Slashdot Mirror
Major UK Child Porn Investigation Flawed
Oxygen99 writes "The Guardian (UK) is carrying a story on Operation Ore, a major police investigation aimed at catching online pedophiles. This has resulted in several high-profile arrests, such as those of Pete Townshend and Robert Del Naja (both falsely accused), while attracting significant press attention. Yet, the reality of the investigation is one of stolen credit cards, wrongful accusations, and ignorance leading to a significant number of the 7,292 people on the list being wrongfully accused of a very emotionally charged crime. There have been 39 suicides and a number of other people on the list will probably never be investigated. It seems to me this case highlights flaws inherent in the way law enforcement agencies handle evidence that only a small minority of front-line officers fully understand."
Online pedophiles? How can you have sex with a child online?
cameras watching your every move, laws designed to control your behaviour [asbo and the like]. Congrats, you live in a nanny-police state.
If only they could actually do anything meaningful with all this "order" they're creating.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Police are stunned to learn that people who look at child porn might use stolen credit card information to pay for it.
Seriously, because child porn is such an emotional issue, everyone tends to leap without looking. Sadly this results in a lot of false accusations and lives ruined. Because these charges are so serious, officials must take more time before jumping to conclusions over any accusation.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWFirst Pedophile? Get the fuck off my Slashdot you pervert.
The government has no interest in prosecuting child porn offenders. They have found the perfect way to get rid of someone without anyone protesting. Simply accuse them of child porn possession and you've pretty much got an open and shut case. Judges are in on the system and juries have been trained to see anyone accused of such a crime as guilty until proven innocent.
Who would seriously by Child Porn on their own credit card? You'd have to be a really dumb person. If that's all these cops are going on, then the investigations should be shut down. It should be expected that the people purchasing are using stolen credit cards.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Baby Boomers make terrible lawyers.
--
make install -not war
No evidence against man in child porn inquiry who 'killed himself' ... the commodore was dead the next day.
The inquest into his death heard that computer equipment and a camera memory chip belonging to Commodore White had yielded no evidence that he downloaded child pornography, and a letter was written by Ministry of Defence police to Naval Command on 5 January this year indicating that there were "no substantive criminal offences" to warrant pressing charges. But the Second Sea Lord, Sir James Burnell-Nugent, feared that the media would report the case and on 7 January removed him from his post anyway
In one case at Hull Crown Court last year, a distinguished hospital consultant was acquitted after it emerged that hackers had used his credit card on Landslide. The judge dismissed some police evidence as "utter nonsense".
Reduce, reuse, cycle
The reason that everyone jumps on this bandwagon is because it gets the votes.
Everyone hates it. Everyone wants the government to "do something about it". Everyone wants it done today.
So very little thought is put into these projects and the more people that can be swept up, the better. That way you're fairly sure, statistically, that you'll get one of the "bad guys".
But it seems more likely that you'll catch an innocent, high profile person who's appearance in your project will reveal how flawed that project is.
For instance, look up the Webe Web investigation here in the US... and it's all because of mass public hysteria over pedophiles... everyone is convinced there is a "predator" around every corner.
The ironic thing is, here in the US, most of these investigations are predicated on a law pushed by Mark Foley (R-FL)
the events of this case means that law enforcement must take due diligence when hunting child pornographers
it doesn't mean that law enforcement should stop hunting child pornographers
you would think this is an obvious difference, but you watch the kinds of comments these sad events conjure here
the problem, of course, is shoddy law enforcement. but whenever something like this happens- the police bungle it big time, people come out with comments pointed against the very concept of law enforcement itself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...won't be fooled again
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
There could certainly have been developments in this since however many years ago that it happened, but didn't Pete Townshend acknowledge having sought out and downloaded child pornography, claiming it was "research"? Whether or not you believe that, he certainly wasn't "falsely accused" in the sense used in the story.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I use paypal
And this relates to the story how? The article was about false accusations, and that most of the so called child porn sites being used as evidences in these cases were just dummy sites without much of anything on them being used for credit card fraud. Kind of a novel approach to credit card fraud at that, a bit closer to pay per click fraud than traditional credit card fraud as it was the hosts committing the fraud and relying on the re-seller to take the hit for the charge-backs.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
A friend of some of my friends, a man I run into about once a year was caught up in this.
The story I heard was that he claimed innocence but pleaded guilty as the legal advise he got was that he would be let off with a fine but he would definetly be found guilty and sent to prison if he tried to fight it.
Why yes... "Research"... That's it...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Coming from Britain I can say this is typical of our government. They are of the impression all it takes to solve a problem is to assign someone (typically totally unsuited) to the task of assigning money to agencies or companies (with the greatest kick back) with absolutely no insight into how to handle things and then sitting back thinking how to BS there way out of the mess that inevitably ensues (just watch them on the news, they are experts at dodging the questions they get asked about how they fucked up again).
The way they try to fix this is to create new agencies in between agencies.. all this creates is more paper work that never finds its way into the correct hands and causes more problems and tax pounds which could be better put elsewhere.
Britain is essentially becoming a broken beurocractic piss hole.
Because this is exactly what is going on.
Read radical news here
You can flag your account so that you're notified anytime someone does something in your name.
