That's what I like, good, targeted, inevstigation, evidence gathering. Glad they got the f-----r and hope they get his compatriates too. Just hope that they use good police work on those people too.

None of that throwing a sausage down an alley hoping it may hit the sides unlike Operation Awe, mass filtering, packet inspection, and other dragnets.

that a paedo like this is seen in the eys of the law as about as bad as soemone who smokes pot - similar sentences for posession of anything more than a few doobies...

good to see paedophiles in the same category as people who do no harm to society at all...

i say stick em in prison general population and let the cons do us all a favour... why the hell should people like him get protection more than anyone else!

...is that they give the Police State the one plausible argument they need for "Total Surveillance". Even Terrorism doesn't attract as much support for its countermeasures as does Paedophilia. Hence, if we want to keep the State out of our lives, we're going to have to figure out for ourselves what we do to prevent Paedophiles abusing this medium (the web). And then, do it.

Suggestions?

I'm a bit confused about the (reported) "indefinite" sentence given to the convict. I thought indefinite sentences (as opposed to very long sentences with the possibility of parole, about which a decision is to be made at a later time) were not possible in England & Wales.

IANAL, so is anyone here better qualified to comment? Or is it just sloppy reporting?

Is paedo outside their control or is this just a weasly excuse? No more do we see shoplifters, burglars and muggers as criminals but now as poor victims of some terrible affliction that causes them to perform these acts.

Thankfully society does provide a therapeutic facility where these people can work through their problems. It is called prison.

...prison is a therapeutic setting for anyone, especially for those whose crimes are not driven by laziness or avarice.

Do I think that someone who finds little girls sexually attractive is a danger do kids? Of course I do. But we'd have to be the thought police to send them to prison.

The disturbing thing that I'm talking about is what do we do about it? Thought police is clearly unacceptable, but I'm equally uneasy about doing nothing until they molest children.

I don't know if it's an excuse or not, I'm certainly not qualified to be the judge of that.

Perhaps the police might get nicer results by getting to a root cause of some of this junk. The people who spam for a living (with similar marginal legalities) are free to roam, but the other online activities that are classified as "really bad" are prosecuted (most likely due to high profile!)? If we have one broken window, the rest will follow, and since spam is allowed to exist, the broken windows will continue to happen.

Fact of life, sorry to say.

> Charges are always brought on a small number of specimen images - this approach is needed for legal manageability and minimises the exposure of the court to offensive material. However it does allow the media to spout "n million paedophile images were found" when in reality the number of images featuring underage individuals may be tiny.

This reminds me of something I heard in a radio interview with a psychologist who deals with pedophiles. He pointed out that the "n million images" stuff that the papers love to crow about is the *normal* part of their psychological makeup.

I'm law abiding and sexually conventional - but my house is filled with stacks of science fiction paperbacks - more than I can actually find time to read - and I keep buying more. And somewhere near you right now is someone who is a compulsive yarn buyer, despite the fact that she's got entire cupboards full of wool she's never touched.

Humans are compulsive hoarders. Why I've even heard there are people who collect little paper postage stickers!

Usual hysteria. The article incorrectly assumes people looking at these pictures are child abusers, and actually calls them so: "allowing it to exist as a forum for child abusers".

Reads like a Sun article.

From what I can read he was just a loser who ran a forum hosted on his home PC. He was just looking for acceptence by anyone, hoping to make other people like him.

He didn't personally collect and index the files... it could reasonably be said that that would be impratical. You could however claim he was responsible for all the files on his PC, even if they we held in the personal "IM" inboxes of forum posters of are in forum posts.

The guy was a scumbag, but his importance has been overblown by the police to make him out to be some supercriminal, living in a volcano, stroking a white cat, instead of the friendless loser desperate for any acceptance that he was.

Do you know you're not allowed to take photos at swimming pools or school sports days anymore? Not even of your own kids? But in the recent Olympics we had 14 year old diver Tom Daley basically in his underwear and being filmed by the BBC. So it's just all double standards and nonsense. There's people in the councils & schools just jumping on the anti-paedo bandwagon and there's just no consistency or logic in their approach.

