Slashdot Mirror
Kiddie Porn - The Virus Did It
The New York Times reports on a British man who was accused of downloading child pornography, and who successfully convinced the court that a virus did it. This is at least the second time this has happened. These cases are extremely interesting since they bring together all sorts of issues of computerized agents - who is actually responsible when your computer does something?
"It wasn't my fault, Officer. Honest, the video said it was Terminator 3 when I downloaded it!"
"The evil hacker even took the time to arrange and sort those pictures by series!"
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
One evening late in 2001, Julian Green's 7-year-old daughter came upstairs from the computer room of their house in the resort town of Torquay, in western England, and said, "The home page has changed, and it's something not very nice."
When Green checked the family PC, he found that it seemed almost possessed. The Internet home page had been switched so that the computer displayed a child pornography site when the browser software started up. Even if he turned the computer off, it would turn itself back on and dial the Internet on its own.
Green called the manufacturer and followed instructions to return his PC to a G-rated condition. The porn went away, but the computer still often crashed and kept connecting to the Internet even when "there was no one in the blinking house," he said.
But Green's problems were only beginning. Last October, police knocked on his door, searched his house and seized his computer. They found no sign of pornography in his house but discovered 172 images of child porn on the computer's hard drive. They arrested Green.
This month, Green was acquitted in Exeter Crown Court after arguing that the material had been gathered without his knowledge by a rogue program created by hackers -- a so-called Trojan horse -- that had infected his PC, probably during innocent Internet surfing. Green, 45, is one of the first people to use this defense successfully.
While a case that played out in the British legal system sets no precedent in the United States, legal experts say the technical issues raise two troubling possibilities. For one, actual child pornographers could arm themselves with a new alibi that would be difficult to disprove. Or, unknowing Web surfers could find themselves charged with possessing illegal material that a lurking software program has acquired.
"The scary thing is not that the defense might work," said Mark Rasch, a former federal computer crime prosecutor. "The scary thing is that the defense might be right," and that hijacked computers could be turned to an illegal purpose without the owner's knowledge or consent.
"The nightmare scenario," Rasch said, "is somebody might go to jail for something he didn't do because he was set up."
Green was eventually exonerated, and he said he had no clue how the rogue software showed up on his computer. "I never download anything, and as far as I knew, no others had," he said.
When his solicitor, Chris Bittlestone, hired a computer security consultant to examine the PC, nearly a dozen Trojan horse programs showed up on the hard drive.
"When the report came in, it was very much what you would call a eureka moment," Bittlestone said. But Green took the news differently.
"He was very quiet and said, 'See? I told you,' " Bittlestone recalled.
"There's some little sicko out there who's doing this," Green said, "and he's ruined my life. I've got to fight to get everything back."
Green's case could point the way to a new defense in U.S. courts , said Andrew Grosso, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor. The presence of a Trojan could mean that the computer is "not entirely under your control," he said, and a defendant could "legitimately point a finger elsewhere."
I would think that whoever caused the computer to act would be ultimatly responsable. If that someone wrote the OS with malicious code, then whoever wrote the OS. If that someone was a malicious remote user, than the remote user, and if that someone is the PC's owner, then the owner.
The trick is prooving who caused the effect. It's not as simple as prooving who was behind the wheel of a car.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Here
who is actually responsible when your computer does something?
If it's passively, this could either be the user's or the software architect's fault (if some OS's security hole allow one to get into trouble).
This could also be due to the ISP's neglect.
if it's actively, the answer should be the same but now, the problem is that we (as in "the consumers") would have to argue about this against some ISP's or worse, against a software editor's lawyer, in which case, we don't weight enough not to be in trouble.
concerning the present situation, I'd be somehow concerned if I learnt that like my ISP, my OS was actually logging whichever off my actions in order to prove the Law how bad I am actually behaving...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Many of the common adult newsgroups are polluted by paedophile images sent by hard-core porn sites. It's a serious problem because it means that the majority of newsnet-carrying ISPs and servers are actually carrying large amounts of kiddie porn.
So the tissues by the keyboard were because you had a virus?
Omnis amans amens
Roughly twenty years ago it was hyperbole for the Dead Kennedys to "sing" about things like this. I forgot which song it was, and you have to remember the culture was more conservative in some ways twenty-odd years ago, but the words went like this:
Pissed at your neighbor?
Don't bother to nag.
Pick up the phone.
Turn in a fag.
Well add about a million times as many transistors and just a little bit extra effort on the part of the spiteful neighbor, and change the setup, and bingo--instant permanent damage to the private citizen you hate, for whatever reason!
the law in Finland (IANAL, but still) says "if you know or SHOULD know..." I believe this one falls under the "should know" category.
Now that we're on this topic, though, does anyone know where to get a virus that downloads high quality images of nubile women with scant clothing who are of legal age?
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
There are spammers/pr0no pages that try to get you to install a "porn downloader" ActiveX control. (If the security settings in IE are really bad [default?] IE might just suck it down for you.) Then it changes your Internet connection to a dial-up via an expensive (900-type or long-distance) connection. No doubt it installs various backdoors too.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Do not be stupid. Of course it is a valid defence.
