Slashdot Mirror
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."
how is this anything new? A completely unprotected system can be infected and then do whatever any other computer can.
Pedobear strikes back
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
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.
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.
Downloads all the latest movie and software releases, and stores them on my computer! It's madness, I say, madness.
The real question is "Why do these same prosecutors allow so many child porn sites to exist?" Because it's easier to pursue innocent victims?
Guess that lets my cat of the hook...
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?
At least it wasn't 100000 Rick Rolls.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
...is create a bunch of honeypot websites for politicians and fatcats.
And then trigger the appropriate middle-of-the-night "clubbing cops" raids on the targets.
But don't get too greedy. It must stay believable to the general public. (Including the media. Including "FOX & 'tards".)
P.S.: I think, we, the people, should have our own intelligence service. With the ability to filter out things that were aquired with proper methods. With a huge knowledge base. With native "agents" in every country. In every company and government office. And with trust relationship management. Make it a game. And let millions of people play it. Let's see who 0wns who then ^^ (Yes I know... nice dream though.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Now if anybody is caught with illegal stuff, they can just claim a virus did it. There's not way to really prove otherwise unless the person is filmed actually typing/clicking for it. Otherwise, anything you can do on a PC a virus can also do.
Table-ized A.I.
The US has an extradition treaty with the EU, and in this case, they knew who they were looking for. If all you have is an IP address and it is a country you don't have an extradition treaty with, it is a bit more difficult.
To be fair the police don't really have to do it on their own. The Internet Watch Foundation http://www.iwf.org.uk/ is pretty much dedicated to wiping the stuff off the net.
Perhaps the government can do something similar. In fact, use prosecuted pedos to hunt the stuff down while in prison. If it resides in another country then just get ISPs blocking it. There is still proxies but you'll never get rid it completely but if you make it nearly impossible get then that's a good start.
What gets me are the confident assertions that people cannot unintentionally download child pornography by prosecutors who have no idea what they are talking about. It's disturbing both that people pay attention to them and that they are more interested in getting convictions than in consulting real experts.
In other news, slashdotters lined up in droves asking "where can I get the adult | lesbian | furries version of this script?"
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.
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.
Computer malware could screw badly your REAL life. It should be a real example to show to people that aren't concerned about security, uses insecure practices/browsers/operating systems/whatever.
Probably is the most convincing scenario until a computer virus manage to infect and kill real people.
so what happens when a public pc goes to a link like that?
A virus downloads it to a public pc?
A pc that is not setup to even be used by any one aka one used to display stuff get some on it?
useing a laptop at a place with free wifi all the ip will show is that some from there when to the site and there are a lot places that have open wifi or just have 1 code to get on the network.
... and the possibly upcoming law now, making it illegal to WATCH child porn. No, not consume it or otherwise support pedophile circles, merely watch it.
It's exactly these things that make me against that law. Sure, you'll probably easily explain it if it really did happen to you, but what if the search warrant was about something else? "Oh, look, he had child porn on his computer too, besides all this movie piracy." Where both can be a result of low computer security and a hijacked WiFi connection, neither of which being illegal to have. It's so sad when we sidestep common sense with laws like this.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
The usual argument for criminalizing posession of data regardless of how you got it hasn't been refuted near enough. (too bad AC posts get overlooked by mods - as if they weren't worth reading unless someone got a karma point)
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
...so of course he's innocent.
What if he intentionally contracted this 'malware'? It seems to do a good job of diverting the blame.
I'd like to think that you spent all of your fifteen mod points over the course of the last thirty minutes, and then accidentally undid them all with this ridiculous post.
Don't forget to change your MAC address before you connect. macchanger on linux, I assume there's similar functionality for other OSes. MACs encode the brand of wifi card (and usually of your laptop if it came with) so it can be reasonably easy to visually scan the room for the offender if there aren't 9001 MacBook Pros in it.
