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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.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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 A law set by a community that cannot be amended or repealed is not a law, it's a dogma.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
Or Simon Buttle?
with few exceptions, 'justice' leans in particular ways. Where children and child support are concerned, it's children first and anything else is a secondary consideration such as whether or not a man is the ACTUAL father of the children.
In a case such as this, at least in the US, a person might at least be able to sue the government for malicious prosecution and collect damages specifying that since the accusation ruined his life, that the government should therefore pay for it for a long, long time.
I have personally experienced what an accusation can do to one's employability... not even a conviction, just an arrest or an accusation. Is this an acceptable part of the justice system? I don't think so. While it's important to 'care for the victims' it's EQUALLY important to protect the rights of the accused until there is enough evidence to prove something is wrong.
In the particular case under discussion, they should never have arrested him based on credit card transactions. That is not proof of identity or of anything other than a transaction was made. And if no other evidence of a crime was present, the most they should have done is attempt to verify whether or not it was actually he that made the transaction or someone else. They could do much of that without even bothering the poor guy.
The reality is that this man is a victim of a crime... not necessarily a crime that is actually described in law, but still a violation of his life. I can't see that as acceptable. I think England is one of the last places I'd want to live... but then so is the U.S... and that's where I am now.
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.
From the Democratic Underground:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3100544
"You're fired!"
Those are the words that millions of Americans could hear if Congress passes the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act would require every employer in the U.S. to use so-called "electronic employment verification," cross-checking all current and potential employees' citizenship status against databases that the government itself knows are filled with errors and inaccuracies.
And what if the Social Security Administration (SSA) or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) get it wrong and can't verify a person's citizenship or right to work using their buggy database? Tough luck. That person is out of a job, with no right to appeal. And you don't even need to have your identity stolen to be so unlucky.
Does this idea bother you?
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
WTF? One in four? are you insane? that would be 15 million people. Does that really seem likely? Anecdotally I know substantialy more than four people and *none* of them have had their identity stolen. They are still the same people I used to know (although with ID theft the way it is who can tell?).
OK, Cifas (whoever they are) pursued 185k cases last year. There are 65M people in the uk. 65,000,000 - 185,000 = 65,000,000 (rounded up). That is not 25%, more like 0.025%. If they can only identify 0.1% of the fraud what are they actually doing? I know the gubment wastes money, but that is crazy.
Scenario: Build a database with every possible social security number.
Next, start gathering whatever information you can and entering it in that database. By theft or purchase or whatever.
How long will it be before you can, digitally, "prove" that you are any person in that database?
The attacks you are talking about are just the tip of the iceberg. It would be possible to perform such fraud on a nation-wide basis. Against just about any person in the nation.
And our system is NOT equipped to deal with such.
He had nothing to hide because he was innocent, so everything worked out in the end, right?
The same thing happened to a guy here : http://www.krem.com/topstories/stories/krem2_040208_chismcomputers.26cb2f44.html although they've yet to drag him through the courts.
A little background. Landslide was the company that sold the AVS and KEYZ age verification codes for access to adult sites. Despite the fact that they had thousands of sites, and their lawyers assured them they were not responsible for content, the government shut them down and prosecuted them over a couple of dodgy offshore sites, claiming the owners were "madams of a child porn bordello," and sent them to prison for life.
Not content with this, they then took Landslide's entire customer list, sorted it by country, and sent it out to foreign law enforcement organizations demanding they raid everyone on it. They couldn't prove anyone on it had even visited an alleged child porn site, or what they had looked at if they did, but they could use the list for "probable cause" to search the victims computers, and if they found illegal porn while doing do, they could prosecute them for that.
Most countries ignored the US demands, except for those conducting their own child abuse moral panics like the UK. The UK ran with the list, and called its version "Operation Ore."
So they ran around raiding everyone in the UK who had purchased an age verification code from Landslide, and managed to find porn on a few computers, and sometimes were able to terrorize people on the list into making incriminating admissions. Of course, everyone so targeted was featured in the UK press as "a person who had paid for access to child porn."
The problem here is not identity theft. The problem here is a fishing expedition into the lives of mostly innocent people based on something which no reasonable person would consider probable cause.
My reading of the story may be wrong, but I can't find anywhere in it where it says that he was prosecuted. Perhaps this is a transatlantic definition problem. Here in the UK, there are basically four stages to a criminal prosecution (yes, I have simplified).
- Arrest: The police suspect that you might have committed a crime.
- Charging: The police decide that their suspicions were correct and ask for the case to go to trial.
- Prosecution: The Crown Prosecution Service (a body independent from the police) decide that the case is likely to succeed and will be in the public interest. They prepare the prosecution case and go to the courts.
