S.C. attorney general wants to speed up investigations into predators
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - South Carolina’s attorney general is calling on state lawmakers to a bill he says will help keep more kids safe from online predators.
The clock is ticking because lawmakers have less than a month to get it done.
Attorney General Alan Wilson says this is a common-sense bill that would cut istrative red tape – and ultimately protect kids.
“It makes it easier, it makes it more efficient, it makes it quicker for us to go after child predators. … We’re trying to keep up with the bad guys, and unfortunately, there’s a lot of them out there,” Wilson said.
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When investigators are looking into people they believe are ing or ing child sex abuse material from the internet – the information that’s available to them is typically only an IP address.
That’s a unique, identifying number that every device connected to the internet has.
To get an internet service provider to hand over the name of the person and the physical address associated with that IP address – investigators need a subpoena.
And right now they can only get that through the U-S Attorney’s Office.
This bill would allow South Carolina’s attorney general to also sign off on those subpoenas – so investigators can then seek warrants for the actual devices.
“When you talk about hundreds of cases that are backlogged, those times add up over a period of time, and so it can be very cumbersome to have to send it down the street and then wait a couple of weeks, and then you can go, when we can just sign them off right here,” Wilson said.
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Republican Sen. Greg Hembree filed the legislation at Wilson’s request.
He says it gives the attorney general another tool to fight a crime that’s all too frequent.
“This is not granting some sort of new authority to law enforcement. It doesn’t. It really is just a matter of convenience and speed,” Hembree said.
This bill has already ed in the Senate and now awaits a debate on the House floor.
If it es there, it heads to the governor’s desk.
But lawmakers have just three weeks to get it done – time runs out on this year’s legislative session.
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Wilson notes this change would not infringe one anyone’s due process rights – because investigators would still need to seek warrants to seize devices and get into them.
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