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."
Too bad his life is already ruined beyond repair.
Frameware ? :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Downloads all the latest movie and software releases, and stores them on my computer! It's madness, I say, madness.
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.
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 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.
It might be the case that the malware was designed to turn the computers into hosts for redistributing the material so that those hosting it wouldn't need to host their site on anything that could be traced back to them.
Seriously? It's the ultimate revenge plot in the west. Even if you're just accused of having child porn, regardless if it's true or not, your life is ruined from that moment on. All for what amounts to what, maybe a couple hours of programming? Talk about return on investment, and probably no way to trace the program back to the 'hacker' means almost no liability. It's the perfect dish to serve cold.
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.
Actually thought crime is often used to refer to something where all you're doing is sitting around not harming anyone (as opposed to victimless crimes).
Here's a fun thing from Denmark (age of consent is 15).
If I (32) have sex with a 17-year-old girl, that is perfectly legal.
If anyone takes a photo of it, draws it, writes about it in detail or films it - it is child pornography. And as I'm am the only 'adult' in this, I will bear the full brunt of the law's punishment. Even if she were to set up hidden cameras without me knowing it, I'd still be charged with manufacturing. It's classified as child pornography and not pornography with a minor (under 18).
But if no-one watches, it's perfectly legal.
That is fucking scary.
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
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'm glad to see finally someone in power having some common sense. As a PC repairman for way too many years i don't know how many times i have had customers reluctant to come in because they got a "nasty" bug, and after assuring them that I keep everything confidential have them bring it in with something like a bug I call a "topsite hitter".
If you haven't seen one of these it is a really nasty piece of work that'll spew connections to just about every sleazy topsite on the net, my guess it is is for some kind of click fraud. But the sites that'll come up have horse and dog, rape, scat, and yes CP images. Now these folks weren't looking for that, hell nobody would want a bug like that as it slows a network to a crawl spewing connections. It is always either some guy or some teenager who got on his families PC that was looking for plain porn like "lesbian Cheerleaders" and didn't know one should NEVER use IE, much less unpatched IE, and got driveby downloaded.
So I can vouch from years of cleaning bugged PCs that crap like this happens all the time. I have seen bugs that opened backdoors, dumped who knows what into the system files in encrypted folders, spewed connections to every sleazehole on the net, you name it I've probably seen a bug that has done it. I'm glad to see that prosecutors may actually be developing a brain, too bad it took them nearly a year to let this guy off. Surely one look at the log could have told you it was an automated connection. And from talking to a buddy in the state crime lab he says the real CP guys are pretty easy to spot, as they keep tons of the crap lying around on DVDs, flash drives, etc, so a basic search warrant could have shown whether he was a CP perv or not.
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.''
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.
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