It is important to secure competent legal counsel as soon as possible to argue your case successfully.

There are many defenses that can be explored to get a positive outcome in your case. For example, the first one that comes to mind is entrapment. These days law enforcement often pose as other users in chat rooms or on the dark net. They pose as someone actively seeking CSAM. You may not have ever done anything illegal but for their persuading you to so. There are legal motions we can file that may be dispositive for your case.  Remember, the government has become well versed in programs like BitTorrent, and can be on the dark net doing things illegal themselves all in their efforts to “combat crime.”

Additionally, when law enforcement comes to execute a search warrant for devices at your home or office, they must have a valid search warrant or everything they seized will be discarded and not used in the case against you. You need an experienced criminal defense lawyer to ensure law enforcement did not violate your Constitutional rights in executing the search warrant.

Sometimes, a download from a proper website can result in what is termed as an “accidental download”. We have experts ready to assist us in showing the government exactly what is and what is not on your devices and what is and what was purposely downloaded and accessed.

These are but some defenses that Conaway & Strickler, PC have successfully argued. Contact us to discuss your case in more depth. The consequences of a child pornography or CSAM (“Child Sexual Abuse Material”) conviction are severe and life-altering. And the collateral consequence of being on the sex offender registry can be devastating. We are here to help.

Synthetic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) may not involve a camera or physical contact but it will depicts a child in a sexual context and thus is subject to regulation. Artificial intelligence is used to create realistic images or videos of children in sexual situations. Sometimes, these materials depict completely fabricated children or the face or likeness of a real child, placing them into sexualized content without their knowledge or consent. When it is the face or likeness of a real child, there is a higher likelihood of charges being imminent.

Can I be Charged with Synthetic CSAM?

It is possible to be charged criminally when in possession of AI generated child sex abuse material. There has been some movement in this area to litigate the legality of charging such activity criminally and only time will tell what that means for how the Supreme Court will rule as recent cases move through the system. News continues to state that AI – Generated CSAM is on the rise and “a growing concern” which will in turn result in additional federal and state criminal charges for AI-Generated CSAM.

Regulation of AI-created intimate images, often referred to as “deep fakes” has been broadly adopted by most states and the federal government. In the state of Georgia, there have been several attempts to change legislation including this recent letter written by Jon Ossoff. There are also recent prosecutions including a man in KY who was sentenced to five years for using AI to create child sexual abuse material. Prosecutions at the federal level for CSAM is on the rise as well.

If you learn that you are under investigation for offenses related to CSAM, you should contact us immediately. We are here to help and have experience to fight these cases.

Early on, Conaway & Strickler defended cases that stemmed from activity on classic peer-to-peer applications like Limewire.  These type of networks were simply software applications that provided a central hub for various computers to connect.  Napster, for example, was a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service that allowed users to share and download music files from other users’ computers.  These types of programs were utilized to distribute music, movies and child pornography.  Law enforcement was able to track those cases more easily.

Today, however, the government has also become well versed in programs like BitTorrent, Limewire and e-Donkey, among others.  When a hard drive or device is analyzed by the government, they now will produce a report detailing their forensic examination.  They will detail all of the evidence found on the device showing evidence of P2P Networking, search history, bookmarks  and they even cite images or image fragments found in cache locations.  Here is a recent example of a federal criminal prosecution of someone who downloaded images from the BitTorrent Network.

The P2P software programs allow the P2P networks to break large files into smaller segments that are then shared independently. The original purpose of this was to only optimize the download process by balancing the load among multiple users but it also increased the overall download speeds, as users can simultaneously download multiple segments from different sources.  BUT, in early prosecutions of federal child pornography cases using P2P applications, the government was unable to show the actual images on the devices anymore.   But, as described above, it is rare for a sophisticated user to have any actual images of CSAM on their devices.  So, today, the government’s forensic report will draws a picture of all activities on the device to show that the user intentionally downloaded child pornography.  We, at Conaway & Strickler, are well versed on the technicalities of defending a complex case like this and have years of experience of defending federal child pornography cases nationwide.  We also have a variety of top notch experts ready to assist us to mirror images these devices in order to do our forensics to mount the proper defense to any federal criminal charges lodged.

Contact us anytime if you have any questions. We are here to help.