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Child Porn Probe Uses Live Internet Wiretap
rrkap writes "The Sacramento Bee is reporting
that Jason Heath Morgan, a suspect in a child porn case was subject to the first 'live internet wiretap.' According to the story, 'Technology used in the surveillance is very similar to a phone tap. Agents attached a monitoring device to Morgan's phone line, then tracked his Internet activity from remote computers.' This packet sniffing was authorized by the PROTECT Act - officially Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act, which authorizes such tapping of internet connections."
Just curious, I realize a lot of slashdotters have jobs where you have to help with implementing some of these things, how do you feel when asked to assist?
With technology like this in place, it becomes harder for the government to justify the need for less discriminate and more easily abused capablities like Carnivore/DCS-1000 or their demands that VoIP wiretapping capability be built into ISP networking gear. If they can tap someone's net connection like their phone line, they don't need to have things installed in every ISP to be able to track what someone does.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Support the WYPSIDYOPINEPOL USA Act today! (That's the Would You Please Stop Insulting the Dignity of Your Office and the Public's Intelligence by Naming Every Piece Of Legislation with an Unbelievably Stupid Acronym Act)
I don't know about you, but I hate this invasion of privacy the gouvenment is doing.
I have nothing to hide, and most people don't, but in a few years, everybody will be scared to click links because of fear of what might load, and the cops thinking they went there on purpose.
And yes, it will happen, and it pretty much already is (with cellphones and other methods of telecommunication).
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
"used by the vigilantes"
Vigilantism could work, just have them cut off all their penises, or for woman their breasts.
Also the sick species of Bonobo Chimps should be wiped out since those animals fuck each other, even adult / child sexual intercourse. Such a sick fucking world we live in, we must reject anything that is disgusting or different from us and make it extinct.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
1) Internet wiretapping has been going on for years, this does not surprise me. /. community.
2) It will be very difficult to garner any sympathy for these sickos from myself or the
Or any community for that matter.
I hate sigs.
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Than going after the consumers versus going after the producers(I'm not defending consumers in any way though). All this will do is ensure that the consumers use better cryptography etc to protect what they are doing. Just like they started to use the internet after the government went after the people who would order it by mail.
There is a different, and better way to catch these people. Most of these scumbags who make this stuff are quite proud of what they do, and often put both their faces and the faces of their victims in the picture. Canadian and US authorities have recently been using these faces to track down both the people commiting the acts and the victims. Going after the producers is a lot easier, and probably a lot more effective at stopping future abuse than going after consumers(esp. ones who don't pay any money), since the producers will probably continue to abuse new children regardless of whether or not they share the photos.
The farther you get from an endpoint, the harder it is to actually reassemble the stream. This is because packets can take multiple routes to their destination -- if not through load balancing, then through asymmetric routes (i.e. the packets from the client to the server are taking a wildly different network route from the path taken from server to client.)
Asymmetric routing always seems to confuse people. It shouldn't -- the traffic on the freeways isn't symmetrical in each direction, and sometimes it makes sense to take one highway to work and another back.
Upshot of all this is that, while all the long haul fiber lines actually are probably tapped by someone or other, it's an enormously tricky problem to integrate the data accurately, and you ultimately still don't get as good results as having a direct feed a hop or two up from the endpoint being monitored.
Now, there have been tools for quite some time to do realtime stream monitoring -- Driftnet is a cheap (and occasionally very scary) one, but there have been solutions floating around the corporate space that basically reassemble a browser screen in realtime. I imagine the gov space has even nicer stuff.
You know, "tcpbust" (a sniffer with integrated safe reassembly, third party cryptographically signed timestamps, and a pony) would probably be a really interesting thing to write...
--Dan
During this time, a paediatrician was hounded out of her home and forced to move because people incorrectly associated her job title with paedophilia.
After Marc Antony's "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech which incited the mob:
Third Citizen: Your name, sir, truly.
Cinna the Poet: Truly, my name is Cinna.
First Citizen: Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.
Cinna the Poet: I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
Fourth Citizen: Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
Cinna the Poet: I am not Cinna the conspirator.
Fourth Citizen: It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.
-William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III.3
Just reporting files to the FBI does nothing. The name of the file does not tell you it is or isnt child porn. The file itself might be on the computer but this does not tell you that the owner of this computer is the child pornographer who created the file.
So it's more complicated than simply arresting random people who have files with the wrong names or who have kiddie porn files. This does absolutely nothing to stop the creation of these files and you only are arresting the people who share it.
