Fighting Porn Vs. Ruining Innocent Lives 815
After news of the conviction of a substitute teacher for endangering minors — because porn popups, possibly initiated by adware, had appeared on her computer during class — comes the even sadder story of 16-year-old Matt Bandy. His family's life was turned upside-down when he was charged in Arizona with possession of child pornography, even though the family computer was riddled with spyware and Trojans. After the intervention of ABC's 20/20, Matt finally was allowed to plead to a lesser charge (namely, sharing a Playboy magazine with friends) and just barely escaped being labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Teh Internets (Score:0, Insightful)
Unproportional (Score:5, Insightful)
As for computers, things like this show why we need better education. Make sure people know to keep things updated. Tell them about Firefox, suggest that they get a Mac next time. They're not going to be 100% safe this way, but at least when you add it together with common sense safety measures then they're going to be significantly safer. Like it or not, the fact is all these people who get computers have been given the impression that it's so easy but they get the least secure system out of the box. People need educating about the dangers plus knowledge of the alternative choices.
your country is fucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. You USAians really live in a fucked up country if you can be charged with showing your mates a playboy.
No common sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Is a Mac expensive compared to this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Conversely, if you are a fan of kiddy fiddling pictures, you surely must use a Windows machine without any anti-spyware applications. And IE6.
To quote the parent.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ignorance or uneducated? You're son is on the computer in the den collecting child porn. Do you all avoid the Den? Do you not know the simplest ways to check cookies and history files to see whats there or if they are missing?
I mean, I'm 22 now. When I was 16 was able to surf porn but my mom barely knew the keyboard from the mouse. My friend on the other had had a school teacher for a mom who spent time setting up browser and firewall so Jimmy could only play Jedi Knights online and surf a few special sites. Not to mention doing random *jpg searches on the hard drive just to see what shows up.
I feel the Teacher was treated unfairly and the Kid was also not treated fairly. That kid is 16, he knew what he was looking at and doing.
[J]
Welcome to Anarcho-Tyranny Population You. (Score:1, Insightful)
*Excepting the Bush Administration.
Re:Unproportional (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the religious right and grumpy grannies run our politics.
With proper forensic procedures and analysis... (Score:5, Insightful)
It' sad to think that the prosecutor was more interested in the conviction than the truth.
As a forensic computer examiner, I'm not always given the opportunity to come to the correct conclusions based on evidence because that's not what I'm asked to do (and if I go beyond what I was asked to do, the client just won't pay for the extra work.) The legal system in this country rewards those who win, who are not always those who tell the truth.
Funny.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, but noboby gets labeled a "murderer" for life. Murderers are released from prison every day. In fact, hundreds of them. They serve their sentence and move on. No reporting themselves to their neighbors. No exclusion zones. No "registered murderer" lists.
I'd actually rather live next door to sex offenders rather than next to convicted drunk drivers. Why am I not notified when a convicted drunk driver moves in next door? Probably a lot more dangerous to me and my kids. Right?
The really weird thing is that neither side of the political spectrum dare oppose the whole "sex offender" legal agenda thing. Its a bit like global warming. Groupthink.
"Think of the children!!" Wait, I didn't mean it THAT way.
Re:vengeance versus justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Chris Soghoian [iu.edu] knows what I mean. It has nothing to do with evidence - all that matters is the nature of the charges. The Duke lacrosse team knows too.
I might be missing something (Score:5, Insightful)
Next they'll be prosecuting young mothers breastfeeding their kids on sexual molestation charges...
Re:Unproportional (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:they still dont see it (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that's a good idea? What happens when people start suing Linux developers for bugs and holes in that software? No software is perfect. Unless MS is doing this deliberately, it's not negligent. It's the nature of software.
And you know what... MS didn't do this to these people's machines. The virus/worm/spyware writers did. They're the real criminals, but no law enforcement agencies are smart enough to be able to track these people down.
Rather than posting a comment. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology Terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
Key people could be coerced or exploited simply out of fear of what the American judicial system would do should they be reported about stuff they don't even know about. I will readily admit in the gigabytes and gigabytes of data on my hard drives(s) there are some directories I have never been in - and I am a friggin programmer.
Huge swaths of people could be put through the grinder by so many "save the children" politician prosecutors that finally it would reach a point where people either ignore child porn or become disillusioned with the judicial system distressing innocents. Either way it is hard to support and trust such a government.
