Child porn bill tabled

[Praxius]

Premier Rodney MacDonald reads a resolution at Province House on Thursday in Halifax.

Child porn bill tabled - Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca

The MacDonald government’s planned law to require mandatory reporting of suspected child pornography seems to be about politics as much as policing, opposition critics said Thursday.

Justice Minister Cecil Clarke tabled the bill as the fall legislature session opened. It says anyone "who reasonably believes that a representation or material is child pornography" must report it to police promptly.

The bill also prevents any action against someone who reports legitimate concerns.

But Liberal justice critic Michel Samson said he thinks Nova Scotians are doing the reporting now, and he’s not sure what a new law would achieve.

"We want to make sure that the government is actually focused on getting real results here, rather than just thumping their chests and making it look like they’re doing something," he said at Province House.

"Anything that we can do as legislators to diminish, or to punish, or to catch people who access child pornography or possess child pornography, we are in full support of. The question today is will this bill actually achieve that, or is it merely a smokescreen to give Nova Scotians the impression that the government’s actually doing something?"

Mr. Clarke said the law could be a deterrent to people accessing child pornography because more people would be watching for violations. He also said it’s another tool to help police.

The law would carry a penalty of up to six months in jail or a fine of up to $2,000 or both.

Manitoba passed a similar law last year and Ontario has introduced one.

Mr. Clarke told an anecdote about a computer technician once telling him that he’d seen disturbing images while working on a machine but didn’t know what to do.

Det. Const. Chris Gorman, a Halifax Regional Police officer who has been dealing with child pornography cases for four years, said he couldn’t recall any case in which someone was aware of child pornography and didn’t report it.

Mr. Clarke confirmed after several questions during a news conference that police in Nova Scotia didn’t ask for a new law, though they support it and are working with the government on the details.

"Government is asking for this as a tool to work with police, and police are very happy to work with government, so I guess it would be collaborative," Mr. Clarke said.

Supt. Mike Burns of Halifax Regional Police said he sees the law as "an incremental step to try to lay out in no uncertain terms to the general public that if you see these images, or you come across them accidentally, you can’t just turn a blind eye of indifference to it."

Premier Rodney MacDonald’s minority government needs opposition support to get the bill passed. He said if the opposition parties vote against it, it will show that they don’t have issues of child protection and public safety "at the forefront" like the government does.

What a crock of political BS....

New Democrat justice critic Bill Estabrooks said he thinks the Tories are using the bill as a wedge issue to differentiate themselves from the NDP.

"It’s not going to work on Nova Scotians — they’re too smart politically to see through that stuff," he said.

I know I am.

Neither Mr. Samson nor Mr. Estabrooks went so far as to say they would oppose the bill. They said they need to learn more about it and hear opinions from the public.

Tino Klironomos, a co-owner of PCMedic.com, said he has contacted police about the two cases of child pornography he has come across while working on customers’ computers in the past nine years.

He said one case came to light when he was transferring a customer’s files from one computer to another, and in the other case, an image was in plain sight on the desktop.

Mr. Klironomos said technicians don’t go digging through files, but if they see something while servicing a computer, they’ll report it.

Now I'm all for preventing child porn being spread around and I'm against the exploitation of children in this manner, but making it a law to punish people who may or may not have seen these images that someone else has accessed is the wrong approach.

Sure if you see on someone's computer or in their home something that has an obvious minor involved in a sexual act, then yeah, there's no real question on what should be done..... The gray area I see in this is if someone has child porn of someone who is at the borderline legal age and you can't exactly tell for sure if it is child porn or not..... you either don't report it due to doubts and get charged, or you report the situation and it turns out that it was legal, and therefore you wasted the police's time and marked that person as a pedophile when they wern't.... they now look like scum and are being watched by the police and you appear to be a paranoid narc.

If you truly want to prevent child porn and/or protect children, then bring out more programs and education on the available options to the public to report anything they feel maybe in question.... decent people will do the right thing in the end, they don't need to be forced by punishment and jail time/fines for something they never actually did, but someone else did.

Another way to look at this is that if I am walking down the street and I see some guy getting their ass stabbed and they die, last I checked I had no legal obligation to come forward and tell officials what I saw..... I see no reason why the general public has to be treated in this manner.

