary duty to assist kind of situation?
If I'm chatting with somebody in a bar and they start boasting about how they stuck up a 7-11, with ample circumstantial detail, then, yeah, I'm going to try to report them to the cops. (Of course, my overarching thought will be about protecting myself from their reaction, but if I can do it safely, I'll do it).
Ditto if somebody tells me about a murder. Probably tax evasion, too, and if I hesitate over that, it's only because the details of this portion of the tax code may make it harder to be sure that I "believe that the law is a just law".
But, I mean, as a general rule? Yeah; I think as a citizen who benefits from living in a generally law-abiding country, I am obligated not to turn a blind eye to lawlessness. I have dealt with more lawless countries, and didn't like it at all.
And now you're going to sputter something about totalitarian Koestler Stasi nightmare creeping jibblies, and I'm going to say something about one thing not leading to another. Then you'll say the same anti-slippery slope thought applies to my concern. Then we'll talk about the golden mean for awhile.
Already been said, but ownership of computer-generated kiddie porn is perfectly legal. So it's tough to know what you're looking at, no matter what you think you're looking at.
The thing is that 'ruining someone's life' over that class of error doesn't bother me. If what we're talking about is an archive of photorealistic images of six-year-olds being raped, I'm perfectly happy to let the police sort out whether they're criminally generated photographs or legal computer generated images. Someone who's collecting that stuff is, IMO, a person worthy of enough disapproval that putting them through the stress and damage of an investigation doesn't give me pause.
339: John Emerson, thank you for your lengthy and thoughtful response.
Specifically, I'd like to address this:
> I would operate under the assumption that if I
> reported him, there'd be a significant chance that
> his life might be ruined even if he turned out to
> be innocent or harmless.
Does this reaction apply if you're absolutely certain that the president has child porn (i.e., if there are infants or toddlers in the images)? I hope not, because that's pretty cold -- and it has you bending pretty far over backwards (no pun intended) to protect an obvious criminal. Clearly, that's not the case here, although the tech said that young people in the images were "clearly" under 18 years of age.
Oh, all right, I'll respond to this part, too:
> As far as prosecutors go, no matter how many
> good ones there are, there are lots of bad ones.
> What was Nancy Grace doing during her ten
> years?
First of all, I can't stand Nancy Grace -- she makes a mockery out of our criminal justice system and I hate being associated with her. But you have absolutely NO idea what kind of prosecutor she was and neither do I. You really can't tell what people were like before they got on TV -- just look at Jerry Springer for God's sake.
As for the "it doesn't matter how many good prosecutors there are because there are lots of bad ones" argument, well, geez, there's not much to say about that. You either believe that kind of gross over-generalization (based purely on anecdotal evidence or your personal experience) or you don't. I thought of drawing some analogies here in the form of other types of people ("no matter how many good ones there are, there are lots of bad ones"), but let's keep this civil, m'kay?
My moral calculus might admittedly be different if I looked at a lot of CGI child porn.
Thanks for outing us, Brock.
I'm not getting why b's reaction surprises you. Seems like a good rule of thumb to me. Isn't this just an ordinary duty to assist kind of situation?
Well, first of all, the American police state is not a runaway-trolley-type possible-world hypothetical. We already are halfway there with regard to drugs and terrorism. Not everyone seems to agree that kiddie porn might also be in that category, but I think that it is. (The Satanic-abuse hysteria isn't gone yet, BTW, I heard some just recently). Prosecutors sometimes show discretion in high-profile high-emotion cases, and sometimes they don't.
If what I saw was predominantly little kids under 12, I'd react strongly, but what the guy reported was that they were "clearly" under 18, "possibly" several years younger. Even the "clearly" is uncertain since as someone reported above, pornographers look for young-seeming models who are of age.
I think that in every country, people draw the line between laws they fully respect and those that they somewhat ignore. In Russia almost no laws are respected, whereas in Singapore the law against gumchewing is enforced strictly. Different people draw the line in different places. And in this case, it seems that there's still a real question as to whether there was a crime at all.
317: B approvingly references a comment I made. I can die happy.
NCProsecutor, you're asking me to trust the profession as a whole because most prosecutors are OK. First of all, given the large number of people in jail for victimless drug crimes, I can't believe that most prosecutors are OK. They might be OK people otherwise, but those laws are monstruous. (They didn't write the laws, but the laws are bad and the prosecutors stay on the job and prosecute the cases. You may disagree about these laws).