The idea of "don't help the man, all he will do is fuck you over for some shit you didn't do" and "so much for good intentions" will build up year over year throughout the population. Already there is an incredible distrust in government regarding taxes and intelligence gathering. What happens to our society when we begin to distrust law enforcement and the judicial system - become like east L.A.?
This kind of nonsense with unfriendly people in other countries could in quite a quiet manner - damage the society and fabric of the United States.
Re:Coming into your computer?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course! But Windows only comes with a screen door, and very few people realize they need a better door, let alone know how to install one. And even if they did manage to get a better door installed, they wouldn't be able to figure out how to operate the lock!
Re:Funny.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You got it backward. Global warming is contested by politicians, but accepted by the brains in the field. Sex offender registries are contested by the brains but generally accepted by politicians.
Furthermore, you don't seem to know what 'groupthink [reference.com]' means. I don't mean to pick on you personally, but it had to be said.
Re:Rather than posting a comment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In this case it was an overzelous Prosecutor (Score:3, Insightful)
And instead, he made an example of Arizona. Applying unjust law, if there's enough press, sheds light on injustice.
Suppose you were hiring someone to take care of your kid. You found a candidate for the job, but you learned they were a convicted sex offender against minors. "Oohh, I guess that rules out this per-- oh wait, they were convicted in Arizona, where "child molester" doesn't actually mean anything. Ok, you're hired."
Arizona just undermined itself. Be ridiculous with labels, and you end up only labeling yourself.
Remember Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
All research on the subject says quite clearly that seeing sex and nudity isn't harmful to kids. Until very very recently, most children were conceived while their siblings were in the same room. The vast majority of children in the world see their first female breast within about 5 minutes of birth. Kids don't make a big deal about it, it's adults for whom its a big deal. Laws against showing porn to minors are really to protect adults from the idea that their kids might understand sex, not to protect kids.
The problem is that lots of people who understand these things, but no one has the balls to stand up and say in a political campaign that they're fine with children seeing adults and other children naked.
Re:your country is fucked (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Save me from my internets (Score:2, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
I mean, the guy has an internet connection and gigs of pr0n, and he goes out and gets a Playboy? Nuff said.
Re:Coming into your computer?? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the risk of the infamous lousy analogy, consider this:
- You have a Masterlock brand deadbolt on your front door.
- You head out for Las Vegas Friday night at 9:00 pm, lock your door.
- Unbeknowst to you, at noon on Saturday a guy with a lockpick breaks in -- turns out your lock is easily cracked in 30 secs by anyone with a pick and 3 minutes to spend on google.
- From the moment he breaks in up till 10:00 pm Sunday night, the guy sells crack to anyone who walks in the front door.
- At 10:00 pm, he cleans up and clears out -- you'd never he had been there.
- You arrive home on Monday at 7:00 am and lounge about resting before heading back to work the next day.
- Tuesday afternoon, you come home from work and are arrested -- it seems some kid got pulled over for speeding and during the course of the traffic stop, the cops found the crack. Kid "cracks" in fear and fingers your address as the place where he bought the drugs.
The question is, should you be convicted based merely on the fact that your house was used without your knowledge and permission to perform illegal activities? Sure you locked the door but any luser idiot would know that a Masterlock isn't true security. Why should it matter that you didn't actually sell crack -- it's plainly your fault for keeping such an insecure home.What we're talking about in the real case, is someone whose property was used to commit a crime and faced life in prison (9 consecutive 10 year sentences) merely because their property was used without their permission or knowledge. That's flat fricken wrong.
Re:Funny.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, sexual assault is not the worst thing in the world. A serial child killer who tortured every single child (in non-sexual ways) before killing them would, upon release, not be stuck with such a label and preemptive notification. A college student who got drunk and had sex in the bushes at a local park (after hours, when there weren't any kids around) WOULD be stuck with the "sex offender" label and preemptive notification (at least in some jurisdictions. There is a difference between "sex offender" and "sexual predator", but regardless, both are still subject to additional restrictions not faced by "conventional" criminals.) T
This might seem like an especially radical thing to say, but being raped is NOT the end of the world. It is completely possible to recover from being raped or molested and go on to live a happy life. However being murdered IS, by defintion, the end of (your) world.
Just unplug (Score:5, Insightful)
You are completely wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I might be missing something (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the logic of these laws, we should charge any child who has seen him/herself naked with possesion of kiddie porn.
Re:For 90% of the population (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm no MSFT fan, but are you kidding me. You have people basically downloading anything they think looks good to them. They are so greedy and so clueless bad people around the internet don't have to try very hard to own them.
