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Comment by officemonkey | Hacker News Reader

Even if they have enough testimony to convict him, they may be more interested in forensic clues about where he obtained his files.

Decrypting his hard drive may lead to other charges against other people. If he knows that he can incriminate others, he may be waiting for a deal.

They're playing hardball with him right now. After six months in jail, watch them offer him a deal if he unlocks the hard drive. He gets a firm but reduced sentence (including time served) and they get more bad guys.

(Why yes, I have watched too many episodes of Law & Order, why do you ask?)

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First sentence of the article says he's already been there 7 months.

They won't get 'more bad guys', they just want to prove that they can do this to anyone who doesn't obey.

Or they want to identify the child victims of sexual abuse, and want to make sure those children are safe, and that the people abusing them and taking photos of that abuse are prosecuted.

Somehow unethical law precedent always seems to come at the aid of women and children. I have a very hard time buying into that overused excuse. How likely do you think it is that the children fall into their jurisdiction? Much less even, do you think they'll be able to identify young undocumented children?

>How likely do you think it is that the children fall into their jurisdiction?

Since child porn is illegal just about everywhere (although the definition of "child" may vary), it should pose no problem to notify the authorities in the country of origin.

The definition of 'child porn' differs greatly as well, more than the definition of 'child' I'd wager.

Police have international co-operation to identify, find, and protect the victims of child abuse.

Exactly, unethical laws are always passed on emotions (supposedly to protect the women and children). Think of how nazi germany started cracking down on jews - some of the very first laws were that german women couldn't work in jewish houses, and Hitler rolled the ball from there.

The new age model is to convict ten innocents than let one guilty suspect go.

The article did specify that the files were obtained through Freenet, a distributed information storage and retrieval system where all the files are shared and distributed to any node that requests it. I would be surprised if agencies against sexual abuse of children do not already operate nodes that siphon up all data it can get.

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