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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 A law set by a community that cannot be amended or repealed is not a law, it's a dogma.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.
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
He had nothing to hide because he was innocent, so everything worked out in the end, right?
He could move in with his auntie and uncle in Bel-air.
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.
This kind of database problem was pointed out back in 1967 in a fascinating article in Atlantic magazine.
We are all just people.
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!
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