Most viruses do not need an unsecure os, just a clueless person. Of course I do not think it was
a virus, but *if* it was a virus, then of course it would be an excuse.
This is probably an unfashionable idea, but the problem appears to be more that law enforcement agencies are treating child porn as an easy way to increase their scores. In truth there is probably little basis for treating downloading of child porn as "criminal behaviour", although the making and selling of it is most definitely so. I'm not defending child porn, but it's entirely possible that it represents for many would-be child molesters, an alternative way of satisfying their unhealthy sexual tendencies.
Aggressive policing against people who have (for whatever reason, and there may be many, both innocent and less so) child porn on their computers is counter-productive. It does not protect children, it does not prevent child abuse, it does not catch the real exploiters, but it does create grief for many people who have done little more than click on the wrong button.
Crime and punishment must be based on some kind of real moral injustice and the redressment of this. I don't think this is what we're seeing in these cases.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Did anyone check the name of the company that located the virus? Vogon International, LTD.
I suspect the Prostetnic Vogon Geltz.
Joe Average is an easy victim for the countless malicious trojans floating around. Visiting a straight porn site is no crime. Being deceived by messages like "Install browser enhancement (OK/Cancel)" is no crime. I have removed countless porn-related trojans from friends' PC's. If someone wants to put kiddie porn on unsuspecting victims' computers, this is no hard task. Removing a trojan when your anti virus software detects it would be the sensible thing to do. If the trojan has downloaded contraband to your PC, it will still be there, but you have removed the proof that you didn't dowload this intentionally. I would say proving intentional downloading of child porn should be pretty hard.
"And you are dying so slowly, you believe to be living" - Bertrand Besigye
Can we demand that regular Joe's take responsibility for their computer, and their computers security? That is to say, should we be responsible for ensuring that others cannot access our computers and do illegal deeds with it? Now, that would require way more knowledge IT security than the regular Joe has, however it might cause the public to demand a more secure OS etc.
And that's the worst part. There will always be a percentage of the population that assumes anyone accused of a crime is guilty. Nevermind that he convinced a Jury, who presumably were working off expert testimony.
Sure kiddie porn is awful, but the right to privacy should not be eroded even if few people abuse this right. I'd say the freenet's uncompromising position is the only way to go.
BOO! TERRO
I am not a lawyer (I still can't bring myself to write that abbreviation,) but if it is a valid defense in a criminal child pornography case to say I wasn't responsible for downloading it, could this not set a precedent for Civil copyright cases? Or are the RIAA's rights more compelling than that of the victims of Child pornography?
"I was hacked. You know, ever since all the Lawsuits started happening, there has been an increase of people hacking computers to download music."
I think a case could be made of that.
"those with pictures are statistically likely to go on to physical acts..."
Do you have figures to back up this claim?
The study of pornography and its impact on sex crimes is always highly charged, but there is a good basis for believing that free access to pornography actually reduces sexual offenses (not just against children, but of all kinds).
And yes, there are "wrong buttons" that will download images to your PC. Someone else here mentioned that Newsnet is regularly spammed with child porn.
Criminals should be punished, no doubt about it. But witch-hunts are never productive. You think you are catching the real crooks? You're not. In fact, you're driving the sale and distribution of child porn underground, causing it to become harder and more violent.
Pushing even an obnoxious trade into the hards of real criminal networks is not wise: you may get that rosy feeling of 'doing good', but the cost is paid by huge numbers of new victims in far-off places.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I feel this device would find a significant market.
Now I'm just looking for investors.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
> What ISP keeps such records?
...as a result no-one really does it, and I've worked at quite a few ISP's. It's a waste of storage space, and equipment - i.e. racks of proxy/logging servers - needed to handle such an operation are just prohibitably expensive and not financially viable (unless you want to nearly double subscription costs)...
It's the law in the UK! The law requests this (and that you keep said logs for something like ~>3 months) but it's very vauge in what your specifically asked to keep track of...
...I've seen this one before (by the description). When I was working on PCs for a living, an optomologist's secretary brought in her computer, which was acting "strangely" and all sorts of "foul things" were coming up on her screen. I figured something had just replaced her homepage on IE with a porn site or something like that, so I plugged the machine up and let it boot, explaining to her "well, there's some bad shit you have to look out for, but there's always worse". I was quite wrong. This was worse.
When I fired up IE on the system, it went straight to a child pornography site that was obviously a typoed URL (freecilpart.com or something like that...don't hold me to it since my memory's terrible), and the default homepage setting was being updated constantly (like kak). This program was listening on some oddball high-numbered port.
Since the box was inside a Novell network and wasn't exposed to the outside world (much) I figured it wasn't a normal compromise. I told her to contact the FBI over the site, and I went looking for the malware, but couldn't track it down (limited time on it, though) and wound up wiping the box clean and reinstalling Win98. She's very religious about keeping the a/v definitions updated now (:
If people can throw their hands in the air and say "The trojan did it", then the law will change to catch the paedophiles who are using it as an excuse.
If it becomes popular to do so, and easy to get off if that is the case (and it seems like it might be, I'd hate to have a court disbelieve me if a trojan downloaded kiddie porn to my computer) - then who gets the blame?
