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The Virus Did It
scubacuda writes "The Inquirer and Get Reading report that a UK man accused of having pornographic pictures of kids on his computer was acquitted after a court heard that his machine was infected with a Trojan on his PC which probably auto-downloaded the images. (In light of moves like Operation Ore, we'll probably hear more defenses like this.)"
I guess you should have invested in some virus protection software. Could have saved a lot of money.
I doubt this type of defense will help people who used their credit card to sign up for child porn sites.
Yet another example of why the decision to allow defendants in criminal trials to be named was a bad decision *sigh*.
As to the story - sounds strange that a trojan would do that unless someone was using his machine as a proxy and in that case why would the images be cached on his system?
The problem this guy is going to face is that, despite his conviction, the prevailing mood in the UK is such that he will still find himself stigmatised for a very long time.
As he found out from the vigilante attacks before his trial, the maxim "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't seem to apply for some people any more - the witch hunts led by certain newspapers mean that any slight suggestion of paedophilia turns the accused into an immediate fugitive.
Therefore, though it's very kind of the Crown Prosecution Service to accept this explanation at trial, why did they wait before it was up before a judge with all the attendant publicity before letting him off the hook?
In the minds of some people as well, there's going to be an attitude of "that's right, blame it on the computer - he would say that, wouldn't he?". Technology-based defences simply don't hold water for a lot of non-technical people - which with the increasing number of technological offences being put to juries is quite a worry.
So, this guy will still be stigmatised as a paedophile, all for the price of some virus checking software...
The point of trojans generally is that they let the evil hacker commit crimes in a less trackable way: Whether it's DOSing Yahoo, defacing websites, or cracking into banks. It seems logical to extrapolate that that they could use it to download and archive their child pornography as well, leaving all tracks pointing to the poor trojaned PC owner, while the hacker disappears into the night. While it's obvious that defenses like this mean that every child porn fanatic is going to stick a trojan on their PC to have a legal out, realistically it means that law enforcement should consider options when they move in on a suspect, such as monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic for control commands, etc, or replacing the user's PC with a honeypot.
"...of making a virus that downloads child pr0n onto a remote computer? I thought virii were created to wreak havoc, not frame random computer users... or am I wrong? And furthermore, if a jury can believe this defense, what's to keep all the imminent RIAA and MPAA suits from being defused by the same argument? FIRST POST! WOO!! "
Didn't wreak havoc? The guy lost his 500 pounds a day job, didn't work for two years, got his named associated with child pornography...this trojan already made him lose out on two years of his own life. I'd say that constitutes as wreaking havoc.
See, its not a problem that the odd inncent person has his life ruined by association with crimes that they did not commit, because we're dealing with kiddie porn! Sure, a few people will have their lives ruined, but it's kiddie porn!
I personally think that we should skip the trials altogether. Sure, some innocent people will end up in the nonce wing for life, but it's kiddie porn!
Won't somebody please think of the children!
O.K, I'll stop now. I don't even know if I'm being sarcastic any more...
I find it entirely feasible that a person would not notice a large amount of files added to their computer. Not all people know their computer well enough to notice image files being added onto their hard drive - particularly if added to a system directory or somewhere a casual user doesn't normally peruse. Take OS X for example - I could load tons of files into the /var directory. To see the contents of /var on a normally configured OS X machine you have to go to the terminal or specifically configure the file browser (Finder) to make those type of directories visible. On my Windows 2000 machine at work I cannot browse the WINNT directory unless I click on Show Files (after reading the "This isn't the directory you're looking for. Move along now." warning). I'm 99.99% sure that I could add a gig of porn to my parents hard drive and they would never be the wiser.
Because those of us at Slashdot are more technically adept and let's face it - our computers are a major part of our day-to-day life - we assume incorrectly that everyday people are more capable with their computers and see them more than just a box that balances their checkbook.
And drinking is the interesting analogy because you generally begin sober and aware that drinking will lead to a lack of accountability. In many jurisdictions, this knowledge means you are still liable because the ultimate consequences are forseeable.
So now, what if I offered a site that wanted to distribute a banned kind of material (kiddie porn, secure encryption technology, that kind of thing) and it was known that anyone connecting could not legally ask for what they surely wanted. Isn't the obvious solution for me to make a virus that will "helpfully" download it for you? You'd just pay for "time at my site" browsing my fine HTML pages, not for the content. But, magically, the content would just get thrust upon you. Escort services use this dodge. Customer pays for time, not service. But customers get service, typically, or they don't come back. Still, legally, the transaction may be quite distinct from prostitution (so I'm told).
