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Having Your ID Stolen Leads to Job Loss, Prosecution
ConfusedVorlon writes "The BBC reports on the sad case of Simon Bunce. Mr. Bunce had his identity stolen, and credit cards were made to capitalize on the theft. Some of those cards were used at sites offering child pornography, and as a result Mr. Bunce was swept up in Operation Ore. The poor man was prosecuted for his 'crime', and was eventually found innocent, but in the meantime he lost his job. It took him six months to find another at a quarter of the salary. 'The police's computer technicians take several months to examine [his computers and records], and Mr Bunce could not afford to wait to repair the damage done to his reputation. "I knew there'd been a fundamental mistake made and so I had to investigate it." Recent surveys suggest that as many as one in four Britons have been affected by it. In 2007 more than 185,000 cases of identity theft were identified by Cifas, the UK's fraud prevention service, an increase of almost 8% on 2006.'"
no one will care, because thats acceptable to protect the children.
All ongoing posts will be the back and forth on this concept.
How society prosecutes child pornography... like a lynch mob: guilty until proven innocent and no recompense for those poor souls that did not deserve to be labeled and treated like some monster.
There is way too much leniency given to law enforcement in the process of stopping child pornography. WAY TOO MUCH.
I'm not saying that child pornography is good or even just 'not bad'... I'm saying that lynch mob mentality in prosecuting anyone suspected of it is absolutely the wrong thing to do.
Sex crime laws and their enforcement (at least in the US) are criminal in themselves. They are, at best, mostly subjective in nature and enforced with the tact of a nuclear weapon.
Victims are stigmatized, penalized, emotionally brutalized, and then forever branded as someone that people can't trust.
Laws are good to have. Not all laws are good laws. A law set by a community that cannot be amended or repealed is not a law, it's a dogma. These laws need some changes, big ones.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
That's what happens when you get involved in a witch hunt, which is exactly what this bullshit is. Anyone who calls it anything else is a closet pedophile. Why else do they fight so hard "to protect the children"? They mean, to protect the children from hypocrite lying shitheads like themselves.
Or Simon Buttle?
People these days can't even bother to wait for all the votes to be counted before having the new leader of their country announced, why in the world would they wait for someone to be found guilty before treating them as such?
This man's problems were caused not by ID theft, but by suspicion of crime. It would be no different if someone seeking revenge reported him on an "anonymous tipline".
The real problem, as I see it, is that even though one may legally be innocent until proven guilty, when it comes to dealing with the public at large, the accused is presumed guilty until proven innocent, and sometimes even afterward.
Mr. Bruce's problems were caused by the society in which he lives, not the ID theft.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If you can solve the "identity theft" problem, you won't have to worry about this in the future. Whether kiddie porn is involved or not.
And we've been over, often enough, the various means of solving "identity theft". The problem is that the burden is on the victim, not the bank issuing the cards. Despite the bank having far more information and resources than the victim.
If we would just validate the transaction instead of the "identity" of the purchaser, we'd be able to eliminate this fraud.
And it's not like it's far-fetched to think that the people purchasing child porn might use stolen or misappropriated credit cards to do so...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think other posters have missed the point a bit by focusing on the fact that this case was about child pornography. Yes, that's a particularly egregiously aggressively policed crime, but it's hardly the only time cops will use credit cards to track who they think committed a crime. (Nominal) ownership of the credit card used should *never* be considered sufficient evidence to charge someone with *any* crime. It's probable cause to investigate, sure, but not to charge. It's only about one step more reasonable than charging someone because their real name matched the screen name used.
He had nothing to hide because he was innocent, so everything worked out in the end, right?
Child pornography is one of a few accusations where a person is presumed guilty until proven innocent... and even after he's proven innocent.
Oh great, let's all move into gated communities, and do balkanization from the ground up!
Dude, Snow Crash was a novel, not a manual.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!