Of course, I'm against actually doing this as then the wifi owner gets yelled at and shuts it down, denying me free internet.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I wonder if this malware was in fact targetted specifically at KP. It might have just been an open door that the creator or others (think: those that don't want to use their own computers could pay to hijack somebody else's).
In most cases, if something is illegal, there's a shady market for it somewhere.
In Germany, there has been a big debate about online child porn recently. One organization showed that by simply sending email to the hosting providers many sites were deleted within 12 hours.
See http://ak-zensur.de/2009/05/loeschen-funktioniert.html (in German)
MACs encode the brand of wifi card (and usually of your laptop if it came with) so it can be reasonably easy to visually scan the room for the offender if there aren't 9001 MacBook Pros in it.
Like this? http://www.abluestar.com/utilities/rndimages/img/acer.jpg
An extradition treaty doesn't give you permission to grab people off the streets without formal approval of the government in question (and some actual evidence; unless it's with the UK in which case the evidence part is optional).
Your idea of harm and the surrounding concepts seem to leave a significant amount to be desired. While for one there is direct harm caused, is it justifiable to cause the indirect harm associated with having a death penalty? Not supporting kiddy diddling or anything. I just hate something about the way you put words and thoughts together.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
possession of kiddie porn is just another thought crime.
Well, tell that to the kids (and the parents) that have to live with the images of them (or their kids) being abused, is traded on the Internet.
Imagine your having a girlfriend, and her being raped. Sharing pictures of that after the fact - just a thought crime?
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.
Holy shit. I'm a fairly large Mac fanboy and that picture is terrifying to me.
Except 99%+ of people who are sex offenders in a way relating to minors didn't actually do anything that any of us would consider objectionable (eg. a 17 year old having sex with an 18 year old, a 16 year old uploading nude photos of herself, making or spreading photoshop child porn whose creation doesn't harm anyone, accidentally clicking the wrong link and not knowing what a browser cache is and how to clear it, etc)
There is a story behind that picture to explain all the macs, though I forget what it is.
You're right - there is an extradition treaty between Italy & the US - but this wasn't extradition, it was kidnap pure & simple. 23 agents from the CIA office in Milan have been convicted in absentia.
See e.g. the BBC.
Hearts & minds.
ant.
Holey Maloney... Is that a photoshop? Anyway... Starting from the Acer, two right one down might also be a different computer. The apple logo isn't as prominent as on the others. There are also some red computers (For example, from the Acer, three right, one up), who have an Apple logo and as far as I know there never were red Apple machines.
So it matters not that the US nabbed the guy with the full cooperation and help of the Italian government?
o_O Yeah I was kinda alarmed by all those little glowing fruit symbols too.
MACs encode the brand of wifi card
Specifically, the top half of the MAC is issued to a chipmaker, who then issues unique serial numbers. If Apple switched brands partway through a run, that top half would change.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Except, of course, that it is difficult to even define who is or is not a predator, pedophile, or criminal. Here is a perfect example for you: in my home state, New York, the law states that it is illegal to have sex with someone who is under the age of 17, and if you do, it is a misdemeanor if they are older than 15 if you are older than 18 but younger than 21, a felony if they are 15 or younger and you are 18 or older, a misdemeanor if they are 13 or older and you are younger than 18, and a felony if they are younger than 11 regardless of your age.
Man, that is complicated. If someone was convicted of felony statutory rape in New York, I would want to know which of the above was the actual crime before I even considered any punishment, let alone the death penalty. I do not even know what happens if the victim was 12 and the perpetrator was under 18; that is defined in a different section of the law. There is also the fantastic reality that if you have a 17 year old lover in New York, that is legal, but you cannot legally produce any erotic photographs or videos of your lover -- that would be a felony, again under a completely separate section of the law (and before you say, "well, people should not have 17 year old lovers," bear in mind that what I said applies to an 18 year old -- or do you think that is a death-penalty deserving crime as well?).
Before you jump to conclusions about sex offenders, perhaps you should first ask, "who is being classified as a sex offender?" In many cases, it is and absurd classification to carry, and worse yet, it is a classification that never gets removed from their record.