Actually, I think Wham! said it better with "wake me up, before you go-go".
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
It runs contrary of privacy laws.
Did you realize the title of the article included the two letters "U" and "K", juxtaposed? It means "United Kingdom", not "United States."
So the bad guys are swapping/selling LOTS of info.
So you never even had to use your card to buy porn.
That's the tie-in with all the other cracking cases reported here.
Now, all it would take is for the bad guys get a clue and start their own DATABASE of info from these various items.
They could quickly collect as much info about you as the credit companies have. And THAT means fraud / identity theft on a HUGE scale.
Stolen cards would be a minor problem at that point. They'd be applying for new cards, new loans, passports, drivers licenses, etc
While I hope of course that legal authorities learn from their mistakes (although sometimes it seems that the only thing they learn from - and that grudgingly - are massive lawsuits, and I'm sure these revelations will spawn plenty) - I hope every story like this encourages another person to read every credit card statement, carefully and completely. I keep an eye out for fraudulent charges (and not just the patently illegal stuff - it is that telemarketer for your card company lying and telling you there will be no charge for this trial offer (as long as you call and cancel after the end of the trial period of which you will be given no notice), the magazine that remembered to stop sending you issues but forgot to stop charging your card after you canceled, the credit card company that decided to start billing you an annual fee (maybe you missed that two line notice in 7pt. type buried in the middle of that mini paperback of terms of service changes they sent you a month ago?). I also watch those interest rates. It's amazing how many ways, even if you have things on "fixed" rates, they find to basically rip you off. I don't hold it against them (any debt I carry is my own damn fault and responsibility), though I do pay attention to who screws me the hardest and manage my bills accordingly. The point is, your carelessness is not just essential to fraudsters prospering, it is a cornerstone of the credit card companies' business strategies. There are only two defenses possible: eliminating credit use entirely (even a card you pay off monthly may sneak in a mid-month interest assessment and start sneaking a few bucks a month out of you or slip in some BS fee) or reading every statement.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
that even being accused of it should ruin one's life. Virginia Tech shooting had a false suspect. The mistake has been revealed and he is fine now. Why should this be any different? We can not allow ourselves to become so horrified by anything that we embark on a witchhunt without due process and skepticism. Otherwise, corrupt government or an angry neighbor can ruin your life by just suggesting you are a pedophile. Or distract people from real problems - deaths in Iraq, global warming, poverty - by dishing out some juicy news to keep the media busy.
Townsend pleaded guilty. Anyone know when his book is out?
Jeese. Spend one minute doing some research why doncha?
http://www.experian.co.uk/
-and all the others I can't be bothered to find for you.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
From what I read in some of the linked articles, in many cases it wasn't so much a case that stolen card numbers were used, but rather that the portal/payment access site processed payments for merchants both legal and illegal (but if you were found with a payment, it was assumed to be illegal). At least according to the PC Pro Mag link from the wiki entry
For example, let's say that they found that a paypal account was used to sell illegal pornography. The smart thing to do would be to determine which goods sold were illegal, and if possible follow up on the buyers. What seems to have been done, instead, was to go after EVERYONE who bought from the seller, whether the purchase turned out to be for fuzzy bunny slippers or underage smut.
Unfortunately, these type of charges, and the revulsion the instill, tend to inspire an automatic assumption of guilt coupled with overzealous prosecution and an lack of desire to delve too far into the evidence (after all, if there are illegal images, who would want to be the one that has to sort through them all). What I really can't understand is that while the actions against the assumed purchasers of said material were rapid and heavy, the providers of the material were left fairly untouched.
Maybe it's just my point of view, but I'd imagine that the sellers of this variety material - especially those with enough resources to start a full payment network - would be much less than the seekers. However, it's easier for the police to leave those that actual peddle in and commit atrocious acts active, as it allows them to dragnet all the possible users. Bust the drug addicts and leave the dealers?
if pedophilia is the desire to have sex with children, are there cases when people download child pornography with no intention of having sex with a child?
Strike the 'child' part, and re-evaluate for legal adult porn. Does the downloader intend he'll be having sex with a porn star?
and if so, are they still pedophiles?
Repeat the above process - does the adult *wish* he were having sex with a porn star? I'd guess both cases are true - some of those folks really do think that, some would rather be happily married. Unless you go in for the whole 'adultry of the mind' or 'adultry against God' theories (then they're all going to hell, but don't suffer legal consequences).
So, if the test is to capture all pervs who think little children are sexy, then it's a fair net. If the test is to capture all pervs who are likely to commit a crime, it's probably too wide a net. I'm not sure anybody has defined the requirements adequately. But to equate viewing pictures with intent to commit a real world crime - that's a big leap.
That's not to say that they're not in possession of contraband or that they're not enabling the commission of crimes (they are) but that's a separate issue. Due to the high emotional impact of the various crimes they're often conflated, but that's not helpful for proper legal prosecution of the actual crimes.
The case of CGI versions of the above really gets to the heart of the issue, because the contraband and creation crimes aspect is factored out, leaving the original question to stand alone.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
and you'll see the witch trials.
There's always SOME hysteria around that can be used to drive a personal agenda.
