Read below what CNN has to say and you'll realize why you should clickherelogo.gif (945 bytes) of the only computer software program officially recognized by law enforcement agencies to defeat every forensic tool they use to recover incriminating evidence from your computer - even if you know you are innocent!

Skip to main content

Technology
CNN Europe CNN Asia
On CNN TV Transcripts Headline News CNN International About CNN.com Preferences

SERVICES

SEARCH

Web CNN.com
enhanced by Google

Child porn: Even surfing can mean jail

By Peter Wilkinson
CNN

Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend


   Story Tools


more video VIDEO
Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who, has yet to be officially charged. CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Diana Muriel discuss the case (January 13)
premium content

RELATED

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Even so much as clicking on a Web site featuring child pornography could result in a jail sentence of up to five years in the United Kingdom and possibly worse in the USA.

And if you host a Web site or forward an e-mail containing images of children -- who are or seem to be under the age of 16 -- being abused, you could face imprisonment of up to 10 years.

If you receive and view an unsolicited e-mail -- or spam -- of offensive material and immediately delete it, then that counts as a reasonable explanation, according to Peter Robbins, chief executive of Web campaigners, Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

But he warned anyone tempted to access child pornography online that even if you delete images and Internet page addresses from the computer's hard drive, police can still retrieve them, as they did with a PC belonging to pop star Gary Glitter, who was jailed for four months in 1999 for possessing child pornography.

"Once you look at a picture of child pornography, that counts as possession which is punishable by jail," Robbins told CNN.

"Even if you delete it, it's not easily detectable but it still remains on your hard drive and police can find it if they make a raid. If you get a spam and delete it, you're not going to chased. But if you have more than one image that's less defense."

Arrest leads to warning

IWF made its warning after Pete Townshend, songwriter and guitarist for "The Who," said he had looked at the front pages and previews of child pornography sites perhaps three or four times after accidentally stumbling across one. He was later arrested. (Full story)

His admission follows a report in a British tabloid newspaper that UK police, acting on information supplied by U.S. authorities, were investigating a "legendary British rock star" and deciding whether to make an arrest.

Townshend added he had been driven "purely to see what was there" and for research as well as out of anger at how easy they were to access. He denied being a pedophile.

But the 57-year-old star says he never downloaded the material and only entered a site once using a credit card purely as part of research for a book he plans to publish later this year. (Profile)


alta_ee00.gif (18080 bytes)

Microsoft: flaw left millions at risk
Bush unveils free-trade zone for Mideast
 
 
 
 

 

  SEARCH CNN.COM:

© 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us.

external link

All external sites will open in a new browser.
CNN.com does not endorse external sites.


Evidence Eliminator Sitemap Evidence Eliminator - Free download instructions