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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.
are the tools of the devils.
Not very good that when the prosecutors couldn't convict him for the porn they still wanted to stick some conviction on him! What's the idea that someone handing copies of playboy to their friends be convicted of a crime? There's nothing illegal in that magazine. The US have some weird attitudes to tits and nudity (playboy ain't really porn).
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.
lesser charge (namely, sharing a Playboy magazine with friends)
Wow. You USAians really live in a fucked up country if you can be charged with showing your mates a playboy.
Seems common sense is abscent.
If you are an average non-techy person, especially one prone to getting spyware and so on, you simply cannot afford to use Windows. Hell, if it's still too much money, and 2 years of your life, the rumours, the 'no smoke without fire' retardo simpleminded shit, the stress and the upset is still too much to bear then at least do yourself a favour and install Firefox ... if you are going to visit the type of website that gets you overloaded with this type of spyware then you need to give yourself some sort of protection!
Conversely, if you are a fan of kiddy fiddling pictures, you surely must use a Windows machine without any anti-spyware applications. And IE6.
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]
But hey, Obedience to The Law is all that matters.*
*Excepting the Bush Administration.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
this wouldn't be an issue. There are ways to determine (using system logs, install logs, and the vast information available in the system registry) when content arrived and by what method. When it was determined that the system was being remote-controlled, the boy was spared a lifetime of embarrassment.
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.
"Lame" - Galaxar
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.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
This is not isolated to porn (duh). When a prosecutor has it out for you, there isn't much that can be done. Often there is a willingness to make an example for others, or to appear tough on a specific kind of crime for political benefit.
Chris Soghoian 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.
FairTax baby!
But is it plausible to convict a 16y old for child pornography?
Next they'll be prosecuting young mothers breastfeeding their kids on sexual molestation charges...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Your friend was extremly lucky
they blame everything but the vulnerable system that propagate this kludge...
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.
I'll just let my signature speak for me.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Just think of what terrorists could do with this sort of reaction?
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.
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!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Nudity and sex are Evil, but blowing someone up because they live near someone we think is bad is Good.
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.
I am officially gone from
what we can't be sure of, is was this kid looking at pictures at all
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.
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.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Most people have very little reason to be connected to the internet all the time, or have their computer on all the time. Save the environment: turn off that computer!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That's simply not true. Your instructor is full of shit. It would be trivial to write a small app that would remain memory resident and would periodically launch popups containing illicit content downloaded from various dubious web servers well outside US jurisdiction. The app could be easily installed without the users knowledge using any number of IE exploits. If you can't see this, then please do the rest of us a favor and get out of computer forensics. Your ignorance is dangerous and, as a forensics technician, it could cost people their freedom and their good name.
And we sadists in our wisdom unleash Windows XP as the tool to use. In fact it's a shite solution for that 90%.
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
Saying Windows comes with a screen door is being generous. I would say it comes with a picture of a screen door and then brags about how "secure" that picture makes your computer.
"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."
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.
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.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The reason child porn is illegal is not because being attracted to minors is a crime, not matter what your age. The reason it is a crime is because you are feeding an industry that is preying on children. Children under 18 are not considered old enough to make the decision to appear in porn. So sure, at 16, it's perfectly reasonable to be attracted to girls his age. But supporting those girls as they start a pornography career (under the influence of others) is what's wrong!
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.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
"OMG little Johnny saw a boobie! Armageddon is upon us!"
/.ers like myself), and it's just stupid to be so repressed about the whole deal.
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 problem, and to virtually all of the problems that are associated with computer ownership, is simple and inevitable. Do away with the personal computer.
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.
There's one point about these arguments I don't understand...
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?
I am thinking that they are setup as IRC fserves, black ftp sites and such.
You are all a bunch of idots.
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.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mohandas Gandhi
No need to lower it. I'd be willing to bet that nearly all of us break a half dozen laws or more each day. Just thinking about it, I can come up with about 10 infractions for me today, and those are of laws I know about. Most are of crap no sane law enforcement officer would ever do anything about, but the point is they're still on the books and they could, at any moment, decide to enforce them.
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.
If you were dealing with illegal pictures, would you store them on your own computer? The video linked to in the article mentions child pornographers storing their data on other computers than their own, so maybe they use some kind of p2p network where "zombie" machines store the pictures/videos. That way, if police find out where the pictures come from, the child pornographers would not be at risk themselves.
The first of my friends to try installing linux didn't realize the particular distribution came with FTP installed with an anonymous account. After spending a few hours trying to figure out why the internet was so slow, he discovered someone was using his machine to distribute porn, some of which was of questionable legality.
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?
A two year old article is all you can do?
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.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the worst thing for a legal system to do is to convict innocents.
