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Fighting Porn Vs. Ruining Innocent Lives
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.
Oh here's my personal favorite quote from TFA:
Admittedly the prosecution's behavior in this case is excessive, especially the part about pleading to an obscenity charge for a Playboy magazine, but it doesn't have to be another excuse to spread FUD about the evil "here there be dragons" internets.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
Yes, Absolutely! In fact, according to one study cited on Wikipedia, the age group most charged for Child Pornography offenses is young males aged 15-20. Note that the law makes absolutely no distinction between pictures depicting an 8 year old, and pictures depicting a 16 year old. Both are "Child" Porn, both get you convictions resulting in registered sex offender list for life. Which, yes indeed, means that two 16 year olds (who may very well be consenting depending on jurisdiction) can have sex with each other, and thats fine, but if they videotape it, or take pictures, they can end up with felony Child pornography convictions.
You don't read very well do you, it wasn't spyware and/or popups, it was trojans and/or rootkits.
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From the Article:
[For that answer, they turned to computer forensic expert Tammi Loehrs.
Loehrs went into the Bandys' computer and what she found could frighten any parent -- more than 200 infected files, so-called backdoors that allowed hackers to access the family computer from remote locations, no where near Matthew's house.]
With the proliferation of rootkits, and lack security on most home computers, I wouldn't be the least suprised if most perverts use hacked computers to access child porn these days.
I seem to remember there was a case in Texas similar to this about 8 months ago, where a man was arrested and charged with possessing child porn on his computer. Luckily for him, the local police department's computer forensics people were actually clueful and found the rootkit used to control the computer.
Not to mention the well documented use of open wireless networks to access illegal content.
The problem with computer security these days, is that it requires to far too much expertise and vigilance to keep your computer secure, even if you are an experienced professional, much less the proverbial hapless grandma.
When you have to spend hundreds of dollars a year, and 5 hours a week keeping your computer clean and updated, and then never open emails the look like they came from your grandkids, or from your quilting circle web-ring. All the supposed productivity benefits of using a computer rapidly disappear.
my old sig is obsolete, and I haven't come up with a stupid enough new one yet
We Canadians take "American" to mean a citizen of the USA; not of Canada, Mexico, Brazil or Argentina.