March 12, 2008

Tulare County Board of Supervisors
2800 West Burrel Avenue
Visalia, CA 93291

Honorable Supervisors,

This letter is written to reassert the position of the City Council of the City of Lindsay regarding its dealings with Tulare County Library personnel.  Specifically, the City Council expresses its concern over recent actions by senior management, most notably Mr. Brian Lewis and Ms. Judy Hill. Both Mr. Lewis and Ms. Hill have failed to meet the public trust in their supervisory roles within the County Library system. Their actions have broken and severely damaged the confidence and trust between the City of Lindsay and the Tulare County Library department.

Of foremost concern, the City Council is appalled with the way Mr. Lewis and Ms. Hill have handled the recent events surrounding the arrest of an adult male apprehended viewing child pornography in the Tulare County library located in Lindsay.  Below is a summary of misgivings regarding the incident:

Read the rest of the letter (PDF file)

A Tulare County library worker says she was fired for telling police about a man she saw viewing child pornography on a Lindsay branch computer. Brenda Biesterfeld's allegations are creating a dustup in Lindsay, where federal law-enforcement agents are joining the investigation following last week's arrest of Donny Lynn Chrisler for suspicion of possessing child pornography.

Biesterfeld, who had worked for the county for nearly six months, said she called her supervisor and told her what happened. "She told me to write him a note saying this was a first warning, and if he gets a second warning he'd be banned from the library."

"So then I said, 'I need to contact the police, right?' and she said no," Biesterfeld said. "She said it's more common than I'd think."

Those who have followed the issue of child pornography in public libraries will find this incident disturbingly similar to one of the most notorious incidents in "Dangerous Access 2000."  I obtained this 1999 incident from a FOI request I made to the Sonoma (Cailf.) Public Library:

 Sonoma, California, Public Library, a staff member sent an e-mail message to his supervisor stating:
"There are 3 men on my shift who come in regularly, perhaps daily. One views child porn of nude boys in tubs. . . . These images are clearly visible. . . .What does it mean to have child molester posters up in our staff lounge & yet we make daily Internet appointments for someone to watch kiddy porn in the library on the library comp? Isn't this crazy?"

But the supervisor responded:
"I don't like it either, but there is nothing we can do about it. The best thing for staff is to ignore it . . . please use your time in more constructive ways." [Emp. Added]

Update:

The City of Lindsay is outraged:

In a blistering letter, the Lindsay City Council late today said a supervisor at the Tulare County Library told Lindsay police they had "no business" interfering with a child pornography incident because the library staff was handling it.

The AP reports:

The first bill, passed 409-2, expands the reporting duties of Internet service providers with respect to violations of child sexual exploitation and pornography laws. The ISPs would have to inform the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of the Internet identity and geographic location of suspected sex offenders and the time child pornography was downloaded.  They also would have to preserve child pornography images for investigations and prosecutions. ISPs that fail to report incidents of child pornography would be subject to fines of $150,000 per image per day, up from the current $50,000. The penalty would jump to $300,000, double the current rate, for subsequent cases.

MicroWorld Technologies caution computer users against probable infection of a Trojan named 'Win32.StartPage.jo' while visiting dubious websites or downloading freebies from untrustworthy sources on the net. According to MicroWorld, Win32.StartPage.jo changes Internet settings on the affected computer. The default home page in Internet Explorer is changed to www.find-online.net. It also adds a range of porn sites and bogus drug sites in the favourites folder and makes changes in the Windows registry to activate the Trojan at the system start-up.

"This Trojan can impede your Internet activity by popping up pornographic content every now and then," said Vikas Vishwasrao, assistant manager, R&D, MicroWorld. Porno-Trojans can lead an infected computer to child pornographic sites, accessing which is a criminal offense in many countries. Court may indict an under-trial for no fault of his, based on the evidence of websites prompted by the malware, found in the browsing history.

Malware that brings unwanted pornographic pop-ups is an old and well-documented trend, but this is the first I'd heard of it bringing up child pornography.   I bet defense attorneys will start using "it was the Trojan horse program" as a defense in child pornography cases.

The Internet Security Unit (İGB) to combat child abuse and crimes committed against the legacy of the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk, began operation on Friday and blocked two pornographic Web sites following complaints from the prosecutor's office and regular citizens.  In response to the growing number of Internet sites with content constituting sex crimes against children, the İGB was recently established as a unit subordinate to the Telecommunications Board and will constantly monitor cyberspace in an effort to fight such crimes.

--David Burt