A blogger i read once covered this using an 'ore is bad law' website, my understanding was that the (usa) police decided that all of an paypal like payment processors transactions where all for kiddie porn - that was fault 1.
English police even tampered with the american electronic evidence - that was fault 2.
This explained to me while Paypal don't like the police (thats not working with them) - for say if you bought a car on ebay - your a child sex offender too apparently according to the policeman.
If im honest - Paypals approach to tell the police to 'get lost' seems the right one. The damage has been done and police forces worldwide have been declared retards and morons by corporations like ebay.
If i was a payment processor I'd consider that not cooperating with the police was a wise business decision and what ever badness it might generate it will payoff in the longterm.
Law enforcement needs better staff - give it 20 twenty years.
We currently give law enforcement officials far too much leeway. The individual officials involved, not the state, should be held responsible for situations where their failure to engage in responsible behavior leads to a miscarriages of justice.
The best example of this by far is the exclusionary rule in the United States. (I don't know how this sort of thing works in other countries.) It is rare for a police officer who obtains evidence improperly to be punished for their (sometimes outright illegal) actions. Instead what we do is make the evidence itself inadmissable, in effect punishing the one innocent party in the entire situation: The victim of the crime!
As constitutional scholar Leonard Levy argued in his wonderful 1974 book Against the Law (sadly out of print), the admissability of evidence should be determined solely by the legitimacy of that evidence. If there are indications that the evidence is bogus or fabricated, it absolutely must be inadmissable. But if the mistakes are procedural in nature and the evidence is sound it should be admissible and the police should be severely disciplined for their procedural violation in obtaining it.
The way things work right now is that the police feel free to "roll the dice", engaging in actions of dubious legitimacy with impunity. They calculate, correctly, that it's a no-lose thing for them to do: If they get caught they lose evidence they wouldn't have had in the first place and suffer no penalty, if they don't the "bad guy" (who may be nothing of the sort) gets what's coming to them. The tacit way this encourages the police to violate rules or even laws leads unavoidably to little if any respect for the truth, and it's all downhill from there - citizens are well aware that this goes on and stop trusting law enforcement.
But change this so that officers are held accountable for their actions and police will change their behavior accordingly. Firing or even jailing the officer responsible for, say, a blatently illegal search would send a nice clear message to other officials to clean up their act.
In the present case I have no idea if there were procedural violations. But there were definitely serious and ongoing errors in judgment, and the odds are good that the officers responsible were never held accountable for them. Doing so of course would not change this any less of a fiasco, but it might prevent it from happening again.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh, that's entirely related to the story. Don't you see? Anything that protects The Children must be done, no matter what the consequences and fallout. Even if it doesn't actually protect The Children. If you're not with us, you're against us. You perv. The cops are on their way to your house right now.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
That's what you think, but they're actually on the way to John Cardholders house at 833 N. Scammed drive 31337 Redmond Washington
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
except that, above and beyond all of what you wrote, there are real criminals out there, real child pornographers at work
such that if you live in a society where the shock and outrage at the bungling cops outweighs the shock and outrage at the child pornographers, and the child pornographers are therefore treated with tender care and total consideration, while the cops are torn a new sphincter for every little mistake, do you really have a grasp on justice?
i see far more bungling stupidity on the side of law enforcement, no real evil. but there are people out there who see only nefarious scheming and career opportunism in the motivations of the police, and not a single iota of disapproval for the actual criminals ruining the lives of actual innocent citizens. kind of crazy priorities if you ask me
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but i fear criminals more. criminality abirdges my rights just as surely as any bad cop can, only more so
so what i don't understand is a society full of shock and outrage over every police misstep, seeing evil machinations in every act which is far better explained due to simple incompetence, and yet not a single word of disapproval or anger at the actual criminals the police are hunting
the priorities seem screwed up to me
the concept of paramount importance, for both of us, is freedom and liberty
but why do you not see the criminal violating those things far more than a bungling cop does?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually with all due deference to Wham, the Sex Pistols said it quite best to when they sang the immortal:
"Throwing the baby, out with the bathwater"
Oh dash and fiddlesticks, that was of course Eddie Ten-Pole Tudor.
What I meant to say was
"God Save The Queen, it's a facist regime, made you moron, a potential H-Bomb...
and I guess that's more than enough completely off-topic heavily formatted surrealism on this Ubuntu day of days.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
WTF?
Pete Townshend's credit card wasn't stolen, and he certainly wasn't falsely accused. Though charges were dropped, because they didn't find any child porn stored on his computer, he openly admitted from the beginning that he was guilty:
"I accept that I was wrong to access this site, and that by doing so, I broke the law, and I have accepted the caution that the police have given me."
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's also unconstitutional in the US.
Liberty in your lifetime
... compared to being marked with the Scarlet "Pedo" marker forever.
(disclaimer: from a US perspective)
Before a trial you are destroyed. Your face gets in the local paper. Reporters show up at your home and place of work and hassle you and your family. Your home is ransacked in the name of gathering evidence. Local politicians and big wigs claim it's a victory for the children and call you a monster. News interviews your neighbors who are all amazed and shocked and now they, of course, don't feel safe. They might just deny you bail on a judge's whim and toss you in a jail cell. You better believe that when guards hear "that pedophile pervert" calling for help to protect him from other cellmates they're not going to rush to his aid. You're let out? Expect lots of threatening phone calls and letters.
