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Malware Can Download Child Porn To Your Computer
2muchcoffeeman writes "The Associated Press tells the story of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was arrested in 2007 after child porn was found on his state-issued laptop computer. He was eventually cleared of all charges after some digging by the defense found that the laptop was infected with malware that was 'programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.' The article also discusses the technical aspects of how it could happen and about similar cases in the United Kingdom in 2003."
Wherever she goes, the police will be aware that she was once accused of something related to pedofilia.
Accused of course implies she was linked to it.
ok, i meant to make this longer and darker, but i'm just not really feeling that paranoid tonight =)
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Lucky for this guy there was evidence to prove he didn't do it. A hacker could might have installed a remote access program, downloaded the files manually, and then uninstalled the remote access program. There wouldn't be much evidence to suggest that this guy didn't download the kiddie porn himself.
Too bad his life is already ruined beyond repair.
Frameware ? :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Its crazy that you can be sent to jail for many years and be alienated from society for the rest of your days for having a certain amount of bits stored on hard drives/flash memory/toggle switches arranged in a certain way.
Criminalising mere possession only drives the stuff up in value, if there was more of it freely available no pervert would feel the need to hand their credit card details over to some lads in Thailand so they can pick more 5-year-olds off the street.
Think Fred might beat you to that promotion? Think your wife was a bit too friendly toward Bob at the party? Think Doctor Franzhaufer gave you an unfair grade? Don't like your new uppity neighbor?
Download child pornography to their computers. Sure, they'll whine about their "rights" and their "innocence", but who's going to believe a creepy pervert? Even if the faggy liberal court lets him off on some technicality, his career will be ruined, his friends will leave him, and he'll probably end up shooting himself.
You win, right? You showed him who's boss.
--
This country is losing all its marbles at once Among our other problems, we're engaging in a good old-fashioned witch hunt against child pornographers. No accusation is too specious, nor any policy too draconian. Never mind if due process rights are bulldozed, and people who've served out their sentences are branded for life and forced to live under overpasses. Never mind that the beachheld of practically all Internet censorship schemes has been combating child pornography. Never mind the culture of fear that can justify anything.
At least we're getting those evil-doers, right?
It's even funnier when you compare the stand on downloading kiddy porn and downloading movies/music/software for free.
1. Downloading copyrighted material illegally (not paying the authors when they ask for the payment) hurts the whole $content industry and will lead to less $content being produced, because nobody wants to work for free.
2. Downloading kiddy porn without paying for it helps the industry and will lead to more of it being produced = more children being abused.
Does this mean that the only true artists are the kiddy porn producers who appreciate that their product is being used and produce it just for the fun of it?
And yes, trojans like this are good. Now will somebody make one that also downloads music and software in addition to kiddy porn? Since most users don't find out about what various software does to their PCs until the PC starts acting up more than they can handle, it should DDoS the MAFIAA and child porn prosecutors. Except this time make it a worm, so it spreads without the user having to click on some link.
Seriously, you gotta be a real ass to do something like this to someone.
It's this sort of thing that will give governments an excuse to try and control the net even more and give companies a reason to close up their hardware and in the end most people end up with less freedom.
The net was nice before every tard was on it waiting to be exploited.
Secretly downloading porn to someones computer to create a cover is hardly moral.
Never said it was.
But life is not black and white, and all of your examples are either whacko (like the US government would be mad that we download secret information from their enemies) or totally missing the point of thought crimes (planting weapons).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Whenever I hear about something like this, I'm always a little bit skeptical. What would a malware writer stand to gain by writing some malware that "accessed 40 child porn sites per minute" and installing it on some guy's computer? It's pretty absurd when you think about it.
Does anybody really believe that there's some spergy criminal mastermind out there who spends his nights optimizing his malware's CPSPM rate? One would assume that anybody with enough knowledge to even write the software is probably already connected to the people who produce that stuff, or else he wouldn't know where to get it in the first place (and so how could he write malware to do it for him?)
