He refers in one place to having his friends and his kids' teachers interviewed, but later, he makes it sound like their names were requested, but that those interviews never happened. It wasn't clear to me.

That's completely ridiculous. I mentioned awhile back in this letters section a teacher I knew who took his computer in for repairs and was reported for having child pornography. In his digital photo folder there were a few of his young niece running around without a shirt on. So this gets reported and the teacher is immediately suspended from his job. There is a news item about it complete with his picture. All of his students hear about this and are questioned by reporters how they feel about their teacher being involved in child pornography. The investigation took awhile and he was let go from the district. Ultimately his charges were also "unsubstantiated", but he will never be able to work as a teacher again. There is a great deal of expense, time, and effort that goes into becoming a teacher and now he has to find some other career path.

They also discovered that the same computer repairman has made false claims of child pornography about at least two other people. The police said that they would take that into consideration the next time he made an accusation, but there's no way that he'll ever be punished for ruining the lives of several people.

And remember, these were also digital photos. So those aren't safe, either.

I think, in reading people's responses, what really is frosting people's knockers is that a report from an uninvolved third party (the photo clerk) started this investigation.

I would presume this goes to the classic Stalinist fear that their neighbors may report them to the state for counter revolutionary activities.

That is of course a legitimate fear, and who among us doesn't have something somewhere in their past that a police state couldn't drum up to prove their own investigative worth.

The problem with this line of argument is that, contrary to popular belief we do not live in Stalinist Russia. The difference being that in Stalinist Russia, one neighbor’s complaint was enough land you in a work camp. Where as, in America, for its citizens, legal procedures exist to prevent the exploitation of persons by their neighbor's accusations.

People have repeatedly said, the photos were nonsexual, that is a fair assessment as their was no sexual intent in their taking, and the photo clerk's interpretation was wrong. But, what if his interpretation wasn't wrong, what if, instead of a child in an unguarded moment, the photo was of a child in a sexual position, or in a clear exploitive situation? Would we defend the clerk's right to report the photos? What if the photo's weren't explicit, but instead merely suggestive, say a naked child licking a bomb pop while looking into the camera, would that cross the line? Where is the line? And finally, if it had not been photos, but simply a report by another camper, that he felt the people of at the next camp were doing something strange with their kids, would that be grounds, what if it was their next door neighbor.

The police rely on witnesses and citizens to stand up and report things they see that worry them. That one person's threshold for worry is lower than another’s is of little consequence since the system prevents mere accusation by third parties from damning people.

There are of course, extreme libertarians who will say that under no circumstances should any accusation ever be investigated, but like any other extreme point of view, it is based on a very flawed sense of society. Once you agree that some citizen reporting mechanism is in place, you have let the burden of proof be determined by professionals. That a local cop thought nothing of the photos means no more than the fact that the photo clerk saw them as possible pornography. The social workers, who are trained in this field, are the one's who reviewed the material, and made the final determination.

To those who say that the photos should not have been seized as they were the privet property of the adult who took them, that of course fails to realize that once a third party is involved, in this case both the wife of one of the men, and the clerk himself, that expectation of privacy evaporated.

And as one more point, the statement that a pedophile in the 21st century would never use a local developer for his pictures, that is a circular argument. Aside from the fact that a pedophile could turn that around as a defense saying, if I were really a pornographer why would I use a local developer, there is also the fact that a person might not think the clerk would see the photos. Many drug stores do not develop the photos in house, and instead use outside services, in such cases the photos are usually processed by machines and never seen. Additionally, many criminals are very sloppy, either because they want to get caught, they have no idea that their hobby is wrong, or they think that everyone is a pedophile at heart and hope that upon seeing the pictures the clerk will want to join them in their escapades.

This article, despite what the author may think, is about a system that although flawed, worked. Would it have been nice if no investigation occurred, sure, but it would also be nice if there was no need for these investigations to occur?

No, once again, it was not the fact that the store clerk reported the photos that is the problem, but rather that a full-blown legal investigation followed directly from the reporting, without discretion from a trained public official. As the author himself argued:

1) a full-blown investigation (i.e., home searches, teacher/employer notification and interviews, etc.) MUST be first authorized by a trained lawyer or a public official with specific expertise in child pornography.

2) relatedly, the law should be amended to grant immunity to those who in good faith deem a situation not to be child abuse or pornography. That way, those who report cases of abuse of questionable merit, simply to err on the side of mandatory reporting laws, might feel less pressure to do so.