important that the white race be good at building cities and societies, than that it have the physical strength of blacks, or the work ethic of the Japanese, or the close family ties of the Latinos.

And in light of the white race's strength at civilization-building, their greater tendency to consume child pornography is relatively insignificant.

Shouldn't that apply at the level of the individual, too -- if there's a white individual who is really good at, say, science or the useful arts, maybe if he looks at child porn, that should be overlooked, so that he can continue contributing to society?

One could argue, "No, it's necessary to make an example out of him, in order to deter others," but that argument only works if punishment actually does have much of a deterrent effect. I'm not sure it actually does; child porn viewership rates are still pretty high, despite the incarceration of a lot of people.

The enforcement also has a lot of negative unintended consequences, like the fact that people's privacy has to be invaded in order to enforce the law. For example, the government would like to ban encryption to make it easier for them to catch people with child porn when they seize their cell phone, or laptop, or whatever. I don't know about anyone else, but I like to live in a society where I can be secure in my person, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches; and encryption can be a pretty effective way to keep cops from going through one's personal data. Not to mention, the right to send encrypted data could be considered to fall under one's free speech rights.

If you're not going to ban encryption, then you may as well give up on trying to enforce child porn laws, because it's going to be really hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone broke child porn laws without being able to perform much of a forensic analysis of their devices.

(A court can order someone to decrypt a device, but one can just refuse to obey the order; it's better to be jailed for contempt for 18 months, than to get convicted of a child porn offense.)




• ( https link ) 28 U.S. Code § 1826. Recalcitrant witnesses
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