Basically right now it's a wash. People get a lot of stuff for free, software, pictures, songs, movies, but some of them lose their bank accounts or even their identity. But hey, don't worry, click here to download.
Sort of like a reverse lottery.
rd
Re:Coming into your computer?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Funny.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's really a matter of group think. Some of it is, of course, and some more of it is the fact that you can score cheap political points by saying "let's torture all sex offenders to death, huzzah!"
The problem is you, and me. It's the public. If a politican said something like, "I think we should re-think our sex offender laws," can you imagine what would happen? Pundits, talk show hosts and everybody in the opposing party would instantly paint them in a way that basically amounts to "they have nothing against somebody raping your child." It doesn't matter that that is not what he said. It doesn't matter that he might have been talking about cases like two 16 year olds who videotaped themselves having sex being brought up on child pornography charges or something similarly absurd, rather than legitimate sexual predators. Once he's hung with that label, he's in deep trouble.
"Senator Jones doesn't care about your children. He proposed a re-examination of the laws that put child sex offenders behind bars and require you to be notified if one moves in next door. Vote for Bob. He knows exactly where he stands on sexual predators. (Paid for by Parents Who Love And Protect Their Children.)"
And it would work. Partially because people get hysterical whenever they hear the words "sex offender." Partially because people are so horribly uninformed that if they saw an ad like that, they wouldn't bother to see what the other side of the story was--they'd just figure their Senator needed a new job. Partially because it's good television to skewer the Senator by bringing his most rabid opponents in with his official spokesperson to give "fair and balanced" coverage--conflict sells, and always has.
There are lot of places where blame can be placed, but it ultimately has to be placed right at the feet of the voters. Voters who don't vote at all. Voters who don't care to see two sides of the issues. All of the things I mentioned are horrible, and they come from different sources--tv networks, politicians, political action groups, etc--but the bottom line is if it didn't work, it wouldn't be done.
We, as a collective voting body, don't allow free thought. More importantly, we don't allow complex opinions. Your opinion may not be any more complex than you can fully explain in a 10 second sound bite. This is, very unfortunately, the attention span of the average American voter as it relates to the people who will be representing them in government.
As sad as it is for me to say so, when so many people act like that, we deserve the politicians we get. We deserve the stupid laws we get.
Re:Funny.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:In this case it was an overzelous Prosecutor (Score:5, Insightful)
Until TV news anchors show up at your door demanding to know why you're hiring a convicted sex offender, and both of you get fired because protesters are making your company lose money over your decision. Watch TV some day, fucking up everyone's lives is quality prime time material!
Arizona just undermined itself. Be ridiculous with labels, and you end up only labeling yourself.
Pfft. The label has been ridiculous from the start. Public indecency in many states is a sex offense, and you're added to the registry on the second time, whether a minor sees you or not. Alabama will register you for "obscene bumper stickers" (what about those popular truck mudflaps sporting a woman's silhouette, are they "obscene"? Miller test time! Who wants to ruin their life to see whether shitty beer is shitty or not?) Googlized version of pdfd version of an excel spreadsheet (yay!) listing registrable offenses by state. [64.233.167.104]
Add to that the fact that as far as "being a sex offender" goes, raping 3 year olds is apparently just as heinous as having sex with your 17 year old girlfriend, or taking home a 24 year old who didn't seem drunk until she woke up and had no clue where she was or who you were, and the whole thing turns out to be a horrid mess, but somebody has to think of the children! No matter how ridiculous it gets, no politician will touch it, because anyone who does would be opening the floodgates for monsters to rape your little girls.
Re:Even if it WAS intentional.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:your country is fucked (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Save me from my internets (Score:5, Insightful)
More percisely, how can you tell if she's turning 18 tommower or turned 18 yesterday? One of those makes you a sex offender for life, the other is perfectly legal. Both are equally moral in the eyes of the majority, but try to get the laws changed in any way other than more harsh and people think you're some kind of kid rapist.
And if you wanted a real answer, look for 18 USC 2257 compliance. It at least gives you some kind of plausible denial (not that that will get you far in court). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Protection_and
On a related note, if you google for "18 usc 2257" like I just did to find the wikipedia link, you find plenty of sites like met-art and all the other legal-but-looks-like-jailbait sites. Funny how those are legal, but a 17.999 year old who looks 25 is illegal because "pedophiles get enticed by it" or some such drivel.
I should post this anonymously, but meh, more people need to speak out.