Assuming you're aquitted because you didn't break any laws, the damage is DONE. Nobody will ever see you the same way again. News of your name being cleared isn't shouted quite as loudly as the accusation. What a surprise.
Can you really blame the falsely accused in this case comitting suicide? It's really tragic how lives can be ruined just by pointing a finger.
I know if I was falsely accused I'd probably kill myself, too.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Here's more background on these cases. A load of wrongly convicted have banded together regarding calims of Operation Ore http://www.inquisition21.com/ and more importantly this http://www.computer-investigations.com/index3.html
I hope the victims win and the police are "spanked"
It's nice that its finally been recognised that a lot of us who were investigated were innocent.
I was one. I arrived home after the New Year break in early 2003, to find the front door had been broken in and irreparably damaged to the tune of 900 pounds (which admittedly the police did eventually pay for - months later), and the house searched, my PC, DVDs, videos all gone. This had been on the strength of someone using my stolen credit card details (which I'd informed both my bank and the Police of the stealing of them, some months previously). My work PC was also removed - albeit under cover of darkness to avoid causing suspicision amongst my coworkers, and my life was in limbo until Sept 2003 when I was cleared of all charges. Basically someone had used my credit card details at some site called Landslide.
It was a terrible time, my wife married me in Spring 2003, but obviously nagging in her mind was the doubts as to who she was marrying! Thank God she and my family stood by me. I am posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
It's just a matter of time before some kid falsely accuses you. Take action now! The Bush administration says pre-emptive war is justified so this is no different. Join the Church of Euthanasia before it's too late.
Equifax is the other. There are only these two operating in the UK, AFAIK.
Why did they let him off so easily, if they actually had evidence of wrongdoing?
On the other hand, if they gave him a choice of malicious prosecution or "admitting kinda dumb behavior and receiving only a warning", I'm not so sure the choice of the latter is that tough to understand. Especially for a relatively public figure with undoubtedly high-prices legal representation.
Kythe
And currently up for discussion is the UK is a new law that would ban fantasy depictions of underage (that includes imaginary 17 year olds) having sex. Here is an interesting link and some quotes from it.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2007 -depiction-sex-abuse?view=Binary
We are unaware of any specific research into whether there is a link between accessing these fantasy images of child sexual abuse and the commission of offences against children, but it is felt by police and childrens welfare organisations that the possession and circulation of these images serves to legitimize and reinforce highly inappropriate views about children.In other words, the proposal discussed is based on no scientific research. It is purely aimed to ban a specific minority fetish. Violent video games is another minority fetish that has been under attack in the news lately.
It is all pure bullshit. Banning soccer games would be more logical, since there is a clear scientific link of soccer games leading to hulligan behavior. Of course, this doesn't mean that I want to ban soccer, but I am just pointing out the obvious bias of the legislators.
It is the case that cartoons, drawings and material created entirely by manipulation of computer software do not harm real children in the same way as taking indecent photographs of children [...] Nevertheless this material is causing increasing concern both within the UK and internationally (see below). The police [...] are concerned that the fantasy images themselves fuel abuse of real children by reinforcing potential abusers inappropriate feelings towards children.Just to point out that this isn't the same as the US child pornography laws, that explicitly bans images/drawings based on real children/photographs (which was a loophole used to circumvent previous laws). This law explicitly targets fantasy drawings, the most common type probably being the japanese hentai artform.
collectors of material of this kind almost always also have indecent photographs of children.I don't. And I am pretty sure most hentai viewers/readers don't. Oh, and in case you wonder, I am mostly interested of the highschool based hentai (which would also be illegal if the proposal above was passed as a law). I fully support the rights of lolicon viewers though. This is a classic case of the "First they came for the Communists, and I didnt speak up..." scenario. They target a minority fetish because they can get away with it.
Anyway, What research do they base their statement on? Unless they have asked XXXX number of people randomly about it...and I doubt that would work either, because very few people would admit they had child porn on their computer.
The relation in the other direction may be more likely though. Child porn collectors are probably likely to have hentai drawings. That relation is easy to find, by looking at the computers of people arrested for having child pornography.
Finally, Don't begin complaining that hentai sucks and I should watch real porn instead. I can't stand real porn with their payed actors and actresses having mechanical sex without feelings. Not, to mention that the redicioulus story lines in hentai movies/mangas are light years beyond the stories in the average porn movie. Oh sure, there are a few exceptions of great scenes, but they are by far the exception. If I didn't have hentai, I would probably stick with sex stories (which I still use sometimes). And I am not saying that you shouldn't watch porn. I am just explaining why I and probably some others prefer hentai. And, oh yes, having real sex is of course the best, but that has nothing to do with masturbation needs.
but most of the efforts to crack down on the end users are to try to cut down the supply.
In the same way people wanting to see porn stars have sex means that pornstars get filmed having sex, people wanting to pay money to see children get abused means children get filmed being abused.
