The Hindu Business Line : Home's no longer safe...

February 11, 2004. Afternoon. "Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Detective Michael Castaneda was acting undercover on the Internet as a 14-year-old girl using the screen name `christine13'. Castaneda entered a chat channel labelled `ltgirlsexchat' and received an instant message from Curtin, who used the screen name `M-42SOCAL'."

Thus begins the text of 91-page verdict of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, dated April 4, in US vs Curtin, a case heard by Circuit Judges Clifford Wallace, Stephen S. Trott, and Pamela Ann Rymer.

"The detective, as `Christy,' and Curtin `chatted' through instant messaging for approximately four hours. They exchanged photos early in the conversation. Castaneda sent Curtin a picture of a female police officer, taken when she was fourteen years old."

How did Curtin introduce himself? He said his name was `Kenny' and that he was forty-two years old, divorced, and living in Anaheim, California. "He told Christy that he was planning to travel to Las Vegas on Friday, February 13 and invited her to go to a `Penn and Teller' show on Sunday, February 15. Christy agreed."

Accessible, Affordable and Anonymous

The case, as you would have rightly guessed, is about paedophilia. A burning issue. For instance, as at the time of writing this, e-newsletter dated April 10, from Centre for Research and Prevention of Computer Crimes (www.crpcc.in) highlights, `Study: Child Porn Isn't Illegal In Most Countries'. A link leads to Thomas Claburn's report on InformationWeek (www.informationweek.com) about a review by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC). Of the 184 Interpol-member countries reviewed, more than half have no laws that address child pornography! "Child pornography isn't a crime in 138 countries. In 122 countries, there's no law dealing with the use of computers and the Internet as a means of child porn distribution."

Claburn quotes David Townsend, CEO of eFor, a computer forensics company, thus: "Twenty years ago, child predators used to go to circuses and playgrounds. Today they go online to places like Yahoo Groups and MySpace." Reason: Anonymity that is available online. One learns that Microsoft has helped train "some 1,322 law enforcement officials from 89 countries to better investigate and prosecute child pornography". Thankfully, "Boys' Prank On MySpace Leads To Paedophile Arrest," as Playfuls.com, Romania (March 7) informs.

On www.commonvoice.com, Dan Burrell's article dated April 5 is titled `Tsunami of Pedophile Predators'. Burrell writes, "The computer and high-speed Internet have given every paedophile and would-be pervert the three most important components to feed his addiction: it's Accessible, Affordable and Anonymous."

Washington Post Staff Writer Paul Farhi reports in a story dated April 9 that the NBC newsmagazine Dateline has agreed to pay a civilian watchdog group more than $100,000 to create a paedophile sting operation that the network plans to feature in a series of programs next month.

The crime is widespread. On March 30, Paul Carter wrote on http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au about a paedophile who is "in line to become the first person subject to new laws which grant the NSW Government powers to lock up sex offenders indefinitely."

The chat course

Back to Curtin's story. "The next day, Curtin sent Christy an e-mail message saying `I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to Sunday. We're going to have a great time.' The detective and Curtin later that day had another `chat' during which Curtin continued to make explicit references to having sex with Christy. Curtin concluded the `chat' by confirming their meeting and telling Christy he would introduce her to Penn and Teller as his niece, adding, `Let's not get caught, ever.'"

But caught, he was. For, "The police officer whose picture was sent to Curtin waited in the bowling alley as a decoy, dressed in the clothes that Christy indicated she would be wearing. Eight to ten other law enforcement officers were also present."

On challenged by the officers, Curtin stated that he was at the bowling alley to meet a female friend he had met on the Internet. "He admitted to using the screen name and e-mail address used to contact Christy. Curtin explained that he often enters chat rooms and `role plays' as if he is engaged in `daddy/ daughter' type conversations, and that he expected Christy to be a thirty- to forty-year-old woman pretending to be a girl."

Las Vegas police arrested him, searched his van and hotel room, and seized his digital assistant and laptop computer. "The digital assistant contained over 140 stories about adults having sex with children. The laptop contained a list of chat channels that Curtin had accessed in the past, as well as pictures of girls whose names matched some of those in his `chat' list."

Stories as evidence

The stories were to play a key role in the case, when it had come up before the district court. On the government's side, the argument was that the language in more than a dozen stories was similar to that used by Curtin in his email to Christy. But Curtin asked that the stories found on his digital assistant be excluded from evidence.

The district court denied the appeal. "However, recognising the highly prejudicial nature of the stories, the court held that the story could be entered into evidence only if it tied into Curtin's intent, knowledge, preparation, or modus operandi."

The stories were no ordinary tales. "The district court admitted to being unable to read the stories because they were so disturbing." So, it issued limiting instructions such as, "A person cannot be charged nor convicted of literature that they read or that they possess."

The government argued that the admitted stories were "inextricably intertwined" with the facts giving rise to the indictment against Curtin. The court, however, observed, "The possession or content of the stories was not a part of the `transaction' that led to the present charges... Thus, the stories were not `inextricably intertwined' with the charged crimes."

Queasy to know that one of the cases cited in the verdict is US vs Dhingra, where instant messenger had been used for a similar purpose. Curtin argued that the government's failure to request a copy of the surveillance video from the casino violated due process.

Law inordinately difficult to enforce

What was the decision of the Circuit Court? It remanded the case for a new trial. But Judge Trott voiced dissent. In page 18 of the text, he begins thus: "During the 20th Century, the four walls of a family's home provided substantial protection from marauding sexual predators on the prowl for children and unsuspecting minors to assault. Locked doors and windows could normally safeguard a dwelling from invasion, as well as shelter parents' vulnerable children from harm. Distant parks, playgrounds, malls, and sidewalks surrounding schoolyards were the child molester's preferred hunting grounds. No longer."

Why? Because, "Now, the Internet is upon us, and it allows cunning sexual vultures repeatedly to enter the bedrooms of immature children where, by seductive and calculating means, unwary children are enticed to leave the security of their homes and to venture into unspeakable dangers."

With the walls of our homes breached by the Internet, our next best defence is the law, declares Judge Trott.

"Congress has enacted a law protecting minors from this behaviour, but we have misinterpreted the Rules of Evidence to make the law inordinately difficult to enforce," he rues in page 90. The full text of the case on the ITcases blog can make for a harsh read, let me caution.

http://ITcases.blogspot.com

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