To me it seems to be more of an attack on P2P and internet freedom than an attack on childporn. Everyone knows the childporn is produced offline yet everyone is focused on the internet? This would be equal to going to the ghettos and trailer parks to arrest drug addicts. Yes of course you will find drug addicts if you look for them but arresting them does absolutely nothing because the drug dealers will continue producing more drugs.
In this situation we have to remove the producers of child porn and by doing so, the child porn will eventually become too rare to find and won't be floating around on kazaa. I don't really see how tapping peoples internet connections has anything to do with stopping childporn, it seems more like invading peoples privacy. If there is a wiretap used it should be to monitor the activity of the computer, not monitor internet activity.
Anyone who produces childporn most likely uses Windows and one of the digital camera programs. Shouldnt law enforcement work with the makers of this software and hardware to allow them to tap just that software or access JUST the pictures on a computer? Or movies if movies are the problem could still be handled in such a way so that it does not require a wiretap.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I made the mistake in college of choosing this subject for a study/report. Once I got a few days into the research, and found things like the 1979 Calvin Klien ad for "designer jeans for kids" was being hammered by conservative groups as being kiddy porn because the fully clothed 12 year olds in the ad - wearing the designer jeans - were in a standard collegiate wrestling starting position. The girl was on her hands and knees, with the boy leaning over with one arm underneath her, and the other grasping her arm. The conservative group determined this looked too much like doggie style sex, so therefore was pornographic - since they were kids - child porn. Calvin Klien pulled the ads under pressure from this group. Personally, I think it was a far cry from what I'd consider child porn. Things like this made that report the most difficult thing I've ever written. Focusing my position on what I thought was (in)appropriate use of children in advertising rather than the general "end child porn" paper it was supposed to be.
As a civilian employee who does computer support for a police department for a living, I get involved with these kinds of things too often. How do I feel about it? It's a job. It's my job. It makes me sick to know what kind of disgusting filth is out there. Most of the time there is no real need for any special technical trickery, these crooks usually are total morons and the evidence is blatantly obvious all over their machines. The detectives generally need no special tech help to gather and present the evidence for a prosecution case.
Probably the worst case I've ever had to deal with was a murder investigation. The victim had met the killer online in a certain chat room. We already knew who the killer was for sure, just wanted some more evidence to help bolster the case. We obtained the victim's computer, cloned it, extracted her chat logs and buddy list and then placed the clone online for a day under her usual logon account. 100% of everyone on her buddy list, with the sole exception of the suspected killer himself (because he was the only member of this list who knew she was dead), saw her name come online and tried to chat with her, repeatedly asking if she were there and why no response. Of course there was no response. Seeing all her online penpals trying to reach out and talk to her, since they had not heard from her in days and were undoubtedly wondering and worrying why (they had no idea she was now dead), and getting no reponse back, made me want to cry like a baby.
The way to stop childporn has nothing to do with P2P or the internet.
The real way to stop child porn is to sit back and wait for Moore's Law.
Within 10 years tops, computer graphics will have gotten so good that there is no longer any reason to use actual human actors in porn- whether children or adults. Criminal's won't take the risk of using real children when they can just buy "3d Poser 2015" for $199 and crank out 100% fake pics.
Remember that in the USA, illegal child porn is only pictures whose production actually involved the sexual abuse of children- not just ones that look that way.
How about A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples. "Meta-analyses [based on 59 studies based on college samples] revealed that students with [child sexual abuse] (CSA) were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant when studies controlled for FE."
And could you elaborate on what exactly "validated scientific research" proves that pedophelia (sic) is abhorrent.
Not to mention that P2P child porn downloading is an entirely different issue. So despite damage to kids from child abuse being minor, despite not all sex being abuse and despite porn downloading being mostly unrelated to real sex with kids, having one questionable image on your PC is a crime in the US. If this is not "biblical bible thumping", it's just stupidity of general public, sensationalism of the media and opportunism of the politicians.
Child porn is not bad. Real scientific research (as opposed to some mythical studies about "abhorrence" - sound like something a preacher would say) showed that about 25% of adult men can be sexually aroused by children (Freund & Costell 1970, Hall et al. 1995, Quinsey et al. 1975, references from Wikipedia). It is perfectly normal to jerk off to images of naked kids or kids having sex. No harm, no foul. Just keep in mind the difference between your sexual fantasies and the real world and you'll be fine. Just like with videogames.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Child porn hurts children. It's a business with two sides: vendors and subscribers. If only one side is present there is no transaction and children will not be exploited because it won't be profitable.