1: Paedophilia is a crime.

2: Paedophilia is a psychological condition.

3: Central Government, Police and Local Government have different and inconsistent approaches to dealing with it and different rules about taking images of children, rules about playgrounds, who is allowed to work with kids etc.

To 1 and 2 An approach needs to be worked out abouit how much we deal with the condition and how much we deal with the crime. That doesn't seem to be being done by anyone at the moment. Certainly the vetting procedure CRB and ECRB is pants and worse, unreliable.

To 3 - a consistent policy needs to be enforced, preferably hysteria free (Sun readers need not comment ) The best source for that would be central government, getting academic, legal and police advice on a strategy - oh and getting metrics - how will you know if it works otherwise - all too often the problem with social policy.

Or am I being naive?

Hey, if you're watching the olympics in China then you are tacitly agreeing with gross human rights abuses and paedophilia, the age of consent there is 14. Check it out...

http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/BIB/pedochin.htm

Pedophilia from the Chinese Perspective

Emil M.L.Ng

Department of Psychiatry, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Don't know where you live mate, but I was able to take pics of my lad running his little legs off at his school sports day - Indeed his school actually make a point of telling eeryone that photos are expected to be taken.

Joseph Edward Duncan III was a released pedophile. Maybe if he was in jail indefinitely a family in Idaho family would be alive:

http://us.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/14/duncan.slayings.ap/index.html

AFAIC if society decides that it's illegal to look at pornographic images of children, that's fine. (Broadly speaking. For example, it seems to me it would be more logical to ban making such images, instead; but, still.)

What bugs me, though, is the conflation of such a crime with the crime of raping/abusing children. Clearly they are not the same thing. And I'm pretty sure that one is a more serious crime than the other.

It seems to me that we've made "being" a paedophile a crime. That bugs me, too. "Being" a bank-robber or a murderer is not a crime; it's murdering and robbing banks that is.

"Maybe if he was in jail indefinitely a family in Idaho family would be alive"

Possibly - but leaving the moral/legal/justice aspects aside (!), whenever you lock people up you're incurring costs that mean you can't spend money elsewhere. I have no idea what the cost is in Idaho, but in Florida it's $20k a year and it's $28k a year in Washington State (it's on google, so it must be true).

So is it better to lock hundreds of people up on the offchance that they might do something, or to spend that money on investigating the crimes that have already happened? I suppose it depends how likely they are to commit a crime again. It's a dismal question from the dismal science...

To what extent does looking at images of child abuse (which is what many of these images are) make one complicit in the crime being photographed? So, while this person may never have touched a child in a sexual way before, their consumption of images of children engaged in sexual activity with an adult is highly problematical if not criminal. Trading in such images could be considered to encourage their production and therefore the crime they depict - therefore they are criminally complicit.

So, while we might all decry the notion of the thought police, actually seeking out and trading such images arguably moves this beyond the realm of a 'thought crime'. With a 'thought crime' there is no physical evidence, no victim. It's when one attempts to realise or materialise the thought that it becomes a subject for criminal investigation because victims become involved.

On a practical level, I've always thought that possession one or two dodgy images on a hard drive does not make one a criminal - perhaps just a curious person or an unfortunate or naive surfer. Several hundred or more makes one a probable suspect for criminal investigation.

"...is that they give the Police State the one plausible argument they need for "Total Surveillance". Even Terrorism doesn't attract as much support for its countermeasures as does Paedophilia. Hence, if we want to keep the State out of our lives, we're going to have to figure out for ourselves what we do to prevent Paedophiles abusing this medium (the web). And then, do it.

Suggestions? "

Embrace the philosophy : Shit Happens.

Paedophiles are absolutely no reason for mass surveilance, 'just in case'

Parents should look after their kids, instead of Myspace etc doing it. And the children who are just unlucky or abused by their parents, fall under the above category unfortunately. You're never going to wipe out all crime. A good idea might also be if they allowed paedophiles to go and get help somewhere. But why would any even consider getting help, when they are seen as the scum of the Earth by everyone, a new law is made because of them daily, and apparently psychologists have to report any to the police, even if they haven't commited any crime ?

