This child-porn-over-Wi-Fi story baffles me from two fronts: From Minnesota, a person (I use the term lightly) in a town north of Saint Paul and east of Minneapolis decided to use free Wi-Fi at a Dunn Brothers coffeeshop to view child pornography. He apparently sat or crouched in an alley or hallway between the cafe and another business.
Here's what mystifies me. First, someone from the business he's crouching near spots him viewing the porn, and instead of calling 911, reports him to the cafe's manager. Then, the cafe manager shoos the guy away instead of calling the police. Only when the man returns three weeks later does the manager call police.
If you ever see someone viewing images of clearly underage individuals engaged in sexual acts or having those acts performed on them, you call the police. There are times when it's unclear whether the images are against the rules of an orderly society in which we protect its weakest members, but I believe with most of this category of pornography, there is a bright line. There's not much subtle child porn, from the reports issued by the police.
The broader issue of whether one should ever look at images of consenting, legal age participants in naked gymnastics in public places is also pretty clear (no).
Here's the experience that shocked me: I took some time away from my regular wifi-filled cafes and decided I'd study at the local library instead.
Ahhh, peace and quiet. Too bad libraries struggle to remain open in this country, but that's another topic.
Then I look up and see a guy on the table across from mine.... checking all sorts of porn sites! Normal, you say? Get this: there was a 10 or 12-year old boy sitting right next top him doing his homework.
Oh, I was pissed and really wanted to come up to the guy and yell at him, but every time anyone got close to his table, he'd switch the screen to another site. Obviously, he knew he was doing something wrong, but still didn't care about the boy next to him.
So I brought this up to the attention of the librarian, hoping they could, at least, disable his machine... The story gets better: The Library does not monitor or control the content of the material accessed through the Internet and cannot be held responsible for its contents.
http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/sfplonline/internet.htm
Oh, it's frustrating. Any recommendations? From now on, I warn all my friends and family not to let their children be at the library on their own - it's not as safe as you'd think.
[Editor's note: That's tricky, to be sure. I believe there are state and federal laws that would allow you to call the police if you witnessed a minor being exposed to images that were deemed adult in nature. That overrides the library's policy. The librarian was being a wimp. She or he should have called security to investigate the situation. Or you could call the police's non-emergency line and say, there's a pervert in the library looking at porn next to minors. I can almost guarantee you a cop would be there in minutes.-gf]