Palm trees and 8
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.
Sure, if it's one CP site. What if there are hundreds? All you really need is some hosting and some desperate parents and you can set up your own illegal picture site.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
How does an extradition treaty allow the US government to kidnap an Italian citizen from Italian streets? This is outrageous and has been repeated in several other locations. If any extradition treaty is to remain, these US agents have to be extradited to Italy.
The person who directed that virus to download child pornography probably just wanted to cover his ass and download some child pornography without getting caught by the feds. Not the brightest move, but someone was bound to try it.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, someone else will probably realize that by toning it down a bit (e.g. visit the sites at a more human rate), they could frame their enemies/rivals. This is sounding more and more like the plot of a south park episode.
Palm trees and 8
Clearly you have never been to Russia where these websites are likely owned by the mob and wouldn't take kindly to US government. Sure, we can send in the big guns, but do you think Russia would be o.k. with that?
I was a US exchange student in Napa, CA during the trial. When the verdict came they actually shut down the school and got everyone in classrooms with tvs, so they could watch it. I always thought that the interest in celebrities (which I partly share) is more of a guilty little secret, rather than something to cherish. So I kinda walked out in disgust. No one could understand that. At least in my school I was the only kid outside at that time.
People were furious, and again I didn't get it. At least once they didn't "fry the black guy", which I thought speaks for the traditionally racist judicial system.
How would you know it's a Vista laptop... Could be running Linux, or Windows XP... or a hackingtosh.... Yeah, I know, we geeks still can dream of such a girl... Probably she doesn't exist.
if you're selling the stuff online, you use the cloud as your web hosting.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I did read about the people you're talking about. While raping and attempting to murder an 8-year-old is pretty horrible, I don't see why a society that doesn't practice the death penalty should make an exception for them - they're clearly mentally unfit and need help, not the needle/chair/bullet. And, of course, persecuting child-related sex offenders gets innocent people a lot more than it does hardcore crazies.
From what I know, the picture was from the Missouri School of Journalism. Apparently, if the students bought a Mac, they got a free Ipod Nano. Personally, the thought of spending between $1500 and $2000 extra(because I am sure that many of the students already had a PC laptop) simply to get a $150 is idiotic, but hey, who am I to judge?
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
School of Journalism....
judge away my friend. judge away...
When I was in 5th grade or so, a kid in my class brought in her homework (or the remains of her homework) complete with teethmarks. So, yes, it does actually happen. :)
I think the moral of this story, though, is that the hidden costs of running a vulnerable computing environment might be far higher than most of us even thought. I mean... how do you balance the extra $200 or so for a Mac (if it's even a real cost, which I'd dispute) against the possibility of $250,000 in legal bills, losing your job, and, more importantly, losing your freedom? And it's not just kiddie porn... industrial espionage, RIAA lawsuits, "real" espionage...
Yes, I know that Macs are not immune, in theory. Nor is Linux, in theory. But in practice the odds of someone actually cracking my Mac or my Linux box--I have both--and using it as a zombie for any sort of nefarious purpose are exponentially lower than they are on Windows. Not to mention all the other benefits... like say the fact that I fired up my Thinkpad for the first time in a long time today and the once-working wireless adapter wouldn't work. Never have that sort of problem on a Mac! And on Linux, it might be a pain to get it to work but once it worked it would keep working.
There's a reason I don't run Windows, and this sort of thing is the reason.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Only n00bs need macchanger to change the MAC address.
# ip link set eth0 addr de:ad:13:37:ba:be
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
So what is the excuse of Massachusetts for destroying the lives of people and not making them whole after it becomes clear they are completely innocent ... including restoring his employment and all backpay? Do they even have an excuse? The recovery cap SHOULD (in the moral sense ... I don't know what their laws actually say) not apply to ACTUAL costs, the backpay, and restoring employment in good standing. It should only apply to the added on awards like "pain and suffering". And they should also pay their health costs (and probably will have to eventually, anyway, after things get worse because they won't pay them now).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Such a virus could serve three purposes in my mind:
1) Disseminate and house child pornography anonymously
2) Bored person playing a cruel prank
3) An attempt to legitimize the "infected computer" defense. No way I knew about it. My computer is infected.