Or (but this will never happen) *deep breath* I say name and shame all convicted child molestors (not the people who hump bikes etc) In fact, publish a monthly magazine with their photos, home address etc. Have a free counselling service for anyone with these kind of ' bad thoughts' to use. 100% confidentiality. Even if they are admitting child abuse. It must absolutely be 100% safe for them to talk.

Split the sex offenders register so that there are different levels (like the bike humpers, or drunken streakers...not the same as raping a baby..)

Make it that if you are on the extreme side of the sex offender list, you are on it FOR LIFE, and molesting a child equals a non-negotiable 15 year sentence.

If they molest more than 1 child, a child under 3 years old, or abduct them, drug them etc, make the sentence 50 years.

You give them a chance to seek counselling, provide drugs which will lower the sex drive and/or SSRI type medication to target their brain chemistry..

Instead of just hiding everything away and shouting that it's bad, bad, bad, DO NOT DO THIS!! Try to prevent people acting on these thoughts, and if they commit the crimes anyway, lock them up and throw away the key.

If more people came forward and were totally honest and open, maybe we'd actually come closer to finding out what causes it, how bad the situation really is, and what we can do about it.

if child pornography photos are so bad, and having them is illegal, then why do the police have them? Why do departments exist, who's actual job is to look for, and AT, these images all day long?

What are the images doing to these viewers? Are they pedophiles? What makes them different from the other people who view the photos?

According to the government, looking at the photos makes you likely to rape a child. So do these workers turn into active pedophiles? No...

Ah but you see, it's something in you. You cannot 'catch' pedophilia.

So wait, you're saying that if the general population saw those photos they would not suddenly turn into child molestors either? Hmm. Interesting.

So the only problem is the actual true pedophiles? Who will probably have a huge collection of photos no matter how legal or illegal they are. And who will make their OWN child porn photos if they can't find any online.

yes? no? Yes.

-Andy, I see what you're saying but your logic is a bit off. Being a bank robber obviously implies that you have broken a law. Thus you are a criminal. However, if you view a PHOTO of a bank robbery, that is not a crime. Same with child porn images imo. You are viewing a photo of a crime.. That is not actually illegal, and there's no real logical reason why it should be illegal. You are not doing anything. What's done is done.

I'm not sure the hardcore blitz reaction to child porn images makes sense. I'm wondering why they even treat it more seriously than things like murder. A PHOTO. Where a photo of a naked child is just a potential.... sign...of a potential..future...potential....assault.

The CRIME is when ...nay, IF the assault happens , surely?

Not all people that abuse/mutilate animals become serial killers but a sufficient number of serial killers started out with animals to consider such abuse as a significant precursor.

Not all people that choose to view child pornography will become paedophiles but a significant number of paedophiles possess child pornography.

A significant number of child abductions for sexual gratification end in the death of the child particularly if the abductor is a convicted paedophile.

When scouring the net you might inadvertently happen upon (I deliberately avoided ‘come across’) a dodgy site but would/should navigate away from it. You won’t get strung up for that.

If you deliberately visit such sites or create one to feed your need then you are on a slippery slope to who knows where?

Viewing images of a crime is a crime despite what AC is saying – if you are interacting with these people, no matter that it is just via the web, you may express an interest in something. If that ‘something’ isn’t catered for at that moment you can bet it will be soon. Was that ‘something’ sitting on someone else’s hard drive or was it made especially for you? Has another crime been instigated albeit ‘innocently’. How can deliberately viewing child pornography not be a crime? (barring for evidential purposes).

I’m sure a great many of The Register’s readers would not wish to attend a post mortem or a number of post mortems but a police officer has to. It’s just part of their job. Some can do it with no emotion, others can’t. It’s horses for courses. The same goes for those coppers that have to view images collected from suspected paedophiles. I know I couldn’t look at pictures or watch and listen to videos without a feeling of revulsion. It would then adversely effect how I would deal with the possessor of said items and then may cloud the issue at court. Sadly, someone has to do it.