Funny the press didn’t bother covering the South Africa GMO corn crop failure.

Steamed: Yes. Exactly. Thoughtcrime.

The thing is that it really isn’t looking at the pictures, because the list of people who can look at the pictures without getting into trouble is very long: The investigators, the computer forensics techs, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the jury, the judge. All those people are expected to look at the images. In fact, to see the evidence, my husband and I could both have looked at the images they found on his computer if we had chosen to. (We passed.)

You should have heard my reaction when I learned that the images would be shown in court. Until you go through some of this stuff, you just have no idea.

The accused doesn’t even have to have looked at–or enjoyed–the images, really. Just downloading them is enough to put him away for years.

That anyone can be sent to prison for the act of looking at a picture is extremely disturbing.

I have been told that the feds have gotten permission to post CP images from children-now-adults who are in them. The feds use these images as bait. I don’t doubt this for a moment (because I believe the worst of the feds…and for damned good reason) but have no proof.

http://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/5768571-Video-Bikers-harass-cops-deputy-arrests-rider-for-video-evidence/

It’s nice that they can admit that their government job is largely about sowing fear in the general populace to justify their government job.

State solutions leading to more state solutions, indeed.

Don’t take for granted that the “vile stuff” really is “easily available”. I met some detectives working a NCMEC task force, and I asked them about all those news stories where media fretfully report the discovery of a local “child porn ring”.

They told me what I should have already figured out. The basis of this moral panic depends on using highly mutable definitions for “child”, “porn”, and “ring”.

As it turns out, the “child” is usually a 16 or 17 year old girl (who is sometimes actually a 52 year old because she was last photographed in 1970s Europe). The “porn” is rarely more than simple nudity, and almost never hardcore. And the “ring” can be any two guys sharing files with a dropbox account.

I asked “Well then where do your cases come from? What does the task force actually do?”

They said “Mostly we go to schools and churches and do presentations to let everyone know how prevalent this stuff is.”

Rather than outlaw the fraud, government regulators institutionalized the practice, and accomplished nothing more than *postponing* the busts and making the consequences much, much more painful.

I really wish this comment stream had an edit feature :/

Here’s an example:
The financial meltdown has prompted calls from the left to re-enact Glass-Steagall. The outrage is easy to sympathize with; why should these investment banks be allowed to gamble with people’s retirement funds?

But one could also ask, how is it that our retirements have become entirely dependent on the finance industry? It used to be the case that one could live off the interest earned from CDs and savings accounts. Those days are lost to us because of the Fed’s policy of perpetual inflation and perpetually low interest rates.

And what about the natural market checks against excessive credit? Before fractional-reserve banking, credit available was directly tied to savings in society. Money was directly tied to real goods and services in the economy. The debt bubble of 2008, which was 8 times the worldwide GDP, would have been literally impossible to create, sans fractional reserve banking.

In the 1800s, before the central bank, the FRB-fueled fraudulent lending lead to periodic bank runs and crashes. Rather than outlaw the fraud, government regulators institutionalized the practice, and accomplished nothing more than prolonging the busts and making the consequences much, much more painful.

Yes. You make good points. I’d like to add the common sense question that lawmakers rarely ask: Will this law really accomplish what we want it to accomplish? For child porn, the answer is NO. Making it illegal to produce or to use child porn has done nothing to reduce the easy availability of the vile stuff.

Or not. The age of consent for adult film is 18 in many places. I can’t really think of any person that would agree to be in porn at 16, or wherever you’ve drawn the line, that wouldn’t agree to do it at 18. That’s the same kind of alarmist crap you hear from the anti-prostitution people. That if its ever legalized all the young girls will become street walkers overnight. Of course, THEIR daughters would never do such a thing, but everyone else’s would.

It would also be one thing if the line in the sand wasn’t so vastly different on both sides. On one side of the line every sexual act between two consenting adults imaginable is legal, on the other side that’s also true but photos and videos result in eight years in prison.

Our laws have taken a draconian approach to a complicated issue of sexual maturity, consent, and completely arbitrary definitions of various stages of legal adulthood. The breadth between what these laws were meant to punish and the type of behaviors that can actually be punished is far too wide. A lot of people are falling into the cracks of overly aggressive prosecution for things that no reasonable system would even consider a crime.

#8 | Marty | June 25th, 2012 at 11:06 am

I’d love to know how these pictures even came to light-

Apparently, the girl’s mother recognized her pubes in a faceless facebook picture.

To the extent the law is clear, one can resist excessive police force if it puts one in fear of serious injury or death.

One could argue that charging up is excessive force that put one in that kind of fear, but that argument probably would not win. (Christopher Harris’ experience notwithstanding) Even if the policeman charged up with his gun drawn that argument would not win. (John Williams’ and Sal Culosi’s experiences notwithstanding).

Once the baton blows to the head start, one probably does have a right to spit in the policeman’s fact, but probably not before that.

Of course, the circumstances matter. Jonathan Ayers probably could have legally spit in Chance Oxner’s face (assuming he didn’t recognize the hanging badge and only noticed Chance’s ghetto rags), but that went down a different way. Unless you don’t know it is police, you have to wait until they try to kill you before you can resist.

Indiana tries to set up a different standard for a man’s Castle, but it remains to be seen what the Courts will do with that.