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"Accidental" Download Sending 22-Year-Old Man To Prison
An anonymous reader writes "Two years ago, Matthew White searched Limewire for porn. He was looking for 'College Girls Gone Wild,' but ended up downloading some images of child pornography. This was accidental, according to White, and he quickly deleted the images. A year later, the FBI showed up on his family's doorstep and asked to search the computer. After thorough sleuthing, the FBI found some images 'deep within the hard drive.' According to White, the investigators agreed that he himself could not have accessed the files anymore. Matthew now faces 20 years in jail for possession of child pornography. On advice from his lawyer, he intends to plead guilty so that he will 'hopefully' end up with 3.5 years in jail, 10 years probation and a registration as a sex offender. 'The FBI could not comment on this specific case, but said if child pornography is ever downloaded accidentally, the user needs to call authorities immediately. They may confiscate your computer, but it's better than the alternative.'"
Absolutely ridiculous
What's a district attorney to do when someone anonymously sends the D.A. an email with kiddie porn attached? Technically, the D.A. downloaded it.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
"Oh HAI, I just downloaded some kiddie pron... by mistake of course you understand"
yeah, I can see that one working out well...
Matt is pleading guilty on the advice of his public defender in hopes of getting a three and a half year sentence.
In other words, he doesn't have the money to actually fight this.
Sure. And go to prison like this guy. Personally, I'd take my chances and just throw the hard drive away.
DO NOT CALL THE AUTHORITIES
Worst idea ever. If you actually have undeleted CP on your computer you will get 20 years.
The only safe thing to do is destroy the hard drive.
Should always maintain your innocence in these type of cases because the guilty plea will haunt you the rest of your life. 3.5 years is still ridiculous.
If the FBI shows up at your door and asks to search your computer, the correct answer is 'No.'
"One day, you're going to get a knock on the door and have your child taken away for many years," he said.
No one sees any problem with letting German existentialists design our laws until things like this start to happen.
Good job Kafka!
Asshole.....
Typically, neither do people who are innocent.
Never talk to the police (even if you're perfectly innocent).
Spammers on a worksafe imageboard I occasionally visit sometimes upload it to the place. I report it to the board's administrator via IRC....which is logged... and purge private history. It is such an easy thing to have happen. Hell, a google search with safesearch off can do it.
This is 'won't somebody please think of the children' gone way to far.
And the public defender encouraging him to plead guilty? That lawyer should be fired for incompetance. How can someone be guilty of a crime they never had any intention of committing, and took active steps to actually avoid committing it?
I mean... I've bought second-hand HDD's that have been zeroe'd and formatted. Could I be potentially liable if the previous owner had been a kiddie-porn freako? The images might still be buried deep in the disk after all.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
'The FBI could not comment on this specific case, but said if child pornography is ever downloaded accidentally, the user needs to call authorities immediately.'
At which point you've just confessed to trafficking in child porn. No, the proper thing to do is have a secure file deletion utility to nuke all evidence on your system.
Child porn has just become way too much of a boogeyman these days. Even if he had downloaded the images to look at - what harm would it have caused? He didn't ruin some girls life by looking at pictures that already exist.
Personally, just to get around stupid cases like this, I'd say that simple POSSESSION of child pornography shouldn't even be illegal. The point is the harm done to the actual children. By that token PRODUCTION should be illegal as that's when the harm is done. BUYING it (through cash or barter) should also be illegal as it finances production of more material. Other than that? Having a picture or video on your hard drive hurts no one, and it isn't going to turn someone into a stark raving mad child molester anymore than playing GTA turns them into a murderer.
If simple possession were not against the law then every one of these borderline gray area cases like this would go away.
"I just wonder if i should ever buy/use a used HD again ?!?"
DBAN it for a few days if that worries you. Electricity is cheap.
http://www.dban.org/download
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Why wouldn't a jury believe you had no intention of downloading kiddie porn when you were the one who reported it to the cops? Calling the cops sends it up the line to who you got it from.
Work Safe Porn
Please someone answer me as honestly as they can: even if that guy happened to willingly watch child porn images, what damage does that do to society? Obviously exploiting children to take those pictures is a bad thing. Yet, we are talking about a random person who never harmed or abused a child. He even downloaded them from a P2P network, which means that he didn't indirectly supported harming children by financing it. How will society improve itself if the justice system throws that man in jail for yeas to come? What is there to be gained? // Posted anonymously to avoid all that social stigma that is promptly associated with those that question society's knee jerk reaction regarding child pornography.