Second, this is a benefit-of-the-doubt, burden-of-proof, default-position question for me. Should I assume that a case will be well-handled on the grounds that in most cases it will be, or should I decide that the risk of a kamikaze prosecutor (compounded by a media scare, shunning, and possible vigilantism) is high enough that I should just keep my mouth shut?
When he said "possibly early teens" to me that meant "definitely not younger than 13". That was a factor.
This has been said a couple of times before, but almost certainly the answers are not limited to "do nothing", "call the cops", or "write an anonymous warning to the company president". There are almost certainly company policies regarding appropriate computer usage that the dude is in violation of.
352: If the guy is company president, though, there's the supposition that that that channel would fail. This channel also would require getting a new job first.
I suspect the basic division here is between people who are inclined, for what ever reason, to worry on some sort of personal level about the possibility of police mistake, and those who know the state wouldn't make a mistake about them. The Shi'a, Emerson, me, and the Apostropher I get. But what secret lies deep in the heart of LB that she is on our side?
350, 317: The thing is, under my reading of the letter, it seems very likely to me that the tech, certain or not, is making a mistake of fact which should be corrected before he takes action. If I'm wrong, and we're talking about pre-pubescent kids, then he is certain about their ages. If I'm right, though, and we're talking about apparent teenagers, I believe (from other conversations like this) that as a matter of the realities of the porn industry, that an apparent teenager in a contemporary picture is almost certainly eighteen or over, and his certainty is mistaken.
"those who know the state wouldn't make a mistake about them"
seems straw-mannish to me.
I worry on many levels about the possibility of police mistakes, and I have no great confidence that the state would not make a mistake about me* in particular.
But I don't think that the imperfections in our state are such as nullify my obligations to advance and promote adherence to its just laws.
And really, if you are worried about damage to an innocent person, isn't that more likely to come from the media and from societal hysteria at large than from the state itself?
*(If I understood your use of "them" correctly, its antecedent is "those", i.e. the advocates of reporting. If not, what is the antecedent of "them" in "mistake about them"?)
345: I was under the impression that there was some ridiculous law that made even virtual child porn illegal. I distinctly remember a lot of huffing and puffing about Orwell and thought crimes with regard to this specific issue. Is it just illegal to create and/or distribute virtual child porn and not to possess? Or does this law not exist?
After reading 354, I have now been able to unpack my opinions on this. I thought at first that maybe I was totally wrong (because SCMT's right, the police are going to fuck me over), but then I realized that my reason for wanting to turn in the boss is a sense of fairness, that disparities in crime reporting, investigation, trial, and conviction should not be based on personal capital. In at least some sense, there's a way in which the boss' personal capital is influencing the tech guy's hesitation. If the tech guy had been seriously creeped out by the guy for years, or had thought that the boss was trying to molest his kid (even if he wasn't), he probably wouldn't be having this kind of hesitation. Similarly, people decide whether to report crimes, or report their suspicions of crimes, more for people they don't like, or don't feel an affinity with (i.e. poor, Black, Arab, socially inept, whatever). The police already have institutionalized favoritism for people they feel an affinity with, should we institutionalize our affinity for successful people by not reporting successful people for fear of jeopardizing their success? Fuck no.
And really, if you are worried about damage to an innocent person, isn't that more likely to come from the media and from societal hysteria at large than from the state itself?
Often, the damage is wrought by these forces acting in tandem. See, e.g., Capturing the Friedmans.
357- well, my 1st Amendment knowledge is shaky, but I'm almost positive that law was struck down by the Supreme Court. (All three aspects are legal, I think, since there is no victim, but it's possibly still illegal to create/distribute and merely okay to possess.)
Perhaps someone with better knowledge of this area of law could clarify.
The heavy moral judgment in 347 surprises me.
354--
I suspect the basic division is between those of us who are pure upstanding citizens who sleep the sleep of the just with a clean conscience, and those of you who are creepy pervy perverts who have guilty consciences because you're going to rot in hell for your sins.
Of course, the situation may be slightly more complex than that in certain respects.
Also, addendum to 358: I don't like the idea of not reporting people because our system is faulty (e.g. rampant police mistake). I believe just as much as anyone here that the police can't be trusted; indeed, I hope to work on police accountability in some capacity, someday. However, I think the system, while it stands, needs to be applied to everyone, in order to speed up the process of changing it. As long as most of the people who are negatively affected by police mistake are people who are poor, Black, and unlikeable (and indeed, that's what most of them are), no one's going to give a shit. So that's what's really underlying what I said in 358.
The heavy moral judgment in 347 surprises me.
347 seems like a strange post to single out from this thread as heavily judgemental.
And, 361 gets it exactly right.