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
While it's sad whenever someone is falsely accused and I have sympathy for him and his wife, I can't help but feel - it's wonderful that this has happened to a politician. Because this could happen to absolutely anybody and politicians will not relent in their fear mongering and ridiculous laws in this area until they become victims themselves.
While I strongly suspect if they weren't a) wealthy and b) in positions of power the governor would now be rotting in a cell, the fact of the case being overturned will help sanity prevail everywhere.
the accused was just a really dedicated pedophile and downloaded a program from his buddies that allowed him to circumvent all the tedious typing and clicking. Turn your laptop on, do your other legitimate business of the day, and then enjoy the benefits of your application at your leisure. Unless I missed it, I didn't see where they mentioned finding duplicates of this program replicating itself across a network, or evidence of a security breach on that computer which coincided with the installation of that program.
I'm not saying he did it, but shouldn't we consider the possibility that he was just a technically literate pedophile? I open up Opera, click on all of my "Speed Dial" favorites and then go get a snack. When I come back I start browsing all my favorite blogs and online news sites and such. What if he's just one step ahead of people like me?
So now the guy's sold his car, taken out a second mortgage, lost his job, 11 months of his life and most of his friends. He's a pariah with a mountain of debt.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor's off looking for the next big case without so much as an uncomfortable public statement or even an "I'm sorry". Business as usual.
It's a touch kinder and gentler than the days of the (Un)Holy Inquisition where if you drowned you were innocent and if you didn't they'd burn you, but it's no different in principle. The process of being tried does very nearly as much damage as being found guilty would. The accusation destroys your life one way or the other. Those who cause all the damage face no consequences whatsoever.
So, someone got framed and is cleared of all charges. Which is good.
But, leaving the fun application of ruining peoples lifes forever using a simple piece of software aside: Personally, if I'd be a terribly evil fan of cp (which I'm not, dear FBI), I'd be searching the Internet for this exact piece of malware RIGHT NOW. Someone finds cp on your harddrive? Simple, "Yeh well, search my computer" and give your lawyer the "hint" that your PC might be infested with "malware" - get out of jail free card!
This exact case presents quite a good precedence for using this excuse.
You see nothing wrong with charging people with a crime, for viewing a picture? Or being in possession of one? It may not be thought crime, but it is persecution especially when you consider that we aren't just talking about actual child abuse either, where you would have an argument concerning actual crime taking place to produce the picture (which still doesn't justify throwing people in jail for possessing the picture), but CGI images have resulted in child porn prosecutions, as have drawings and comics.
This is at its core, prosecution and persecution targeted toward people the public does not like.
The act of possession means it is no longer a thought crime. It is a crime in the United States to even view an image of Child Pornography.
Uh yeah, what do you think a thought crime is - something that is not a crime?
There are ways to catch the manufacturer, but what other freedoms will be lost in the balance. Shall we have to provide ID to buy a Camera?
So, your argument is that because it is too hard to actually save any children from abuse, we should just fuck with people we think are gross?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't even know why this is illegal. First-off, nude images are not a crime, even if you're a 15-year-old taking pictures of yourself in the mirror and sending them to your boyfriend. Second, a photo of sex is not a crime, since it's considered free speech (hence the existence of Penthouse and other porn websites).
The only person who's committed a crime is the adult raping an underage child, and also the photographer (an accessory). They are the ones who should be arrested.
It's also a bit nuts when some Australian court can say, "Cartoons of children having sex is illegal." No victims; no crime.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
As threats to society, people like you are far worse than pedophiles. People like you are why families get their lives derailed from something as innocent as a picture of their child in the bath. People like you are why a couple of teenagers sending nude pictures to each other gets them both charged with production and possession of child porn. People like you are why even after pedophiles have 'served their debt to society', their life is turned into a living hell by moralistic jerks, without a care for the fact that such abuse just increases recidivism rates. People like you are why even after being unambiguously acquitted of child porn charges, people continue to have the stigma of 'child-raping monster' on them. People like you are why a grown man has to seriously consider whether or not he should help a crying child, for fear of it being seen as him trying to abduct them. People like you are why parents are endlessly paranoid about some freak snatching their child off the street and raping and murdering them, oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of child abuse is perpetrated by friends and family. People like you are why the Internet continues to be censored in many places under the guise of 'protecting the children'. People like you are responsible for gladly handing over the rights of yourself and others to maintain the security theater that is the war on pedophilia.
