KIRO TV'S Anchor Susan Hutchison: There's an email circulating through cyberspace that could get you in trouble with the law just by opening it. Bellevue Police is trying to figure out what the email came from after several people alerted them to it. The email sends you to a web page that is full of child pornography. [At this moment in the newscast KIRO shows the very web site on TV Hutchison says is full of child pornography.]

Female Citizen: But when I saw this about tiny little girls. That just turned my stomach. [Some of the promotional text on the web site said "This site is created specially for all fans of tiny little girls."]

Bellevue, Washington Police Officer Marcia Harnden: Don't open it. Because it subjects yourself to opening and looking at child pornography and that can affect your employment, it's illegal to posses it.

KIRO TV'S Susan Hutchison: Bellevue police say if you get an email like this contact police and definitely don't open it.

Comments:

I'll begin with comments about specific statements in the story:

Issue: ". . . circulating through cyberspace . . . ". Well, this is basically true. The email was a spam. Many people got it and I had several people contact me wanting to know how to take action against the spammer.

Issue: " . . . could get you in trouble with the law just by opening it . . . ." This is a new concept -- breaking the law by opening an email. Where is the legal foundation for this statement? I called Seattle Police and talked with them and they said that just having the text that promotes the child pornography was not illegal.

Issue: ". . . figure out what the email came from . . . ." What it came from? Well, we can all be fairly confident it came from another computer.

Issue: ". . . The email sends you to a web page . . . ." The email contained a link to the web page that person had to actively click on. Opening the email did not automatically take the reader to the web page.

Issue: "Don't open it." A person cannot know an email is promoting child pornography simply by looking at the FROM or SUBJECT fields in the email, especially these days with misleading subject lines. The subject line in this particular email was "WARNING! Specially for all fans of tiny little girls!" This is pretty close to being accurate. Rather than help viewers and telling what the subject line was so viewers could know what it was without opening it, KIRO just passed over it.

Issue: "Because it subjects yourself to opening and looking at child pornography . . . it's illegal to posses it." Of course it is illegal to posses it. But what is it? The text promoting the child pornography or the child pornography itself or both? Based on the comments from Seattle Police, possessing the text is not illegal.

Issue: ". . . if you get an email like this contact police . . . ." Right. How many ever tried this? I called Seattle Police and and talked with three people. Not one of these people had clue on what to do with such an email. And are police departments in Washington State (or even around the country) equipped to take calls from a few thousand people each time they get a spam promoting child pornography?

Issue: ". . . and definitely don't open it." Ok, if you should not open it, how do you know what is inside? If you don't know what is inside, how do you know if you should call the police? And why would you report it to the police if you are going to be considered a criminal?

In general, the tone of the entire news report is how the recpient of the email can get into trouble over something unsolicited. Rather than focus on where this email actually came from and what people can do to stop this email, or how the Bellevue Police is tracking down the sender of the email, the news report shifts the burden of guilt onto unwilling recipients.

We don't know the entire comments the officer made. But the comments in the report coincide with the station's narrative text -- make the unwilling recipient the criminal.

Because this email -- which I saw from people who contacted me -- contained an invalid address in the FROM field, it violated Washington State law. So, instead of officer Harnden referring to unwilling recipients as the victims they are, she turns the unwilling recipients into criminals. This is the same kind of general thinking of blaming the victim for the crime (as in you must have done something to invite this) and the same kind of particular thinking that blames the rape victim for a rape (you must have worn something to provoke the perpatrator). So what is it that all these unwilling recipients did that invited them to receive this email that turned them into a criminal? They had an email address.

Also overlooked because of the tone of this news report is that residents of Washington State could at that time initiate their own private right of action against those who send commercial email against the law.

By shifting the guilt and criminality from the child porn spammer to the recipient, an underlying message is conveyed that there is nothing anyone can do about spam, so why bother calling the police or taking personal action? This kind of thinking will never get rid of spam. And I, for one, am really annoyed that we are paying our tax money for this kind of lame thinking from our law enforcement officials who would rather take the easy way out by creating criminals out of victims rather than going after the actual perpetrators.