354 + 362--
I suspect the basic division here is between people who are poor, Black, and unlikeable.
("I wanna be Black! I wanna be Black!"
"No, dammit, you're unlikeable!"
"Shit...could I be poor instead?")
363 -well, I read 1-56 and then started again at 341, so maybe I missed something in the middle. I wasn't really trying to single out, just to note.
In many cases the people who speak loudest against kiddie porn are the same ones who have chained pre-teen sex slaves in their basements.
367--
That's an outrageous lie! Our house has a crawl-space!
367: Don't think that by being the one to present that possibility, you're going to get out of us thinking it's you, Emerson.
362: This reminds me of the position that we should reinstate the draft, so that rich kids can go die in ill-conceived military misadventures, too.
Or that the proper response to the massive disparity in sentences for powder cocaine vs. crack should be to ramp up the powder cocaine sentences to draconian levels as well.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for such either position.
353 - Well-designed whistleblower systems (probably requiring a large company, and who knows if that's the case in this situation?) have a means of blowing the whistle on executives, and getting fired for reporting a violation of company policy seems like an excuse for a monster lawsuit, but point taken.
360 - Yeah, I think I remember seeing either the ACLU or the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund announcing that the "virtual child porn" law had been overturned in 2001 or 2002. It was illegal, though.
370: I was trying to compose that very comment, but got distracted by work. Thanks for doing it for me.
the position that we should reinstate the draft, so that rich kids can go die in ill-conceived military misadventures, too
Funny thing, I hold that position.
Similarly, I think more women should die in ill-conceived military misadventures, and thus support the removal of the combat exclusion.
360: You're right.
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), held: federal prohibitions against virtual porn are overbroad and unconstitutional.
Bottom line for me: The real harm of child porn is that it continues the victimization of the child who was sexually abused during the making of the original images. Virtual child porn does not have that element of harm, and therefore should not be outlawed. It still sucks, and I exercise my right to moral judgment of those who would make it and view it, but it ought not be banned by law.
I'm still amazed at the folks who want to give the president with child porn a pass because they can't believe that a computer tech knows for certain that it is, in fact, child porn. Would you feel the same if a 6 year old child came to the tech and said that her babysitter was molesting her? Would you be concerned that the tech couldn't possibly differentiate between a legal and illegal touching, and that the consequences of turning the babysitter in would be so grave for the babysitter that you couldn't recommend call the cops? Even if the child described behavior that is, to the tech, "clearly" illegal? After all, unless the tech is a trained professional, how does the tech *know* what is illegal and what isn't? Given the hysteria and overreaction inherent in any allegation of child sexual abuse, isn't it best to just leave it alone?
And once and for all, I'm not conflating possessing child porn with child sexual assault. I'm trying to understand the logical basis for this concern by using a counterfactual.
I assume then that you support making abortion as hard to get in New York and Boston as it is in South Dakota on the same grounds, yes?
374--
but your adherence to that position is probably somewhat sensitive to whether it would *increase* the number of ill-conceived military misadventures, right?
I mean, I take it that you are arguing for fair distribution of existing societal burdens. If the attempt to level the distribution were to result in a massive increase in the total burden to be distributed, then maybe no?
I'm not saying that having a draft-army around would increase the likelihood of starting wars--some people hope it will reduce it. And one might think that ratcheting up the penalties for middle-class coke users (i.e. powder vs. crack) will actually result in a legislative revulsion that will get all the penalties lowered.
But I take it that your point was about fair distribution of burdens in the first instance, rather than about the knock-on effects for later changes in the quantity of total burden.
Seriously, though, zadfrack and apo, don't you guys think it's problematic for us to only allow bad things that trouble us to happen to people for whom, for racist, gendered, and classist reasons, it troubles us less (e.g. letting mostly poor men die in armed conflict, letting mostly poor black men suffer the mistakes of our criminal justice system)?
to only allow bad things that trouble us to happen to people
Yes, it troubles me, but the prescription I prefer isn't to make bad things happen to more people, but to fewer people. This doesn't seem a particularly controversial or counterintuitive stance.
380--
speaking just for myself, I am very grateful to have your knowledge and insight on this and the 'land of the free' thread, and my only concern is that you not inadvertently out yourself.
E.g., that comment about your question after the meeting looked like it could be a unique identifier. I usually tell stories like that as "a friend of mine got up and".
But you know how to take care of yourself.
377: Hmm. No, I'm not. I don't think that's analogous, because abortions are difficult to get in SD because of problems particular to SD, which are uniform across the state, and thus can be addressed at the state level. Now, if California had a well-functioning criminal justice system and Texas a poorly-functioning one, I wouldn't say that we should make the one in California worse in order to address the shortcomings in Texas.