I bet that's what the guy downloaded, given the description of how the FBI just shows up and knows exactly what to look for.
If so, the good luck explaining your way out of that.
In my opinion, it's irrelevant whether or not he downloaded the images on purpose. The connection between downloading an image off of limewire and the sexual abuse of a child is so tenuous it's absurd. The only way people can justify it is to make up crazy hypotheticals and market demand theories which are used in no other context.
... to fire his attorney and enter a plea of not guilty. If I were him I would fight to the end to avoid the felony conviction. They said he is in his early twenties with no criminal record - why screw that up now? Even if he spent years fighting the charges, and drove himself to bankruptcy in the process, it would still be less of a problem to his future than taking the felony conviction and serving 3.5 years in prison.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Whatever the (dis)merits of the application of the law are here you Americans really, really need to shorten your prison sentences.
Where I live (Finland), it's hard to actually be imprisoned for 20 years even if you murder someone. Sure, technically killers get lifetime sentences, but they are mostly let out after a decade or so.
And despite us technically having lots of killers and other criminals on the loose, this country is very safe. I believe the science actually says that prisons manufacture and "enhance" criminals.
Pics or it didn't happen!
If you don't have a warrant, you don't get entry.
If you want to go fishing, go fish yourself somewhere else, not on the taxpayers dime.
Fire the lawyer. No jury will convict. "Deep int he hard drive" - it is to laugh. Must have been a really old hard drive - most of them are pretty shallow nowadays.
The summary states that if you accidentally download kiddie porn you need to call the cops asap. Typically, people who are guilty or trying to hide something don't call the cops on themselves.
Yes but the summary also states that accidentally downloading child porn will get you 22 years in prison.
No thank you, I will not be calling the cops to have myself sent to prison for 22 years for not doing anything wrong.
This is shocking and appalling and must stop. This sort of thing makes it impossible to be able to even look at webpages on the net. What if one accidentily clicks on a link without knowing what it goes to and ends up with these files in their web browser cache? Clicking on a link is not enough to show intent, we cannot go on a wild witch hunt where everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent. Under the law, it is the act of taking pictures of children in a sexually suggestive way is what should be considered illegal. For some time it has been argued that those who were purchasing such material were helping to contribute to this. However, an accidental download of such a thing does not contribute in any material way to it whatsoever and in most cases, such as we see here, is completely accidental. There are serious problems with this. This is like arresting a person for seeing a blank sheet of paper on a sidewalk, picking it up and noticing that on the other side there was child porn, since they had simply picked it up and held it. The notion is so outrageous and this is exactly what is going on here. This has nothing to do about protecting children and these prosecutions are not protecting children. That is NOT what this dragnet is about. They are NOT protecting children but they are attacking and destroying the lives of completely innocent people. In fact, many childrens lives have already been destroyed because they took a picture of themselves and simply had the picture on their cell phone. This is about thought control and precrime, because by accidentily downloading this, no one anywhere has been harmed, all it is a copy of bits. Really, this massive abuse of the law needs to stop.
The law makes no distinction if the child porn you possess was obtained accidentally or intentionally.
Its just like buying a used car from a drug dealer and going across a border checkpoint.. The sniffing dogs smell some dope that got stashed underneath the seat and YOU are the one who gets put in prison.
I'm not a libertarian but even I can see how utterly broke and immoral the system has become to get to such a point.
Calling the cops is a complete gamble. The cops will likely say "you have child porn, I am required to arrest you and charge you with possession, you can explain it to the judge".
Best thing to do is a low-level multi-pass format, or a new HD. But that is if you *know* that you downloaded CP. If you don't know, cops may bust down your door some months later, seize your computer, then charge you once they find a thumbnail in some cache folder that was deleted 4 months ago.
There is NO requirement to "call the authorities". Delete it, preferably with a file shredder that opens up the file, overwrites each block with random bytes, closes the file, flushes the cache, THEN deletes the file. "Nothing to see here." Their "l33t toolz" (which are really just some perl scripts) won't recover it.
