PAT - I don't care if you publish my email address or not.
> As the law now stands, the way most people have the preview pane in
> their email program enabled, if they are sent unsolicited illegal
> images, they're at risk even if they immediately delete them. Most
> people don't know the data from deleted emails delivered to their PC
> is still on the hard drive for quite some time. All I can say is if
> you ever receive illegal content in email, call your attorney at once
> for guidance!
I have searched for sources for the two stories I'm about to convey,
but I cannot find them. They both sound urban legend-ish, but I
remember reading them in mainstream news publications.
One was a man in England who was arrested and spent nine days in jail
(gaol?) until police sorted out what had happened. They found a
mountain of child porn on his computer. Turns out he had his wireless
router wide open and was sharing his entire hard drive, so his
neighbor was storing child porn on his computer. He was released and
the real culprit arrested. But still, nine days in jail and his name
was raked through the mud.
Another case involved the "look ahead" function in many browsers.
After you pull up a web page, your browser will then look at the links
and start downloading those in anticipation of you clicking on one of
them. The speeds the browser up (from the user's perspective). I
believe this happened to a US government employee. He was visiting a
legal site, but it was linked to one with child porn. So his browser
started downloading the images which he never saw. However his IT
department saw them and they found the images on his computer, so he
was arrested.
I know you can turn off the look ahead function on most browsers, but
I'm not sure about IE.
Happy surfing!
John
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think almost any police officer will
tell you it is imperative in the case of (pre-detirmined by police)
'criminals' that their name be 'dragged through the mud'. After all,
if you cannot be assured that someone has lost his credibility, there
is always a chance that a judge/jury may agree with _him_ instead of
with _you_. Or am I just watching and reacting to too much CSI/SVU
on television? PAT]
John Mayson (john@mayson.us)