The reason it's not getting better in SD is not that no one gives a shit about SD (unlike, say, the problem of poor people in the CJ system), but that lawmakers in SD suck ass.
I'm still amazed at the folks who want to give the president with child porn a pass because they can't believe that a computer tech knows for certain that it is, in fact, child porn.
In my case, it's based on the belief (from other cues in the letter) that when the tech says "children," he or she means "teenagers." Comparing this to dismissing a six-year-old's reports of molestation strikes me as intellectually dishonest -- "clearly illegal" in that case corresponds entirely with my own sense of "clearly immoral" where the other does not.
If it's clearly kids, it's clearly kids. There would be no lower boundaries of "early teens," etc. There wouldn't even be much of a question--go to the cops. Maybe that changes with the tech's employment situation and his responsibilities to his family, etc. But that's not what it sounds like to me. (And again, part of this is driven by a suspicion that pedophiles are at least aware enough of the way in which society judges them to avoid putting criminal content on a work computer. And assuming there is some connection between good sense and high corporate office, especially the president.) It sounds like SFR found porn on the hard drive and freaked out. That's at least a possibility, right?
I am on m. leblanc's side re: the draft, but for different reasons. I think the idea of a volunteer army excuses too many problems. No mental health care for vets? Meh, no one I know, they signed up for it. Stupid war? Meh, no one I know, they signed up for it. Low pay? Meh, no one I know, they signed up for it. Right now it seems the attitude towards veterans seems to be, well, they made some life choices, and it's not like anyone didn't know that armies go to war.
Would rather have everyone do two years or a service equivalent.
380: kid bitzer, you give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. And if anyone ever cares enough to track down someone who was at that meeting and find out who asked that question, well, I reckon I'll have hit the big time and it will only add to my cache as a proecutor with a heart of gold.
Except with John Emerson, who still won't trust me.
This doesn't seem a particularly controversial or counterintuitive stance.
When you put it that way, it doesn't; fair enough. I'll admit to being a little over-obsessed with fairness.
384--
you know, rfts, I'm pretty snooty about intellectual honesty, but I don't think NCP's analogy sinks to the level of intellectual dishonesty. Maybe a helpful analogy, maybe an inaccurate analogy, maybe even a analogy that confuses more than it clarifies.
but in my book, I need a little more evidence before I'll report somebody to the authorities for 'intellectual dishonesty'.
And one might think that ratcheting up the penalties for middle-class coke users (i.e. powder vs. crack) will actually result in a legislative revulsion that will get all the penalties lowered.
That's actually the kind of thinking I'm having. It seems that as long as the problem is restricted to people we don't care about, we can ignore it. So Cala said what I was trying to, and more clearly.
384: I said I was using it purely as a counterfactual so that someone could explain the difference. despite that, you still toss that "intellectually dishonest" tag in my direction? Poor form, old chap!
As to the substance, I still don't undestand the difference, so maybe you can take another shot. You don't trust the tech to know if a person in the pictures is under 18 (for the purposes of calling the cops) but you would trust him to know if the touching being described to him by a six year old is illegal (for the purpose fo callign the cops)? THIS is what I don't understand.
Emotional disingenuousness, perhaps.
391
you ain't confusing me with Cala, is you?
cause then I'd *know* we aren't video-conferencing.
392: Ack, when I type fast, my spelling is a real problem. Feel free to mock me mercilesssly.
I for one will admit readily to having a different standard of moral obligation in the case of crimes against people than I do for crimes against pixels.
391: There is no better way to fall into the category of "people we don't care about" than to be accused of molestation. AFAIK, Foley didn't do anything even illegal. Does anyone, anywhere think that his career possibilities are basically fucked for life relative to what they were just a month or two ago? Does anyone think this is going to make us treat such issues more seriously? Don't you suspect that most of his former friends have entirely abandoned him?
(I admit that Foley isn't the most clarifying example, but the second cup ot coffee hasn't kicked in.)
NCProsecutor, it's not a good counterfactual. In your alternative scenario, there's already independent evidence that the touching was problematic, in that the six-year-old came and complained to him. Six-year-olds don't have a history of falsely (sua sponte, that is, falsely reporting with prodding is a whole different story) reporting that they've been molested, while pornography has a history of falsely appearing to be pictures of 15 or 16-year-olds.
Except with John Emerson, who still won't trust me.
