Not just a typical porn arrest...

A story out indicates that a man who posted pictures of Iraq war dead on his adult web site has been arrested. Now, local authorities were quick to point out that it was the adult content on the site that he was arrested for.

The charges against Christopher M. Wilson, a former police officer, are likely to reignite the debate about obscene material in the Internet age. They also raise questions about whether the federal government played a part in motivating the prosecution.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said late Friday that the 300 obscenity-related charges against Wilson -- which include counts of distribution of obscene material, offering to distribute obscene material and possession of obscene material with intent to distribute -- involve sexual content posted on his Web site, and not graphic war-scene images posted by soldiers.

In other words, they are trying to spin this as a typical internet porn arrest (while I myself generally find porn to be stupid and tasteless, I object to censorship if it involves consenting adults, but that is another matter). The fact though, is that the story hints that it is not just a typical porn arrest.

Wilson, 27, was said to be allowing soldiers access to portions of his Web site in exchange for the graphic war-scene shots or proof that they were fighting in the Middle East....

Judd said none of the 20 films and 80 photographs that brought about the charges involve pictures of the war dead. But Judd confirmed that his detectives did speak with officials in the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division before arresting Wilson on Friday.

Wilson's Web site and his deal with U.S. soldiers have been the subject of many recent news articles.

"Obviously, we knew the military had an interest in this," Judd said....

Wilson's lawyer, Larry Walters, questioned the motivations behind the prosecution, noting that there may be hundreds of thousands of Internet sites with explicit material.

"Why are they getting into this battle now, and why Chris Wilson?" Walters asked. "It's the military that potentially stands to have the greatest gripe."

Apparently they are trying then, to shut up this guy because they don't want the pictures around.

Now, I don't have a great desire to see gruesome war photos either, but my take on that is exactly the same as my take on the porn. It is that in a free society, where our own Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, our government cannot be in the business of colluding with local officials to stifle that freedom. We know that the Pentagon has already put severe clamps on what can come out of Iraq, so it appears to me that this arrest was politically motivated. Mr. Wilson may have done something stupid by giving them a pretext to arrest him, but the fact is, they were looking for one.