Totally fucking agree (Score:5, Insightful)
We crazy-ass Americans have such bizarre hangups about sex... Jesus, folks, get over it. We all think about it, most of us do it fairly often (/.ers excepted, especially those of us old married
The liquor laws piss me off enough (whaddaya mean it's a dry county?), but all the puritanical sexually-repressive moral crap that's in law has just got to go.
The solution to this is simple and inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
For most people it is completely unnecessary. For most people all they need is a graphical display terminal with a rich user interface environment that is attached to the Internet and software which is streamed at them, whether in a browser or, as in the case of X, served up to their graphical display terminal.
No hard drive to worry about, nothing police can find in your possession to investigate, charge, prosecute and punish you for, no viruses, no spyware, no adware, no trojan software.
Nobody every got in trouble for watching the most raw, stimulating, raunchy porn on TV and nobody will ever get in trouble for watching what is streamed to their graphics display terminal. After its viewed it just goes right off into the great void. Any software that the average person needs in the future will be streamed directly to their graphics display terminal which is connected directly to the Internet without the need for a local operating system, storage, massive bank of RAM or local copies of application programs.
Users can go anywhere in the world, walk up to any graphics display terminal and have the same software experience regardless of who they are, where they are. No need to download songs or movies, just stream them right to you, just like Television. You don't need a PC to have a TV, you don't need a PC to have a phone, you don't need a PC to receive streaming software. You just need a graphical display terminal. No mess, no fuss. The PC, for the average person, is an unnecessary, expendible component of the software experience in the era of ubiquitous access to the Internet and versatile graphical display terminals.
Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are the child porn types writing software that magically puts child porn on random people's computers? I'm really not clear about what they're accomplishing there, other than potentially hurting their business by bringing child pornography into the spotlight.
I can see porn sites writing malware that provides porn popups (advertisements for their sites), but those (to me) aren't "images" as much as "software". I'm sure they aren't downloading a free gig of porn to the victim's computer - they wouldn't be making money that way!
The way some of these stories and comments are written, it sounds like someone examining the computer found dozens of pictures of kiddie porn on there, and the explanation is "the virus did it!"...but I don't see the motive in writing a virus to do that...a popup or two, yes, but not dozens of images.
What am I missing here? Are people just finding malware that's popping up ads, but phrasing it poorly?
Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Law vs. Reason... (Score:2, Insightful)
We've already gone down the "slippery slope" of making analogies between Real Life and Digital Life, and trying to make them legal precedent. I think we all know that, although there are parallels, the analogy is not usually that direct.
Example 1: in the case where you've locked your door, someone breaks into your house and injures themselves when leaving by slipping on your icy walk, and then sues you because they injured themselves on your property. Jury finds that you should have shoveled your walk. Yes, some juries have actually awarded money to burglars in personal injury suits.
Example 2: Same scenario, but you left your door unlocked. Jury finds that you should have locked your door.
Example 3: Kids from next door walk into your yard when you're not home, fall into your swimming pool and drown. Jury finds that you should have put up a fence.
Example 4: Neighbor climbs your fence, ignores your no tresspassing sign, and goes ice-skating on your pond, then falls through the ice and dies. The parents sue you. They lose. Jury decides that your fence and sign were enough to tell a reasonable person that they shouldn't have been there.
An analogy in the Digital World that many people have been drawing lately is Open Wi-Fi. (Which I agree with, BTW.) This says that Wi-Fi piggy-backing should be legal because if you don't want people using it, you can secure it, put up a digital "No Tresspassing" sign, etc.
Is there an analogy here? If your computer isn't secured, according to the standards of a "reasonable" person? I think it depends on who these "reasonable" people are. Does the average person know how to secure their computer at a bare minimum? Probably not. But are average people reasonable?
I don't know how to fix my car. But I, and I would presume other reasonable people, as well, know that your car should be checked regularly to make sure that it is in safe driving condition. I also know that I'm supposed to get regular checkups to make sure that I'm healthy.
If I got sick from something at work, didn't go to the doctor for 6 years, found out 6 years later that I was sick and tried to sue my job, the court, at least in my state, I wouldn't get anything. Why? Because the statute of limitations says that I have 2 years from the date that I got sick OR 2 years from the time that a "reasonable person" in the same situation should have known that they were sick. Because reasonable people are supposed to go to the doctor on a regular, I would be unreasonable for waiting 6 years.
Should reasonable people have their computers checked for malware? Yes they should.
Re:Lower the bar far enough.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one of the problems with the US today (and I'd bet many other nations) - we pass *fuckloads* of laws that are then never revisited, never repealed, but sitting out there awaiting enforcement if they can't pin anything else on you. There's no way that the citizenry could possibly know all of the laws and be sure they're abiding by them all, thus we need to streamline and simplify.
