Comments | morgan_lowri: Legal Advice, Please

morgan_lowri

Legal Advice, Please

Oct 08, 2009 17:53

I am posting this here because I know that a few of you on my flist are lawyers. I have unfortunately stumbled upon some sources of child pornography today, real photos of real kids, mostly young boys under the age of ten or twelve. Where should I report this? I've already reported the users to the owner of the website in question, but since these ( Read more... )

advice

Comments 8

eroticjames October 9 2009, 01:01:55 UTC

I would start local...depending on how big your local depatment is. I mean, Los Angeles is set up to deal with cybercrimes (and I say cyber because you don't know where the actual pictures were taken and where the posters are actually located). If you don't get heard there or the department is small, contact your local FBI feild office. The FBI.Gov website has all the contact infor for the local agencies.

eroticjames October 9 2009, 01:03:23 UTC

And also, just FYI having child pornongraphy in your posession is, itself, a crime. So don't print them out to show them...give them the web addresses and such. They can do cache searches.

morgan_lowri October 9 2009, 01:51:15 UTC

Thank you so much, I called the FBI hotline and they sent me to a form to fill in and I sent them several of the links. Couldn't bear to click on all of them, but I made sure to get them all the users that were involved and all the source sites they were linking from. Have not printed any of them or saved them to my harddrive. I'm not even linking them here because I don't want anyone else to go look at them. Am strongly considering boiling my poor laptop in bleach after this. One pair of the boys looked to be about seven years old.

Should I contact my local DHS, or will their hands be tied because the location of the children can't be proven?

eroticjames October 9 2009, 01:59:13 UTC

Their hands may be tied. And the pictures may be older. FBI, contrary to popular myth, is very good about contacting local agencies and including them where appropriate.

Thread 5

cathouse_mary October 9 2009, 01:47:54 UTC

I'd take it to the FBI - they can do cross-jurisdiction searches and investigation.

morgan_lowri October 9 2009, 01:52:28 UTC

FBI is apparently in charge of cybercrime. I have called their hotline and sent most of the links I could find to them.

And now I am attempting to eat dinner.

vashtan October 9 2009, 08:56:05 UTC

*hugs* That's...just gah.