BERKELEY — At 86, William Kolbe has put built up an extensive career as a researcher for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with dozens of co-authored papers that have been cited by thousands.
He’s also allegedly been downloading child sexual abuse material for decades, onto encrypted hard drives on his home and work computer, apparently avoiding detection by either employers or law enforcement until this year.
Last September, the California Highway Patrol raided Kolbe’s Albany home, the culmination of an investigation that started in January 2024 with a look into secret peer-to-peer networks where child pornography was being shared. As police were seizing his electronic devices, Kolbe allegedly admitted that he’d been downloading child sexual abuse material for 30 years, said he’…
BERKELEY — At 86, William Kolbe has put built up an extensive career as a researcher for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with dozens of co-authored papers that have been cited by thousands.
He’s also allegedly been downloading child sexual abuse material for decades, onto encrypted hard drives on his home and work computer, apparently avoiding detection by either employers or law enforcement until this year.
Last September, the California Highway Patrol raided Kolbe’s Albany home, the culmination of an investigation that started in January 2024 with a look into secret peer-to-peer networks where child pornography was being shared. As police were seizing his electronic devices, Kolbe allegedly admitted that he’d been downloading child sexual abuse material for 30 years, said he’d been storing it on encrypted devices, and told police there was more to be found at his work station, where he researches electronic engineering and condensed matter physics, according to court records.
Now Kolbe has been charged with a felony count of possessing at least 600 images of child pornography. But if police are to be believed, that’s a drastically low number when compared to what was found on his hard drives. An initial search yielded hundreds of thousands of files, a police investigator wrote in court filings.
Authorities have been vague on exactly how Kolbe was caught. They say the CHP investigation started into an IP address involved in illegal downloads from Hyphanet, formerly known as Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform that emphasizes its ability to give users anonymous, uncensored internet use. Authorities served a search warrant to identify the owner of the IP address as Kolbe, then drafted another to search his home, then another to search his Lawrence Berkeley work station, according to court records.
A spokesperson for the lab didn’t return emails requesting a comment on Kolbe’s case. Legal filings say he is out of custody and has not yet appeared in court on the charge, which was filed last Monday. It is unclear if he has even retained an attorney, according to court records.