Just thinking out loud
Silver, 08 Dec 2005 11:04:40
I was wondering how the authorities will police the new legislation if it ever happens.
It is okay on the one hand ( if that is what society wants ) to say that such terrible depraved people like us should be imprisoned for looking at illegal material, but how is this heinous crime to be policed?
As far as I am aware (and I freely admit to being mistaken) that paedophiles are caught by agencies like the F.B.I checking suspect websites for credit card movement. Some will be caught like Gary Glitter, who was daft enough to put his computer in for repair with 4000 images; which could have hardly gone unnoticed.
Surely if we have to rely on the F.B.I to catch our paedophiles, this has been confirmed by Derek Wyatt MP who has spent public money presumably going to the States to urge the agency along, then how on earth are we to cope with the new legislation which the Americans have not adopted?
If the obscene images are subjective and not clearly defined in law, then what are the police going to be looking for? I fear there will only be 'witch hunts' an added tool for police who want to prosecute someone they don't like. In practice I would imagine will be mainly bdsm businesses, clubs and private parties.
A friend of mine ten years back had his home raided after a private kinky bdsm party. The police ran through his home with a fine toothcomb and eventually found a pistol (his own brought back from the war) and prosecuted him for that and a small amount of dope. This man was in his mid sixties, not a teenage tearaway; he was criminalised for having a bdsm party in dinky little cottage in the middle of nowhere. He and hid wife were devastated by the conviction
You can imagine the fun police will have shortly, any image remotely violent will probably be enough to put someone in the same situation in prison and on the sex offenders register. Every raid will have will have all computers and printed material taken away for analysis.
Here a random thought; say or instance say the police raid ‘Miss Use’ or similar venue and find a suspect image blue tacked to a wall, will everyone be prosecuted, everyone would have seen it. It’s a bdsm party so all without all would have been titillated by it.
Silver.
SnowdropExplodes, 08 Dec 2005 12:20:44
flagoftheunion@hotmail.com wrote: I was wondering how the authorities will police the new legislation if it ever happens.
It is okay on the one hand ( if that is what society wants ) to say that such terrible depraved people like us should be imprisoned for looking at illegal material, but how is this heinous crime to be policed?
As far as I am aware (and I freely admit to being mistaken) that paedophiles are caught by agencies like the F.B.I checking suspect websites for credit card movement. Some will be caught like Gary Glitter, who was daft enough to put his computer in for repair with 4000 images; which could have hardly gone unnoticed.
Surely if we have to rely on the F.B.I to catch our paedophiles, this has been confirmed by Derek Wyatt MP who has spent public money presumably going to the States to urge the agency along, then how on earth are we to cope with the new legislation which the Americans have not adopted?
If the obscene images are subjective and not clearly defined in law, then what are the police going to be looking for? I fear there will only be 'witch hunts' an added tool for police who want to prosecute someone they don't like. In practice I would imagine will be mainly bdsm businesses, clubs and private parties.
A friend of mine ten years back had his home raided after a private kinky bdsm party. The police ran through his home with a fine toothcomb and eventually found a pistol (his own brought back from the war) and prosecuted him for that and a small amount of dope. This man was in his mid sixties, not a teenage tearaway; he was criminalised for having a bdsm party in dinky little cottage in the middle of nowhere. He and hid wife were devastated by the conviction
You can imagine the fun police will have shortly, any image remotely violent will probably be enough to put someone in the same situation in prison and on the sex offenders register. Every raid will have will have all computers and printed material taken away for analysis.
Here a random thought; say or instance say the police raid ‘Miss Use’ or similar venue and find a suspect image blue tacked to a wall, will everyone be prosecuted, everyone would have seen it. It’s a bdsm party so all without all would have been titillated by it.
In the USA, the issue of porn censorship is supposedly determined at the State level, not the Federal level, so the FBI's involvement as I understand it is actually technically a violation of jurisdiction (although since the internet might qualify as offences across State boundaries, there may be a loophole there). The FBI do, it seems, have the ability to bring charges against purveyors of extreme pornography under the individual State laws.
In short, my understanding is that the USA does have laws that prohibit "extreme" pornography (albeit based at the individual State level, not the federal level), and the FBI do appear to have powers to investigate and prosecute.
In terms of an event at which a suspect image was shown, the organisers of the event would presumably be liable under the Obscene Publications Act anyway, as would the owner(s) of the picture displayed. The people attending the event might conceivably be charged with being accessories to the crime or some such, but that would be stretching it waaaaay too far, even for the police, I imagine - they'd probably seek some other form of charge instead, if they really wanted to lock up everyone there.
Ta,
SnowdropExplodes
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