Crazy times. Last night's news was reporting a 20+ year employee of the Fairfax Co. sheriff's dept., living in Centreville, was arrested yesterday with a full hard drive,stacks of DVDs, boxes of videos and he said he was doing research to help the department with arrests. That is a sickness that cannot be cured and pedifiles should have their own prison and should never see the light of day. The people who produce and sell anything to do with children, well I can't think of anything bad enough!

Well, two different sets of cases here (both involving kiddie pr0n, though).

1 - major story - I believe that tech support types are actually compelled to report this if they find it. However, an interesting angle is that if they went snooping around through layers of files, they'd be in trouble. However, if they just hit the directory and it was at the top level, then they're probably okay.
2 - forcing the password. I see what the law's trying to get to, but it's still not a good thing. 5th amendment is correct here. Besides - with all the computer work the FBI does, they can't hack this guys files? That's BS - they're just being cheap. If they want, get a warrant, seize the PC, and then let their geeks work on it until they get the files they want. Shouldn't be that difficult for someone with huge resources, no?

Actually 3 cases