Now I'm not entirely convinced that the world is full of people abusing children to make money, but there's certainly a connection.
for making mistakes, is more important than going after criminals, for committing actual crimes, then yes, your priorities are screwed up
real malintent versus stupid incomptence
i for one view the guy who actually wants to hurt me on purpose as a worse threat to my life and liberty than the guy who hurts me by mistake
that's called having your priorities in the right order
evil is a worse threat to you than stupidity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and the victims will get compensation for their damages
meanwhile, exactly how does the child pornographer compensate the children he sexually abuses?
i don't see how bungling cops is anywhere near a threat to society as actual predators
evil is a far worse threat to you than stupidity. everyone who get stuck in the gears of a fumbling screwed up system can be compensated. not so much victims of lowlifes. THEIR justice should be your paramount importance, for their justice is the justice that matters most to the leath of society, and to the protection of your rights and liberties
a criminal does more damage to your rights and liberties than the the stupid police can
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As another poster has already pointed out, this is just another example of thought crime and those who wish to use it as a bid to take more control over the lives of others.
--I*Love*Green*Olives
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. --George Carlin
does the victim of a screwed up system have? a number of avenues, which, if he or she is truly innocent, can result in vindication, clearing of your name, even monetary compensation
what recourse the victim of a criminal have? money? ha! how do you, for example, remunerate a child for screwing them up due to sexual abuse?
in other words, yes, abuse of authority is a threat to your life and liberty, i agree with you. but what i am saying is that criminality is a LARGER threat to your life and liberty, and people need to adjust their priorities to reflect that simple concept
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In my city we have had women arrested over taking photos of their children in the tub and around the house without clothes on. She didn't own a computer but she did have a twisted person visit and see the photo album.
Sure I think some sort of punishment for showing any visitor a photo album of your ugly child is a good idea but this goes way too far.
Oh, she will be listed as a potential threat for the rest of her life because they provide that data to our public schools (not even the police have direct access to that data-- has to be a more severe to get on the wider circulated lists.) I have seen the map from the local school and nearly every house has a low-threat mark on it! There is a high chance you are on your local school threat map as a low threat - it takes almost nothing to get on there or my area is quite messed up (in a low threat way.)
But I am far less afraid of random acts of criminality than I am of institutionalized abuses of power.
I am more afraid of random acts of criminality than I am of institutionalized abuses of power.
and so there we have our essential split on the matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but now you're changing the scope of the argument
within the narrow scope of police abuse of power, i fear criminal action more than that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Believe the rhetoric.
Go Look up what happened to Ray Buckley. (http://www.nhpr.org/node/12381 some other storys about the same:http://www.nhpr.org/taxonomy/term/8175)
Summary:
Ray Buckley is a rising star of the New Hampshire democratic party. As he is mounting a campaign, that he is a shoe in to win, for the NH democratic party chair he is accused by a political rival, and former roommate, of having a long history of child porn smuggling. His life is ruined for many months. The allegations were found to be completely unsupported by evidence. The accusation was for purely political purposes...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I did use my own credit card though. But I signed up to a completely legal all-over-18 site through the "KeyZ" system.
I was of course found innocent, but not until I'd been arrested, my house turned over completely, my possessions destroyed, then jailed, interogated and put on bail for 3 months while they went through all my hard drives, CDs, DVDs etc. I, like many others, never got most of this equipment back.
I never got an apology. All I got was a note on my intelligence file that I was a potential child abuser and a note on my criminal record that I was once arrested for downloading child pornography.
The police on the day of my arrest were basically insinuating that it would be better if I would just commit suicide to save everyone a lot of trouble.
I later, with the use of sites such as archive.org, helped bring a stop to several other cases where the people in question had quite obviously only accessed legal sites.
Thanks British Government, you bunch of faschist cunts.
If you want any questions answered, ask below. I'm posting this in Coward mode, as I don't particularly want everyone in the world to know, even though I'm innocent.
do you want to stack those cases up against the daily drumbeat of criminal activity that results in destroyed lives and deaths in the uk on a daily basis?
do you think your drops can hold up against that ocean?
of COURSE police abuse is a threat to you, i don't deny every example you cite above, and a couple of hundred more i'm sure you can cite
all i'm saying is that simple criminality is a far LARGER threat to your rights and liberties than police abuse
both exist, but one is larger than the other. me saying that does not invalidate victims of police abuse. feel me now?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
there are more victims of police abuse than there are victims of criminal activity?
(mouth drops to the floor)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
--I*Love*Green*Olives
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. --George Carlin
What exactly do you think behavior is? Actions, nothing more, nothing less.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I recall reading Townshend's online diary in the weeks BEFORE he was accused and arrested. He was on quite a tear about child porn at the time. He reckoned it one of the world's greatest tragedies, as it destroys so many lives and creates a cycle of child porn and child sexual abuse. I haven't checked the wayback machine, but it might just be in there.
It's easy to sneer at his "research" explanation if you don't know the backstory, but having seen evidence of his interest in wiping it out, perhaps the start of a campaign to do something about it immediately prior to his arrest makes his claim credible in my eyes.
He certainly did admit that he'd used his credit card to enter a site. He admitted entry, and allowed as to how it was a stupid mistake on his part. That said, the cops grabbed his G4s as evidence, and with Townshend's admission of entry into the site as a starting point, certainly could've determined whether they had an actual child-porn offender in custody with just a little forensic analysis.