- Conviction or aquital: A court decided whether or not the defendant is guilty and if guilty imposes a penalty.
So far as I can tell, in this case Mr Bunce only passed through the first stage. The police eventually decided that he had not committed a crime and therefore didn't charge him. Now, that is not to minimise his suffering. He has clearly been very badly treated and he hope he succeeds with legal action against not only the web site, but also the police and his ex-employers. I should also point out that here in the UK police state, he will have had his finger prints and DNA taken and that these will now be retained forever (even after his death) even thought the police accept that he did nothing wrong.
This is a case of fraud, not theft. This man's identity was not "stolen," but used fraudulently in an attempt to gain illegitimate access to goods and services under the guise of someone else. Using words like "identity theft" is no better than the RIAA calling copyright infringement "theft."
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the USA, most companies practice "at will" employment. Here, you have little (if any) recourse for being fired, excepting special cases related to race, sex, or disability.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Child pornography is one of a few accusations where a person is presumed guilty until proven innocent... and even after he's proven innocent.
Actually I had such a dispute. Damaged my credit pretty badly at the time. I still refused to pay. To make a long story short, a man's word is not worth gold anymore, a man's word is worth not a penny, while other men's words about that man are worth more than gold.
Makes you wonder why so few people are responsible nowadays... perhaps because all they have to do is be robots at work, and vege at night. Had they had to live up to what it was they said, life might be a bit different... for all of us.
The question that must be asked is... "what makes a bunch of bankers and liars for a living, make their word more worthwhile in people's eyes than the word of a man who actually produces something tangible and sells it for a living and therefore has at least some chance that he isn't just a liar for a living?"
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
morons.
yea it is. im no psychopath, badass wannabee or anything. i just recognize stellar shit when i see it.
this 'child pornography' scare has been made into a modern day witch hunt. its totally stupid and idiotic. no less than a medieval witch hunt - you just need to be accused by someone to be prosecuted. try it. just accuse someone, and watch their computers getting confiscated. their sensitive data, passwords, everything passing through some obscure personas in local police department.
mankind really lacking in wisdom. higher the level of disgust/horror a crime induces, the higher they are regarding that crime.
hundreds of thousands of people around the world are dying every year due to various atrocity related events, genocides, strifes, terrorism, repression, disease, hunger. but our current overly politically correct public is more appalled at the wake of pathetically negligible percentage of child pornography cases than hundreds of thousands of people dying. what ? when a child grows up, s/he is not important anymore ? s/he dying due to hunger whilst the world has the means to aid them is not something more horrible than a child pornography case ? if you just read this last sentence, and thought that child pornography is a more horrible and bigger crime, even if a second, you need to really straighten up yourself and get smart - because you yourself are judging the seriousness of a crime by the horror it induces, not its real merit. right to life is the foremost right on the face of the earth.
Read radical news here
Are there people who are child molesters? Yes. Is everyone who is charged, convicted, or treated for child molestation a child molester? Nope.
What happens with this crime and several others is they become weapons for women to use against men. It's very simple; accuse your husband / boyfriend of this crime and the police will arrest him immediately. Make that complaint Friday evening and you'll have 3 or 4 days to clean out the bank accounts, conceal assets, etc. before he can bail out.
Does this happen? You better believe it does. More often than most people can imagine. This abuse of the legal system (and others like it) are brought to you courtesy of your elected representatives who are giving you what you ask for: crack down on child molesters, wife abusers, etc. Too many are getting away, let's make the laws a bit more general and a bit more "guilty until proven innocent". For the win, make them so that the accused is guilty until proven guilty.
Nope, not me. But I've seen this scenario play out time and time again. I feel bad for what our country has become and cast a worried eye at England. They seem to be leading the way in the race to Fascism...
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the USA, most companies practice "at will" employment. Here, you have little (if any) recourse for being fired, excepting special cases related to race, sex, or disability.
That's the theory. But in practice... well, let me quote the attorney who taught the class I took on "the laws involved in hiring":
"California is an at-will state. That means the employer and employee can terminate employment at any time without cause, barring a few exceptions. In practice, those exceptions make up about 90% of the rule."
"He had nothing to hide because he was innocent, so everything worked out in the end, right~"
Fixed it for you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Do you have any idea how much tragedy has been preceded by your kind of posturing bluster?
I picture the scenario as such:
... and scary as hell, I imagine. However, it's still an inferior threat.) A blade may scare away that burglar with a knife, or the rapist with a box cutter, but will do nothing when they have a pistol, and may even aggravate their intentions.
Person enters my house without permission.
Person is either unarmed, or armed.
Person's intentions are either to steal from me or to hurt/rape my family.