This might lend some power to the palladium protocol (nothing's impregnable, but the guff is pretty air-tight) - "get rid of all viruses and trojans" - can now be replaced with "protect your children from being brutalized and their pictures sold to sickos all over the world while you rot in jail forever"?
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
You'd better call them up then, if you live in the UK or USA. Both countries have legislation forcing ISPs to be able to do this.
May I suggest two tin cans and a piece of string as a more private medium? ;-)
Sure kiddie porn is awful, but the right to privacy should not be eroded even if few people abuse this right.
Yup, and that's how people have been manipulating other people for (at least) hundreds of years. Claim that in order to prevent one horrible thing, another horrible thing should be done. Examples:
Manpulation is easy. Issues like kiddie porn are so emotive, we should be careful what liberties are taken by those who seek to use the problem to their advantage. Taking the US example from above, the new snooping powers have been saught for many years by several organisations, long before terrorism was thrust into the spotlight. They used the situation to achieve their goals. I can see the same potentially happening here.
Possibly intentionally: child molesters, and people who download child pornography.
Uhm, I've a large collection of videos about cars crashing, but that does not make me a dangerous driver.
You are being somewhat wicked when you imply that everyone with a penchant for watching a kind of act is also likely to go out and commit it. This is a tired pseudo-psychology that has tried and failed to link TV to violence, games to violence, foreign-language films to political insurrection, what have you. Monkey see, monkey do? I don't think this argument has any provable basis.
You cannot save children from exploitation by making such falacious arguments. You must show a clear connection between the person in possession of pornography, and those committing the acts.
Imagine we're talking about rape videos. Now rape is a crime. Does this mean that someone luridly watching a rape video (real or faked) is actually a criminal too?
How about someone watching the film of a bank heist. Or the millions of viewers who watch 'cop reality shows'. Are they all likely to jump up and start stealing cars?
You can't stop using logic just because you're discussing an emotive subject - if anything you have to be more clear headed than usual.
Lurid interest in an illegal act is not (in the general sense) a crime, and is often a substitute for the real thing. Think clearly and you will see that there are better ways of preventing abuse of children.
One example: to recognise that most abuse of children actually happens in countries where children's rights are totally ignored, and often takes far worse forms than sexual exploitation.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Technical issues aside, there can only be one advice: If confronted with any kind of child pornography, or even being offered such - inform the cops.
This kind of stuff is illegal in almost any jurisdiction worldwide, and it is immoral by all but the sickest standards. There is also no argument that children are exploitet for this, and suffering from it.
Chase spammers for fun all day, more power to you! But do not collect evidence on child porn, leave that to professionals.
And again, in most jurisdictions, law enforcement _will_ act on your tip.
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
Mod the parent up. I live in Japan and KNOW that this hits home. The Japanese goverment has been suspiciously lax in pursuing enactment of Child Porn laws (Cyber or otherwise) ispite of heavy pressure from US and many European countries. I would say that Japan and Thailand are responsible for most of the Child porn being generated worldwide.
Anyone then faced with an RIAA lawsuit can just accidently install it and claim that the virus did it. Am I missing something here? And why isn't there any mention of wich virus did it?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The computers of the future will be capable of rendering a picture indistinguishable from a real one. In this case no real harm is done to anybody by making such a picture. So, the defendant will claim he/she just rendered those pictures. Can anyone be arrested for rendering a picture?
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
The question of culpability for the actions of a computer is going to become increasingly interesting. Spammers and other miscreants are getting more brazen about the use of third party computers by which to make mischief. I'm not saying that it's a new concept -- far from it -- only that the audacity factor is going up. Dealers in kiddie porn and other widely-considered-bad things may start to see third party computers as a safe medium for their wares; a good way to cover their tracks.
It seems unfair for a person with a virus-infected computer to be accountable (even in part) for the actions of a malicious third party who takes control of that computer without the owner's knowledge. On the other hand, it's risky to let them off the hook for it: genuinely culpable parties may install a virus on their own system as a legal defense measure! And if the owner of the computer were nailed for the actions of their computer, could they then sue some software or hardware vendor for enabling a malicious third party to use their computer without authorisation, thus exposing them to this risk? Presumably the end user doesn't haven't much of a case against the Internet Service Provider: I would expect the ISP to be offering a network service, leaving it up to you and your equipment as to what use is made of that service.
The real problem here, as I see it, is that we want to discourage systems which facilitate abuse by evading accountability. The real culprit -- the malicious third party who uses the computer as a zombie slave to get up to no good -- is safely hidden from accountability through anonymity. The owner of the equipment is deemed not culpable on the basis of inability to know or do anything about it. The owners of the network infrastructure are just providing the advertised service, and should be thought of as common carriers. The owner of the software which enables the virus, well, no software authors seem to want to be held accountable for their software either, and that's somewhat understandable.