As it stands, the cops had an admission that Pete had visited a child porn site, had all the equipment in their hands to find evidence of offense and didn't make a case of it.
I don't know that that makes it a "false accusation" - particularly given Pete's admission - but if the cops couldn't find enough to make a case from that, it certainly says to me that Pete Townshend is not an actual child-porn offender.
you are 100% correct
but i want to make sure that your righteous moral outrage results in punishment of police, not in the dampening of the fight against child pornographers
you do realize that an overly sensitive atmosphere to the rights of mostly scumbags gives some scumbags a way out, right?
presumption of innocence is not the same as sympathy and coddling for criminal assholes, but when your mortal outrage is focused more on the bungles of police, and less on the true viciousness of real cirminals, then your priorities are out of whack, and it results in criminals getting away with it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
do you believe that more lives are ruined by the acts of the police than are saved?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've got first hand experience of this. My close friend was accused as part of Operation Ore. He came around sobbing one afternoon, after the police had crashed into his flat at 7:00, searched through all his stuff, took all his computer equipment (which he needed for his work, and contained irreplaceable files) and took him down the station.
That night he slit his wrists.
*Luckily* another friend went round there the next morning, and found him barely alive in a pool of blood.
Since then, after several months of recovery, he's lost his flat and had to file for bankruptcy. And yes, he was one of the victims of credit card fraud.
That's just one of the reasons I've since moved from the UK.
Don't let anyone tell you the UK isn't a Police State - they're too blind to see the reality.
i love extremists, they're great comic relief
if i move an inch in a direction, it's interpretted as moving a mile
example:
me: "yes, i think gays should be allowed to marry"
you: "so you think pedophilies should be allowed to marry too!?"
me: "yes, i think marijuana should be legalized"
you: "you want inject heroin into our children's veins!?"
wtf?! it's a fear-based reaction, a reaction to the unknown
you see me take a careful measured balanced stand on an issue, but in your mind, rather than thinking about what i am actually saying, you merely react to a hot button topic with a regurgitated partisan attitude
you're a blind fool. you've stopped thinking. i suggest you open your eyes, blink, and react to what people actually say and actually mean, as clearly they have written, and tune out the hot button in your mind that makes you think the most insane paranoid fantasy about anyone who has an opinion that is different than yours
but as it is now, you're just a partisan propagandized tool. you're of no use to the issues you care about, because all you can do is blindly knee jerk with the most retarded hysteria
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's not the FBI, its coordinated higher up out of the DHS and involves a marketing company that specializes in behavioral analysis.
A site will present normal pornography, if you click the teen, then they'll offer you a younger looking girl or hentai or fully dressed girl. If you click that after a few of those you'll be fed child porn and links to buy it.
If you examine the DNS it appears to be Russian, but if you chase a few of the context sites down, they're in the USA and checking for related sites reveals the behaviour marketing company has it's site on a shared server with one of them.
Now report it and see what happens.... Nothing at all. I've reported them several times and the site remains up. It looks like a sting operation, but I bet they don't mention they are behind the lead-to sites when they file the charge.
I would add to this that anyone who has listened to a decent amount of his music will pick up on an underlying theme of child abuse by adults. Look at Tommy, with his crazy Uncle Ernie or Crazy Cousin Kevin.
In my mind Pete Townshend has had do deal with a lot more abuse in his life then he's let on to the public. I think his music, his book and even his "research" were honest attempts at dealing with things in his personal life.
I don't think he went about it the right way and I question the benefit of subjecting oneself to such material but I tend to think he was just stupid about it and honest in his intentions at least.
Just my $.02 and I admit bias as a long time Who fan but in the end I decided I wouldn't judge him too much as I don't really think I have the complete story.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Please, please, everyone keep a copy of the link to this story, and post it every time some shortsighted fool says "I don't object to 'x' because I have nothing to hide..."
Some hundred years ago, people started going on witch-hunts. All around the world, they started burning mostly women thought to be doing witchcraft. Yes, this has happened in _every_ corner of the world.
It seems insanity spreads, and most sane people are in the minority. This is why meditation is so important, so that people can calm down and look thoroughly through the matter instead of reacting.
This is their logic:
Cameras can help identify criminals (murders etc)
Fact
Identifying criminals can help apprehend them.
Fact
Some criminals are less likely to commit crimes if they think they are likely to get caught.
(debatable) Fact
Therefore: The presence of CCTV reduces the likelihood of crime in the area under surveillance.
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
Why do I never have mod points when I see good comments?
I HATE SOD'S LAW
The Kids are Alright.
If you are familiar with how the US Gummermint awards contracts, then you will laugh high-sterically at the idea of a government contractor "expert" being employed at anything more sophisticated than finding the missing emails on granny's computer. I tell you from first hand experience it's a myth that the X-Files helped to create and even then Scully & Mulder had to go to the "lone gunmen" for help!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
a) The author of the article does defence work in...Ore and similar jobs. This article is not objective in any way, shape or form.
b) He doesn't give the police a chance to reply to any of these points he makes. That's not journalism, it's a rant.
c) Most of the people prosecuted as a result of Ore have also been found to have indecent images of children on their computers. These are usually computers seized a few years (up to 7) after the initial period on which Ore was based, and are usually completely different machines. Usually the initial Landslide subscription forms a small part of the case by the time it comes to charging.
spit it out - why they were full of shit ?