So...viewing child porn is a part of the problem. Children must be protected against exploitation by adults - its why we have child labor laws in most first-world countries.
In the United States there is a Supreme Court decision that clearly allows for the definition of child porn as prohibited speech.
What to DO with those who both use and create child pornography is a more complex problem. The last time I looked there is no known way to cure a pedophile. It is how their sexuality is wired. Many will want to find and use children. Many will not. For the pornographers themselves - toss them in jail and go after their assets as if they were drug dealers (they are).
Personally I'm in favor of real asylums for those whose desires are incompatible with the world. They do not need to be punished, they need to be isolated. Which means decent living accomodations, a setting that is more campus-like - except it is isolated - protecting society from them AND them from society.
Biologically, once a person is mature enough to procreate they should start attracting members of the oppoite sex.
It is society who has decided that sex is not an acceptable thing for people under 18. Anyone who believes there is a fundemantal difference between 17 years 11 months and 18 years 0 months it just kidding themselves.
Humans are not autonomous biological entities, they are creatures of society. Many aspects of their behavior are both formed and created by society. Society sets and enforces various rules on behavior.
In every human society I have heard of there are limits on what are considered acceptable mating partners.
Your point about the difference between someone who is 17 years and 11 months old versus 18 years old is reasonable. It begins to fall apart as you widen the gap. Surely you wouldn't even think of making the same claim between an 18 year old and a 13 year old?
For the most part society doesn't care if a 19 year old guy has a 17 year old girlfriend, although it may in some instances. It will care greatly about a 19 year old guy with a 13 year old "girlfriend". The 19 year old will be lucky to escape serious trouble. A 30 year old guy with a 13 year old "girlfriend" is almost certain to go to jail.
Child pornographers take things even further, using even the youngest children. They are mentally defective. If the only thing that does it for you as an adult is to look at pictures of 13 year old kids, or even younger, you have a serious mental problem and need to seek help immediately, before you find yourself with a long prison sentence.
Well, being sexually aroused by kids is not sick - if 25% of men can be, it's not sick. Neither is jerking off to something you are sexually aroused. Fantasy != reality. Just like killing people in computer games is ok, so is looking at child porn.
Yours is a typical example of hysterical response to child porn. First of all, asking the children was exactly what was done in all 58 stuides. The researchers asked college students specially designed questions controlling for different factors, eliminating bias, etc., etc. And it turns out that there were very few kids who were fucked up for life. And those few that were usually had a pretty fucked up family, which was responsible for them being fucked up.
Of course, if you have an agenda, then such research is harmful and should be replaced by blunt psychological pressure on kids to persuade them they actually have been terribly abused. Sometimes the damage done by the police, school, parents and psychologists is greater than the damage done by the sexual act itself.
As for the contribution, I have never paid a single cent for child porn and I have no intention of doing so. The only way it can influence child porn producers is to discourage them, since it's very hard to profit from child porn.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
As someone that has been on the receiving end of child sexual abuse (not someone in my family, just some sicko that lied about his age and another sicko "friend" that lured me in) I can say that you are mostly correct. As with anything of this nature my initial reaction was bad. I've given my testimony to the police and don't feel nearly as bad about it anymore. It was not a violent sex crime, but despite the fact that the guy is still apparently not in jail, still going around and soliciting police plants online, I still don't feel any more changed (for better or worse) than I have been by any other 'normal' relationship. It hasn't really affected me in any way, less perhaps making me a bit more wary of people that seem less-than-truthful. Anyway, my $0.02. Your milage may vary.
The harms from sexual predation have been answered by psychologists, law enforcement, physicians and so forth.
That is incorrect. Firstly, law enforcement knows nothing of the studies, they just do as they are told. Further, with the case at hand, a "protection service" is involved, not law enforcement.
Further, physicians can only speak when actual actions happened that caused damage.
Thus, the only group worthy of being asked are psycologists.
However, psycologists only see the cases where there was abuse, or where the pedophile did activities that ultimately led to his arrest. Being this is a small amount of total pedophiles (one must assume that most are not caught, and then there are still others who do not partake in such actions (which constitute the majority)) the people they have spoken to are not an accurate representation of the group.
Also, there is a social stigmatism on the matter, which impedes proper impartial study of the matter. So much so, that when Congress heard a report mentioning many adolecents recalling positive experiences with pedophiles, it was rejected out of hand.
Thus, in conclusion, the matter has not been shown at all. In fact, the fear that many people have on the matter is possibly indicative of nefarious traits in themselves. Perhaps one day we shall review the matter truthfully.
Have you read my journal today?
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