A Columbia man faces charges of possessing and promoting child pornography after a computer repair business discovered the files on his computer.
Darren Robert Johnson, who lives at 3800 Saddlebrook Place Apt. 504, turned himself in at the Boone County Sheriff’s Department yesterday after officers issued an arrest warrant Tuesday. Johnson was released after posting $9,000 bond.
The computer business, which law enforcement officials didn’t identify, contacted the Columbia Police Department in June 2007 after Johnson took his computer to the shop.
Investigators with the Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force then examined the computer and discovered evidence that it contained child pornography. Officers also discovered Johnson sent the files to at least one other person. Investigators obtained a search warrant and, on Dec. 5, found another computer in Johnson’s home that contained additional child pornography files.
Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force officers were unavailable for comment by Tribune deadline.
Missouri law requires computer businesses to contact police if they find photographs, videos or computer-generated images of child pornography on personal computers.
Unless those documents were on the computer desktop, technicians would essentially have to search through personal folders to find them, said Johann Luebbering, a technician with Columbia Computer Center.
"It’s only come up one time here, when someone anonymously dropped off a computer in the parking lot," he said. "We found it and handed it over to Columbia police. Honestly, we don’t dig through people’s personal files; that’s not what we do. So even if it’s on there, the chances of us coming across it are pretty slim. It’s pretty impossible to find unless it’s sitting out in the open."
Law enforcement agencies don’t ask computer shops to search for pornography files on individual computers, said Lt. Joe Laramie, director of the Missouri Cyber Crime Against Children Task Force, adding that it "wouldn’t be appropriate."
But when asked whether it is appropriate for computer businesses to search for those files on their own initiative, Laramie declined to comment.
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