You may not feel shame over your complete inability to rationally consider the situation, your lack of care for the harm you cause to society as a whole, your lack of care for the harm you cause to even the children you claim to be defending, and the fact that you're driven by nothing but hate and a desire to have a group to persecute and torture for your twisted amusement, but you sure as fuck should.
I think YOU are missing the point, however. How can a crime be victimless? The deed was already done by somebody else. The accused only has an image of what occurred, and what occurred did not actually involve the accused. Throwing the accused away into PMITA prison for several years will not somehow fix whatever happened to the supposedly exploited child went through (and might I point out that what is considered a "child" by law is not necessarily the same thing as defined by biology... having boobs and bush already makes one not biologically a child). And let's carry it a step further... You correctly state that it is illegal to even view an image of child porn... But let's say for the sake of argument that somebody hacked into cnn.com and put up a bunch of kiddie porn on the front page. Congrats, that person just created a crapload of felons out there by no fault or action of their own. Let's seem them have to go to court and convince everybody that they had no intention to view the porn (is that even considered a valid defense?). So now explain to me how possession of "child porn" is nothing more than a "though crime"... I'd love to hear about how the subject of the "child porn" gets harmed more for every copy of the file out there...
I would say that rights and freedoms were already the baby tossed out with the bathwater when possession of "child porn" became illegal.
P.S. I think it's rather stupid to criminalize God's creation (the body). Only a completely and total dipshit, also known as a politician, would find the Creator's work a perversion. It's sickening.
But then I've long thought Puritan americans have a mental aberration where they can see violence on television without concern (think 24), but fear nudity (like Janet Jackson's naked breast). That can't be normal.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Boy, sometimes it's easy to tell that the majority of people here are men. I don't know American age-of-consent laws and I don't really care, but how hard is it really? Don't worry about all those scenarios - they don't all apply to you. You'll be ok if you (a) don't have sex with children or look at pictures of them and (b) find out how old a girl is before sex - if she's younger that 16 - she's too young for you if you're out of high school yourself and - if she's younger that 18 - don't put the pictures up on the net.
So let's recap. Someone finishes their post with this:
It's a kind of blood sport. It's a form of entertainment. It's completely shameful.
You respond with this:
If ever the state needs a volunteer, I'll step up. I can do the needle, I can knot a rope, I can throw an electrical switch, I can pull a trigger, or I can swing an axe.
You get modded down and respond with this:
I can't help wondering what kind of lowlife modded me down. He probably lurks around the bathrooms at his local park, waiting to get a peek at the little boys and girls.
Your possession of the motor skills required to manipulate a needle, tie knots, swing an axe, or pull a trigger on command is not the problem. Your diction/presentation within the context of this conversation is the problem. To put this another way, you are presenting an argument using techniques commonly employed by fuck-tards.
If you are able to re-read your down mod'd posts without picking up on the fuck-tard aspects of those posts, then you might consider simply ignoring the moderation system altogether. Either way, this is /., so unless you take up sock-puppetry your fuck-tardish posts have simply joined the proud tradition of -1 fuck-tardary on this site, and it will all be forgotten by morning.
Best of luck navigating the world.
The point is that 'people like you' think about the horrible cases of actual children being raped by adults (abhorrent, of course), but as a result support criminalizing a whole range of behaviors that have nothing to do with the above (plenty of examples in this discussion, so I won't bore you by listing them).
The distinction here (of which I see no awareness in your post btw) is that people who can be legally liable under the slew of anti-pedophile laws currently on the books are an insanely wider proportion of population that the sum total of the kind of truly dangerous people you talk about.
