Realistic fake photos challenge child porn prosecutors.

Each week, about 100,000 sexually explicit images of children arrive on CDs or portable disk drives at Michelle Collins' office.

Although challenges to digital photos come in all types of criminal and civil cases, they are especially pronounced in child-pornography cases because of a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a ban on computer-generated child pornography. Defense attorneys are trying to use the ruling to introduce reasonable doubt in jurors' minds about the images' authenticity. And many law-enforcement officials worry that the time and money needed to withstand any challenges will only grow as technology improves and makes it more difficult to tell a computer-generated image from a real one...

Some of you work in the this arena. Please give us more insight into this issue so we can help to ensure children's safety.

Download realistic_fake_photos_challenge_child_porn_prosecutors_cnn.com.pdf

Comments

[Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, PhD]

The danger in viewing computer-generated images is that the brain does not distinguish between simulated and actual. Thus, the brain stores the memory as an actual memory, not a simulated memory. Therefore, the memory is recalled as actual. This phenomenon has been proven vis-a-vis post hypnotic suggestion.