Here are the reasons why I think it's different: (a) I don't think it's appropriate to call the cops over photos of 16-year-olds, anyhow, (b) there is an enormous, enormous market of "barely legal" porn that is, in fact, perfectly legal, and (c) in your hypothetical, there isn't any reason to think the tech is confused about the fact that there is a six-year-old kid who feels threatened. If the photos looked like they were of six year olds, I'd feel differently about it.
And that's where my feeling that the comparison was inappropriate comes in -- not in any potential conflation of assualt and porn, but in the conflation of risk to a real live six year old (where the question is whether to believe that what happened to her was illegal) with something that doesn't seem to involve any six year olds in any way (where the question is whether to believe that the participants in the event in question are of a certain age, and the age involved is not six).
I do apologize for the "intellectual dishonesty" remark.
396: Now THAT I understand. A friend of mine went to a training at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on child porn, and he said that one of the presentations talked about the victim's perspective on child porn. The victim was interviewed and said that the continuing re-victimization was, in many ways, WORSE than the actual sexual abuse which was captured on film. She said that she could NEVER EVER know that the images had been erased, due to the digital nature of the stuff. She would never be free from the fear that someone was out there watching her be sexually assaulted, and that was a source of continuing trauma for her.
I'm just sayin.
I think that, in reparation for all the heterosexual men died in wars, that the military should be made up entirely of women and gay men. (Boom! Boom! Tough shit, guys. Ha!)
I also think that only gay people should be allowed to get married. Give them a chance to see how they like it. (It's your turn now, guys! Alimony! Community property! Emotional cruelty! Ha! )
Plus what m. leblanc said in 398, more crisply.
As to the substance, I still don't undestand the difference, so maybe you can take another shot. You don't trust the tech to know if a person in the pictures is under 18 (for the purposes of calling the cops) but you would trust him to know if the touching being described to him by a six year old is illegal (for the purpose fo callign the cops)? THIS is what I don't understand.
NCP -- I've made this point a number of times, but apparently not all that clearly. It is my understanding (and given your profession, you may know better -- tell me if that is the case) that the porn industry is highly aware of the penalties for taking pictures of minors, and that its behavior is shaped by this awareness. While there is a large market for pictures that appear to be of post-pubescent minor teens, that market can be served by the provision of pictures of young-looking eighteen-year-olds passing as younger, and the porn industry does this, rather than creating large numbers of images of actual minors. Therefore, given the realities of the behavior of the porn industry, pornographic pictures that appear to be of minor teens are highly likely to be legal pictures of eighteen-year-olds.
This letter appeared to be written by someone who was not aware of these facts (if they are facts -- correct me if you know differently), and reacted to pictures that looked as if the models were, say, fourteen without knowing that the odds were strong that the models were of legal age. It's an area where mistake of fact is very likely.
(And none of this argument holds, of course, if the pictures were of eight-year-olds.)
403: "get married" s/b "eat Brussels sprouts"
401: Excellent points here. Too bad I have to try to get some work done today or I'd continue to delve into them. But I will say that I'm not sure that you can just write off the pictures viewed by the tech as pictures of 16 year olds, given what the tech says in the letter.
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think we're really not disagreeing on that much. Our disagreement, I think, stems from how we're reading the tech's letter.
Oh, and thanks for apology. See? Prosecutors are good people, too!
Even if it's clearly kids it may not be clearly illegal. The tech describes the pictures as "pornographic", but that's not always clear cut.
There's at least one reported appellate case in NM analyzing whether the pictures which were the basis of a conviction for child porn were pornographic. As I recall, the prosecutor and trial court reached one conclusion, and the appellate court disagreed as to at least some of the pictures.
In NM prosecutors are elected, and judges are first elected and then run for retention, which gives them a reason to be concerned about the publicity generated by their exercise of discretion. As best as I recall, at least one justice of the court of appeals was not retained after a decision involving child sexual activity. I've seen campaigns based on claims of toughness in prosecuting sex crimes involving children.
(b) there is an enormous, enormous market of "barely legal" porn that is, in fact, perfectly legal, and
Redfox, this is what I was trying to push on with 345. It seems this is a crux of the argument for a lot of poeple, but the fact of the matter is that there's a reasonably sized market in "not-even-close-to-legal" porn that is, in fact, perfectly legal (being CGI). Why is it wrong to judge someone else for looking at "barely legal" porn, but not to judge them for looking at "not-even-close-to-legal-porn", if in both cases the images are totally legal and there are no victims? (You may not think there is a difference, but it seems some people do -- see LB in 347.) I don't understand what's driving this judgment.