Do the math. What's the most popular porn? Girls as close to 18 as possible. Combine that with user submitted porn. Combine that with typical porn viewing habits, i.e. way too much. Now do some stats. Who's leftover that doesn't have something illegal in their cache? No one who looks at lots of porn, that's for sure. Face it. If someone doesn't like you, they can mess your life up financially, politically, emotionally, really anything they fell like if they are malicious.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I don't know about you, but some times I've come across porn that I think of as a little bit marginal. I also don't like the idea of someone digging up deleted files on my hard disk. It seems like a good idea to have a tool that scrambles all the bits on the free space of your hard disk overnight and during idle periods. Does anyone know if such a thing exists?
What this speaks -- loudly and clearly -- to me is that the national tapping of any and all communication lines is complete. And, when things are slow and the FBI can't find a terrorist cell or -power group to take down, they troll their logs, and look to hang someone that no one would defend.
I'm sure that both the EFF and the ACLU will jump in here any minute now...
It just makes the case for using cryptography in everything you do online. I don't know how far it goes though. It may be that they finally laid off Zimmerman because they have enough horsepower to break anything that bubbles up to the surface as potentially interesting.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
I posted something similar to this in the comments to the article, but I thought I would start the discussion here too. For those of you who are inclined to rip on the public defender for letting this guy take the plea, bear in mind that the PD is probably handling about a thousand other cases (no exaggeration), not to mention that he barely makes a living wage. Public Defenders' offices are criminally underfunded compared to the DAs, who have the full backing of the State.
Matt White's attorney probably had no choice but to take the plea and dispose of the case quickly. The system is designed so that the PDs can't take anything to trial on account of the sheer volume of cases they have to manage; they're forced to plead everything out and pray they get a good deal. (If they took even a small fraction of their cases to trial, their other clients would be waiting for years to have their cases heard, and there's this pesky little piece of paper that guarantees people the right to a speedy trial. (Of course, it also guarantees the right to effective counsel, but the bar for what constitutes "effective" is ridiculously low.)
It's a win-win for the people who matter: the DA gets to scratch another kill mark into his desk, the prison system gets another warm body it can use to justify its budget, the politicians who depend on prisons to keep the headcounts in their districts high get another "constituent" who can't vote, plus they get to claim they're "tough on crime" and are "protecting the children".
The fact that an (arguably) innocent man has his life ruined as a result doesn't even factor into the equation. He and the public defender are pawns. It's not that the $ystem hates them, it's that, to the people who run the show, they truly, truly do not matter.
So the moral of the story is: if you accidentally download CP, pull the plug on the computer, rip out the hard drive, and destroy it immediately. (Okay, maybe you can leave it powered up for the time it takes to back up your documents, &c., but no longer. It's hammer time.)
Hasn't the music industry spent billions of dollars in advertisement and legal fees trying to convince us illegal downloading of music harms the music industry?
If so we should be thanking this man for harming the supporters of child pornography. Even if it was unintentional and immediately deleted.
Now I am going to destroy any credibility I had by quoting Captain Jean-Luc Picard. "I don't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions. "
Just another example of the prophecy of 1984. If anyone thinks that this sort of activity will diminish in the future then they are just kidding themselves. It will get worse, much worse. Big Brother wants to know what you are doing, where you are doing it, when you are doing, and even why you are doing it - at all times. As other posters have said - destroy the drive if you ever THINK you might have accidentally downloaded ANYTHING that your respective Government considers illegal. Preferably with acid, although a sledge hammer would do nicely.
He will never get employment and maybe he will even get killed by a vigilante who knows the kid is guilty.
And for those of you named Mathew White, you're going to have to deal with it too on some level - people like to jump to conclusions.
This is were the Internet shows its evil side.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
"Matt is pleading guilty on the advice of his public defender in hopes of getting a three and a half year sentence."
In other words, he doesn't have the money to actually fight this.
... where by "he" you mean the PD himself.
Look, public defenders almost *always* encourage their clients to settle, because their compensation structure incentivizes them that way. PDs barely make ends meet, and they get compensated by the number of cases they take on, with very little marginal compensation for taking a case to trial. So they wind up taking on 50, 100 cases at a time. The faster they can get rid of you, the faster they can take on another case.