It isnt' done out of voyeurism, you sick fuck. Parents do it because they want pictures of their kids. The fact that kids are sometimes nude is just a natural, normal part of life.
# ifconfig eth0 hw ether de:ad:13:37:ba:be
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
You could just return the mac...
or turn around and resell it.
YOU know that, and I know that, but would a prosecutor looking to advance his career know, or frankly give a shit, and what are the odds that 12 folks too stupid to get out of jury duty would know that? My mom is real civic minded and went when they called her for jury duty. She hung the jury 11-1. Why? Because with no evidence they were gonna send this guy away for arson because "he is Italian and Italians are in the mob and do that kind of stuff. Haven't you seen Goodfellas?"
So just because someone with a little brains and tech knowledge would know that doesn't mean you won't get dragged into court over it. Don't forget the MPAA accused a laser printer of file sharing, but that doesn't keep them from using that "evidence" in court.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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. So it's natural that people will be outraged by that - just like a mugger will get a bigger sentence if they mug and old woman than a young man.
No, it's not particularly rational, but rationality isn't the whole game. Unless you've had an empathy bypass, it's something that's understood on an instinctual level.
BTW I feel sorry for pedophiles as well - it must be sad to be hardwired that way. And of course they should be treated fairly, given a chance to be rehabilitated and not subjected to a witch hunt. But they are the predators.
Sorry if I missed the point of your post - maybe it was burried in the spew.
You missed his point beca... OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!
(and not in the slightly pedophile way of thinking of the children)
- These characters were randomly selected.
Has nothing to do with the iPod. Here's the story:
http://blogs.eweek.com/applewatch/content/macbook/is_apples_mac_u_pic_worth_a_thousand_words.html
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.
Where can I get a copy of this supposed "malware"? ;)
Trust Your Technolust
I am sorry but that is an incredibly felatious argument.
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.
For New York, that's actually a fairly straightforward law.
An interesting point. Statistically, in the U.S., for every 7 death row inmates who have been executed, one has been exonerated (usually due to improved DNA testing proving conclusively that somebody else did it). That's a staggering number. One might reasonably interpret this to mean that as many as one in eight people convicted is convicted falsely. Food for thought.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm
I don't know why, but one of the biggest obsessions in the US culture is underage porn / underage sex.
And I call it underage porn, and not child porn, because most of the time the subject of the pictures are not children, but teenagers (15 - 17 years old) who know what they are doing.
Even when a 15 year old girl takes a nude picture of herself, or her boyfriend takes a pic of her, it is considered a crime in the US, I find that kind of strange.
Some other obsessions I've found so far in this species is:
- political correctness
- the "N" word (won't even dare to write it here)
- immigration
- coffee
MACs encode the brand of wifi card (and usually of your laptop if it came with) so it can be reasonably easy to visually scan the room for the offender if there aren't 9001 MacBook Pros in it.
Like this? http://www.abluestar.com/utilities/rndimages/img/acer.jpg
Think different!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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.
It isnt' done out of voyeurism, you sick fuck. Parents do it because they want pictures of their kids. The fact that kids are sometimes nude is just a natural, normal part of life.
I wonder if AC's rebuff to arekusu was posted AC out of fear for being labelled sick and extreme by a society that doesn't see any nudity as appropriate?
I don't have any nude photos of my kids, but I'll pose a question. Lots of people in the 1940s and 1950s had naked photographs taken on bearskin rugs by professional photographers - so why are their children being prosecuted for dropping off rolls of film containing a shot or two of their grandchildren playing under the sprinklers? If the test is whether some weirdo somewhere could jack off to it, I'm sure there are people out there who get their jollies imagining all sorts of things about pictures of three year olds with lollypops - and if we invoke the Quantum Fetish Theory, we probably shouldn't have any photographs of anyone under 18 at all. There's a line that has to be drawn somewhere, but I don't know if anyone can say for sure just where that should be without appearing foolish or perverted to someone else.
