BOY SCOUT EXECUTIVE PLEADS GUILTY TO CHILD PORN CHARGE

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.kfdx.com/news/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=8152

A former Boy Scouts of America leader today plead guilty to a federal pornography charge. 61-year-old Douglas Sovereign Smith, Jr., is accused of receiving images over the Internet of children engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Douglas Smith faces from 5 to 20 years in prison, without parole, and up to a $250,000 fine.

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[Arkana]

1. Sick, sick, sick.

Although I'm surprised the BSA didn't try to retain him because he was a "godly man" or something.

[pelagius]

12. BSA forced him out when they learned he was under investigation...

...and turned over his work computer to the authorities. There's a lot the BSA has to answer for, but it looks like they handled this situation as well as they could.

It's always the "happily married" middle-aged hetereosexual who does this sort of thing, isn't it? Never the out gay man. The BSA might want to think again about who is and isn't a good role model for youth.

[Arkana]

18. You've noticed that too, eh?

The creeps are always those middle-aged, heterosexual white guys.

[Gman]

21. Just like mass murderers

[NightOwwl]

2. When will Bush be awarding him the Medal of Honor? n/t

[CO Liberal]

7. Nah - Bush'll Be Giving Him a Cabinet Post or Ambassadorship

:-)

[PassingFair]

14. After all, *ush is SO taken with

the meaning of the word "sovereign", remember...

"Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a—you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." - Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004

[Endangered Specie]

20. Secretary of Education

:scared:

[Megahurtz]

3. Ew!

:freak:

[Catherine Vincent]

4. So someone sends an innocent person stuff over the internet and

the innocent person mistakenly opens the attachment (not knowing what it is) and they get arrested? That doesn't sound right.

[youspeakmylanguage]

6. ?!?!?!?!?

Why the hell would someone send a stranger child pornography via email? Why would that stranger, in this day and age, open an attachment from another stranger?

Any self-serving excuse like that deserves nothing but scorn.

[NNN0LHI]

9. He was resending the stuff to other people

He just didn't know he was sending stuff to a law enforcement agent. That will get you every time I bet.

Don

[Bridget Burke]

11. And the innocent person saves the files to his hard drive.

And keeps doing it.

Yeah, right.

[Catherine Vincent]

17. Oh, okay. I wasn't up to speed on exactly what happened with this guy.

I was asking that because it could happen to either one of us right?

[Heddi]

22. Uh, not really

I mean, if you open an attachment in an email from someone you don't know, not only are you opening yourself up for some kiddy porn (which I'm sure happens very infrequently), but setting yourself up for tons of viruses, spyware, adware, etc.

But let's just play along and say that you got an email from a stranger with an attachment, and you opened both the attachment and the email. In the attachment was kiddy porn.

Normal people wouldn't right-click and save the picture to their hard-drive.

Normal people wouldn't then forward the email to other friends.

Normal people wouldn't have a cache of dozens or hundreds (or even TWO) pictures saved on their computer hard-drives.

I mean, maybe you just have rotten luck and get tons of kiddy porn emails sent to you on a daily basis---having been online for...counting...10 years now, I've not only never gotten kiddy porn spam, but I honestly wouldn't know if I did because I don't open attachments from people I don't know, and I don't open forwarded attachments even from people that I do know.

Also, I would hope that a normal person, upon receiving unwanted kiddy porn in their email, would immediately notify not only their email provider, but the email provider of the sender as well as their local law enforcement agency. Because, you know, kiddy porn is against the law.

But who knows--maybe you're just unlucky. At any rate, even if you had a copy of a picture of kiddy porn stored on your computer, and you were arrested for it, and your defense was "well, it was sent to me and I dont' know by whom, and I didn't know what it was when I opened it", your Defense Lawyer's first move would be to get a very savvy computer detective to go inside your hard-drive, see when the photo was downloaded or saved to your computer. They can even tell how many times the file had been opened or viewed.

If, as you say, you received unwanted email from an unknown sender that had unanticipated Child Porn inside, the computer detective should be able to say "Well, that's probably correct because the photo is only on the hard drive due to Window's automatic saving of all images opened on the computer, and the image was only viewed once, and that was the date it was 'saved' (automatically by Windows). However, I think you'd have a hard time defending your case if the photo was viewed dozens or hundreds of times and was shown to be "actively" saved by the user, and was also there with other photos of the same nature.

So no, this couldn't happen to anyone who didn't intend on receiving AND supplying child porn to other people.

Nice try, though

[spotbird]

5. Is this man straight?

I mean aside from being a deranged sicko. Please tell me he is a heterosexual deranged sicko.

[NNN0LHI]

10. He is "happily" married with children n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

8. I think I heard on CNN that Smith's lawyer said...

that his client's interest in child pornography was entirely separate from his Boy Scout duties. Well, that's a relief to all involved, I'm sure!

[Ripley]

13. Hahahah.

Dammit what a crock. Everyone knows pedophiles specifically seek jobs that get them close to young kids (teachers, coaches, youth counselors, Priests and BOY SCOUTS). This guy worked for them for something like 39 years....I wonder if he molested anyone in all those years. Hope not.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

15. Well I'm sure

glad Eagle Scouts can't be gay! /sarcasm off/ I think this proves what a bunch of crap that (the gay thing) is.........

[customerserviceguy]

16. He sure pleaded awful damn quick

Makes me wonder what he's really trying to cover up that would be brought out in a trial...

[Betty]

19. This is right out of that South Park epsiode

where they kicked Big Gay Al out of the scouts for being gay and brought in a pedophile to lead the troop.

[Quetzal]

23. Suprise Suprise! The Boy Scouts is already doing some spraypainting

on their website.

The BSA Legal Issues organizations deleted a letter on their website that Mr. Douglas Smith wrote in response to a column written in the Corporate Legal Times. Luckily, Towleroad saved the letter.

http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/Boy%20Scouts%20Legal%20Issues-%20Bruce%20Collins.html