I'd suggest starting with all laws having a 10 year sunset clause and a constitutional provision against omnibus renewals. That'd be a good start. If it's not important enough that it can be revisited every 10 years, then we should really question if it needs to be a law.
Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:your country is fucked (Score:2, Insightful)
Australia has some pretty ridiculous laws against porn -- which is why so many Australian porn sites moved *to* USAmerica to beat the censorship laws imposed ~2000.
All the white world has its share of backwood, podunk conservatives, and I'm always amazed people from Oz can knock the US with a straight face. Knock American politics all you want (I do) but since when is Australia the beacon of liberal, progressive thought and intellectualism? Your Prime Minister has been Bush's faithful cheerleader through every, mucky step of the Iraq war, and can't seem to get enough of Moral Values invading policy.
Re:your country is fucked (Score:3, Insightful)
It can happen (Score:3, Insightful)
This was back in probably 95 or 96, so i'm sure in the intervening decade distributors have got much better at it. Using a network of hijacked computers to sell your "product" would probably make reasonable sense - you certainly dont want to host it on your colo account.
This unfortunately leads us to one of two conclusions
1) spyware is a legitimate out for child porn charges
2) people should be responsible for anything that shows up on their computers
I'm sure people here will argue 2 all the way, but when it comes down to it we all make configuration mistakes. I had a disk error once result in our sendmail.cf file being truncated at 1024 bytes, which was just enough to leave it working but turn it into an open relay. I've never had random files appear on my boxes, but i'm sure part of that is luck since i'm not really obsessive about monitoring logs etc... yet i'm probably 10x better than your average computer user.
In the end we need our investigators and prosecutors to have a high degree of technical knowledge, so they can seperate out the victims from the perpatrators. Is that too much to ask?
Re:Law vs. Reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
WiFi concerning 2.4 GHz should be unmoderated, along with laws concerning "no listening". It should be legal for me, under part 15, to continually spit out interference because it is UNLICENSED. If you want a quiet channel, go buy your own. If you have an encrypted channel, I should have the right to decrypt the data, and transmit "encrypted" so that you understand.
When it comes to encryption, I dont use it on WEP or WPA. It's open, spitting out 5 watts. Why over the limit? Im licensed with amateur radio. I have part 97 on my side.
---Is there an analogy here? If your computer isn't secured, according to the standards of a "reasonable" person? I think it depends on who these "reasonable" people are. Does the average person know how to secure their computer at a bare minimum? Probably not. But are average people reasonable?
Reasonable: If you squirt RF over unlicensed band, you had better be sure what you're communicating with. If you want WPA with VPN, thats fine. But prepare for it to be cracked into. If you want security, use wires.
---Should reasonable people have their computers checked for malware? Yes they should.
Reasonable people woudnt be using browsers that could become infected, nor should the computers run executable code unless directly instructed by the person. Then again, using a secure OS is a part of that, but Windows is reasonable because many people use it.
Re:This has affirmed my aversion to windows (Score:3, Insightful)
And, straight from the article, "The mi2g study concentrated on 'overt digital attacks' and didn't include more general forms of attack such as viruses and worms." So even the (pitiful) evidence you've provided doesn't include the most common forms of attack. The mi2g study was on manual forms of attack. Pop quiz... which is more likely to happen: a hacker sitting down at your computer, or a remote attack through your internet connection?
I swear. Microsoft apologists are getting weaker every day.
Purpose of the Legal System (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's think about the purpose of the legal system for a while. Why do we want laws at all? Why, we want to make sure people can just live their lives, without being robbed, killed, raped, and whatnot. So we make robbery, rape, murder, etc. illegal. Now we have two categories of people: innocents and criminals. The innocents are the people we want to protect, the criminals are who we want to protect the innocents from. So we must arrest and convict the criminals. A legal system that does not result in criminals getting caught is useless. But a system that results in innocents getting punished is worse than useless, because it does exactly what it was intended to prevent: harm innocent people.
From what I've heard, the whole crackdown on child pornography is mostly punishing (severely!) a lot of people who are not harming anyone, while the people who do harm others (the criminals _and_ the law enforcers) mostly run free. That can't be good.
Does Arizona Elect DAs? (Score:4, Insightful)
This means, of course, that there will almost inevitably be abuses of the prosecution process, with people like this 15 year-old the victims.
The long-term solution could be to stop electing the prosecutors.
Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:2, Insightful)
Knowing a thing or two about networks, I would say that protecting yourself could be a strong incentive to install child porn on someone else's computer.
Imagine you were somehow distributing child porn. Would you give your ip or the adresse of your website to your "customers" ?
I don't think so. You would probably try not to have any child porn on your pc, given the rotten and dangerous nature of what you are doing. You would probably try to do something like installing the stuff on some oblivious guy's pc and give HIS adress to download the files.
In my opinion the investigators (if any) fell for it and didn't realize that if the guy had child porn on his pc, that's not because he is a pervert, be because the real pervert is skilled with computers and uses zombies to hide his trail.
It's a long shot but I think it's at least a possibility.
Re:Save me from my internets (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because drivers' licenses solve the problem of bad drivers. Please wake up and realize that in most of things we license (e.g. driving, vehicle registration, firearms, building permits), the licenses are only a tool for the government to collect money and serve no useful purpose.
Re:Funny.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:your country is fucked (Score:3, Insightful)
Who determines what is a lie, the government? What if the Administration said "Global warming is a myth, and anyone caught repeating it will be punished?" Or conversely, what about in Muslim countries, where they say "Mohammed is the true prophet of Allah, and anyone who is a prophet-denier will be punished"?
This isn't to say that there are no forms of prohibited speech -- I can't just say "My neighbor eats babies for breakfast" and not expect to be sued for defamation. However, in this case there is an actual person being harmed. Likewise, if I claimed my elderly Jewish neighbor was never in a concentration camp, but tattooed his own arm to gain sympathy, I might be defending myself against a slander charge. However, I can't imagine a class action suit against me if I started claiming a particular number of Jews died, since it would be very difficult to prove my words damaged anyone.
Finally, it's a cliche, but the solution to free speech is more free speech. Prohibiting something -- whether it is denying the holocaust or burning a flag -- merely tempts certain people into doing it anyway. Better to consistently, continually, and logically argue against such behavior, rather than legally prevent it, since prohibition damages society even more.
Re:What we need: (Score:4, Insightful)
That's fine - at least they serve as somewhat of a check on the power of a prosecutor. Better than a prosecutor basically being able to press any charges he wants and have people in jail or having their reputations tainted until a trial happens to occur.
For those who don't like grand juries, I propose an alternative. Allow private prosecutions of prosecutorial and police misconduct under civil rights legislation (18 USC 241,242,etc). By private prosecution, I mean allowing a private attorney (hired by the aggreived party) to press charges against a state official in the name of the state. This is possible under common law, but infrequently used or impossible today. Why private prosecution? Government officials seem a bit too unwilling to prosecute one another, so someone from outside sometimes needs to be brought in.
-b.
Re:your country is fucked (Score:3, Insightful)
No, we are citizens of The United States of America. There is no country whose name is America. Referring to us as Americans or to our nation as America are commonly accepted colloquialisms, but not strictly accurate.
Frankly, I'm not too thrilled that "The United States of America" is used as a singular construction, rather than plural, these days, either.
Re:Even if it WAS intentional.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That argument falls flat on its face if you consider a 16 year old enough to understand he should resist his perfectly normal urge to watch nude girls in order to prevent the pornography industry exploiting 16 year old girls.
Either a 16 year old is an adult or a child, make up your mind it cant be both.
Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:1, Insightful)
Why are the child porn types writing software that magically puts child porn on random people's computers? I'm really not clear about what they're accomplishing there, other than potentially hurting their business by bringing child pornography into the spotlight.
Umm, maybe to distribute it without getting caught? Not everything is about money, you know. Back in the day, the first of the 10 commanments of phreaking [textfiles.com] was:
BOX THOU NOT OVER THINE HOME
TELEPHONE WIRES, FOR THOSE WHO
DOEST MUST SURELY BRING THE
WRATH OF THE CHIEF SPECIAL
AGENT DOWN UPON THY HEADS.
"Box[ing]" refers to using a device called a colored "box" (eg. redbox, bluebox, etc) to trick the phone system into (usually) giving you free phone service, which is clearly an illegal activity. As with any illegal activity using public communication lines, it is not wise to use a connection that can be traced back to the perp. In the case of child porn distribution, the trojans can be used as an untraceable way to store and distribute the illegal content. Your grandma's computer could be a hub for kiddie porn without her even knowing it!
I can see porn sites writing malware that provides porn popups (advertisements for their sites), but those (to me) aren't "images" as much as "software". I'm sure they aren't downloading a free gig of porn to the victim's computer - they wouldn't be making money that way!