While I agree more laws and rules should be applied in order to prevent the spread and availability of child porn, they should be directed to the criminals not the bystanders.... this will accomplish nothing..... besides, how are they going to prove you ever saw someone else's child porn if that person isn't caught in the first place?

If they're caught, they're caught, case closed.... why jail additional people who had nothing to do with it?

 

[Praxius]

Update:

Clarke: Stats back up need for anti-child porn law
Clarke: Stats back up need for anti-child porn law - Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca

Justice Minister Cecil Clarke pulled out some numbers Thursday to back his case for a new law requiring people who are aware of someone accessing child pornography to report it.

Mr. Clarke said that a 2007 national survey by Toronto police found more than 5,000 computer addresses in Nova Scotia traded child pornography images.

And police statistics from earlier this year showed 1,700 websites with such images had been accessed from Nova Scotia.

"This is not just a passing issue," Mr. Clarke said at Province House on Thursday. "It’s not a minor problem in Nova Scotia. It’s a major issue."

Opposition critics gave Mr. Clarke a rough ride when he introduced the bill the day the legislature opened two weeks ago, wondering whether it would actually help police combat child pornography.

The opposition passed the bill through its second reading Thursday, sending it to the law amendments committee, where the public will have a chance to comment on it. That will likely happen next week.

Liberal justice critic Michel Samson said he’s still concerned whether the proposed law would be effective and said he’s confident Nova Scotians already know when to report matters to the police.

New Democrat Bill Estabrooks said he wants to hear from the public at law amendments but it would be difficult to vote against a bill on this issue.

The bill says anyone "who reasonably believes that a representation or material is child pornography" must report it to police promptly. It also prevents any action against someone who reports legitimate concerns.

The law would carry a penalty of up to six months in jail or a fine of up to $2,000 or both.

The thing that I see in the above numbers is yes, that is a lot of sites and a lot of computer IP's they're talking about..... but seriously, do they think this is all happening in internet cafes, libraries, and every other public place so much so that we all think it's ok or something?

I would say about 90% of the population here believes and knows child porn is a pretty sick thing..... but do they think we just turn the corner and a crap load of people are openly viewing and trading child porn for all to see? Are they that stupid? Hell, even the majority of these freaks who enjoy child porn have at least half a brain to not go around sharing their little fetish for all to see, or else they'd be in jail a long time ago.

So where the hell do they get off making it a law on what the majority of us know is common sense, which is to report this sort of crime?

That's like arresting an innocent by-stander who witnessed a shooting..... you have no legal order dictating that you must report as a witness what you saw in that shooting..... so how the fk do they get off pulling the same stunt in this situation?

They don't.

I'm all for the protection of children and their rights to personal security, be that physical or mental...... but this idea isn't a solution and will only cause more harm in the long run.

Seriously, how are they going to charge you with this law even if you did see someone access child porn but you didn't report it? Where is their evidence that you saw it and did nothing? Who is going to call you out like a witness saying you did nothing and you did in fact see this person had child porn? Did they see it too? Did they report the crime to the police and at the same time, ratted your ass out too? Or did they get arrested under the same law you're being arrested on, and they cut a deal to toss you in the slammer if he/she fingers you?

What if you know some guy who wanted to show you something on their computer, accidentally opened up a window/video of something, but shut it down right away before you could tell what it was? You don't know if it was a family video, something from YouTube, adult porn, frig it could be just about anything..... but if it was child porn and you didn't physically see/hear any youths in the video while it was on for a couple of seconds.... can you still be charged?

Anyways, bottom line for me, is if I am in a situation where I know some jerk has child porn, I would have already reported it on my own, I certainly don't need the government to tell me I have to report it, or face jail time..... ffs, I and anybody else put in that situation had nothing to do with it, so why focus the law onto innocent people?

You want to stop child porn and the sort..... focus the damn laws and regulations on those they're meant to stop..... don't half-ass it by putting the onus onto the average law-abiding citizen and claim you're doing your job, because you're not.

 

[mabudon]

Yeah that's ridiculous alright.

Proving someone "probably knew about something" beyond a reasonable doubt would be difficult at best, and that's only dealing with the applicability of this law, going in to how it is SO wrong overall would take a bit too long, but you covered it fairly well Prax