Recently there has been a glut of news media publishing about a virus downloading Porn to an innocent person's computer ( see MSN for an example). I have received many emails from Probation Officers about this issue. They were primarily concerned with "...what should we do about this?".
Here is my answer.
1. Once convicted as a sex offender, one should be held accountable for ALL material on their computers.
2. This means that offenders on supervision should be running the best protection they can (i.e. good anti-virus and anti-spyware applications).
3. Granted, most of the commercially available software applications are not 100% effective, and there is always a chance that one may become infected by visiting hostile web pages.
4. We should always strive to make the offender accountable more than us. This means that the offender should take reasonable steps to protect themselves AND we will hold them accountable in the short term until we can establish their innocence (e.g. we WILL take action until we determine they were victims of hostile code).
5. The chance of them downloading a trojan which downloads porn or CP by visiting an "innocent" site is remote.
6. The web sites which push trojans which are this malicious are not sites we would approve of them visiting under the terms of their supervision.
7. Hence, anything found on their computer is suspect until proven to be the work of malware.
8. Upon finding new charges (e.g. CP) on an offender's computer, we should always forward the device to a fully qualified forensic examiner for a complete examination (which, by the way, will test for exclusionary results such as virus infection).
9. Upon finding "legal" porn on a convicted offender's computer, we should endeavor to get an admission from the offender, or in lack thereof, cause a polygraph of the offender or forward the device to a competent forensic lab for further analysis.
In short, this issue is not significant for offenders under supervision for sexual crimes. We, as supervising officers, should not be passing "final" judgment on the offender's actions. Our job is to enforce the conditions of supervision, not to determine "guilt". If we find circumstances which indicate there MAY have been a violation of conditions, we should act in the public's interest and take action as appropriate. The justice system has checks and balances to ferret out the truth. Our job is clear... we must act on the apparent violation and let the judicial process sort it out.
To all the POs who have written about this situation and story, I commend you for your diligence. I suggest you not lose track of your responsibilities in relation to the courts. We are not tasked with determining guilt, but rather are tasked with providing the court with information which may affect the status of probation awarded by the court.
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