I want to address a few things.
First: Bob, I'm sorry -- but the perverts and the terrorists are sometimes smart enough to know that cheap/suspicious cameras will give them away. Please note that, outside of certain places like Langley/CIA Headquarters, my practice, training, and belief is to INVESTIGATE the suspicious action, not begin with a new jerk "he's a pervert/terrorist/monster." I used to watch the kids playing baseball near the community center where I teach. Obviously, none of the kids were mine -- and if someone asked, I can explain myself. Same sort of thing with photographers.
Second: Child Porn. A nude picture is not necessarily pornography; a nude picture of a kid isn't necessarily child porn. There has to be a salicious or sexual nature to the picture, not just nudity. Real child porn makes those of us who are normal sick; it's kids doing things that aren't appropriate, and it hits you in the gut. I don't -- and I never want to! -- work child porn, but I've had to see enough of it. It makes you sick. What happened in that case is that the Child & Family Services Department wasted weeks and weeks of effort in an inappropriate and unsubstantiable investigation. I don't blame the store photo clerk for calling the cops. And the cops may not have had a choice; they did have some pictures there that could suggest that the kids were put into dangerous situations. Especially since, in the writer's own words, the kids took some of the pictures on their own, and the parents didn't know what was in them. Too many times, CFS has overworked people with the wrong training conducting investigations. The interviews should have taken place within the first week, and the entire roll of film should have been reviewed. There's no reason that the investigation should have lasted weeks; the only explanation is that the case workers assignment load was too high. In fact, the very length of the investigation suggests that there was little real concern for the safety of the children. In short, hearing only one side of the case, I think the investigation was terribly mismanaged. I've had several very bad experiences working with CPS -- along with a few really good experiences. I've had cases where they don't start investigations they should... and where they've come to us with significant cases. It's just very uneven, because they aren't criminal investigators -- they're social workers.
But there's really no easy solution. The over-reacting mothers in the story that started this thread aren't right; they're like a novice student who jumps at every twitch when sparring. But they wouldn't be wrong to ignore something that made them concerned, either. In terms of photography -- there's been no real definition of pornography; rulings basically hold "we know it when we see it." Then you get some clerk who barely speaks English developing the film, with a 19 year old store "manager", and it gets dumped on a patrol officer. Often, as a mandatory reporter, he doesn't have a choice about reporting something that he knows is silly -- or he as to take the police report, and a supervisor who's afraid of being called on the carpet for a judgement call like that passes it on to CPS -- who are mostly social workers, not real investigators. Too often, a CPS worker's job consists of hitting the checkmarks on the list, not really investigating.
