7-18-2009 New Jersey:
In five days of pre-dawn raids at homes in 14 Camden County municipalities, authorities this week arrested 18 males for keeping pre-pubescent child pornography, some of it violent, on their computers. Three others were being sought late yesterday.
Operation Sentinel, as it was dubbed, netted a police dispatcher from Haddon Township, Michael Connelly, 51; an enlisted Army soldier in Haddonfield, Tim Schiffman, 27; a retired corporate executive in Waterford, Clarence Pribus, 67; and a man already under indictment for sex crimes, Jordan Winczuk, 24, of Oaklyn.
Authorities said the diversity of the suspects, ranging in age from 14 to 67, was notable. They live in all corners of the county - from rural Waterford and urban Camden to suburban Voorhees.
They are juveniles, grandfathers and married men, police said.
"We want to scare as many people away from this as we can," said Lt. Martin Devlin of the Camden County Prosecutor's Office Major Crimes Unit. "Big Brother is watching. We're in the same cyberspace you are, and we are actively preying on the predators."
Investigators tracked the pornography using software that traces digital fingerprints left on the Internet. From their offices in Camden, detectives spotted in real time those who downloaded child porn, and matched Internet addresses to street addresses where the computers are located.
That's enough to secure a warrant. At the homes, they interviewed residents to determine who used the computer for such purposes.
At the start of a series of raids in Haddonfield at 5 a.m. Wednesday, Prosecutor's Office investigators gathered at the municipal building for a briefing with investigators from the New Jersey State Police and the FBI.
As the sun rose, teams descended on homes, armed with knock-and-announce warrants.
Prosecutor's Office investigator Kevin Kellejan knocked on the door of a retired university professor in Haddonfield, at a two-story white Colonial with green shutters and a neatly planted row of red geraniums.
Inside, investigators located two computers and began searching for hard drives, thumb drives, cell phones or anything that could contain electronic images. In a front room with a view of a street where young children play, investigators found a computer with the two pornographic movies they were looking for.
Hours later, police emerged with the handcuffed suspect - Schiffman, the son of the professor - along with household computers that would undergo more thorough searches in Trenton for hidden and deleted files.
"We will come to your homes in the early hours of the morning, rouse you from your beds, search your computers and arrest you," Camden County Prosecutor Warren Faulk said at a news conference yesterday in Haddon Township.
Faulk noted that a third of those arrested were juveniles.
"If nothing else, this should be a wake-up call to parents that they should be vigilant in watching the computers of their children," he said.
Police said all of those charged possessed graphic pornography of children in computer images that are illegal to download, purchase, sell, share, or even to look at.
"These can not appear on your computer by accident," Devlin said.
A total of 33 computer units and hard drives were seized this week, in addition to 34 weapons, confiscated for the safety of the officers, police said.
When they started searching for child-porn downloaders, Devlin said, there was so much going on, it was "incredible." They searched specifically for content with pre-pubescent children.
While police have found at least three suspected sexual offenders, most of the suspects are not registered sex offenders.
Investigators, many of whom are parents, spoke of the difficulty working on the investigation and viewing such disturbing images. Faulk said he saw two images for the first time on Monday and had to walk away from the computer.
State police said seven more operations are ongoing throughout the state, and 70 people have been arrested as part of such operations so far this year.
"Perhaps we can stop a young guy from turning into an older pervert, or older predator," Devlin said.
Under the law, endangering the welfare of children by possession of child pornography is a fourth-degree crime. In 17 cases this week, those arrested were released within hours and free to return home. If convicted, they will not be required to register as sex offenders.
Four of those arrested also were charged with distribution, a second-degree crime that would require them to register as sex offenders if convicted.
If federal charges are filed, those carry more serious penalties.
On Thursday, Mark Hendrickson, 47, of Princeton, was sentenced to serve five years in prison for receiving and distributing child pornography. Hendrickson was arrested in 2008, and authorities said he traded 147 images and his computer contained nearly 200 other images of child porn.
"When you're looking at a film of child pornography, you're actually looking at a crime scene," Devlin said. ..Source.. by Barbara Boyer and Matt Katz, Inquirer Staff Writers
July 18, 2009
NJ- 18 Camden County males arrested on child-porn charges
October 5, 2008
IL- Computer techs must report child porn
10-5-2008 Illinois:
New Illinois law requires repair technicians to inform on customers if they see a questionable image
SPRINGFIELD — Computer technicians must report to law enforcement any customers whose computers contain child pornography under a new law that drew fire Friday from opponents who warned innocent people will end up under investigation.
The new law applies to those who work at big or small stores as well as repairmen who work on computers in people's homes. It's an expansion of a current state law that required photo processors to report potentially criminal images.
