Colorado - Sex Offender Who Used Library Computer Arrested For Alleged Child Porn
From Fox21.com (online). 06/08/07. By Christina Salvo, csalvo@fox21news.com
A registered sex offender living in Colorado Springs is in custody on charges of sexual exploitation of a child. Detectives said 34-year-old William Huffstutter was distributing images of child pornography on the internet using computers at a Pikes Peak Library.
Internet use at the library may be free, but that does not mean people are free to surf the web for anything. Sydene Dean works at the Pikes Peak Library. She said, "We do have a filter called Websense." This prevents users from viewing sexually explicit images over the internet or at least in some areas. Dean said, "E-mail isn't filtered it must be something the internet provider, like Yahoo! monitoring what's going over their site." That is how detectives were tipped off to Huffstutter.
Detective Adam Romine said, "We had information that Mr. Huffstutter had been sending images from the library downtown."
In February detectives received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who was alerted by Yahoo! that an e-mail account of theirs was being used to distribute images of child pornography. It was the tip that launched the four month investigation into Huffstutter, but one that detectives said should have come much sooner and from the library itself. Romine said, "He at one point was ban from the library for using their computers for viewing child pornography on one of their computers." Detectives said that was in June of last year and he was not reported to them by the library.
The library did not want to get into specifics but said it was only a temporary suspension that as issued because Huffstutter accessed a site that the they say only potentially contained child pornography.
Though Wednesday's arrest would suggest child pornography was what Huffstutter was searching for, detectives said they will never know since the library does not monitor or retain who is looking at what when on their computers. Dean said, "You sign up on a computer so for that day with info. After that day, I'm not a tech person, but that info is lost on a daily basis."
The library defends its actions saying while it is not logistically realistic to keep such information for longer than a day, they said more importantly, sharing such information is an infringement of privacy rights protecting their users' freedom of speech.
Posted by Kelly Brown. kbrown@fox21news.com
Retrieved June 16, 2007 from http://fox21news.com/Global/story.asp?S=6626198