Then again, the escort service model obliges me to come to the issue of "victimless crime". Driving drunk and injuring someone has a victim, and we want to fix the legal system to minimize such cases. Escort services have no obvious victim, IMO, and so I'd argue the other way--that perhaps the simpler solution is just to legalize prostitution.
Child porn is caught in between these two scenarios, I think, with some parts of it falling into one scenario and some into the other. Certainly, if the pics are of real children, then that's bad. But it's within range of technology to make the entire industry based on fabricated images. Then who would be the victim? If no child was abused in the taking of the pictures, for all we know, the people in possession of them are sublimating urges they might otherwise carry out. Is taking the photos away going to cause them to not have the urge? Or just cause them to be out on the street seeking real children? We're so quick to make assumptions in this area, I just don't know why we don't just make a death penalty for anyone even suspected of child abuse or kiddie porn and be done with it mercifully, because nothing the person can do for the rest of their life after they're found in possession of something like this will ever be normal.
When I see a child being abused, it's not erotic to me. That it is to someone shouldn't make it a crime for me to see it--maybe I and all of us need to see that picture to understand someone's outrage about a crime. How do we know when someone is seeing something for a "legitimate" reason or not? There may be pictures of murders that arouse people, but we distinguish between "snuff films" (which are illegal because of their filming technique, not their content) and other films about murder, because murder is a fact of life we need to understand. I am alarmed at the concept that the mere possession of certain kinds of topic material, in and of itself, a crime. Who will study this crime if no one may possess its materials? Will images of murder, of feces, or other things that turn others on but not me one day also be illegal to possess? Where does it stop?
Sure--people are legitimately angry at people who harm children, and they want someone to punish. They can't catch the guy who makes it, so they find someone else to lash out at. (The drug war is the same way. Sometimes drugs cause problems, so we make all uses of drugs illegal whether they hurt anyone or not, just so there's always someone handy to punish when we're mad.) I just hope that in our rush to make it possible to punish people who too easily elude our present systems, we don't take away rights which are not causally related to any kind of harm. And I have to say, the idea of criminalizing the viewing a picture, any picture, in privacy, whether it's a field of daisies or a torture chamber somewhere, is
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I imagine many of you have used P2P apps like KaZaA. I'd bet money that almost all of you even downloaded some porn with it. Don't be bashful. There's nothing wrong with it. However I'm sure you too have noticed the overwhelming amount of BS crap files that get turned up in searches. Many of them say "underaged" or "pre-teens" or many other things that indicate a minor child. And many of them are pure junk and are simply pictures ripped from a Girls Gone Wild video. However some times you end up downloading a picture you just can't identify. You really can't tell if those are kids, flat-chested and baby-faced college seniors, or midgets. If you don't delete these files and leave them on your computer, are you now guilty of having child pornography if someone proves that the picture you downloaded 1 year ago and is still in you junk directory?
Lets say for example that your ex knows you have porn on your computer. Hell she and you used to watch it together. You break up with her and she's pissed. She makes an anonymous call to the police one night when drunk. The next day and overzealous police officer has a warrant from a judge looking for some good PR for the election coming up. They confiscate your computer and arrest you, even though all they have as proof is the anonymous tip. A lab goes through your hard drives and CDs while you're grilled by a cop with bad breath over how you abuse children. You don't want to call for a lawyer because you don't want to seem guilty. You think it's all a big mistake. The lab boys come back with the porn. The cops browse through it. A picture comes up of Devon in her early years. "Does she look like a minor to you, Bob?" "She sure looks like a minor to me, Chuck." They arrest you and charge you with child pornography, even though they have confirmed that the person in the photo is a minor. The PD and DAs office goes public to say how they've arrested a vile child pornographer. Media coverage. Citizen outrage at him. yadda yadda yadda. In the meantime he's arrained. This gives an assistant DA time to go through all the porn on the hard drive. Whoops. It turns out that the photo the cops thought was child porn wasn't. Hell it obviously wasn't. Damn overzealous cops. Nevertheless he goes through all the porn. He even enlists the help of a person in the pornography business who can recognize many of his fellow actors. Finally they come down to a small handful of pictures that no one can identify. Of these 3 could be of a minor. The DA picks the most child-like photo as proof and goes to trial. The prosecution paints the defendant as a vile, horrible child pornographer. A few of his ex-girlfriends step into the lime light to say how he was abusive or was obsessed with kids or some other bullshit like that. The defense lays out the facts of law and that the photo can't