I was going to mention it, but you beet me to it. Now does anybody know of a tool to do that under windows?
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
I see what you did there...
Circumcision is child abuse.
``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.
Don't be silly! Doctor Franzhaufer uses Linux...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
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
"you beet me to it
That'll happen if you sit around vegitating.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
the courts need to raise the standard for proof of this crime. Just because there is CP on a computer should not be considered enough to prove the owner of the computer put it there. Computers, especially home computers running Windows, are inherently insecure and able to operate autonomously, subject to outside control without the owners knowledge. I can't think of any other possession we are less in control of, which is probably why there is no real analogous precedent for the courts to relate to.
The courts need to require that the prosecutor can show the owner DID download the material with knowledge, not just that it was there. The requirement for proof should be something like correlating an online conversation to a request for the material or carrying it on a DVD, purchasing it with the offenders card, something that shows it could not have been automated.
There is the potential for severe miscarriages of justice with the lax standard for proof presently employed which will inevitably lead to abuse and misuse of power. Once prosecutors have a slamdunk way to leverage a confession that will use and abuse it. All they have to do in ANY case is to look for a piece of CP on the defendant's computer, even if that has nothing to do with the case. No-one wants to go to jail for that and will confess to any other crime, even if they are not guilty. Look at the present case against prosecutors for manufacturing evidence if you don't believe they would do this. "there is no freestanding right not to be framed."
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
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.
And that's just executions. Due to the inherent irreversibility of the punishment, people tend to apply higher standards of proof to it. In prisons, there are more people who are innocent (far more if you count people in jail for things that really shouldn't be criminal).
It's not an easy matter to decide what should/could be sacrificed, but there's one simple point where "protecting the children" should absolutely and definitely stop cold in its tracks. It's when it's ruining the lives of the children in question.
An underage posing nude in front of a camera should never be accused of production of child porn.
A child should never be taken away from the parents, unless they were directly abusive. Taking photos does not count.
To be deemed a pedophile, you should be at least 2 years older than your "victim".
Goddamnit, any day now we will see a law against underage masturbation deeming it child self-abuse.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Someone is sick and tired of the bullshit. They write a virus that does exactly that, and spreads to millions of computers. As result, 25% of citizens of the US is in possession of child porn without even knowing it. After the initial wave of arrests the police finds out they are trying to stop a tidal wave with a bucket, and becomes completely powerless.
Except the virus wasn't quite as efficient as intended...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
What are you trying to do? Make the police and prosecution actually have to PROVE that someone actually LOOKED AT the CP, over and over?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Amazing what people do with their free time. Why would anyone want to target a 'former government employee'? Was it given to him by someone or did he download it unintentionally? Begs the question what kind of sites he's been looking at...
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
I'm not going to be judge, jury or executioner on what happened on this guys computer.
Although, look it from another perspective.
A pedophile could install a virus or malware on his/her PC, doing these actions in order to prove his innocence through blanket defense.
A knife has two sides that can cut; how is the state going to protect against such behavior?
I would think a providers web/proxy access log would be a lot more accurate instead of finding a virus/trojan on someones PC; which could be installed on purpose by the pedophile.
With an access.log, time can be compared to "legal visits"; where the times of visiting legal sites would either match +/- the timeframe where the photos are downloaded would be proof the perpetrator was behind the PC when it happened; visiting child pornography. If the state has to provide evidence and virusses are in the wild downloading illegal porn; then they will have to be prepared for both cases....
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Ah but they probably also want to punish people who get pleasure ( especially sexual) from watching 9/11 videos.
Thought crime and all that.
FWIW, adultery is still a crime in some US states. Maybe they should also imprison people who get pleasure from looking at photos of other people's wives.