Notice that the merits of your case didn't appear in the above reasoning chain.
Of course if the client insists on going to trial, the PD is legally obliged to do so--but how many criminal defendants know enough AND have the cojones to argue with their lawyer when their liberty is at stake?
The PD compensation system is b0rkd, and innocent people are in jail because of it.
First of all, the CBS13 article is utterly fact free. The only CP "boogeyman" is the one the news manufactures.
Limewire? A year ago? As a fake "College Girls Gone Wild"? Anyone who downloaded that would be getting it from many sources and would have no idea what it was. The FBI simply wouldn't be able to track the download, and over that kind of time, NTFS (I assume) would have completely destroyed any evidence. I've done data recovery, it takes a lot less than a year for deleted files to degrade.
If something could be recovered in an intact enough state to satisfy forensics, I'm convinced this guy intentionally downloaded CP, got caught, and deleted it not too long before the FBI showed up. He's making excuses.
The FBI without a doubt does set up sting sites and baits CP downloaders, but why would they disguise it as fake adult porn? They want to catch people who are actually trying to download CP.
As others have pointed out, this shit shows up on 4chan and the like all the time. Lots of us have probably seen it be accident, has the FBI knocked on your door yet?
Do you really forget accidental child porn on your hdd for a year ? If you do "forget it there", you belong where law says you should be at. Every normal person would delete the file after opening it.
Duh.
This was accidental, according to White, and he quickly deleted the images.
Not a new low for slashdot, but still depressing that people can't even finish reading a sentence they have begun to read. Even worse, you actually read the FA to get that "forget" part of your post. Maybe you just skip randomly around.
It's bad enough that viewing child porn can throw you in prison for 20 years when most who view aren't interested in making it, which is the real crime. But even the FBI says he couldn't have accssed these pictures easily. For that we trade his tax paying job for a tax paid term in prison which will also make it hard for him to pay as much in taxes afterwards. Then there's the ridiculous cost of this investigation.
Whheeee ... the modern police state, where you can be arrested for anything at any time, regardless of how stupid it is.
Infuriate left and right
No doubt about it. This is a classic case where the users should have been using GNU/Linux. This is because GNU/Linux is designed and created by people who enjoy child pornography just as much as you do. It's the only OS with the security and reliability needed to keep your private collection of "good pics" safe from prying eyes. If you care about freedom, you'll use FOSS. Simple as that. People who use proprietary software are the real pedophiles.
Turning to a Linux advocate for thoughts on Microsoft is like asking Hitler how he felt about the Jews.
As much as I think child porn is bad (including possession), I think US law, for better or for worse, is built upon giving individual rights to protect themselves from self-incrimination, otherwise the legal system can run amok - as evidenced by this case (if we choose to believe the guy).
So I kinda like the Neal Stephenson approach of having a strong magnetic field in the door frame wipe any drive passing through it. Surely in this day and age of portable electronics it may cause some issues, but not unresolvable ones ;-)
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
The feds often have super-powers when it comes to plea bargaining.
They can make the threat: Plead to three years or face twenty.
When that power is in the wrong hands it can force innocent or very mitigated people to plead guilty.
More importantly--much more importantly--they can use this leverage to FORCE a person to agree to their sentence recommendation. This means that they don't get to plead for mercy from the judge.
This power when used in the right hands, is excellent for hammering bad guys. When used in the wrong hands (for ambition or to avoid embarrassment), it can be downright evil.
We place a lot of trust in our federal prosecutors.
Who runs (most of) the high schools?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have to assume this guy is not guilty, not because of the presumption of innocence, but rather by the lack of accessible cp on his computer. Pedophiles don't just quit cold turkey, and even if he is a pedophile, quit cold turkey (doesn't happen), hey great, he's fixed his problem on his own. Going with that:
Where does the government keep finding 12 morons to vote guilty in the jury box? I know this particular guy's case isn't going to a jury, but his lawyer seems to think he's screwed if he does. With easy to explain facts like this, both the DA (who wouldn't bring charges that would hurt his win %) and defense thinks there is a high likely hood of conviction? Are you kidding me?
And how many CRAZY guilty verdicts have we read about? Why are juries stacked with idiots too stupid to see that they could just as likely be in the defendant's seat for a multitude of offenses?
