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Man Accuses Cat of Downloading Child Porn

Posted by samzenpus on from the when-pets-go-bad dept.

bruce_the_loon writes "They have blamed viruses. They have blamed neighbors. They have accused police of planting it. In rare cases, they have admitted downloading it. This is the first time someone has accused a cat of downloading child porn onto their computer. This seems like a defense almost too stupid to be made up."

5 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Re:There is software to protect against this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That has to be one smart filter to detect the difference between a normal vi or emacs command stream and cat steps.

    ESC W - CTRL-A :.-3,.+4s/a/z/g

  2. CD Behind radiator by shadowknot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Working in digital forensics you hear all the ridiculous defenses dreamed up by crazy suspects and defense lawyers but this one is pretty out there! One case a colleague of mine involved the usual defense of "a trojan did it" but this was his defense for how a CD-R marked "best stuff" had gotten from the spindle on his desk, into his machine, appropriated a copy of the illicit images on his computer (which he then moved to the recycle bin!) and then hidden itself behind a radiator in a jewel case. Amazing what a little knowledge (and I do mean a very can do!

    1. Re:CD Behind radiator by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One case a colleague of mine involved the usual defense of "a trojan did it"

      I'm rather surprised trojans don't do it more often. It seems like a pretty viable extortion scheme:

      1. Infect victim's PC
      2. Download loads of kiddy porn to various places on the PC
      3. Email the victim: "ILLEGAL CHILD PORNOGRAPHY DETECTED ON YOUR PC at C:\WINDOWS\KIDDYPORN AND OTHER LOCATIONS. Send us $100 to purchase cleanup tool within 5 days, or the police will be notified"
      4. Wait 5 days, collect money from victim, or if no money, send an 'anonymous tip' to the police
      5. Evil profit!
      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    2. Re:CD Behind radiator by Lord+Ender · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would like to get into computer forensics, but I'm afraid I would be spending all my time going after dirty old men, rather than prosecuting real crimes with real victims and damages. Worse than that, I'm afraid I would be forced to attempt to make cases against people who had no intention of downloading illegal content at all (does a 17year 11month old girl look any different from an 18 year old?).

      So as someone who has worked in the industry, I ask you: is modern computer Forensics at all about prosecuting serious crime, or is it just playing porno police? What is your caseload like? The idea of having a hand in ruining someones life for looking at a picture of a sexually mature female just seems immoral to me, and I would want no hand in it.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  3. Re:Florida by TheCarp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Believe me, if this had been something that happened within the past several years, I probably wouldn't have. However, I haven't used Usenet to download porn since I was 16 and on an Apple 2 GS. Given that I am over 30 now, and the only evidence that it ever happened is well... me telling a story about something that happened so many years ago.... while I was a minor myself.... well....

    Lets just say, I am not terribly worried. Should it end up requiring me to dig out an OLD GS, and display some jpegs on it to show people exactly how horrendous the image quality was (would you like 640x200 in 4 shades of grey or 320x200 in 16?) then... I guess I could even do that. Actually, after 15 years, I am not even sure that it supported both video modes. (and yes, 320x200@256 was possible by a really funky assembly routine, but the JPEG software couldn't really support that since just drawing the screen that way took 90% of the CPU time just to push pallets ahead of the scan line... leaving precious little for JPEG decoding which already took forever at just a few shades of gray)

    And of course, to top it all off, Its not like it said "kiddie porn" anywhere. For all I know, it was a very young looking 18 year old model. It wouldn't be the first time. However, I was convinced enough to be a bit sick to my stomach and delete it immediately.

    Any DA wishing to use these statements against me is going to have a real fight on his hands, and I promise to bring public opinion to bear on that one. If anything, they should call me as an expert witness against this asshole :) I would happily state, unequivocally that there is no way a cat or other random event input downloaded that much kiddie porn from the internet. There just isn't that much out there that is publicly available. If there was, I am pretty sure I would have stumbled on more of it by now.

    -Steve

    --
    "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"