Man Who Downloaded Kiddie Porn Using McDonald's Wi-Fi Convicted

Any restaurant chain choosing to offer its clients free Wi-Fi needs to deal with the consequences of giving the riffraff unlimited access to the Internet.

Human nature being what it is, some people will invariably gravitate to the darkest recesses of the Internet, no matter how wholesome their surroundings. And when we say dark, we mean real dark.

Last year, a Memphis man was seen watching child pornography on a laptop inside of a McDonald's. Robert Cliff Jr. was promptly arrested and charged with sexual exploitation of a minor. Police ended up finding more than 50 sexually explicit photos of children as young as 12 years old.

Now, Cliff, who's worked at schools and at Memphis Zoo, has been found guilty and is looking at three to 15 years in prison, according to local news network WREG.

So, how can someone access child porn from inside of a child-filled McDonald's?

Well, the answer is pretty simple; the free Wi-Fi offered at some McDonald's doesn't censor what patrons are looking at. As a result, porn, as well as other taboo sites and illegal happenings, have historically been free game for users at those restaurants—but that was an assumption that a doe-eyed McDonald's was apparently not willing to make when they envisioned offering public internet access at US locations. It wasn't long before they found out the hard way about the total lack of self-control and self-respect that some of their customers (and humans in general) are capable of. Needless to say, the Golden Arches were forced to act, enacting a filtering system for internet content at many of their stores starting this past July.

"We are pleased to share that Wi-Fi filtering has been activated in the majority of McDonald's nearly 14,000 restaurants nationwide," McDonald's told MUNCHIES last summer.

The McDonald's in question reportedly already had software in place to flag inappropriate content, but in this case, it looks like it didn't work. The company said that they were addressing the problem in a press statement to WREG: "We will continue to make our restaurant a welcoming environment for families."