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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."
If everyone downloads kiddie porn, then that makes it really hard to pick out and prosecute the people who do it deliberately.
This case was kinda stupid in that it went faster than humanly possible. I expect that newer versions will be a bit more subtle.
Personally I think trojans like this are a good idea precisely because they make it difficult to prosecute someone for having a copy of the stuff -- possession of kiddie porn is just another thought crime and prosecuting it is complete hypocrisy. The politicians like it because it is 1000x easier to prosecute someone for having a copy of kiddie porn than it is to catch and prosecute the people manufacturing it. The politicians get their public back-slapping for a job well done, meanwhile the children who are really being hurt by the creation of the stuff aren't any better off than they were before.
Its a case of the politicians deliberately not thinking of the children at all, only their careers, but proclaiming that they are protecting children -- 100% hypocrisy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It is not resources. It is a matter of will. If a US government agency can kidnap a person off an Italian street and ship them off to another country to be tortured, then the US government can shut down child porn site _no matter where_ it is located.
Because there is, to my understanding two kinds of "child porn".
1) The "core" material that is clearly children, clearly porn and prosecuted as such pretty much everywhere.
2) The "fringe" material that is teen but maybe not 18, suggestive poses, artistic or not so artistic nudes, CG art, stories, roleplay or whatever else that the US may consider child porn but at least parts of the world do not. They're an endless source of easy convictions that make it appear that they're tough on all the nasty bogeymen.
For example, here in Norway there was a "child porn" conviction that I read about in the paper, where the defendant disputed that any children was involved, and it quoted part of the main actress' bio. I found this very strange so I googled for it and it was "Tiny Tove", who was a Danish porn star that starred in a lot of dubious movies in the 1970s but was 18+ in all of them. None the less, he still got convicted because she was playing a much younger role in the movies and that is illegal in Norway. In other words, it's not "child porn" in 95%+ of the world and you can download it from any adult site or p2p network. If you turn off safe search on google you don't even have to do that. But if I did that, I'd be watching child porn under Norwegian law. It's just so fucked up you wouldn't believe it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Our governments claim that it is essential to stop people downloading and possessing regular media from P2P services (outside of official channels) because it decreases the ability and motivation of media producers to produce new media.
Our governments claim that it is essential to stop people downloading child porn off P2P services because it increases the ability and motivation of child abusers (or more commonly now, children) to produce new child porn.
I think there's something fishy here.
...so of course he's innocent.
What if he intentionally contracted this 'malware'? It seems to do a good job of diverting the blame.
There is not - nor has there ever been - a lucrative market for child pornography. Even before the laws that now ban distribution and possession of the stuff were written, and it was available (usually under the counter) from mainstream porn vendors, it just didn't sell very much. Today, with the internet, it's almost exclusively distributed gratis. That's something that people who've been raised to think of everything in transactional economic terms can't seem to grasp: child porn doesn't operates on supply-and-demand terms. So the argument that possession of child porn creates an economic "demand" for it which incentivizes pornographers to produce more... misses the point. Child porn is produced almost exclusively by people who enjoy child porn themselves. They distribute it not for profit, but for the simple reason that they want to share. Whether there's an audience of a dozen out there, or a million, they're going to do the same thing. Now, there are other arguments for the criminalization of possession of child porn, and those may or may not have merit. But the argument that possession creates demand is a fallacy.
I see several people talking about how "gross" that guy is and maybe he "intentionally put the bot on his computer" and I thought that maybe I should put my 2 cents into this discussion since the same thing happened to me several years ago. I was charged with Possession of Child Pornography and I didn't do it. I didn't even know stuff like that existed, much less that it was on my computer.
I was a guy that always had fun hanging out with my friends and since I was one of the first ones to finish college and get a 'real' job, I was also the first one out of all of my friends to afford nice toys. Like a Flat-screen TV, every video game system, workout equipment, and a nice, fast computer. Friends came and went all the time. People may say I'm too trustworthy and I guess I wasn't thinking, but most of my friends had keys to my apartment along with my roommates. I'm sure you can figure out where this is going.
One day I get back from what was a 5 day party/drinking-binge with one of my friends who was going to college in another city a few hours away, and I notice that my apartment is messier than usual. I didn't think much about it at first but then I notice that my PC is gone. So I call my roommate and asked him if he borrowed it for a LAN party or something? (yea, that's how ridiculously lax I was with my friends) and he said no. Then on my PC desk, I noticed a detective's business card and a search warrant describing what they came to search for (they came sometime that morning and guess what they were looking for?) and what they took (PC stuff like HD's etc) and that they wanted to talk to me. I kind of did that whole out-of-body experience thing that people talk about where you don't really think this is happening to you and you get all numb and it almost feels like you're "watching yourself".
I can microscopically explain every detail of the whole ordeal, because even though I try, I will never forget it. But to make a long story short - I was eventually arrested and charged. My name was on the news in my local community and on the radio as well. The law enforcement went to my work and questioned my boss about how much "access to children" I had. (I never worked with kids so therefore I had "no access to children") but nonetheless I lost my job. There were even some people (old ladies who didn't personally know me) who wrote to the local paper asking the editor "why do they even give people charged with crimes like that out on bail?". I remember thinking "This can't be happening" and that someone's gonna come out and say it was all a joke like in the movie 'The Game' with Michael Douglas. I just couldn't believe it. I mean... I WAS INNOCENT and people were already condemning me for something I didn't even know existed.
At first I thought that the prosecutor would realize it was a mistake and apologize or something, but my lawyer sort of brought me to "reality" when he basically told me that I was DEFINITELY going to go to prison and that I was DEFINITELY going to have to register as a sex offender at least for several years after prison and possibly for the rest of my life. He was just trying to reduce the prison sentence and see what else he could do. He told me that since I was being charged with this crime there was no way in the world that I would "get off" despite not having any criminal record.
When the realization set in that my life was pretty much over... it got really bad. I felt as though my entire life up to this point was done and everything I ever worked for was over. I basically boarded myself up in the spare room at my parents home. It really felt as though the villagers were outside my Mom's house with pitchforks and torches just waiting to lynch me. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I lost 30% of my body weight in a matter of a couple weeks. I thought about suicide constantly... and every time I did I would begin crying. I would begin crying not because I was scared, but because I knew I wasn't thinking about suicide in a "passing thought