Man charged with possessing child porn

MONROE-A 45-year-old resident of Mid Oaks Drive has been indicted on 29 counts of possessing images of sexual performances by a child. Gary Buchanan faces up to 116 years in prison on the felony charges, each of which carries penalties that range from a fine and probation to four years in state prison. A conviction also would required registration as a sexual offender. Described by police as a heavy equipment operator, Buchanan has been free on $1,000 since his arrest Oct. 13. The Orange County Grand Jury returned the indictment late last week. The case began this past summer when investigators from the federal Department of Homeland Security told Monroe Police that there may be a local connection to a federal investigation into Internet child pornography stemming from a case in the state of Florida. Although he would not disclose the exact nature of that connection, Monroe Det. James Frankild indicated it involved e-mail addresses and credit card numbers. Using that information, Monroe police obtained a court order for Buchanan's residence, Frankild said this week. On Aug. 5, police went to Buchanan's home, spoke with him and looked at his computer. They seized the computer, Frankild said, after seeing images of young children and turned it over the Rockland County Sheriff's Department Computer Crime Task Force for forensic analysis. That analysis, by Deputy Shlomo Koenig, determined that there were about 1,000 images of early teens and pre-teens in sexual situations. Sending and receiving child pornography is both a state and federal crime. Orange County District Attorney Francis D. Phillips II said the case represented the first time local authorities have received this type of information from the Department of Homeland Security. Critical in cases involving the Internet and home computers, Phillips said, is the privacy issue. "Information is protected," the district attorney said. "We just can't go in and seize someone's computer. We need probable cause. There have been cases where we've seized the computers of people charged with child abuse, and we got a court order for the computer on the belief that there may have been images that related to that crime. "But we can't just get someone's telephone records to find out what restaurant they're going to or to tap into the EZ-Pass system to see where someone has driven," Phillips added. "We need probable cause in order to get that search warrant."