Slashdot Mirror
Ex-judge Gets 27 Months on Evidence From Hacked PC
netbsd_fan writes "A former California judge has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for possession of illegal pornography, based entirely on evidence gathered by an anonymous vigilante script kiddie in Canada. At any given time he was monitoring over 3,000 innocent people. The anonymous hacker says, "I would stay up late at night to see what I could drag out of their computers, which turned out to be more than I expected. I could read all of their e-mails without them knowing. As far as they were concerned, they didn't know their e-mails had even been opened. I could see who they were chatting with and read what they were saying as they typed."
Haha. I actually laughed: that's how stupid your post was.
The point the grandparent was trying to make still stands. The people can be locked up for looking at pictures (in some cases, pictures created entirely from someone's imagination), and pictures are expression and therefore are (or should be) protected--absolutely.
How ironic it is to see someone bleating the "think of the children" line while simultaneously accusing someone else of propagandizing. The initial humor of your post has worn off and now I'm left with sad disgust--is this how low we've sunk?
The acts of child molestation/exploitation should be illegal--children don't have the necessary mens rea to consent to sexual acts--and we should punish those responsible for violating the rights of those children. Viewing a picture of a naked child, even if it gives you a boner, should not be a crime. This is absolutely a slippery slope, and if you can't see that, I pity you.