Now, finding that an invader is in my home, I do not know how armed or hostile the adversary is. In such a case, it seems imprudent to be overly optimistic. If my goal is to maximize the safety of my family, I need to assume the worst: the adversary is both armed, and intends to harm my family. My threat-response choices should be based on this expectation.
So, versus an armed hostile adversary, my options are, in increasing levels of severity:
1) Run away. Get everyone out of the house, in the car, and Far Away.
2) Threaten adversary. Accept possibility that I will be harmed in the process.
3) Harm adversary. Accept possibility that I will be harmed in the process.
4) Kill adversary. Accept possibility that I will be harmed in the process.
Let us examine the viability of each of these.
1) Run Away.
If this is possible, I want to do it. I'd much rather avoid confrontation, and make sure that no one gets hurt. However, in the case of a home invasion, the invader is quite likely to be between my family and the exit. If the adversary is hostile, we could be at risk. (Yes, we could open a window and escape that way; this isn't always guaranteed.)
Additionally, if I were to find the adversary already harming my family (or me), it's too late to do this (to an extent).
2) Threaten Adversary.
-- Call the police, and notify the adversary that they are on the way. Unarmed assailants are likely to be scared off, but I am not optimistic that an armed assailant would be convinced to go. They might take hostages. I realize this is not reasonable, but crazy people, psychos, or people who are high on $Drug are unlikely to be thinking completely rationally.
-- Any other threat I might make (to harm or kill the adversary myself) requires that the adversary believe I can and will do such a thing. Thus, this requires that I arm myself in a manner which will be percieved as a threat by all attackers.
A knife, sword, or spear won't do. A firearm is the weapon of choice, and I'd prefer a shotgun. Anything less is an automatic failure versus an assailant with a gun. (Yes, I know about the lethal distance. Yes, a short spear would be fantastic for CQ fighting in my house
Threats also have a chance to escalate into a combat situation ("You're welcome to try, have at thee!"). In such a case, I'd much prefer that I have an unfair advantage.
3) Harm Adversary.
This is both legally and ethically problematic, to me. If someone is an active threat to the life of my family or me, I do not feel it is prudent to try to "injure" them (not to mention that it's likely to impede my performance, as "shooting to wound" doesn't work). If someone is NOT an active threat to my life or my family, then I would be liable (legally) for having assaulted the invader. Anyone that I'd feel it's ethical to harm in self defense is an enemy which would be better completely unable to harm me, and therefore dead.
If I could disarm them safely, and then further ensure that they couldn't hurt me or my family, that see
Can you even back up your claim that you are more likely to get shot with your own gun?
And then you claim that police are highly trained!
HAhahahaha!
Just google "how often do police have to qualify" and you will get this as the first link: http://forums.officer.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-9835.html
Reading it you will find out that some police have to qualify ONCE a year, if that. And the qualification is to hit a man sized target at 10 feet. Some departments don't even provide funds for the officers to train and qualify and they must do it on their own time and money
Certainly there are police departments where the standards are much higher. But your erroneous statement of "getting shot with your own gun" is a complete fabrication.
He was not "prosecuted for his 'crime', and was eventually found innocent". "Prosecuted" implies there was a trial. He was arrested, and later the charges were dropped.
He shouldn't have been arrested either, given how slight the evidence against him was. A search was justified, but no more.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Your wish is my command.
A gun in your home is 22 times more likely to kill a member of your family than an intruder.
This is just ridiculous. No, plain stupid. Agree, not more than still using feet and pound for creating machines.
Why not make an encrypted 6 digits PIN code?
This is an example as the USA spreads its ineffective obsolete technology around the globe using soft power: advertising, marketing, etc.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
Quadruple piles of arse in this particular thread. The UK government wrote the European Convention of Human Rights in the late 1940s and all Council of Europe states (*not* EU states) adopted it. It has bound British law ever since, but prior to the Human Rights Act in 1998, UK citizens had to go to Strasbourg to fight a case. That's no longer true.
And guess what clause 2 of article 6 says?
"Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law."
A big lawsuit against the UK government, most probable carried to the EU level, not only will result in a big compensation (for psychological damages), but also make agencies to be more careful.
Do you have any idea how much tragedy has been preceded by the idea that fighting back is wrong, that the law will deal with it and that the state should have a monopoly on violence?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
You play way too many FPS games. Get yourself a loud alarm that you can trigger if you suspect there's an intruder in the house. Chances are they'll run away and find somewhere quieter to rob. Also it means you don't risk shooting the electricity meter reader, or some neighbor kid visiting your kids.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That's why I always save a levelup, just in case you need to put points in the Kill Adversary skill on short notice.
Not so much. This is holdover terminology from the Cold War.
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.