've seen campaigns based on claims of toughness in prosecuting sex crimes involving children.
This is why election of judges is horrible, horrible, horrible.
409: I was actually thinking about this as a possible source of the tech's confusion about illegality -- say what he found was an archive of teen-looking porn, mixed with the sort of thing NattarGcM was talking about: semiclothed shots of little kids. At that point, I'd be fine with letting the cops sort it out.
Prosecutors are good people, too!
You do seem like a good guy, NC, but I think we ought not personalize this. There are lots of institutional and public pressures on prosecutors (and everyone else) to act in ways that don't accord with their own goodness. When considering whether to turn someone in for possession of potential child pornography, how good a person the prosecutor is isn't something I consider.
It seems the key point of disagreement on this thread is not "narc" vs "don't narc", but whether IT Guy really knows child porn when he sees it and whether he has probable cause to believe Mr. President knowingly violated the law.
Given the text of the letter, this issue is unresolvable.
I declare this thread closed!
Well, the letter did say with confidence that the images were not digitally altered (though God knows on what authority the tech made that pronouncement).
My relatively unexamined view is that it might be worth the risk to let the authorities sort it out if I felt a reasonable degree of concern that there was actual small-child porn involved -- I think there's some part of this that involves crossing a personal threshold of "if you are dumb enough to keep this kind of thing on a work computer, I'm not going to suffer moral pangs over whether I should protect your interests." And yet.
414 gets it exactly right. Now let's click on the link in 217 again.
405: Thank you for making explicit some assumptions what went unstated in earlier comments.
Real, honest-to-God child porn has none of the production values of modern porn, even those purporting to be of adult but young-looking models, and most adults would have no problem differentiating the two. Real child porn is made in secret, mostly by abusers who want to memorialize their abuse of their victims and then share those images with others in the underground of people who exhibit this type of paraphilia. Real child porn is NOT the product of the porn industry, which as you quite correctly point out has other less risky ways of turning a buck. You certainly do see aggregator sites selling child porn pop up once and a while, but these things almost always get busted pretty quick. Typically, these images and videos get passed from one person to another as attachments in chats or by one user passing to another a passworded ftp site (occasionally you see something posted to a filesharing network like limewire, but that's getting much rarer these days).
It seems unlikely that someone wouldn't be able to tell the difference (especially an "Internet technician"), but I can admit that it's at least possible. I guess we all weigh that possibility of mistake against the consequences of reporting in different ways. That's what makes America great! But your comment finally allowed me to understand the basis of your concern (and certainly that was due in large part to my own thickheadedness), and for that I am truly grateful.
410: I've got a couple of warring principles here. First, that no one should be penalized for what they're thinking, so long as they don't hurt anyone -- fantasizing about doing evil things is, in itself, harmless, and no one should be harmed for it. Second, that people's fantasies are not unconnected with their actions, and that someone who spends too much time fantasizing about evil is both likely to do evil things, and is in some sense a bad person for their desire to do evil, regardless if they've hurt anyone yet. I'm trying to reconcile them by believing that if you have evil fantasies (raping children) you are responsible for at least controlling them well enough so that they do not impinge on other people -- where you are uncontrolled enough in the expression of your desires that you get busted with a big stash of child porn, whether or not any children were actually harmed in its creation, that being treated with social opprobium isn't unjust.
Am I being thick or something? The situation:
"Dear dsquared
I am a lowly office worker. Through a combination of circumstances, I find myself in a position where I don't know what course of action is ethical. On the one hand, I might end up destroying my boss's entire life ...."
"DSQUARED Answers: Stop right there. I know the answer to this one. The answer is yes, it is acceptable to serve Australian sparkling wine at the party rather than champagne".
413: Agreed. I've just been poking John Emerson's earlier comments with a sharp stick once and a while. It'll pass.
I've got a couple of warring principles here
Which means that you need to appeal to an overarching principle of higher degree of generality in order to decide between them, and in that case this higher principle is surely "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!".
Ah, the French child pornography has always been celebrated for its licentiousness.
And like the best French Champagne, it's vintage dated.
Similar question answered with equal and opposite error by Dear Prudence (via the Unethicist thread). Reminds me of the old Dr. Phil "if you're husband likes to wear your panties, divorce him" line. But maybe I'm being unfair.
Incidentally, 2 out of my last 3 bosses thoroughly deserved to have their lives destroyed. If the porn had been on one of their computers, my moral dilemma would have been diametrically opposed to the one we've been talking about.