Quick side story: *all numbers, except age are fudged to prevent recrimination* I'm 32 (so far so good on my plan to outlive Jesus) and have been on a Jury 1 time. It was a drug charge, which I kinda figured out during jury selection based on the questions I was asked, so I shaped my answers accordingly. It ended up being a trial of a 19 year old kid found with 5 marijuana plants in a "grow box" (nice setup, bought online for like 2k, could of built his own for 800). The prosecution presented their case, the defense only called the defendant, who swore up and down that they were only for personal use (we're not in a medical marijuana state), and the defendant pretty much begged for mercy. I swear at this point one of my co-juror's started to tear up. Final arguments came and went, and then the Judge, the last arbiter of law said (paraphrasing here) that we were only to determine if he possessed the plants, and if so, to find him guilty.
We got back to the jury room and as I'm told we're not supposed to do, but always gets done regardless, we took a vote. 11-1. IANAL but I believed without knowing that if I gave my real reason for not wanting to convict that I'd be replaced (we had 2 alternates). I've never had to choose my wording so carefully, meanwhile the rest of the Jury kept saying things like : "the judge said we had to vote guilty" and "It doesn't matter if I think he did anything wrong, the judge said he did wrong" (that last one, I SWEAR TO GOD, was uttered word for word, i will never forget a syllable). It took 2 hours of carefully worded analogies to sway 1 other to my side, from there we got to 3 in 10 minutes, at 4, the whole room switched. Let me say that again, at 4 ppl, the remaining 8 switched over, not out of a sense of civic duty, but because they were tired and wanted to go home. WITH A MAN'S LIFE IN THE BALANCE.
When we returned our verdict, the judge didn't look at what the foreman wrote (he opened it, looked at its general direction and refolded it), when the foreman not guilty, the Judge damn near fell out of his chair, the DA did a real life triple take, and the defense attorney looked like a deer in headlights. The point is that all 3 professionals INCLUDING the defense attorney, were shocked that the jury failed to rubber stamp guilty on this guy.
After we were relieved 4 of the other jurors came to me and admitted thru conversation that they smoked pot and didn't want to vote guilty at all, but thought they had to because the judge had told them to. As they were talking, all I could think was, "So this is how democracy ends, with sheep"
"you know why? Because we got the bomb, thats why" -Dennis Leary
"Its just like buying a used car from a drug dealer and going across a border checkpoint.."
You can have your local K-9 unit run the dog through any car you buy if you ask nicely. The military will do so too, and when I was in the USAF I
had them do one car I bought as a precaution.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I've provided technical services to public defenders for fifteen years and have worked on a number of cases similar to this one. Every legal case has a huge set of facts surrounding it that the general public isn't privy to. Some of those are exposed to the jury, if there is one. More are exposed to the judge. Still more are available to the DA and/or defense attorney. They all affect the legal strategy. Based on the tip of the iceberg we, the general public, are presented with, it's virtually impossible to say anything meaningful, let alone insightful. Acknowledging that massive limitation, here is my perspective:
From the video, the kid presents well. If his record is clean, I question why his attorney isn't aiming for a plea of "not guilty" and a trial. PDs have a reputation for laziness and incompetence. Some of them deserve it. Others are better than the best attorneys money can buy. So this kid may be getting solid counsel - in which case, there is a good reason for him to avoid going to trial - or he may be stuck with a lousy attorney who doesn't want to work or doesn't know how to handle a case like this and wants to see it go away.
In theory, if he's gonna plead guilty, the kid should enter an Alford plea. This is a variation of the guilty plea that says, "I maintain my innocence, but will plead guilty to get the best outcome." That said, DAs will often reject such a plea. The DA may be making an out-and-out guilty plea a requirement to plea bargain at all. Too, he may be aiming for an Alford plea and the press just isn't reporting it that way.
Being put on the sex offender registry is a big deal. Your rights are significantly curtailed - for life. You'd be better off taking more prison time in lieu of the registry... if the DA is willing to even entertain such a deal.