But if we don't come up with some strategy for discouraging systems which facilitate abuse by third parties, the natural consequence will be an increase in unpolicable lawlessness. To complicate matters, insecure systems are already pervasive, so it's hard to know where to start. Who do we put the pressure on? I didn't RTFA, as I said (don't read NYT's website on principle), so I don't know what conclusions were drawn. It strikes me that perhaps we need to start holding the end user accountable for the mischief of their system if they don't take reasonable precautions to prevent it, such as using anti-virus software, or keeping modestly up to date with security patches. Maybe we can also hold commercial software/hardware sellers accountable to do their fair share in selling a merchantable product, with particular reference to reasonable standards of safety, and working as advertised. In the case of OEM-installed operating systems, it's probably the OEM that should foot the bill, as the seller of the product. Penalties should be relative to the cost of the product.
I'm not suggesting that these ideas ought to be implemented, but we ought to think about them. What seems fair and would have the desired impact? Most end users aren't aware how unsafe the Internet is, with regards to this kind of abuse, and they should be educated about it, or protected from it. Computer manufacturers are selling computers as internet-ready but by and large they are selling an unsafe product. Selling a machine bundled with anti-virus protection might be sufficient to make the product "safe", from a merchantability perspective. Removing (or not providing) Internet functionality would also protect the manufacturer from Internet-related issues. Providing clear warning material on the dangers of connecting to the Internet might also be sufficient ass-cover.
Stuff to ponder. And note that I didn't rant about Microsoft Windows, despite opportunity and motive.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
With the wild DAs making accusations, perhaps it is time to finally delcare any software that acts without the user's knowlage to be illegal hacking...whether it be Windows "phone-homes", Gator advertizing, or of course malicious virii!
Of course I wouldn't condone hacking Gator to put inapproperate pictures on unsuspecting users' computers in any way...
The driver rams into someone because his brakes don't work. Did
A) The repairman screw up on last check-up
B) Someone rig the brakes
C) He did it himself
However, going back to the "motive, means and opportunity", a car driver would hardly have much incentive to be in an accident. In this case however, you would because it would be a "get out of jail free" card. It's as if you happened to ram down a pedestrian that you had a motive to kill. Is that any evidence of who rigged the brakes? Nope, it could be just a coincidence. Would it still be relevant in court? Absolutely.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When I was sharing a house, we had a P-233mmx which was shared between several of the occupants, running windows 9x. After using the thing for some time, the machine began to slow down, behave oddly, and then a few other odd things started to occur; the mouse moved strangely - and then the machine started to type things. By itself. It was fairly obviously some sort of remote control program (either trojan or maliciously stuck on there by one of my housemates) - which started to do other odd things.
Including displaying child pornography on the screen.
The first time this happened, I had the willies scared out of me as my 14 inch monitor was suddenly filled with an image of a girl of a similar age to the size of my monitor, barely dressed, obviously looking up at a taller photographer. It petrified and disgusted me so much that for a moment I didn't move - before I promptly turned the machine off at the mains and gutted it. I couldn't work out what had caused it - and no virus software picked the thing up. Thank god it was a shared computer, or I'd have never used the net again, I think - in the following months the above happened on a monthly basis, and every now and then the bootup screen changed to an image of a fly on windows background, with the label "ISpyFly Windows {something I forget}".
To this day, I have NO idea what the software was that caused it, but of one thing I'm certain - child pornography *can* get onto your computer without your consent or knowledge. No-one knows better than I how much paedophilia goes on online - I worked in computer forensics - but all the same, there are *two* sides to this coin, in whatever proportions they occur.
Incidentally, if anyone's heard of the software or has any idea what it was, let me know. And no, I don't still have access to the machine. It wasn't mine anyway.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you
If I was seriously out to get someone I could do a much better job than this, and so could you.
1. Get him infected with a trojan. Just send him shit on email (from free accounts), icq, irc, latest windows exploits and whatever until you find something his antivirus doesn't bite on.
2. Drop him a shitload of illegal stuff. As techies, I'm sure you'd be able to find it, it's just that we don't *want* to. Maybe even download it directly to him through the trojan, keeping yourself completely clean. If he gets logged downloading it, all the better.
3. Jerryrig the dates, to make it seem as if they've been collected over extended period of time, accessed repeatedly etc.
4. Uninstall the trojan. Give him a total clean-up and remove any over shit he might have happened to have too.
5. Tip the cops. Payphone, anonymous note, whatever. Anything untracable.
OTOH, his life is pretty damn screwed already (even if you get aquitted, everyone will still wonder... did he *really* do it or not). This is if you want someone really thrown in jail and lose the key. Maybe I shouldn't give anyone the idea, but at the same time it might also get people to actually *care* about their security.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So, using that as an example and considering how much more common computers are in every day life than cars (know anyone how hasn't driven in the past 12 months? Now, know anyone who hasn't touched a computer in any way shape or form in the same time period?), why don't we have compulsory "basic operation" licsenses for computers?
Most people outside the IT Industry use computers as a tool, a means to an end. And yet there are NO requirements in place to ensure people are competant when using that (potentially dangerous) tool
Think about it this way; Truck drivers are forced to undergo rigerous driving training (in the form of logged experience and lessons from qualified staff) before they're allowed to sit for their license and operate the tool they use to make a living. Builders are required to undergo at least two years of apprenticeship plus TAFE (think community college) courses before they can build any type of large structure. People who pilot any form of marine vessel are required to sit a test and get their license before they can command a vessel capable of going over a certain speed/weighing more than a certain tonnage. Hell, even short-order *COOKS* are required to undergoe some form of food preperation and service training before most places will give them a job.
