By Jessica Reed
In her recent column 'Anonymity on the net' Becky Hogge describes Darknets as private file-sharing networks which makes online dealings very difficult to trace - she goes on to say that Darknet users are often associated with malicious and often illegal activities such as credit cards fraud, or the swapping of illegal material.
New York Times senior reporter Kurt Eichenwald recently spent months on the Internet researching paedophile communities, which resulted in the publication of this piece titled "From their own online world, pedophiles extend their reach". Eichenwald's research - which included having to browse through websites containning prohibited data- was illgeal : in the United States, only abilited members of the accredited Police departments have the right to 'hunt' for paedophile websites - members of the academia or journalists cannot, even for the sake of research or reporting.
Debbie Nathan challenges the illegality of reporter investigating child porn in her Salon piece 'Why I need to see child porn' :
I was consumed with fear of the U.S. government. Technically, according to federal statutes, just visiting a kiddie-porn site makes you a lawbreaker, because regardless of why you went there, the images end up in your hard drive. You "possess" child porn, which is a serious crime. You can notify the authorities. You can clean up your cookies and your cache. Still, you broke the law. The feds might excuse you, or they could arrest you. It's entirely up to them (...)
I'm worried that the government has declared an entire field of law enforcement and public policy off-limits from empirical critique by academia and the Fourth Estate. I want a process that allows non-governmental investigators and journos to be vetted and qualified as child-porn researchers.
After reading the article the main question remains: can journalists investigate everything (including horrific topics considered 'taboo') in the name of the freedom of the press & information, or is there boundaries that cannot be crossed, even when it comes to keeping the public in the know?