417- I went looking for child porn on the internet once, just to see how difficult it was to find. (Honestly. And yes, that was probably a very stupid thing to do, since that's the excuse everyone who's busted uses.) It was horrifyingly easy to find a very large number of very, very sick images and video clips.
This was several years ago, so maybe enforcement has gotten better and one can no longer find this sort of thing so readily, but honestly I sort of doubt that's true.
419, 423: You've never met my fiance. I doubt she'd be down with Australian sparkling wine in lieu of fine French champagne (that last should be spoken in the accent of Christopher Walken's "The Continental").
You've never met my fiance.
I have.
I am sorry are we going to have an ethical debate about this now? Fuck it no. The rule is champagne for real friends, real pain for sham friends and you do not serve the good stuff at a works party to celebrate something like this. Quite apart from anything else, just as the bitter herbs of Passover remind us of the suffering of the desert, serving slightly nasty, warm fizz would strike a suitable note of poignancy and remind everyone that, joyous occasion though it be, a man's life has after all been destroyed, and it could happen to any one of us, except of course those of us who aren't nonces.
I've had plenty of Spanish cavas and Italian proseccos that measure up to decent French champagnes at better than half the cost. I don't think I've ever had any Australian spakling wines, though.
spakling s/b spackling, obviously.
Re: the kiddie porn/molestation connection: I'll have to find the cite, but I remember a study that found that 40% of those found with kiddie porn had also actually molested children.
Years ago, I did an AC brief in support of gays being allowed to adopt; as part of that, I had to research child molestation [an issue usually raised by those against gay adoption; you'll be happy to know that the vast majority of child molesters of both boys and girls describe themselves as heterosexual and religious]. Studies indicated that child molesters tend to have extremely poor impulse control [part of an immature personality] and do, in fact, suffer a further diminution of that control after viewing kiddie porn.
Cohen's an idiot for implying that "free" pictures don't somehow count; ad-based revenue aside, some kiddie porn rings consist primarily of men trading pix of their "conquests". From my POV, the IT guy should have sent copies of the pix to someone who knows kiddie porn, be it the cops or a forensic specialist, before turning the boss in; had the pictures been deemed to be those of underage children [and who calls even young teens "young children"?], he should then have turned it all over to the cops. He could have done so anonymously through an attorney or any number of watchdog groups.
OTOH, if the pix were clearly of six-year-olds, I recommend a clean shot with a .45 and a really good alibi.
Obviously the distinction here is how one reads the letter. I read "clearly under 18, possibly early teenagers" and "pornographic" as meaning "okay, not infants, but they look like 10- or 11-year olds or possibly 13-yos who haven't yet gone through puberty, oh, and these ain't just pics of a kid who happens to be naked, either." You guys read it as "I'd guess 16, but maybe a mature 13-yo, and it could just be an innocent naked picture."
If I read it that way, I might agree with you; but then again, if I read it that way, I'd be wondering why the guy wrote the letter in the first place. Who the fuck can reliably tell the difference between an 18yo and a 16yo? Or even some 13yos and some 18yos? Whereas, to me, "clearly" under 18 means clearly pre-pubescent or possibly hitting puberty.
But then again, I think sexual fantasies about anyone under the age of 25 are sick, and anyone who has 'em should be thrown in Gitmo.
Anyone who'd like actual data on child pornography, and other kinds of porn, and informationa bout their producers and consumers, and what are slippery slopes and what aren't, and a bunch of other stuff, may wish to consult someone who has a clue about it. I usually take my questions about such things to Avedon Carol, who really knows her stuff, both research and law (and law of several nations at that).
Based on my own limited experience looking at "barely legal" images, I'm going to say that the tech is probably wrong. Unless he's got very extensive experience evaluating stuff on both sides of the line, he's likely going to do the same thing I did - leap to assumptions and then be boggled if and when he ever gets to learn just how thorough the image-altering business can be. LizardBreath gets at some of the differences involved. There is a lot of stuff that the untrained eye will likely see as child porn that isn't.
And as John Emerson says, the laws about this stuff are nothing short of insane. One of my good friends from old BBSing days was a high school teacher accused of sexual harassment and molestation by a group of students unhappy with him. They ended up withdrawing all of their charges and most were easily demonstrable as false, but he still had to go through the whole trial, and even though he's acquitted, he still can't get a teaching job. The fact of the charges is enough. The students who did it are feeling pretty bad - last I heard, all of them were in serious depression and treatment for it - because htey had no idea how far it would go. They thought they could stop it when they wanted to; they were wrong. If my friend had had anything at all pornographic or suggestive in his possession, the odds are good (his defender told us) that he would have been convicted on most or all of the charges.
