For those who are new to the story last year there was a horrible abduction and murder of a young girl in Toronto named Holly Jones. See CBC — Holly Jones for a time line and some background information.

On June 16th the trial of Michael Briere, the accused murderer began. He pleaded guilty. The twist to all of this is that in he plea he explained how he was looking at child pornography on the Internet the same day he abducted and killed Holly. CTV News has an article covering this. As expected this admission has resulted in calls for new laws to punish people who possess child pornography.

Canada already has laws that cover child pornography. If Briere would have been caught with these materials on his computer or viewing them on the Internet he would have been punished by the justice system. How would stricter laws have saved Holly when the enforcement of existing laws failed to find and punish Briere?

Especially troubling are the people who believe that ISPs should be filtering all ‘bad’ content. Obviously child pornography is bad but where is the line drawn? Coming from the technical side of things it’s also pretty much impossible. Good old fashioned police work is whats needed. We need police forces capable of working with new technology and not new laws that are unenforcible.