Many people here on slashdot are really really pissed at what they perceive as irrational overkill in that direction that strangles everybody's freedoms without having much impact on the real predators - hence the emotional tone that strikes a chord with a lot of us here.
The problem IT Pros face is that it is a potential crime to not report CP sightings because you could be said to "endangering children" which is a very broad and yet serious charge. The whole law in this area is far too vague and cloudy for the level of seriousness it comes with, and so you are forced to basically make some innocent person's life even more of a hell than the malware has already, or to assume some liability in case it comes out that you didn't report something.
``People have a special contempt for pedophiles because their victims are children and the motivation for the crime is mere sexual desire - the sort of urge most of us supress every day. It's an adult versus a child.''
That's fair and well, but that isn't the whole story. I don't think you'll find many people arguing that actual sexual abuse of children isn't a horrible crime that should be punished. The problem is that, under the guise of protecting the children (which we all agree is a Good Thing), many people are labeled as child molesters even though they don't actually sexually abuse children. This is a problem, because it ruins the lives of innocent people - the exact thing the system should prevent.
The debate, now, is about whether the collateral damage (innocent people getting their lives ruined thanks to "protect the children" laws) is a fair price to pay for the protection it affords to our children. Some people seem to take the position that any price is a fair price to pay to protect the children. This is an irrational position, but people find it hard to argue against, for fear of being seen as soft on child abuse. The truth is that there are some measures that are worth it, and some measures where the cure is worse than the disease.
Personally, I feel that only actual abuse (suitably defined) of actual children (suitably defined) should be a crime. Anything beyond that just makes it far too likely that people will be prosecuted even though they mean no harm to children.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
And we all know girls don't lie about their age, don't we.
After all, if a club or bar has an 18 age limit, a teenage girl won't lie about her age so she can get in at 16, will she.
Because those laws might not be impacting me directly, but that's not a reason not to fight injustice. Segregation, apartheid and anti-semitism does not affect me, it is still wrong and must be fought and argued against.
The problem is that as soon as anything of a sexual nature is involved it is treated in such an emotional way. The main reasons for the laws are the way they are are because of emotional knee jerk reactions not because of a reasoned strategy to curb actual harm. Our feelings should never be a reason to enact laws. I personally can't stand pop music. I find that whole cult around britney spears and the rest disgusting. Should we have a law that would put people(and children) in jail for many years and permanently label them as perverts, because they had possessed pop music or a poster with a pop star on it?
If you lock a child in a room and emotionally scar it for life, so it will have trouble functioning in society, holding a job, creating a family etc. Then you are a child abuser and should be thrown in jail. So we should also throw the judges, the lawmakers, the police, and the voters in jail, who decided or aided and abetted that the appropriate response to a child sending some nude photos of her/him-self to their significant other is to put them in jail and brand them as sex offenders.
What's REALLY sick is that this kind of activity, and many others that can result in infections, were well known YEARS BEFORE Fiola was persecuted. Yet on that basis, instead of the state being required to prove their case (they apparently got to assume he was the perp just because the computer he was using had the porn on it), he was required to prove that he was innocent. WE already knew this kind of thing is not just possible, but significant. But THEY didn't want to bother having to separate the real pedophiles from the innocent victims ... or were just computer idiots (like the department he worked for that forced him to use an insecure computer).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
My point was that it is very easy to be convicted of a "sexual offense" without actually doing something wrong, and that in some states that even includes "sex with a minor." The GP said he would be proud to murder sex offenders, and that he is not ashamed to call for their executions. My point was that the "sex offender" label is frequently misapplied, and that even if you look up the crime someone committed, the statutes have become so complex that it could be difficult to determine what the actual circumstances are.
It has nothing to do with being a man or a woman. It has to do with being a citizen in a society where "sex offender" means a mark for life, where people violently hate "sex offenders," and where teenagers who did nothing wrong can be convicted of "sex offenses." No, the laws do not apply to me, but I still have to live in a society where people are convicted under those laws.
Palm trees and 8