And yet companies all across the world will hire someone into a position that required daily, extended user of office type computers at the drop of a hat. At best you can expect "Can you touch type? DO you know Microsoft Word?" Hell, even that's only mostly for secretaries!
A basic computer competency test should be *compulsory* before anyone is allowed to purchase a computer. Said test should include the following areas;
- Basic hardware in a computer (stops the old "my cupholder is broken and the tv wont start!" support call when whats actually happened is that they've kicked out a cord at the back)
- Basic use of word processing, database, presentation and spreadsheet software (by basic I mean VERY basic. "This is a spreadsheet. It does simple simple calculations, like so")
- Basic Internet skills ("this is how to use email, this is SPAM - its bad, dont ever reply. This is how to browse the web" etc)
- Basic computer security (in fact, dont even include the word "security". Include this in the "basic operation" section. Cover topics such as viruses ("don't open email with attachments unless you have an UP TO DATE virus scanner running, and the file is NOT an exe/vbs/whatever", spyware, password security (and the importance of it, with say a "your internet banking and hotmail account are vulnerable! listen up!")
- How to report a problem (if you have a support line/helpdesk/manufacturer to call under warrenty.
When computers are in as widespread use as they are in our society today, rivaling even vehicles in their numbers, people should be forced to prove at least some BASIC competancies. I'm not talking about doing us out of a job (I am paid to fix problems, among *other* things), but ensuring that the damage/aggrivation/grief caused by computer-ignorant people is minimised.Janie took my gun...
the answer is not to make this stuff easier to use! first, we have been doing that for 10 years now. we've been lowering the bar and people still keep tripping over it!
secondly, making it 'easier' has taken away security and safety mechanisms.
no matter how easy we make this, if you are not required to learn/know a certain amount, you will be making a mess. maybe just for you, maybe for other people.
eric
Yeah, but their culture see's it differently i.e. not so much of a problem. To them, it's like Saudi Arabia asking us to clamp down on alcohol, because their society doesn't tolerate our activies. A lot of Asian porn features school girl references there, and they really dig the whole cute china-doll thing. I'm sure many of the legal ones get made up to look as young as possible, jeez that even goes on in Western porn as well, 25 year-olds masquerading as 18 year-olds.
With different ages of consent around the world, policing this planet is not an easy task. I think I heard once that the age in Spain was 12, though that may have been years ago and it's probably standardised through the EU now. How exactly to you legislate based on widely differing laws and cultures?
Remember also that our society is very diffent to many others, and has only become that way recently. Several hundred years ago, most people were married and had had several children by 17-18 years old. You'd be lucky to reach 30 years old and have half of your children reach adulthood. Our ever extending life-span has lengthened the "age of innocence", but it's not "naturally human". If a boy/girl can conceive children, that's natures way of saying it's time to start having sex, regardless of what abstinence groups or abusive catholic priests regard the issue.
It's a very muddled issue. Where do you draw the line?
I had an interesting experience helping my cousin with his computer a few hours ago. I've done this plenty of times before, and I'm sure every computer professional has served as volunteer tech support for family members at least occasionally. The difference this time is, instead of simply doing a few quick fixes for the things that were broken/nonfunctional (which is what I usually do, in the interests of time), I actually thought long and hard about what was broken, and more importantly, how and why it got that way.
I will state from the top that I don't intend for this to be a Windows bash session. Though it's plainly a software environment I try to avoid when it's practical to do so, I recognize that I'm a kook and that most of the rest of the world has decided otherwise. Since, like death and taxes, Win32 is omnipresent, unavoidable, and in the end always victorious, it's prudent to learn how to efficiently work with it.
My cousin purchased a basic home system earlier this year, a modest (but powerful enough) system with Windows XP Home Edition preinstalled. It also came with Microsoft Works (which he's just starting to use for his classes) and the various and sundry shovelware that no user ever bothers to either run, nor uninstall. We live very close to each other, so we both have the same network provider -- in this town it's basically Comcast for broadband or the highway (read: craptacular dialup). He uses Yahoo as a portal page, and occasionally uses Yahoo Messenger. He likes tuning in to streaming radio, so he has dozens of stations bookmarked. And that's pretty much it -- he uses his machine for web surfing, internet radio, and the occasional short word processing or IM session.