If people don't think adultery is damaging, I suggest they do a statistical survey of people whose spouses have cheated on them. While some people aren't the jealous sort, a significant number are. And from an evolutionary POV it's quite understandable why they feel that way. It can be significantly affect the survival of their genes.
this defence would not work. In the UK the law is such that the authorities do not care where the porn came from. The fact that it is on your machine means that you are in possession of it, and therefore guilty.
End of story. No excuses. No counter arguments allowed.
Go directly to Jail, do not pass go.
Justice? Pfft. Missing, presumed dead, and has been for a while now.
Trying to associate Microsoft with "fun" is like trying to associate Satan with aromatherapy. -Tycho
"It's completely shameful."
Whatever. I feel no shame in demanding the executions of such bizarros as Phillip Garrido, or Dennis Bradford, or any number of other freaks. In fact, I am PROUD that I'm willing to put a predator to death. 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.
Put the dogs down, and they'll never harm another human being.
I think you just proved GP's point. He was referring to how easily people assume guilt, and you still seem oblivious to the whole "burden of evidence" concept.
I agree that the serial numbers portions of the MAC address are supposed to be unique. However, (back in the day) I've seen an instance of 4 Compaq SFF desktops with identical MAC addresses cause havoc on a Novell network. So don't bet your bacon on a unique MAC address.
If you can't do it in device properties in the Device Manager:
Win2k/XP: http://www.nthelp.com/NT6/change_mac_w2k.htm
May not be possible in all cases in Vista/7...but you can give it a try:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpronetworking/thread/697bf48c-a226-4315-8875-2bbeddf16db2
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you're in America with a laptop & someone manages to get the right data onto it, you're penalized for life. It doesn't matter your gender or anything else, you're vilified and will never be able to get a job or house.
Additionally, it's male sided so much that if Women help other people's kids or innocent pictures surface of mothers with their children during bath, then no crime.
Men want equal rights. All the while, they are continually cast as villains. Watch TV mystery shows to see what % is the married white guy the criminal. It an American culture problem.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Heard of DNA? The DNA evidence in both cases I mentioned is already established. The only other evidence that can be almost equally as damning, is a video.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's part of the GUI.
Go to the properties of the NIC in Device Manager. Click on the "Advanced" tab. Hit the drop down and find "Hardware Address" Type what you want in the box without spaces or colons. Click OK.
There you go.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
What if the girl lies about her age to you?
What if she has fake ID?
People have been locked up for shagging girls that look 20, say they're 18, and are in fact 15.
'Innocent until proven guilty' does not apply if you are accused of anything sexual involving kids. In that case it is 'Guilty until proven innocent. Then assumed guilty anyway.'
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
No, they aren't. The IWF only gets UK-hosted stuff taken offline. If the child porn is hosted in another country (like for example the US), they don't inform the authorities in that country - they just add it to their block list. Then they use the number of sites on that lists to talk up how important their work is and how critical is is that they're allowed to censor everyone's internet access with zero oversight.
Oh, and if you're in the UK and come across a child porn site, the IWF is (AIUI) the only place you can legally report it to. It's also the organisation the UK police work with. Wonderful, ain't it?
The article is about someone who was falsely accused. Nobody ever said pedophiles do not exist, and the two cases you presented are relevant only to those two people. They do not affect the guilt or innocence of others, and they do not make circumstantial evidence any stronger.
Time to squash this thread before it gets out of hand.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
You deliberately chose some spotlight cases where the perpetrators most definitely were sick fucks who deserved what they got.
However, that's what grandparent meant by "unlike witches, they actually exist". It's a witch hunt: you catch the innocent along with the guilty.
That doesn't justify the disgusting treatment of high-school lovers and consenting relationships, which seems to be more and more common these days – much more common than the stories about the Phillip Garridos and their like. As a 25-year-old in the state where I live, I could legally get with a 17-year-old and the religious folks could just scream and bitch all they want – I'm not doing anything illegal. But if it's a 16-year-old, even if she's totally consenting, by golly I'm a sick pervert and ought to be locked up.
