The device is always recording. When the officer activates it, it starts recording audio and video immediately. It also grabs the 30 seconds of video prior to activation.

The pictures are of "known" victims. A police investigation at one point actually found the victim and through the investigation proved that the victim was under 18 at the time of the picture.

In many cases, the police get the case from NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and the victim is already identified, such as "Pictures number 14 and 17 from the Chelsea series".

In other words, the information has already been vetted as actual child pornography.

As far as hashes go, many ISP's already automatically scan for child porn. Some have sophisticated programs that can recognize the picture based on certain features and items in the picture itself such as a pink blanket, blue walls, and a Cookie Monster. Naturally, it's going to spit out a possible hit, and the picture will have to be compared against the database.

I'll give you all my little story of how my interaction went with Charter. I live in Fort Worth, TX, USA and got my letter today. As some poster noted above it was signed by "Joe Stackhouse, Senior Vice President, Customer Operations".

So, I decided to see if I could get an email or physical address for Mr. Stackhouse.

Mind you, this was about 1900 hours CST, so I wasn't expecting a whole lot.

Further, I'll be honest here. I really sunk low on this one. My ethics and morals were screaming at me. My primary goal was to simply tie up a bunch of support people for as long as possibe, or until I got tired, to negate any possible benefit that Charter will get out of this. Not company wide, of course, just per capita if that makes sense.

I started with the online support. I asked for the email or phone number of Joe Stackhouse. They simply replied that they didn't have that information and to contact the generic 888-Get-Charter. Thanks and good bye.

I called the generic number and tied up a few people that sorta tried to help me. Now, try to take my next statement in context. I wasn't an over the top jerk, but I launched into anybody I talked to instead of behaving in an extremely respectful manner. Don't get me wrong, I didn't try to be personally degrading, just that I had a chip on my shoulder going into it (in character so to speak). In fact, I told a few reps my exact intentions were to negate any possible benefit that Charter would realize by engaging in such a business venture.

Before anyone beats me up too badly, I realize that the ultimate cost is going to be passed onto the consumer. But, I feel pretty strongly about this one. I'm willing to not only pay my fair share, but to also quit the company. I am going to talk to someone somewhat important at some point, and I will drop Charter. Fortunately, I've already been looking around. There are now several options in my area (unlike when I moved in to my house in 2000), so I have some bluffing ability.

In any case, I ended up arguing with "J.T." from St. Louis. I'm a bit skeptical he was from St. Louis, though. He sounded like he might have been from a few hundred (thousand) miles east of St. Louis...

J.T. and I went round and round for about 30 minutes. He would not give me Mr. Stackhouse's physical address. He did tell me he thought he was in Denver. Again, we went round and round and I won't bore you with the details, but J.T. did compare Mr. Stackhouse with a "star" and said he couldn't possibly respond to millions of fans. J.T. and I then had a conversation about "stars" versus companies with investors and customers, but I don't think he made the connection.

There were many little parts to our conversation that could be talked about in detail, but I figure it doesn't really matter. Charter is losing a long-time customer that pays about $160 per month for their various services. It is not the end of the world for them, but it is where I make my stand.