Read radical news here
Well I happen to think that someone touching my genitals is either being intimate or violating me physically.
Somebody touching my arm; well that doesn't really move me much - course if they broke it I'd complain.
I guess you must be the sort that would give a business acquaintance a blowjob rather than shake their hand?
The fact that UK "child porn" laws don't even require pictures of children to be pornographic - just "indecent" - is evidence of the fact that the laws aren't there to protect children, they exist because people don't like minor-attraction. Since homophobia is no longer acceptable, they must be able to express distaste about another perceived sexual minority.
Consider the case of Tom O'Carroll, who was imprisoned because they decided the images he had were 'inappropiate for a paedophile to have.' His thoughts were the deciding factor in the case, effectively rendering his conviction a case of thought crime.
UK child porn laws are disgraceful and they need to be changed.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
This case *should* be referenced every time some short sighted idiot brays about having nothing to hide!
Strange - police reveal the names like Pete Townshend - but have still kept the name of Labour Government Cabinet minister quiet.
w ww.sundayherald.com/30813
Quote:
Detective Chief Inspector Bob McLachlan, former head of Scotland Yard's paedophile unit, told the Sunday Herald that the lack of urgency in making arrests will lead to suspects destroying evidence of downloading child pornography before they are arrested.
The Sunday Herald has also had confirmed by a very senior source in British intelligence that at least one high-profile former Labour Cabinet minister is among Operation Ore suspects. The Sunday Herald has been given the politician's name but, for legal reasons, can not identify the person. (Yet Pete Townshend was named in this same story)
There are still unconfirmed rumours that another senior Labour politician is among the suspects. The intelligence officer said that a 'rolling' Cabinet committee had been set up to work out how to deal with the potentially ruinous fall-out for both Tony Blair and the government if arrests occur.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050109090646/http://
The Sunday Herald took the story off their site - had to look in archive.org
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If the people running these operations were serious about catching creeps rather than looking good, they'd go to the trouble of executing the operation competently. "But they're dangerous" is no more a valid excuse for lax standards in catching pedophiles than it is for lax standards in catching terrorists. If these people are really dangerous enough to require fail-safe (i.e., better to have an innocent guy in jail than a dangerous guy outside) prosecutorial methods, then they're dangerous enough to require that proper resources be committed to do it right. There's never an excuse for this kind of nonsense.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Logical fallacy: that one is in public (place owned by no one, privacy not actively being enforced) does not imply that one should be actively surveilled.
...Rough boys
Don't walk away
I wanna buy your leather
Make noise
Try and talk me away
We can't be seen together...
Rough boys
Come over here
I wanna bite and kiss you
I wanna see what I can find
Uh, yeah.
Only the naive think such a distinction exists - the only difference is who is doing the watching.
I think it's you who needs to do a little reading on what exactly constitutes stalking. It's a crime of harassment, which induces a fearful response in the person being stalked. Following someone around on CCTV cameras would not necessarily be stalking, in and of itself; if you started sending photos from those cameras to the person, so that they knew you were watching them and were thus fearful, then it would be.
If you don't include the fearful/harassment part of "stalking," then you broaden the definition so much that it becomes a meaningless term.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If someone said that law enforcement should stop hunting child pornographers, I didn't see it. Could you point that out for me? What I saw was a general outpouring of disbelief that so many people could be fucked over by an investigation that went this wrong, and some horror at the suicides--I assume because most of us have ordered things online and there's no reason to assume that the same thing couldn't happen to us as well, given sufficiently Keystonish Kops.
And I think that agitating for due diligence and agitating for rigorous police work are pretty much the same thing--if it's important for the cops to catch child pornographers, then it's important for them to be competent enough to actually catch them, isn't it? I mean, apart from catching a whole bunch of innocent people, they utterly failed to catch the bad guys. I'd think you'd be right up there calling for these clowns to be fired.
In your following replies, you go on about how much worse criminals are than cops, but you miss the point--nobody was saying that we should get rid of cops because they're a bigger threat than criminals (though bad cops are a different kind of threat). I don't care how bad the criminals are, they never, ever justify shoddy police. In fact, the worse they are, the more we should be expecting from our cops.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Exactly, but not the "addicts", just the users. On a previous visit to Bali, I was advised to NEVER buy weed off the street from anyone, local or foreign. The deal was that on completion of a sale, the seller would whip around the corner to his mate, the copper, to inform on you. The copper proceeds to your hotel room, finds the stash, and you pay a hefty bribe to let the copper take your weed off you and not get prosecuted. So the copper takes the money, pays 2% to the seller, gives the dude the weed back so he can sell it again. Everyone wins. It's not just "atrocious acts", it's anything that you just don't want to be made public. Corrupt police ... the scourge of our modern day. A few bad pennies completely undermines the entire principle of law enforcement, as in the recent UK cases. And "Internal Affairs" are despised by those entrusted to uphold the law and protect us. Hmmmphhh. Bring back the lions.