I stopped by today to help him with a project he's starting up and he went to log into his computer. My first clue that something was very wrong: it took forever. The interval between the time when he entered his password and when he gained full control of the machine (i.e. when the busy cursor went away and the machine finally became responsive enough for him to do anything as basic as using the cursor to launch a new application) was at least 90 seconds. This box isn't a server, he's not compiling code or serving pages or rendering frames or anything else that ought to be stealing major cycles from the foreground UI. After that eternity has passed and he finally gains control of the machine, he gets a dialog box advertising cheap university degrees. By this time, I'm all like "what the f___?!?" It seems that in my time away from mainstream (i.e. Win32) computing, something known as "Windows Messenger Service Spam" has become a serious nuisance. How goddamned evil can they get? You don't even have to open your mailbox before some lowlife jumps in your face trying to sell you merde? How fricking evil is that? I do wonder what kind of krakk kokane your software engineering staff has to be smoking for them ship an operating system that, in its default configuration, allows an unauthenticated tcp message from any random spot on the internet to display a dialog on a client workstation, but, as I mentioned earlier, that's not where I want to go today. I felt a sick feeling in my gut, realizing that there are probably millions of grandmothers out there getting these stupid things popping up in their faces all day, without the vaguest clue of how to stop them.
After closing the messenger spam, my cousin started his browser, which happens to be IE 6. This took an extroardinarily long time. Once it came up, I noticed that he had a Yahoo toolbar underneath the standard Explorer toolbar, bristling with gewgaws, animated crap, pulsing buttons and links to, erm, "synergistic content". In addition, there was a vertical pane along the left side of the window, also Yahoo branded, also full of pulsing, flashing, irrelevant happy crap. In the middle of trying to throw up (and I do mean "throw
Maybe access related computer crime needs to be looked at very carefully. The people who take the photos and who probably rape and abduct the children are the real criminals, true people who download it have questionable minds (assuming they actually did it intentionally and it wasnt an accident, virus or someone else) but that doesnt change the fact that they are were using their computer to access data.
If you asked someone to read out loud the hex code of a jpeg containing child porn while you copied it down and put it in a file is that illigal or is that free speech? this has already been looked at with the DeCSS case. You might say who cares they are pedophiles but it does infringe on every other aspect of the internet: If you are arrested for downloading something, eg music, films, porn, software you are really just being arrested for using your computer, its a very different crime from taking out a gun and shooting someone, rape, murder, assult etc.
It just seems to me that legislators dont understand what computers are and they are treating it the same as everything else. If the law allows someone to be arrested for downloading child porn on the internet then there will be no problem making it illigal to do any number of things (downloading anti-american political pages,diagnostic tools, research papers/dmca violating material etc.)
That doesnt mean that computer crime should be abolished, if you are trying to bring the internet down or disrupt traffic that is pretty serious and should be treated differently (in that case you are accessing remote systems with out permission etc.) and ofcourse if you write an outlook vbs virus the case should just be laughed out of the court room and microsoft should pay for your taxi home!
Sorry for bad spelling or flaimbait views - my spell check is broken and the milk in my coffee curdled this morning
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"someone watching a child porn may go out and and try it"
How on earth do you reach this conclusion?
It matches nothing demonstrated or seen elsewhere. In no domain do people jump up and imitate the things they see unless it is clearly part of an ongoing social movement.
A person who intends to molest children will do so with or without porn. Children have been sexually abused for all history.
It's the same old argument about violence on TV: people forget that the western world (US included) has the lowest levels of violence of any society in any place, any time. Although the levels of violence portrayed are higher than ever, the actual violence we encounter is rarer than ever.
You cannot just state that child pornography is an exception to this trend. People commit criminal acts because they have the means, the motive, and the opportunity. Not because they watched some illegal pictures.
And I have a daughter, yes, and if someone touched her or took pictures of her, I'd hunt him down. Nonetheless: there are ways to attack crime, and the current witch hunt on people who have kiddie porn on their computers is a mistake and it will eventually be seen as such.
I'm going to stop discussing this subject now but I will say one last thing: most of the 'science' in the public discussion on child porn comes from the police, and this is a party with a vested interest in depicting all child porn viewers as twisted criminals. The police are a large part of a public perception that is painting huge segments of the population as criminals. It makes no sense except when you are trying to "act tough on crime."
Ceci n'est pas une signature
You can't compare broken brakes with surfing the internet.
The situation is more like that you park your car in a foreign country. While you away, somebody opens your car and put drugs into a hidden place within the car. After that you drive home and pass the borders to your country. Later, another person will pick up the drugs. You will become a curier without knowing it.
It is realy hard, even for professionals, to harden a pc against attacks from the internet.
Bollocks, say I. No stats here, just personal experience. I'm ex-resident of Amsterdam, now resident back in the UK. I have observed the drug scene in both situations with very similar people. I firmly think that people who want to take drugs simply want as much as they want and that legality is entirely incidental.
By criminalising drugs, the money goes to the crims, who have a vested interest in getting users on harder stuff. That's where the increased usage comes from.
Naturally, you may disagree.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
> There are lots of issues to consider here, firstly the daughter claim... his daughter may have had a vendetta against him because he molested her, or she knew that he was commiting acts against children and just wanted him to get what was coming to him. Who knows...
To be blunt, who cares? If she was molested, she should accuse him of that. If she has reason to believe he's molesting other children, let her present that evidence. Framing him for a crime he didn't commit is never right, even if he committed some other crime.
> also the other thing to consider (and i have some experience in this) when i was getting started in computers and did some stupid things (bruteforcing passwords from my own system), i always ran a copy of BO on my own pc, so i could blame "the evil hackers" if it came down to it. Possibly he was doing the same thing with much more sinister acts.
