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Email Searches Catch Criminals, Concern Privacy Groups

Companies such as AOL, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have been legally obligated since 1998 to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children when they find child pornography on their networks. In recent years, some of these companies have gone beyond alerting the center when receiving complaints, and have developed sophisticated image scanning software that identifies offending files passing through their networks. The Office of the Attorney General in Virginia explains that these tactics are perfectly legal even without a warrant, as it is not a government entity doing the searching, but a private company that wants to ensure that their resources are not used for illegal activity. "It is analogous to FedEx or UPS reporting a package they suspect of containing narcotics to authorities."

Read the whole story at Virginia Pilot »

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