I would add that the legal system is mind-bogglingly inept when it comes to even mildly technical issues. I am considered an expert in my local legal community and have testified as such on multiple occasions. I consider myself to be competent but by no means expert. Watching / reviewing the testimony of other "experts" is blood curdling. You just wouldn't believe the junk "forensic science" presented (and accepted) as evidence. Attorneys, judges, and local law enforcement are quite clueless and accept what they're told, if it sounds sufficiently complicated or is delivered with adequate certainty. I've not dealt with the FBI before but would assume they are much more competent than that. With them on the prosecution's side, the defense would have a very hard time in court, regardless of the facts. I will say that the law enforcement unit in charge of investigating kiddie porn locally is pretty lame - their understanding of technical issues is superficial and their expertise focused on the usage of particular forensic software (specifically Encase).
Hi Steve Franklin,
Just a friendly note to remind you that you're a loony.
Have a nice day,
T.L.A.
P.S. Don't forget to take your meds and put on your tinfoil hat.
P.P.S. We're watching you...
...Imagine someone hating someone else (yes - that happens)
that someone gets an idea based on White's misfortune:
1) Send some kiddie porn images (or just family pictures of naked kids) to someone you hate
2) Do it repeatedly a few times, just to make sure they land on his harddisk
3) Secretly tip the Feds that he downloads child porn or has an interest in naked kids
The feds seizes his harddisk, he says someone anonymous sent it to him, but it doesn't help him - because it could be a child porn ring - which he "perhaps" is a part of, and they found them deleted on his harddisk. He's basically screwed! You just killed a man.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I recently interviewed a Save the Children organization's representative over child pornography. She pointed out that the ample psychological harm caused by kid rape is compounded by the victim's awareness that depictions of the act are being spread and "enjoyed." What's your take on this? She had previously mentioned a gateway theory, ie. that less access to child porn results in fewer child molesters, but I'd have to see the numbers before coming to conclusion.
Innocent people are more likely to be flustered, etc., when confronted with allegations of a crime.
They'll act guilty, whereas the true crook will look you right in the eye and lie. He or she has nothing to lose by lying.
The old story of "liars can't look you straight in the eye" is a lie. Crooks do it all the time. An honest person would be ashamed tha people would even *think* that they did something wrong, which is why they act in ways that pop psychology says "they're acting guilty."
"No warrant, no entry. I have nothing to hide, but I do value my privacy, and you should be spending your time catching crooks, not trying to weasel around the law like a crook. Have a nice day."
Really? How is that "War on Drugs" working out for you? I hear USA has the highest percentage per capita of jailed individuals in the world, many in for-profit private prisons and most for drug-related offences. I assume drugs are therefore next to impossible to obtain there, no?
This is precisely such moronic "logic" as you have presented, main purpose of which is diversion of money and power to the "holy crusaders", elimination of civil liberties to enable the witch-hunters to operate "efficiently" ... and creation of ever-more-profitable and violent black market, which is used to justify this spiral of insanity.
Yup... The SPs/MPs will happily do a free sniff of your recently purchased used car. Can't beat a good training opportunity.
And if their free sniff finds some hidden drugs, what then? Will the congratulate you on your honest, or arrest you for possession of illegal drugs? Hopefully the former, but do you want to bet the next N years of your life on that?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What is your problem with Pilots for 911 Truth? The fact that they are pilots or the fact that they want the truth?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
One does not need to be any sort of anarchist to question whether or not it is a good thing that we have this particular "justice" system.
A coherent, non-corrupt, and temperate systems of laws and their enforcement is, to my thinking, an obvious public good. Today's American legal system does not meet these basic criteria.
Our laws retain considerable internal coherence; but so many and various legal fictions have a accreted in the system that it has lost touch with external reality. The question of corruption is less clear, tho there is strong evidence that financial interest of the prison-industrial complex fuels the demand for more "crimes" and more "criminals" to fill prisons. Most disturbingly, the US law enforcement system seems to have thrown overboard any vestige of temperance, moderation, or concern for justice.
Thus the social utility of our legal system is rapidly declining. In some areas of the law it may already have reached a negative level of utility. It no longer serves the public interest.
We must beware of misleading questions like "isn't our legal system better than nothing?" The obvious alternative to injustice is not anarchy, but justice. Civil society must use its budgetary control over the law enforcement apparatus to reign in abusive prosecution. The police and prosecutors must be reminded that they are paid by the taxpayers to serve the interest of the community, not the interests of their caste and industry.
