Tax protester faces kiddie-porn charges

Philadelphia Daily News ^ | Thu, Jun. 17, 2004 | Jim Smith

[Lurking Libertarian]

Tax protester faces kiddie-porn charges

A Montgomery County man who has publicly dared the Internal Revenue Service to arrest him for not paying federal income taxes was charged yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia with possession of child pornography.

IRS agents seized 10 computers from the Hollywood home of Larken Rose more than a year ago, but have yet to charge the tax protester with any tax crimes.

The child pornography was "inadvertently discovered" by an IRS agent who was examining one of the computer's hard drives, an FBI agent alleged.

FBI agent Beatrice A. DeFazio said the computer images contained explicit sexual situations involving underage girls.

The agent said there is "probable cause" to believe that Rose downloaded the kiddie porn from the Internet because the pictures were stored in the same computer file "where partially nude images of his wife" were also stored."

Neither Rose nor his wife could be reached last night.

[streetpreacher]

I've read about a program that encrypts your entire hard drive. Does anyone know if this truly protects you from government invasion of privacy?

[streetpreacher]

So now it's okay to be prosecuted for not throwing away an e-mail you receive? I get hundreds of e-mail messages, some in Spam, Bulk, or even Inbox and often let them linger before going through and deleting them. This is really getting out of hand, IMHO.

[freedumb2003]

How can we be sure the IRS didn't download it?

Well, if you just watch "Law & Order" or "CSI" or other cop shows, then there are magical indelible tracks left when data are loaded onto a hard disk (and of course, corporate mail behaves in all kinds of magical ways). You just have to get one of the geeks from there (or whatever passerby they tapped to be their technical expert).

[streetpreacher]

there's probably still incriminating images sitting in his browser cache, or that may be recoverable from previous deletions unless he hashes his free space after clearing his browser (highly unlikely unless he was the extremely paranoid type).'

Is that the same thing as Disk defragmentation?

[jwpjr]

Some parents give no thought at all to having their kids appear in public in the nude. There's a beach here in Tampa that has a shower head for rinsing off after a swim. It's not uncommon for parents to have there kids, boys and girls, get nude and shower before leaving the beach area. They arrested a guy there a couple of years ago who had a video camera in concealed in his beach bag and would tape the kids showering in the nude. I'd have a hard time deciding who to prosecute in this case. In Florida it's against the law to have even the kind of photos you are referring to. More than one one-hour film lab geek has called the police when after processing film of kids in various stages of undress. The there were the several one-hour film lab guys who routinely made copies of photos featuring nude ladies. Seems at one point, pre-digital, an awful lot of guys took film of their significant others in various stages of nudity to the one-hour labs. They were discovered when one of them had a party at his house and left his album with HUNDREDS of such prints on the coffee table and one of his guests found a picture of herself in the album. Three or four people were convicted of various crimes and the drug store chain, Eckerds, had to pay out a LOT of money to a number of persons whose pictures were copied over the span of a couple of years. There's just no limit to the crazy things some people will do when it comes to nudity and sex.

[DB]

"And load them in the same place you store your wifes pictures ? Smart program. I would have thought the hijack uses temp directories."

I never said they did. I was simply stating a fact. I never defended the guy in this article and the fact that his wife's pictures are in the same "file" or folder as the other kiddie porn is damning evidence for which I made no attempt to refute.

[streetpreacher]

Why would the wife "overreact" like that? Does she have any cause to think so negatively of her husband? I couldn't imagine my wife not giving me the benefit of the doubt.

[streetpreacher]

computer forensics experts

Whose experts?

[Lurking Libertarian]

Whose experts?

If it goes to trial, we'll probably hear two sets.

[DB]

There had to be a lot more wrong with that "marriage" than some kiddie porn popping up on the computer screen once.

To blame it all on that one incident is disingenuous of somebody.

[streetpreacher]

Jpegs probably don't fit that mold.

Actually, a document could have been scanned and saved in JPEG format.

[VRWC_minion]

Easily shredded or modified by anyone with a bit of computer knowledge.

Everything leaves a trail. If a copy were made when it was obtained which apparently is standard, such a change would be evident.

Records? Of every bit of data transferred and every site visited by every subscriber?

Log on information would be available. Someone would have to coincide the data in the computer with the log on times with the provider and still make everything else in cache files match up. Pretty neat trick.

[VRWC_minion]

or someone who really thinks he ought to go to jail putting them there

Why would the IRS create a zip file with kiddie porn and his wifes nuddie pictures ? If they wanted to get him, why not just load up 10's of thousands of pictures and throw in some zip disks and CD's to boot ?

[GrandEagle]

B-36
I suppose so. I may learn more than I want to know! LOL!

[NJ_gent]

I'm one of those who believes that we're a bit too uptight in this country when it comes to nudity. That being said, that idiot with the camcorder certainly needed to be arrested, and anyone who puts their kids in danger (as in taking them out partially nude or in provocative dress to 'shady' or very public places) needs to be investigated. I think if it's a fairly private beach in a fairly safe area, and it's people who simply don't find nudity taboo (as opposed to perverts who are getting off on it), then I wouldn't have a big problem with it. That being said, I also wouldn't find it unreasonable for someone (preferably a cop as opposed to a random person) to ask them to make an effort to shield themselves and their children from public view while they're showering there. No one should be forcably subjected to that family's views about nudity.

In terms of who you prosecute, I think the rule of thumb is that you prosecute those who can be shown to be a danger to others. In the case you mentioned with the beach, the guy with the camcorder was obviously a pervert who represented a real and present danger to the children around him. In terms of the parents, it gets a little trickier. I suppose one way to look at it is to ask yourself whether they appear to be simply unconcerned about nudity, or whether they're showing off their kids for the other people there. Those fitting into the latter group certainly represent an even greater risk to the children than the fool with the camera.

[agitator]

This is clearly a plant. When the IRS gestapo has your computer data for over a year and can't refute your arguments or find anything to charge you with and then all of a sudden "kiddy porn" "inadvertently" appears on your computer........ puleeze. Only somebody that just fell of a turnip truck would believe that. Larken Rose can run circles around the best the IRS can produce when it comes to their own law. I've listened to interviews recorded between him and IRS and my response was "What is this? Candid Camera?"

When you can't out argue somebody ask them when they stopped beating their wife. This is what it has come to in the good old US of A. He'll get no better treatment in our vaunted courts of alleged justice either.

[Flashman_at_the_charge]

Many tiff's are multi-image.

As are animated GIFs essentially.

[NJ_gent]

"Why would the IRS create a zip file with kiddie porn and his wifes nuddie pictures ?"

The "I had no idea!", "It was a trojan!", and "I got hacked!" defenses go right out the window. "Sure you didn't know about them, and those incredible hackers somehow managed to take pictures of your wife as well. They must have been very talented." *GUILTY*

"If they wanted to get him, why not just load up 10's of thousands of pictures and throw in some zip disks and CD's to boot?"

Because this looks less suspcious and far more incriminating. Imagine the police impounding your car, and a month later reporting that they've just now stumbled upon 400 kilos of cocaine. Is anyone going to believe that? When they say they found a couple grams between the seats, they at least convince some people. In the latter case, you're far more likely to wind up in jail.

[NJ_gent]

"He'll get no better treatment in our vaunted courts of alleged justice either."

What would be a grand turn-around would be if he uses the money made from this whole thing to hire a hotshot attorney that nails the whole thing to the wall and gets him a walk.

[StriperSniper]

Who's really breaking the rules here?

My first thought. They have nothing, so they have to indict on the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.