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.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It seems to me that the problem with over-zealous prosecutors could be that they are elected in many places. They need to get a certain number of convictions for certain crimes to show that they're "tough on kiddie porn/drugs/terrorism/jay-walking".
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.
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.
There should be some sort of licensing requirements, like driver's licenses
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.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
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.
>Children under 18 are not considered old enough to make the decision to appear in porn.
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.
There's one point about these arguments I don't understand...
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 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.
So now I'm labeled a pure hardcore sex offender. I'm on the website here in my state, my glorious picture is up there, they put posters all around my white color suburbanite neighborhood, my neighbors who knew me couldn't believe it, the ones who didn't' saw me and pulled their kids aside like I was going to eat them alive when it was the farthest thing from the truth. I've had people spit upon my father who has a lawn business, mom who gets harrassed at her school from other teachers cause of it, my friends got hassled and dropped me like the plague. I got to see who my true friends and people were. People who were still there, still loyal, looked past my stupid mistake and realized "Hey, he did something really dumb, but he didn't rape some kid or kidnap a school bus full of girl scouts."
You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything dumb.
The people trying to convince you otherwise are sick - plain and simple. If it weren't for people like you, we wouldn't be here as a species. You are attracted to females in their sexual prime, and this makes you normal.
Stay strong. Karma is real. :)
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
- 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...
No need to lower it. I'd be willing to bet that nearly all of us break a half dozen laws or more each day. Just thinking about it, I can come up with about 10 infractions for me today, and those are of laws I know about. Most are of crap no sane law enforcement officer would ever do anything about, but the point is they're still on the books and they could, at any moment, decide to enforce them.
And this is my big argument against surveillance.
Often the question is asked: if you've done nothing wrong, what do you have to hide?
This ignores an entire category of people. What if you have done something wrong?
I smoke drugs with friends (occasionally), I have had sex with people (my age) when it was illegal for us to, I have consumed alcohol while under the legal drinking age, and I have cracked DVDs that I've bought to watch them. I've idled my car for longer than 5 minutes (to charge my battery), I've watched a torrent download, and I've played music at a party after 11pm.
As a potential criminal, I appreciate the fact that I can run from my crimes, and not get caught. There are far too many moralists and politicians to create a legal system that is just - or at least just enough that surveillance is safe and right to deploy.
My $0.02.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Sure it's possible to burn a CD with those images, and not just because some mysterious pedophile hacker is doing it remotely or via malicious code.
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...
It takes an idiot to do cool things - that's why it's cool!
You're looking too far into this. The goal and effect of irrational sexual legislation is to promote hysteria, and instill a sense of guilt into young people. The religious nuts can't burn us anymore (legally), so they use the legal system to promote their sick, twisted views of humanity. It is the same reason they abhor sexual education in schools - they would rather teenagers die of STDs than fuck outside of marriage.
I wish I was joking.A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Frankly I really don't care. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume she's reached puberty. Maybe I'm wrong but it isn't the impression that I got from reading his comment.
In which case, it's up to him and her (or her and him) and everyone else (except perhaps their respective families) should fuck right off. Sex is a very personal and private thing and is no business of the state.
I know this doesn't jive with current American mores but I'm past the point of caring. I'm just so sick of it all.A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
That's something I really don't get. It contradicts itself.
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).
Here's the problem with your assertion: The product itself did not cause any harm. Rather, a third party -- not the product creator/vendor -- caused the harm through their direct action by exploiting weaknesses in the product.
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.
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.
Don't make it into a pissing contest.
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.
As a US citizen living abroad I sympathise with other residents of the Americas taking umbrage with our appropriation of an entire continent's name. However, there isn't really any sensible replacement. USAian looks and sounds stupid, so you will never get 300+ million people adopting it, no matter how sympathetic they are to your point. Every other identifier for folks from the US, from "yank" to "gringo" has derogatory connotations, so you won't see us stampeding to change our label to that either.
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
OMG! 10 years ago, when I was in my 20s, internet just evolved around here. The most interesting part of the net was IRC and he IRC scene was quite developed here (Slovenia, Europe) at that time.
:-). However, 16 years old was the bottom age limitation. Younger girls were not even interesting at that age any more.
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!
There have been a bunch of comments already and no one has mentioned WebeWeb? I find that strange. I'm at work and filtered, so I can't google for links, but look for "Pierson" (the photographer) and "WebeWeb" (the umbrella site). It seems that the U.S. govt now believes that photographs of clothed children *not* engaged in sexual acts are now child porn. All I can do is shake my head, wonder, and start looking for some sensible place to migrate to when I retire in a few years.
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.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.
I guess my first question is how the kid can be in trouble if he isn't even an adult yet...