Published: January 21, 2010 06:47 pm      

Feds file complaint against child porn suspect

An agent with the Secret Service in Atlanta has filed a complaint in U.S. district court in Rome against a Spring Place man who is in the Murray County Jail on child pornography charges.

Albert Vernon Norton, 47, of 1178 Highway 225 S., Lot 56, was charged by the Murray County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 12 with four counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of manufacture of marijuana. The 16-page complaint states Norton “possessed and received child pornography,” charging him with that offense, and details how files containing child porn are shared between some online computer users.

An affidavit by agent Joey Ward with the Secret Service states the child porn Norton possessed and received depicted “the use of minor children engaged in sexually explicit conduct.” It details a “Gnutella network” that is used to trade digital files, including still images and movie files of child porn.

Two special agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation mentioned in the complaint “know” that the IP (Internet protocol) addresses can be used to identify the locations of computers sending or receiving child porn. A detective with the Salem, Ore., police department created an automated software application named “GnuWatch” that “sends Gnutella-based network messages to computers offering to distribute child pornography.” The GBI agents used the application to “browse” online, and with a file-sharing program called “Phex” established connections with various transmitters and receivers of child porn.

On Dec. 17, a GBI special agent received “requested subpoena information” from Charter Communications, which was the Internet service provider (ISP) used by Norton. According to the complaint, when his trailer in Spring Place was raided, Norton told agents there were a total of four computers at the residence — his desktop, a laptop owned by a “juvenile Hispanic male that frequently visited the home,” a spare computer and a fourth computer that belonged to a female resident.

“Norton stated that everyone in the home used his computer for various purposes, and knows the password to his computer (to be able to use) e-mail, Facebook, surfing the Internet and electronic banking,” Ward said in the affidavit. “Norton stated that he probably began downloading child pornography approximately three years ago and fully knew what it was he was downloading.”

Ward said GBI special agents, Secret Service special agents, and detectives and deputies of the sheriff’s office executed the search warrant. According to the affidavit, Norton told officers there were “approximately eight or nine” DVDs onto which he had downloaded child porn, and said that the material “would only be found on his computer and DVDs and belonged to no one else in the residence.”

Norton is on a federal hold while in the Murray jail. District Attorney Kermit McManus said he did not know when federal officers might come to take Norton into custody, but when they do he must be tried within 100 days.