Oh, and that 17-year-old girlfriend who I of course don't have (I'm on slashdot, afterall)? Fornicating is fine, but take one little picture and I'm a child pornographer.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This, folks, is why treating ownership of information as an illegal act is inherently flawed. Exploiting/molesting children? Yeah, that's a crime. Funding that exploitation? That could be a slippery slope, but, at its core, sure, it's a crime. Possessing the products of that exploitation? If you make it a crime, you'll run into this.
It is completely unreasonable to make the possession of a particular type of information illegal if you fairly consider the implications. This type of law is both dangerous and fruitless. It's friggin' data. Even if it were put down on paper, photocopiers would make it almost infinitely reproducible. When it's electronic, it can be replicated at an absurd rate.
It's like criminalizing glass pipes because they could be used to smoke pot (whichever way you sit on smoking pot, just let this go for a sec). If you do this, you start down a road of harassing people for having wood pipes, then toy pipes, then things that look like pipes, then lumps in their pockets. If you wanted to stop the use of pot, go after the source.
We can't get to the people producing this sort of media and committing these crimes, so we try to get to the people who have it in some sort of scorched-earth approach to the problem? This can only end badly.
I like the tools anyway... they have built-in lists of manufacturers, with the ability to use either a real manufacturer code and a random device code or just randomize the entire MAC.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You really just have no idea do you?
Well I was in the porn trade for a while, running the servers of pay sites. There is a LOT of money to be made there. It was very interesting, after years of having to explain every dime in IT, it was refreshing to make a pitch for a new server costing X and just get X plus a bonus of Y if it was done yesterday. And that was 100% legit porn. The reason I quit is because there was always that push/lure/risk of going in the wrong direction. Call to ask wether I was interested in setting up a new server room in Russia, money no object, no-no don't bother with an offer, just say how much you want.
Eheh.
There is a lot of money in the sex trade and a lot of money in child porn. Google "teenmodel". Oh, there is free stuff and then the "collectors" pay for "bonus features".
No money in child porn... that is like saying "well in holland everyone can grow their own pot, so there is no money in the drugs trade in holland".
Only a person completely out of touch with reality would make such a claim.
They aren't concerned that they will end up in that situation. They are concerned that these laws are overly broad and that the laws will be used unjustly. It is also a "They came for the Jews and I said nothing" situation. Yesterday, it was illegal to possess CP, today it is illegal to possess fictional images of CP. Will tomorrow's law include of-age tentacle rape?
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
I write search spiders as a hobby. Part of their job is downloading lots of random files. So if it indexes a child porn site will I get arrested? Just having the content on your computer or having downloaded content doesn't mean there was any intention.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I was browsing the net a couple of years ago and all of a sudden I got tons of pop up windows full of really vile images( i was running a pop up manager but they were obviously using some new-fangled method to deliver their product). After closing them all I then got the final pop up which was an ad for Evidence Eliminator (or some similar product) with the full spiel about how you can go to gaol for possession of images in your browser's cache and other really scary stuff. So when I hear about someone busted for CP claiming that a virus did it I may be suspicious about their excuse but as I have been on the receiving end I do not dismiss their claims outright as just another stupid excuse. If you are wondering how I made my HDD legal again. I smashed it to pieces that night (it was due to be upgraded anyway - evidence eliminated!)
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
This can now be used as an excuse if someone is caught.
All rites reversed 2010
Sure, and here's my own anecdotal evidence to back it up.
My parents were relatively prudish, and even they had pictures of us children taking baths or using the toilet, you just couldn't see any of our "naughty" parts.
Our next door neighbours for a while were a family from the Czech Republic, and when they had a daughter they had us over to dinner and showed round the table the picture of the newborn, naked, in the sauna right after she was born. No embarrassment at all. Another time, though, when I walked into their living room unaware that the mom was changing the baby, she seemed a little embarrassed and I retreated as quickly as I politely could.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
sexual desire - the sort of urge most of us supress every day
Actually, I thought it was pretty well known that normal people watch porn on a fairly regular basis.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
FWIW - You made me laugh. :)
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.