Again, it's not always about money.
The way some of these stories and comments are written, it sounds like someone examining the computer found dozens of pictures of kiddie porn on there, and the explanation is "the virus did it!"...but I don't see the motive in writing a virus to do that...a popup or two, yes, but not dozens of images.
Most people who aren't computer literate will not realize that 30GB of their shiny new 500GB hard drive is missing. That's plenty of space to set up a clandestine IRC fserv for pedophiles. The default configuration in Windows XP doesn't even have an indicator to display network activity, so the unsuspecting users wouldn't have a clue what was going on behind the pretty wallpaper.
Re:It can happen (Score:5, Insightful)
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Come On (Score:4, Insightful)
- Drug dealer (convicted felon) says you have guns and tips DEA (possibly to lessen a charge against themselves..so they can later make money).
- Criminal (Ibid) puts malware out on the internet (possibly just to make money).
- Homeowner leaves for work
- Computer owner leaves for work with computer on
- District Attorney has no clue but proceeds with warrant
- Ibid
- See the article (RTFA)
- Agents surveil the house, wait till you leave, serve a "no-knock" and pull the front door off the house. Dog/cats are taken to the pound, house is ransacked and left in shambles, and your perfectly legal and $4,000 gunsafe is destroyed in the process of getting inside.
-Countless legal battles to
A: Figure out what the hell just happened
B: Clear yourself of the charges
- Ibid
The first one is the article I just read, the second happened to a neighbor two blocks away.
I've had a computer since 1983, using a TRS computer and a Hayes Smartmodem (300 baud, course) and I've got Sun certified in running hundreds of Solaris systems. I went most of those 23 years without a virus-scanner (just being very careful and patching), but still got bit. YouTube bit me. 23 years experience and a protected/patched system was still defeated. Never downloaded a wallpaper or any attachment for that matter. I played with the malware a little before fixing the system, and it was interesting watching the malware disable and render the AV software inept. In one case, it sat there by itself, just feeding, until I wacked it. A few moments later it re-spawned and this time protected itself from whacking. The other mal-ware blocked the port for updating the AV software...seems ironic the virus is smarter (remapped URLs to localhost) than the AV.
Oh well....after reading this it's just one more reason to switch over to the Mac when I have the $$$ (yeah, it's still vulnerable....but a lot less attractive to malware).
So what's my point? Even with all the knowledge and training, you will still get infected. You can scoff at YouTube, or MySpace, but you will eventually get bit. The upside: You'll figure it out quick and patch (hopefully).
I'll likely get modded as flamebait but to be blunt: You're just as naive as those you scorn if you think the average person is capable of stopping it and "got it from downloading screensavers." I don't think there's a single computer I've seen in the last 5 years that wasn't a Windows OS-installed screensaver. Wallpapers? Yeah, I see those on occasion...
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Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever burn an mp3 disc by simply dropping and dragging folders? Did you check each and every folder to make sure that there were only your expected mp3's stored there?
Ever burned a backup disc? Again, did you copy that 600+ MB's of data over one file at a time or did you just drag bunches of folders over?
If the kid's hard drive was compromised and there were images on there that he didn't know about, it's reasonable to suggest that some of those images may have unknowingly been burned to disc. One would have to know a lot more of the specific circumstances surrounding that disc before passing judgement.
Now if someone had written "Kiddie Pr0n" on the CD using a Sharpie, then circumstance might be a bit more obvious...
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Re:Even if it WAS intentional.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I've seen similar ~3 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: Why do we protect children from sexual predators?
A: Because children are deemed unable to make a conscious and consenting sexual decision.
Q: If anything sexual a child decides to do or not to do is unconscious or nonconsenting, how can it ever commit a sexual crime?
A: Because we say if it does it anyway, it must be a criminal.
(We have currently a case in Germany where an at the time probably 11 year old girl took sexual photographs of itself and sent them to someone per email. In the U.S. probably the girl now would face charges for producing and distributing child porn).
Re:Coming into your computer?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm not defending the well-known security holes in Microsoft's operating systems. And I have no problem with the creator of a shoddy product being held liable for direct harm caused by their product. I do, however, have a problem with Entity A being held responsible for the actions of Entity B, under any circumstances, no matter who those respective entities may be -- individuals, corporations, whatever. Should Microsoft be held liable for the known security holes in their operating systems? Absolutely. Should they be held liable for how others with malicious intent exploit those holes? No.
