[DSMan195276]

> I'd say we get police or health care to talk to people who think perfectly normal images are sexual in nature, but until we get laws changed at least then keep us safe.

Personally I don't find anecdotes convincing compared to the very real amount of CSAM (and actual child abuse) we already know exists and circulates in the wild, but I do get your point. That said personally I don't think changing the laws would really achieve what you want anyway - I don't think a random Walmart employee is up-to-date on the legal definitions of CSAM, they're going to potentially report it regardless of what the law is (and the question of whether this is a wider trend is debatable, again this is an anecdote).

With that, they were eventually found innocent, so the law already agrees what they did was perfectly fine, which was my original point. No it should not have taken that long, but then again we don't know much about the background of those who took them, so I'm not entirely sure we can easily determine how appropriate the response was. I'm certainly not trying to claim our system is perfect, but I'm also not convinced rolling back protections for abused children is a great idea without some solid evidence that it really isn't working.

> Another thing that comes up is that a lot of things that are legal might be in that database because criminal might have a somewhat varied history.

That didn't really answer my question :P

I agree the database is suspect but I don't see how that has anything to do with the definition of CSAM. The legal definition of CSAM is not "anything in that database", and if we're already suggesting that there's stuff in there that's known to not be CSAM then how would changing the definition of CSAM help?

[skinkestek]

> Personally I don't find anecdotes convincing compared to the very real amount of CSAM (and actual child abuse) we already know exists

First: This is not hearsay or anecdotal evidence, this is multiple innocent real people getting their lives trashed to some degree before getting aquitted.

> I don't think a random Walmart employee is up-to-date on the legal definitions of CSAM, they're going to potentially report it regardless of what the law is (and the question of whether this is a wider trend is debatable, again this is an anecdote).

Fine, I too report a number of things to the police that might or might not be crimes. (Eastern European car towing a Norwegian luxury car towards the border is one. Perfectly legal in one way but definitely something the police was happy to get told about so they could verify.)

> With that, they were eventually found innocent, so the law already agrees what they did was perfectly fine, which was my original point.

Remember the job of the police is more to keep law abiding citizens safe than to lock up offenders. If we could magically keep kids safe forever without catching would-be offenders I'd be happy with that.

Making innocent peoples lives less safe for a marginally bigger chance to catch small fry (i.e. not producers), does it matter?

The problem here and elsewhere is that police many places doesn't have a good track record of throwing it out. Once you've been dragged through court for the most heinous crimes you don't get your life completely back.

If we knew police would always throw out such cases I'd still be against this but then it wouldn't be so obviously bad.

[DSMan195276]

> First: This is not hearsay or anecdotal evidence, this is multiple innocent real people getting their lives trashed to some degree before getting aquitted.

"multiple" is still anecdotal, unless we have actual numbers on the issue. The question is how many of these cases actually happen vs. the number of times these types of investigations actually reveal something bad. Unless you never want kids saved from abuse there has to be some acceptable number of investigations that eventually get dropped.

> Remember the job of the police is more to keep law abiding citizens safe than to lock up offenders.

Maybe that should be their purpose, but in reality they're law enforcement, their job has nothing to do with keeping people safe. The SCOTUS has confirmed as much that the police have no duty to protect people, only to enforce the law. However I think we agree that's pretty problematic...

> Making innocent peoples lives less safe for a marginally bigger chance to catch small fry (i.e. not producers), does it matter?

I would point out that the children in this situation are law abiding citizens as well, and they also deserve protection. Whether their lives were made more or less safe in this situation is debatable, but the decision was made with their safety in mind. For the few cases of a mistake being made like the one you presented I could easily find similar cases where the kids were taken away and then it was found they were actually being abused. That's also why I pointed out your examples are only anecdotes, the big question is whether this is a one-off or a wider trend.

If reducing the police's ability to investigate these potential crimes would actually result in harm to more children, then you're really not achieving your goal of keeping people safer.

> The problem here and elsewhere is that police many places doesn't have a good track record of throwing it out. Once you've been dragged through court for the most heinous crimes you don't get your life completely back.

Now this I agree with. The "not having a good record of throwing it out" I'm a little iffy on but generally agree, but I definitely agree that public knowledge of being investigating for such a thing is damaging even if it turns out your innocent, which isn't right. I can't really say I have much of a solution for that in a situation like this though, I don't think there's much of a way to not-publicly take the kids away - and maybe that should have a higher threshold, but I really don't know, as I mentioned earlier we'd really need to look at the numbers to know that. For cases that don't involve a public component like that though I think there should be a lot more anonymity involved.