It's called Argumentum ad Hominem. It has no more relation to the argument than the fact that you have an unnatural erotic attraction toward goats, Gerald. Perhaps you can take some time out from your busy day at the ranch to tell us just exactly what your problem is with actually interviewing the witnesses before coming to a conclusion about what happened. Forget the damned goat, Gerald, answer the bloody question.
Any of you other geniuses out there want to chime in on this, go right ahead. Just don't bother to tell me what you channeled from the spirit of Hani Hanjour. The position of Village Idiot has already been filled by the Anonymous Nitwit.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
The fact that they already have the truth, and are in denial.
Comment of the year
Just get a new HD. Why risk _everything_ when you can be in the free and clear for a very well spent $100 and a few hours re-install. You think that guy wouldn't pay $10,000 now to make all his troubles disappear??
It's the unforgivable crime. If that stuff winds up on your drive, smash it, then toss it, and get a new one. Tell whoever that the HD died and you need a new one. Even if you have to put it on a charge card or borrow the money. Don't even mess around with shredders or wipe programs. Why take any chance at all??
The mindless "kiddy porn" hysteria is out of control, and it's a canary in the coal-mine for further suppression of free speech, because all tyrannies wean themselves on suppressing the most unpopular freedoms first. Any dissident can now have doubleplusungood.png or crimethink.avi uploaded to his computer and deprived of his liberty for the rest of his life! (Being released from prison under the current "former sex offender" programs isn't much better than still being in prison!)
In most cases "kiddy porn" doesn't even depict an actual crime (the "market" is over-saturated with millions, someday an accumulation of billions of high school idiots posting pictures of themselves, as I once did), but even if it does - viewing an image of a crime is not same as committing it! In a rational world, the alleged victim and/or her parents / guardians should decide whether rape has taken place, with "bad parents" being subject to social ostracism and the child's Natural Right to sue for emancipation (jury-granted full sovereignty or transfer of custody). When government force is put in charge of regulating family life, the former grows beyond all bounds and the latter collapses! All those victimless restrictions on human sexuality only encourage violent rape, or the psychological projection of violence into other aspects of one's life!
No possible combination of 1's and 0's should EVER be illegal!
>>>He claims it was done by accident, that the files magically got buried deep within the system. Yeah, because that stuff happens. Not.
Actually it does. I suspect the FBI used an "undelete" program to scour the whole drive, and piece together various sectors to form an illegal image. As the FBI admitted, the user would have not been able to do that under normal circumstances. ----- Who kows what crap is on my or Your hard drive, just waiting to be uncovered. Just because you "delete" something doesn't mean it can't be recovered later on
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>I smell an excuse. "oh it wasn't me, it was scary computers that did it"...... Smell the bullshit.
I smell someone who doesn't understand computers, and naively believes that when he deletes files, they are gone. I hope someday YOU get caught when the FBI digs-up 2 or 3 year old files from your HDD. Maybe I'll call them now and give thema tip that SmallFurryCreature downloaded some illegal stuff. Are you SURE you're computer is clean, and you haven't broken any laws? I bet you have. We all have.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What a victory for the tax payer. First we have the thrill of supporting some lard assed FBI personnel. Then we have the joy of paying for a trial as well as the prosecutor's time. And then for the next wonderful thrill we get to pay a huge sum to put this poor guy in prison! And then we get the absolute joy have having him on a sex offenders' list so that he will not be employable or able to get housing for the rest of his life which will trigger welfare and public support until the poor schmuck is dead.
So the guy gets his entire life trashed and the public gets a whopping expense. With a logic stream such as this one the people behind this kind of law should have been in charge of the war in Vietnam. Entire new definitions of victory abound!
Accidental possession isn't "strict liability". It's strict liability ONLY if you KNOWINGLY make, distribute, or possess kiddie porn. If you did it knowingly, then your intent is irrelevant. If you knew the kid was under-age, your "intent" to "make a harmless art film" is irrelevant. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002252----000-.html Possession of less than 3 items is an affirmative defense. Making a good-faith attempt to destroy the material in question is an affirmative defense. they don't have to report it if they've deleted the images.
Also, 18 2252a uses the term "knowingly", and subsection d 2 a again says that if the recipient then destroys it, that is sufficient.
