[smh.com.au – 4/4/19] If politicians are looking for a sure fire vote winner then anything that punishes people convicted of sex offences does the trick. So there is likely to be little resistance to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s budget announcement of $7.8 million to establish a National Public Register of Child Sex Offenders. Dutton is proposing that this register would allow all Australians to see names, aliases and photographs of sex offenders, as well as their date of birth, physical description and the “general location and nature” of…
Read MoreDay: April 4, 2019
Canada: Sex-offender registry laws discriminate against mentally ill, court rules
[theprovince.com – 4/4/19] Parts of federal and Ontario laws requiring sex-offender registration where an accused is granted an absolute discharge after being found not criminally responsible discriminate against the mentally ill and are therefore unconstitutional, Ontario’s top court ruled Thursday. While the court ordered information belonging to the man who brought the case to be deleted immediately from sex-offender registries, the justices also gave governments 12 months to fix the offending legislation, widely known in Ontario as Christopher’s Law. “Persons found (not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder)…
Read MoreProsecutors Dropping Child Porn Charges After Software Tools Are Questioned
[propublica.org – 4/3/19] Using specialized software, investigators traced explicit child pornography to Todd Hartman’s internet address. A dozen police officers raided his Los Angeles-area apartment, seized his computer and arrested him for files including a video of a man ejaculating on a 7-year-old girl. But after his lawyer contended that the software tool inappropriately accessed Hartman’s private files, and asked to examine how it worked, prosecutors dismissed the case. Near Phoenix, police with a similar detection program tracked underage porn photos, including a 4-year-old with her legs spread, to…
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