I have commented on these types of articles before, and I will likely do so again. I add this introduction, because I'm about to lay down a long story and figured I should at least say I join these conversations regularly before asking you to read further.
To start, the Department of US Immigration and Customs (ICE) confiscated my computer equipment (towers, monitors, cables, networking gear, everything) 8 years ago as part of a CP investigation. My brother and I owned a house at the time, and all his equipment was confiscated as well. I was 19 at the time and my brother was 18. My girlfriend, whom lived with us, had just turned 18. They actually brought some of the images that supposedly existed on the computers into our home and showed them to my girlfriend and my brother.
As I'm typing this, now, you probably assume what happened. Neither of us were charged with anything. What we conjecture happened was that one of the dozens of people who came to my house to LAN (we had a decently competitive Counter-Strike clan) was likely doing some IRC trading. At least, that's what we pieced together from the questions we were asked. It took two years, and server letters to get my gear back. They threatened to seize it because it was "an instrument of crime". By the time we actually did get our gear back it was antiquated and not worth getting back. We actually destroyed the vast majority of it for peace of mind.
In the interim, it absolutely destroyed my life. I couldn't sleep for fear of waking up with a pistol in my face (that's actually what happened...). I ended up moving out of the house, because I found myself watching the streets every day. My parents, who own the house, ended up having to find renters on no notice. My family and my girlfriend were amazingly supportive. Luckily for me. I've heard of other stories where the investigated's families instantly ostresised them. I was a computer science student at university at the time and no longer had access to a computer at home. I missed a ton of school dealing with the authorities. And, because we had so many people in/out of our house, the interviews with the police and my friends left no doubt of what they suspected.
I lost all of my friends. Even the ones who were pretty sure we had no part in it didn't want to be around, because they didn't want to be suspected. I retain two friends from that period out of dozens.
I spent two years as a criminal, more or less, while they investigated. To this day I'm still absolutely scared shitless every time I see anything even remotely grey-area on the internet. I counsel my friends to avoid places like 4chan or IRC or any place with user submitted pornography. Or any P2P trading for that matter.
I was judged in the court of public opinion and was guilty before any facts were submitted, all because of how taboo of a subject we are dealing with. I will absolutely never be the same. And, I didn't even see the damned pictures/movies/whatever the hell they were looking for.
All this, not because someone abused some child somewhere, but because one of my idiots friends likely got jaded with the tons of normal porn available and instead decided to download something darker. And, because he/she wasn't a total idiot decided to do it at someone else's house.