The law is clear - if someone sends you kiddie porn, or you are tricked into downloading some, you only have to immediately delete it.
They wouldn't have asked. Asking first is stupid because it could tip off the suspect that they were under investigation and they'd then have time to destroy evidence and such.
So that they asked means they either realized they had insufficient evidence to get a warrant, or they'd already tried to get one and the judge said "No, you are fishing and I'm not signing off on it."
The police do things like this, try to go search when they lack the evidence to get a warrant. Many people are cooperative so it works well. Happened to a friend of mine. His roommate at the time was a problem many ways, and ended up getting himself arrested. However the police thought my friend might be involved as well. So they came back and said they wanted to search the house. My friend told them to get lost, which annoyed them, but there was nothing they could do. They didn't have any probable cause that he was doing anything illegal, they'd never get a warrant, but they could ask and if he said yes they were free to go.
It is amazing how often tricks like that work. A county attorney I know says he loves lineups. Reason? Because he asks the question "Would the guy who did it please raise his hand?" and people do! He's gotten the same person with that on more than one occasion. If crooks are willing to make it easy for the police to get them, well expect the police to take advantage.
So if you've done nothing wrong and the police come and ask to search your house, your answer should be "No, come back with a warrant." That'll most likely be the last you see of them, they wouldn't have asked if they had probable cause for a warrant. Remember: The 4th amendment is made for protecting innocent people. If we could rely on the police to be a perfectly noble and just group who would only ever search criminals, well then we'd not need a 4th amendment. It isn't there to protect criminals. However we can't thus we have one to protect innocent people from being harassed and inconvenienced.
Oh really? Tell that to the face of the child in the image he downloaded.
This is exactly the type of reactionary nonsense I was talking about. That emotionally-charged statement does nothing to explain why the connection between downloading an image off of limewire and the sexual abuse of a child is not tenuous.
I'm not saying it - Eddie Greenspan, an experienced trial lawyer, says it in his book, where he deals with cops and other witnesses who lie under oath.
And its' everyone's experience. Even if you did nothing wrong, you don't want to be stopped and questioned. Even if you haven't even got a "borrowed" hotel towel in your baggage, customs makes you nervous. The crook? They're already pathological, so it's no wonder they exploit weaknesses in human responses.
I did read his comment, which was full of outright lies. Lies like claiming that crack cocaine was eliminated due to introduction of ever more draconian laws, which is utterly laughable to anyone with even passing knowledge of the US drug scene. "Recreational drug" consumption has been steadily growing all throughout the "War on Drugs" and shows no signs of slowing down, although some morons have mis-interpreted decline in use of older types of drugs which were being replaced by newer, more potent or more fashionable ones as a "victory" resulting from their brain-dead "demand reduction" campaigns.
The advice to call the FBI and turn yourself in is the MOST RIDICULOUS I've seen in all that ridiculous case. They're either going to laugh at you or sue you like that poor guy. And the real advice is: never admit having done anything. Even doing something by mistake. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Remember the magic words: "I don't recall." Those words sufficed to get a few war criminals off the hook.
McKinnon is getting the same kind of bullshit -- and it would never have happened had he not admitted doing anything wrong.
The best thing to do would be to have the FBI agents and Judge killed. And their families and their friends. In public. By rabid, starving dogs.
Repeat this over, and over, and OVER AGAIN until it soaks in.
If you think you've got nothing to hide, etc... I suggest you go and watch the following YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc&feature=related>Don't Talk to the Police
This is the now quite famous lecture given by Professor James Duanes and gives you a frank explanation of WHY you don't talk to the police unless you have to. IF they ask for consent, refuse. IF they ask for a voluntary statement or similar on something, refuse. You will breach your Fifth Amendment rights out of the gate almost every time. Once you do, you can and most likely will have your words twisted on you. Once you do, you open yourself up to all sorts of potential problems.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I know, let's criminalise breathing oxygen. I'm sure that we can trust the police to only use the law against the "bad guys", and we can conveniently do away with the need for pesky things like evidence. And I'm sure than no innocents will be caught by having to meet their targets for catching "people who breath oxygen". If the worst comes to the worst, they can always bring in some guy who taped something off the radio, and sentence him to decades in prison!