The list on Lt. Glenn Lang’s desktop computer screen went on forever. The origins of each file pinballed from Portland to South Portland, back to Portland and then on to Brunswick, Brewer, Bryant Pond, Sanford, Norridgewock, Charleston, Sanford, Topsham, Skowhegan . . .

Every one of them contained child pornography. Every one had been posted on the Internet by a Maine user for like-minded deviants to add to their collections. And every one was a crime in progress.

“That’s Greenwich Mean Time,” said Lang, head of the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit, as he pointed to the time stamp on the most recent file. Adjusting it to Eastern Daylight Time, he added, “So that’s got to be pretty close to right now.”

Welcome to the world of Maine’s computer cops. It’s not for the fainthearted.

Many a head turned with Wednesday’s news that Lawrence Winger, a widely respected Portland attorney who lives in Falmouth, had been arrested and charged with possession of sexually explicit images of children under 12 – a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Two days earlier, well-known Bangor disc jockey Dana Wilson told Superior Court Justice Ann Murray, “I am broken, your honor,” as she sentenced him to 2½ years, with all but nine months suspended, for the same crime.

A rare coincidence? Not exactly.

So far this year, the Vassalboro-based Computer Crimes Unit has arrested 22 people in Maine for possession of child pornography. That’s on track with the 47 arrests logged last year and does not include an undetermined number of other cases that are forwarded to district attorneys and the Maine Attorney General’s Office for presentation to grand juries.

Still, just how widespread is this most revolting of criminal activities? Are we talking a relatively small warren of mouse-clicking perverts, or are these modest numbers the tip of a much bigger iceberg?

“Hundreds of thousands of people nationally, maybe millions, have files that are prosecutable child pornography. And in Maine, I’m sure there are probably tens of thousands,” David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center, said in an interview Thursday.

Think about that. As you read this, thousands of your fellow Mainers could be squirreled away in front of their computers trolling for pictures and videos that would make the rest of us recoil in disgust.

Some think they’re committing no crime just by downloading the stuff. Guess again.

Others think that because they’re simply looking and not actually touching, they’re not victimizing anyone. They could not be more wrong.

Still others know what they’re doing is as illegal as it is morally repugnant, but keep clicking on the assumption that they’ll never get caught. Alas, they may be right.

“We can’t get to them all, it’s as simple as that,” said Lang, who’s been at his post on the cyber-frontier since 2001. “We probably have 150 or so that we know of who are out there and we haven’t gotten to yet.”

From where Finkelhor sits, the Internet’s role in the proliferation of child pornography over the past decade or two is both a blessing and curse: While it enables the widespread dissemination of digital contraband through peer-to-peer networks, chat rooms and myriad other shadowy conduits, it is also the best weapon law enforcement has to stem, if not stop, the 24/7 torrent of humanity at its worst.

Which brings us to the toughest question facing those who fight this battle with woefully limited resources (Lang’s annual budget, much of it funded through year-to-year grants, is just under $1.2 million): Who gets targeted for investigation and possible prosecution and who essentially gets a pass?

“There’s an ongoing debate over what the priorities should be,” Finkelhor said. “Do you go after people who have the largest amount of this stuff? Do you go after people who have some access to children? People in prominent positions whose prosecution would have more of an impact on the community?”

Here in Maine, concedes Lang, “we’re not really a proactive operation. We’re not playing ‘To Catch a Predator.’ We’re simply responding to complaints from either other officers or citizens about some type of activity.”

What follows is usually a tedious and time-consuming process. Photos and files, many already cataloged in an ever-expanding national database, are tied to a URL address whose owner can only be identified via a subpoena served on the Internet provider.

That in turn leads to the search warrant, the knock on the front door and, more often than not, an anguished confession from the perpetrator while his laptop, extra hard drives and other electronic paraphernalia are carted off for forensic analysis. Once such raid in Sanford recently netted 23 separate devices.

Last but not least come the news releases.

“The honest truth of the matter is we’re doing a better job getting the word out when we do these cases,” Lang said of the recent spate of above-the-fold news stories. “It basically puts the community on alert in that area that this guy is potentially a threat to children.”

Ah yes, the children.

As a matter of policy, Lang and his 14 investigators turn the sound down when they look, as they must, at every second of video that goes into building a case.

Why the silence?

“The audio, in my mind, is the worst part of it,” Lang replied. “To me, that’s the part that can get inside you and stick with you. It goes into your ears and you just feel like you’re contaminated when you hear it.”

Mute buttons notwithstanding, Lang is already planning his retirement – not to distance himself from all those poor kids, but to get closer to them. He’s founded a non-profit called the Child Victim Identification and Rescue Network (cvirn.org), which will strive to identify and locate the children in the pictures and videos and help them heal from the horrors they’ve experienced – and may be still.

“All this talk about (possession of child pornography) is bull,” Lang said. “This is not victimless in any way, shape or form.”

As he spoke, members of his team sat at their computers, their eyes on the screen, their faces devoid of emotion. Nearby, a storage room (one of four) brimmed with desktops, laptops, hard drives and thumb drives – all confiscated and now awaiting digital dissection.

“It’s all so depressing,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” Lang insisted, “What are you going to do anywhere in the world that’s going to have this kind of impact? Where you can save children and take people out of circulation who want to hurt children? It’s the best job in the world, really.”

And thank heaven for those who can handle it.

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