Newfangled Crime, Old-Time Fix : Existing laws can address almost all computer crime, including smug

It won’t take another salvo of overly broad and breathless laws from Congress to confront crime on the worldwide computer web known as the Internet. Good old-fashioned police work and statutes already on the books will suffice in almost all cases. A law broken is a law broken, even if that occurs in cyberspace.

Take, for example, the downloading of pornography from the Net into one’s home computer. Yes, some think that’s a problem, but it isn’t one that would be solved by Sen. James J. Exon’s proposed Communications Decency Act of 1995. The Nebraska Democrat’s bill, which would prohibit the distributing of obscene materials via computer, is a potentially unconstitutional measure that also would saddle the Federal Communications Commission with the delicate task of curbing computer smut while preserving privacy and speech rights.

Is this bill truly needed? It’s already a crime, for example, to possess child pornography. Finding a new way to obtain child smut doesn’t make having it any less a crime.

A Sun Valley man was arrested recently in a child pornography case. Authorities say he had placed an ad in a magazine called Loving Alternatives seeking people interested in “family nudity”--a code term for child pornography.

Detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department’s sexually exploited child unit directed an investigator to pose as a pedophile responding to the magazine ad. The Sun Valley man allegedly told the undercover agent he had obtained child pornography from an Internet bulletin board. Sure enough, police armed with a search warrant found child pornography on computer diskettes owned by the suspect and on his computer hard drive.

The man has been charged with one count of possession and faces up to one year of incarceration and/or a $1,000 fine. If convicted, he will also have to register as a sex offender. An important point is worth making here: Nothing but current law was needed to pursue this case.