... my captcha is "brothel" ... thanks for the free ticket to 10 years of arse-banging, Slashdot, off to the clink and I thought I was an "anonymous" coward. Can I plead entrapment ?
How ironic
In this time if high-tech surveillance, wiretapping and information gathering, all in the good of... the people (?) 37 suicides is just a small price to pay for the security of our children.
Privacy is terrorism.
but (at least in the US. Maybe not the UK) one is considered innocent until proven guilty
Tell that to the McMartins...
He confessed for fecks sake!! Granted, he tried to rationalise it as research, but don't give us crap that he was falsely accused.
... I want to monitor what the police and government get up to in my name.
I'm told that we need to spend lots of money and pass new laws to combat child pornography. Do we? Children are not sexy. "child pornography" is an oxymoron. The concept lacks credibility.
Suppose I visit a few sites to check. Perhaps I find that I'm being lied to and that busty 18 year olds in school uniforms are "children". Or perhaps I find that the phenomenon is real, and this persuades me that we do indeed need to spend lots of money and pass new laws. It is rather troubling if one is not allowed to carry out basic checks.
Imagine if your are 25 yrs old and someone asks you, what happened some friday night 12.5 years ago.
Its hard to do that as an adult, let alone for a kid. Thats why every year of our lifes goes faster than the
last because each one is 3-5% shorter each time, when in your 20s...
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
In this case, any corpse will past this test, even if they drowned.
But seriously, maybe they should start using part time cops, like army reserves, do a 2 week stint a year by law with tax free earnings.
After training ofcourse all paid for.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
You can check your own credit rating as much as you like without penalty.
Before you buy a car or house you are supposed to check it for errors.
You can check it annually for free thanks to a law passed a few years ago.
Write your MP and get the law changed.
Nobody knows how many innocent lives are ruined by KP because we don't have a handle on the number of unreported cases.
Nobody knows how many innocent lives are ruined by cops because we don't have a handle on the number of buried cases.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If nobody thought children were sexy there would be no demand for child pornography and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Most of us have had the hots for a 13 year old cutie, but not since we were in junior high school.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is explanation why it was impossible to fight child porn charge7 02/opa050811-0208.htm
in Minnesota
Minnesota supreme court reviewed recently child porn law.
They declared unconstitutional only part of law.
Law can not be partly unconstitutional, like woman can not be partly pregnant
I read Supreme court decision at
http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/supct/0
They declared unconstitutional only subsection 8 which said
"Subd. 8. Affirmative defense. It shall be an affirmative defense to a
charge of violating this section that the pornographic work was
produced using only persons who were 18 years or older."
Government must prove age people in porn pictures, not a
defendant,according with this decision.
Supreme court said that this was harmless error, because it was clear
just by looking at faces these were minors. This sound like 'we all
know what child porn is, are we?'
Modern computer technology can create any faces and cut and paste to adult porn.
No computer expert can tell the difference ( US Supreme court struck
down child porn law in 2002 based on this argument )
Arguments by court looks unprofessional, there was no real computer
forensic specialists and experts. Also why state should not prove
there was not spyware,
porn pop ups, trojan horses.
Too many holes in Supreme court decision. I am not a lawyer, but it is
clear for me.
This is very grey area of existing law. Judges just do not understand
how computer works,
and that everything is possible in digital world.
I would like to send you some links to publications about my criminal case. I was forced to confess to the possession of internet digital pictures of porn in deleted clusters of my computer hard drive. My browser was hijacked while I was browsing the web. I was redirected to illegal sites against my will. Some illegal pictures were found on my hard drive, recovering in unallocated clusters, without dates of file creation/download. I do not know how courts can widely press these charges on people to convict them, while the whole Internet is a mess. This is my story in inquisition21.com. There is all information about case written by Irish writer Brian Rothery. You can see a lot of violations of law by police http://www.inquisition21.com/article~view~7~page_n um~3.html
This is publication in Wired news
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,633 91,00.html
This is publication in Theregester
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/13/browser_hi jacking_risks/
Article in Globe and Mail newspaper
http://ctv.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20040617.gttwhijac17/tech/Technology/techBN/ctv-t echnology
Article in ZDnet
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5344831.html
This is article in Washington Times, May 22, 2004
There is information about my case.
http://www.cato.org/cgi-bin/scripts/printtech.cgi/ dailys/05-30-04.html
Article in Crime research center:
http://www.crime-research.org/news/07.22.2004/506/
Article in Dallas, TX Newspaper
http://www.crime-research.org/news/24.12.2004/862/
Child porn law was declared unconstitutional in Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA'
http://xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=11750
"I came here to the US as political refugee from the former Soviet
Union, and, now like many other people in the US, I feel shame that
all of this can happen in the US - supposed to be the greatest
democracy in the world."
I recently received a letter from this company, click on Important Customer alert http://www.tjx.com/index.html They told me that my vcredit card number was stolen by criminals
If you are sure the name will come out in the future.
Pete Townsend was not given such privacy - there was a big media circus around his arrest.
Why special treatment for New Labour MP's?
My ex-partner just accused me of downloading child porn and I haven't so FP back at you! First Pragmatist!
Vote! Mind you, the government allways get in, don't they, so what's the point. Make your own government, savour the power, and become like them. You'll never be free.