Sorry, but "possibly" doesn't do in a court of law. Sure it's possible he set up an alibi, but if there's not sufficient evidence that he did it's not the court's right to assume guilt. That's how "beyond a reasonable doubt" works.
Virg
sorry, i just couldn't help thinking that the phrase "harvest porn" is not unlike "furniture porn" so couldn't help imagining combines in painfully silly poses.
OK, move along, nothing to see here...
ed
"those with pictures are statistically likely to go on to physical acts..."
Do you have figures to back up this claim?
In other news, people looking at gay porn tend to have gay sex, and people looking at straight porn tend to have straight sex. Scientists are shocked.
The statistical question is: "Would there be more or less people commit child abuse if child porn was freely available?" This decomposes into two questions:
A-1. How many current abusers would be sufficently satisfied with only looking at child porn, had it been easy available in great quantity (reducing abuse)?
A-2. How many people that otherwise wouldn't have abused children get so inspired by child porn that they choose to abuse children (increasing abuse)?
Note that there are two groups that are simply irrelevant to this question:
B-1. Those who would abuse children, porn or no porn
B-2. Those who wouldn't abuse children, porn or no porn.
Due to the
a) total inability to measure this (child abuse records show A-1 and B-1, child porn arrests don't really say anything because you don't know if they're abusers or not (could be any of the four categories), or how this affects the statistical likelyhood of being arrested and so on and so on).
b) the incentives to not answer truthfully (Me? Commit child abuse? Never! Never, I tell you!)
c) the inability to answer truthfully (no I wouldn't do that even if I looked at child porn... would I?)
I don't think we'll ever get a solid statistical answer to this question out of police records, censuses and other second-hand data. It would require an "Eye of God" view to get the real data.
And running a controlled experiment? Yeah right. For one it'd have to ensure that those that shouldn't have porn don't have it, which would require detailed personal surveilance. And at the same time, if they wanted to abuse children they'd have the opportunity to do so (and if they were abstaining from it because they were being surveilanced, the entire experiment is down the shitter. OTOH, if they knew they would get away with it for the same reason, it'd also wreck the correctness). Not to mention the idea of letting children knowingly be abused in the first place.
To summarize, you simply won't get a good statistical answer to this. Ever.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> So, using that as an example and considering how much more common computers are in every day life than cars (know anyone how hasn't driven in the past 12 months? Now, know anyone who hasn't touched a computer in any way shape or form in the same time period?), why don't we have compulsory "basic operation" licsenses for computers?
You need to get out of the area you live in a bit more if you think that computers are more common in everyday use than cars.
> Think about it this way; Truck drivers are forced to undergo rigerous driving training (in the form of logged experience and lessons from qualified staff) before they're allowed to sit for their license and operate the tool they use to make a living. Builders are required to undergo at least two years of apprenticeship plus TAFE (think community college) courses before they can build any type of large structure. People who pilot any form of marine vessel are required to sit a test and get their license before they can command a vessel capable of going over a certain speed/weighing more than a certain tonnage. Hell, even short-order *COOKS* are required to undergoe some form of food preperation and service training before most places will give them a job.
Um, in every single one of the cases you cite, the cost of failure can be fatal. Operating a computer that doesn't run fatally dangerous operations does not carry the same cost by a huge factor, and those who run computers that do run that level of risk (control systems in hospitals, aircraft guidance, and the nuclear power industry, for examples) are indeed licensed and trained for their work. You can't seriously consider that even something as awful as wiping out someone's life savings stands on the same level as killing them in a truck accident. This is apples-to-oranges comparison.
> And yet companies all across the world will hire someone into a position that required daily, extended user of office type computers at the drop of a hat. At best you can expect "Can you touch type? DO you know Microsoft Word?" Hell, even that's only mostly for secretaries!
If that's all the job requires, what's the motivation for demanding more? You can pay an IT person good money to protect your system from users who don't know more than touch typing, so why make everybody learn stuff they don't need to do their jobs?
> A basic computer competency test should be *compulsory* before anyone is allowed to purchase a computer.
Elitist drivel. You don't have the right to demand any given level of competence from anyone who can afford to own a computer. It's not your business. And no, not even when their system gets infected and attacks yours is it your business. When your lawn gets dandelions from upwind, do you cry out for people to be forced to get a lawn care license or not have one? Get real.
Let's go through your points one at a time:
> 1.) Basic hardware in a computer (stops the old "my cupholder is broken and the tv wont start!" support call when whats actually happened is that they've kicked out a cord at the back)
Basic hardware changes so fast that anyone who isn't actively using the knowledge will quickly have their knowledge turn obsolete. If you think not, then I ask, how many personal computers had CD-ROM drives, or any need for the term "gigabyte", only eight years ago?
> 2.) Basic use of word processing, database, presentation and spreadsheet software (by basic I mean VERY basic. "This is a spreadsheet. It does simple simple calculations, like so")
Why would someone who doesn't use these functions need to learn them? Spreadsheets aren't basic if I never need to use them. Presentation software? What does your short order cook or police officer or teenage gamer need with that? Get out of your boardroom and recognize that you don't have the right to define what's basic for everyone, and that "basic" needs aren't the same for everyone.
is a service that runs on top of windows rpc. That (ports 135-137) should have been blocked by your ISP! Why they are letting windows RPC traffic through to residential customers is beyond me. Don't tell me people are sharing their drives over the internet, because that's fucking retarded. Some broadband ISPs are such complete idiot farms.