Addressing products that are less than 100% secure does not address the underlying problem: Human behavior. Obviously, if everyone were honest, there would be no need for physical locks, computer firewalls, and so on. However, because of the malicious actions of many people, we do need those security measures. And those measures can never, ever be perfect. No padlock, no steel door, no software firewall, no router -- anything that is designed to let "some" stuff through and block the rest -- can ever be 100% secure.
If, as you state, "a software company can be shown to be grossly negligent about the security of their operating system software", then they should certainly be held liable for their own negligence, but not for the actions of others. Ever.
Re:Save me from my internets (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if you meet a 16 year old and the two of you decide to fuck, it's all perfectly good fun. But if the same 16-year-old sends you a nudie-pic of herself you better delete it real quick: Posession of childporn is a criminal offence, and the definition is "under 18", despite the age of consent being 16.
Hell, in principle you could get convicted for posession of child-porn for posessing a nudie pic of *yourself* at age 17, even if you *are* 17. There's no exception in the law for people of similar age, or for pictures of *yourself*.
Dumb is just the first letter of it.
Stupid defense (Score:3, Insightful)
Any country where you can get prosecuted for showing an issue of Playboy to your friends have serious problems, be it North Korea, Saudi-Arabia or USA.
American, Shamerican (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is that we've been called Americans for over two hundred years, and the etymology of the word stems quite clearly from the name of the country "United States of America." Since Unitidians and Statsians are too generic, American is the term that evolved.
I suppose we could start calling ourselves "Americans of US citizenship" or some other stupid, ungainly term, but anyone doing so would be trivially identified as a politically correct dogmatist of gargantuan proportions, and probably laughed at almost as much as those who use USian, or other inane terms like "Sie" as a singular gender neutral pronoun ("their" may be grammatically wrong, but at least it doesn't sound utterly contrived--but I digress.).
So, if someone can come up with a sensible replacement for "American" that doesn't sound like PC newspeak or involve multiple words, and isn't derogatory, I will entertain the notion of adopting it. But until that happens, I will consider calling myself American, with due apologies to the other residents of America who also happen to be able to call themselves Belizian/Brazilian/Mexican/etc., and don't have 300+ million Americans demanding they should change their centuries-old national identifier.
Re:Let me tell you a lil story (Score:1, Insightful)
So, I' ve met a few under-18 girls online and then met them in RL. Of course I WANTED to have sex with (most) of them, but the success rate was not all that high
Today of course, I find 16 years old girls being total children. They are nice to look at, but not really attractive to me. A girl in her mid 20s is a different story. On the other hand, I find some women in their mid or even late 30s sexy as hell.
My point is, it's normal and healthy to be attracted to 16yrsold when you're 20! If both partners agree on having sex, I think there's no problem. Of course, some girls might not be ready to have sex at that age, and must not be forced to!
All those laws were created by people, who have a real problem with sex and should go to therapy IMHO. Just look around. Typical sex offenders are priests and republicans. And they are the ones who push that kind of stupid laws. And the whole crap about not having sex before marriage? Can you imagine dating your girlfriend from say being 16, you finally marry at 20 only to find out that she's crappy in bed? You get frustrated, and then you have to live your fantasies - those, who you didn't live up when you were 16. And you turn to 16year old children when you are 30 or 40... This is crazy.
IHMO the world would be a much better place if there were no news at 19:00 on TV. Porn at 19:00 would be a much much better alternative!
Now, the final question. Why is it OK to expose our children to violence, crime and death? It's ok for the children to watch a body of a hanged man!!?? I found those images highly disturbing. And the most important thing - i was disposed under seeing the pictures against my will! I just opened a local news web site, and there was this freaking picture. This is ok? And having some fun and good feeling with 16years old is not?
Anyway, why don't you just move to EU? If I was under such stress for doing nothing wrong, I'd leave!
Re:Funny.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Unproportional (Score:3, Insightful)
No WebeWeb? (Score:3, Insightful)
just the ones that have been caught (Score:3, Insightful)
This is normally a bullshit argument since we could use it to make literally any claim, but this is a unique situation since some of the malware out there is quite sophisticated (e.g., using private digital certificates on control channels) and the idea of a combination VPN/P2P network to host illegal material is fairly obvious to anyone with a technical background. Sufficiently motivated people (e.g., people facing decades in prison) will make the effort to contact the malware producers who can provide secure channels.
I hope you're proud. You ruined the kid's life. (Score:1, Insightful)
Then that's what you should've done.
That child needed a stern talking to and perhaps grounding. You got him a lifetime in prison.
um? (Score:1, Insightful)