"It's not acceptable if you're a computer technician to say, well, it's none of my business and then move on to the next customer," said state Sen. A.J. Wilhemi (D-Joliet), the sponsor. "We have to take a collective approach to combating this insidious industry."
Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose signature put the law on the books immediately, approved it as part of a package of legislation aimed at preventing the exploitation of children.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois questioned the wisdom of a law that would require untrained computer technicians to make judgments on what constitutes child pornography, spokesman Ed Yohnka said.
"To what extent do we want to build this kind of society where we are asking people to watch us?" Yohnka asked.
Yohnka worried the law could result in countless people falsely getting swept up into investigations over "something that was not child porn at all."
Failure to report the child pornography is a business offense punishable by a $1,000 fine, but that raised questions with Yohnka too.
"It's impossible, I suppose, to know precisely how every individual would react," Yohnka said. "But the inclination would be to report for fear of later being fined."
But for many technicians, the law may change little in the way they operate.
"I thought it was already law," said Robert Stephens, founder and chief inspector of the Geek Squad at Best Buy. "This is one situation that I think most agents are [aware of]."
The Geek Squad training manual requires employees to immediately notify a manager if there is the suspicion of child pornography on a computer. The same is true for technicians at Circuit City. Technicians do not routinely look at customers' data, several experts said, but would view data in situations such as copying files from an old computer or checking different programs to determine the cause of a system problem.
"The chances of coming across something like that are probably pretty good, but it depends on how nosy you [are] when you're looking at a customer's data," said Marc Lysne, co-owner of CompuTechs in Chicago. "I just want to fix the customer's machine, but if I ran across something like that, I would report it."
Computer technicians must report to local police or e-mail the attorney general at reportchildporn@atg.state.il.us, which will soon be activated.
Another provision in the law targets adults who contact children on the Internet with the intent of luring them into a meeting. It makes it illegal for an adult to send a minor a bus or plane ticket or provide other transportation with the intent of illicit activity. ..News Source.. by Ray Long and Azam Ahmed | Chicago Tribune reporters
July 22, 2008
WV- 911 official arrested for child porn
The purpose here is to show folks how the police are finding illegal images on home computers and often, as in this case, without the knowledge of the owner of the computer.
Here the owner of the computer was using a P2P (Peer to Peer) program. Those programs give access to those computers by anyone else who has a similar type program. That is exactly how the police were able to search his computer files without a warrant and finding at least one image then got a warrant to search further.
7-22-2008 West Virginia:
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A longtime Kanawha County Metro 911 administrator was arrested and accused of possessing child pornography, including pictures of his own daughter.
Police acted on a search warrant for the home of the administrator, identified as James Curtis Sorgman of South Charleston.
Child pornography was found on his home computer, police say. The computer at Sorgman's office has been seized as well, officials say.
Sorgman, 49, has been suspended without pay. He has worked at the 911 center for 16 years, officials said.
The investigation was carried out during the past several weeks by the Kanawha Bureau of Investigation, an cooperative unit of several area police agencies.
Investigators first received a tip from West Virginia State Police, which in turn had gotten information from a unit called the Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
The pornography was located using Limewire (actually this is a well known P2P program), an Internet service in which information can be shared among numerous users, according to a criminal complaint filed at Kanawha Magistrate Court.
Investigators obtained the file name that was downloaded and the Internet protocol address from which the file was downloaded and used that to figure out the physical address on Kingswood Drive, where James Sorgman lives.
Sorgman admitted in a statement to the police that he had downloaded and saved several digital files containing child pornography, according to the criminal complaint.
Sorgman allowed police to search his home and computer, and a warrant was issued for the police to do so, according to the complaint.
During the search of the home, police found several printed images of young females in sexually explicit poses, according to the complaint. Several images appeared to show exposed breasts and vaginas or depicted minor females involved in sexually explicit activity, police said.
Police also found seven printed images of a female that appeared to be a minor child in sexually explicit poses. Sorgman identified this female as his daughter, the complaint said.
Sorgman told authorities that he took the pictures of his daughter while she was between the ages of 12 and 14, according to the criminal complaint.
Sorgman has more than 20 years in metro communications overall, working most recently as an administrator in the address and mapping division with Metro 911.
Kent Carper, President of the Kanawha County Commission, said that he was informed of the situation Monday and said it would be dealt with swiftly.
Sorgman was arrested by deputies Monday and was immediately relieved of duty, Carper said.
"The 911 dispatchers do a wonderful job with a high level of trust placed on them and we will take this very seriously," Carper said.
Internal affairs is investigating the allegations along with the Kanawha County Sheriffs Department and other agencies. ..News Source.. by Ashley B. Craig, Daily Mail staff