The messenger service is actually useful if all the machines on your protected net are under your control. You can send popups to people in a controlled fashion without IM software. If a person is logged out, they'll get the message(s) the next time they log in.
But if he's the only machine on his connection, well that's not a big deal
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Probably the same stuff that was being smoked near any place shipping a unix operating system - remember "talk"? The internet used to be a much calmer place. (Actually, I haven't done a default install of any linux distro in ages - does redhat install talk-server by default?)
Now, had you added "in 2003" or "in this day and age" to your comment
You really can't cause lots of monetary damage to anyone but yourself with a computer if you're an average, unless someone hacks you and uses your computer to do it. That kind of stuff takes savy. So, should the person be responsible if someone hacks their computer? I don't believe so. Would you be responsible if someone cut your brake lines and you hit and killed someone with your car? There is a line where you start being negligent, but I don't want to draw it right here.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Even if he turned the computer off, it would turn itself back on and dial the Internet on its own.
Who's computer can turn on all by itself?
Heck, sporks can be pretty dangerous too! A spork competency test should be compulsory before using such a potentialy dangerous tool. Said test should include the following areas:
Hmm... actually, we could solve all of this and have a slashdot moderating competency test. Basically, whenever some short-sighted elitist suggests an insane reduction of basic freedoms for absolutely no reason, a mod of "insightful" will result in instant failure. Yeah, I think that would do it.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
The reason so many computers are so insecure is that most computer users are completely unqualified. But the solution isn't to legislate them off the net. I think computer vendors should administer a test, and if you pass, you get a discount.
When you get auto insurance, they offer to give you a video and CD-ROM (Windows, ugh) training course, and if you pass it, you get lower premiums. Dell could do this: after all, competent users cost them less in tech support time. So all of us nerds would get cheaper hardware, and everyone else would have an incentive to learn the basics of computer use and security.
Litigious bastards
Is it illegal for a minor to download sexual pictures of people his or her own age?
I'm just curious. I bet there are at least a few horny 13-year-olds who would rather look at people their own age.
It is possible to cut the brake lines so that fluid leaks, and your brakes go out mid-drive. But lets use an even better example. Lets say someone steals your car. You left it unlocked. This person runs over 3 kids. He gets away and leaves no trace. Are you guilty of a crime?
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
I'm happy courts give leighway on arguments like this, even with the potential for abuse in mind. It's like the idea of pleading insanity, or temporary insanity. Most people don't like the idea because what they've seen on TV, but in actual statistics, as far as the US is concerned, the plea is rarely used and it's even more rare for it to be accepted.
Same idea with computers. While an insanity plea means you couldn't control your mind, the virus plea means you couldn't control your computer, and it's totally plausible. I just bought a new laptop and was browsing through some sites, being bombarded with pop-ups. I was going to click a button, but the pop-ups kept... well, popping up, and just as I went to click the button, a pop-up sprung up and I clicked yes on that instead. (This was before I could install Mozilla or anything else to get around that kind of situation.) Almost immediately, there was all this porn-ware and spyware installed on my machine. I used ad-aware and spybot but, still not satisfied with the clean-up job, just formatted and reinstalled. The average user would not have even heard of ad-aware or spybot or thing that it was that big of a deal.
Use the computer of a friend of yours who is an average computer user. Downloads music, checks e-mail, chats... that kind of thing. Run ad-aware or spybot on their computers. When I do this to help clean up friends computers and improve performance, the programs find something like a thousand files that are in suspicion. Sure, it'd be great if they could be more educated about the situation, but the education isn't readily avalible unless you're looking for it. To compare the use of a computer to driving a car is absurd. The system for licenses is very organized and infractions can clearly be observed, and then punished, as they're in public. You drive outside so it's relatively easy to make sure you're doing the right thing and even then, not everyone who doesn't signal as they change lanes or stop at red lights gets caught. Now image trying to apply such a thing to people while they're in the privacy of their own home.
A solution (maybe it's temporary) will be to hear these exceptions in court and I could only hope that further courts will follow such examples.
This case tainted him forever. He'd lost his personal life, probably most of relatives turned away from him. It doesn't matter that he wasn't guilty. At least two types of crimes you can be accused and that will ruin your life whatever the outcome is. I mean peadophilia and rape. For many it will be enough that he was accused, no matter what was the decision of court. It's worse than shit under your shoe...
On the other hand he should be grateful that case ended this way, if he would gone to prison - many `nice' people there would take `care of him'.
"Mom, it was a virus... No, it was the RIAA... No, it was a big corporation... No, it was Gabe and Tycho... No, it was Dad... From the grave... No, it was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates fused together using alien android technology to make StevGate, the ultimate computer genius... Yeah. That's it..."
any with WOL or a bios that supports it. My old work dell used to turn itself on at 8am every weekday so it looked like i arrived early...