It's not often I feel confident enough to put someone else's well-being at stake like that.
If I were in the tech's place, I'd look for someone like Avedon to give questionable images a professional evaluation. I'd also tell the guy (and I don't care if he's the president or anything lower down) that I found this large collection of images and that it's likely against university policy whether or not it's illegal, and that he could make everyone's life a lot easier by removing it right away. I would probably offer to nuke the whole drive, if my source(s) say the images aren't child porn and perhaps explain a bit about removable media. I might very well make up some BS about impending audits to encourage the guy to do it now now now.
Now if my sources said it was kiddie porn, or likely to be, then I'd go to the cops forthwith. But not until getting a much better informed judgment. It pays to know porn researchers, and also pornographers, apparently. (Footnote: Avedon is not a pornograppher. Another friend of mine is, and I'd also trust her to give me a serious judgment that respects both the freedom to look at vile stuff and the desire to protect real children from exploitation.)
434 seems the best answer so far. Much better than any of mine.
1.) On the subject of using young, teen-appearing women in porn. My sister who is cute and fairly young in both her appearance and mannerisms went to college in Claremont, CA. For some reason she needed to go to the drugstore and the one in Claremont didn't have what she needed, so she went to the city of Pomona. She's a runner, adn I think she may have run there, in which case, she was probably wearing a sports bra without a separate shirt.
Some guy came up to her and asked her how old she was and whether she'd liek to be in a porn flick. Gross.
2.) Canada versus the U.S.
I think that it was teofilo who pointed out the relevant Canadian law, and Ogged said that the guy was in Vancouver. We have, however, tended to discuss this applying principles of American law.
Canada doesn't have a 1st amendment protecting free speech. Does that affect the moral calculation at all? I genuinely don't know. Here's why I mention it. We seem to be really disturbed by the thought that someone could get in trouble for having pixillated pictures of children, since that could be mere expression that doesn't involve exploiting actual children. Canadian law doesn't seem to recognize a distinction. It seems to me that the IT guy might be obligated to report even if they only appeared to be young.
One thing I might disagree with Bruce Baugh about is that I wouldn't do anything predicated on the assumption that people in the organization I was working for would do the right thing. Organizations work brutally, and kiddie porn is a volatile issue, so I can imagine Organization A under certain circumstances either covering up for a predator, or ruining a man's career and life for no good reason.
Julian Sanchez links to this post, beginning: "There is (as usual) a very long discussion in the comments at Unfogged"...
Heh heh.
Yeah, we already made all those point, Julian. Nyah nyah.
The definitive proof that I (with Apo, Emerson, ogged, and LB) am right: TNR takes the opposite view. B has been exposed as a neocon!
From the link:
>That brings us to the second prong. When the Supreme Court considered the question back in 1982, they were making some pretty reasonable assumptions about child porn possession. Someone who had it had either made it themselves, or had purchased it, providing economic support to the people who'd made it, and economic incentives for others to make more. And it was all but inconceivable that anyone could have any by accident, or without being aware of it.
I think this is a good point. Another point is that hanging on to paper copies of a magazine is a lot more intentional that hanging on to a digital copy. Especially if the digital copy is in a browser cache or just not erased well enough.
Who is Adam Kushner, and why is he making dumb analogies on my internet?
Ashton Kutcher's ugly cousin. No idea about the why.
443: I'm on your side? I thought I agreed with B, except for differing readings of what the letter was talking about. I'd turn the guy in if I was sure it was child porn, I just got the impression from the letter that the writer's belief that the pictures were of minors was poorly founded.
oh come on, LB, next you're going to be saying that we should have installed Chalabi first thing and the only problem was Bush's implementation.
447: That's my position as well. I think only ogged takes the radical position that we should hug the perversion out of a molester.
Actually, I think most people are agreeing that a) if it's clearly kiddie porn, tell the cops and b)if you can't tell that it's clearly kiddie porn then c) keep your mouth shut or d) talk to someone who can tell.
And e) Cohen is some kind of tool.
That would be, 'not the sharpest kind of tool in the box,' no?
Shouldn't 451 be (a)...(b)...(1)...(2)...(c)? Seems more logical.
Oh, fine, you indent my comment in Harvard outline format or whatever.
456: just checking my universe calibration ... please, carry on.
I wish to lodge a formal objection at being equated in any way with someone who thinks that whether or not a murder victim is a hooker is in any way relevant.
I think teo's feeling unappreciated. Someone offer him a hug.
What, and have one of you report me to the FBI? No fucking way.
463- WTF?! Lizardbreath is BANNED!
