I would think that the Police, or a judge in particular (who allows this warrant) would require at least one more piece of cooberating evidence before 'breaking someone's door down'.

Like what? The thing is, if he was a real paedophile they would have needed to act fast before other harm was done and before he would destroy any evidence. The part that sucks the most in this story is the period of time for which his computer was seized. It was absurd to seize his computer for 4 months.

That's the funny thing. About what harm exactly are we talking about? If it's downloading "illegal material", then the harm was done a long time before. If it's producing, then evidence should be abundant, and the best strategy would be to gather more evidence before alarming him.

But you see, he wasn't even told the offense. And neither have we. That's the magic of child porn - you'll never see a journalist trying to dig deeper into such cases.

> Like what? The thing is, if he was a real paedophile they would have needed to act fast before other harm was done and before he would destroy any evidence.

Why would police suspicion of an IP address trigger any knowlege by a miscreant who uses said IP address? (While miscreants who know that they're being watched may do something, surely police can know a potential suspect's IP address and gather additional evidence without tipping him off.)

But what "additional evidence"? They enough evidence to link the ip address to a serious felony. If you lend someone your car, and they try to drive it across the border with 20kg of cocaine, expect them to come crashing through your door.

The last time I looked, my car wasn't much like a computer connected to the internet. Since they're going to claim technical expertise in the warrant ....

In any event, I was addressing the assumption that quick action is required as soon as the police know an IP address. It isn't.

As to the additional evidence, some indication that it was actually received at the guy's computer. After all, I'm pretty sure that the police don't raid the post office.

This has always been inherent in "the process." It's just that child pornography is particularly easy to vilify, as it likely should be. But in the past, there have been similar scares using witches, communists, homosexuals. Now there are Nazis and child pornographers. (Heck, I've even seen people trying to vilify Nazi child pornographers!)

I think more attention should be placed on the broader issue of Human Trafficking. We know this is real, and child pornography constitutes some fraction of it. It's just a lot easier for the police to get ahold of an IP and break down somebody's door.

Human trafficking is real (I was actually offered to buy someone once), but in child abuse cases it's usually a parent or somebody close to the family.

I wouldn't be surprised if it would be easier to identify them if distributing child porn would not be illegal. I cannot imagine somebody starting to abuse their child in order to post a video. But I can easily imagine somebody who's already been abusing the child taping it.

Right, but the 'scare' is an orthogonal issue to how law enforcement acted in this instance.I'd expect the same response whether it was human trafficking, stock fraud or racketeering.