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Stalker Jailed For Planting Child Porn On a PC
An anonymous reader writes "An elaborate scheme to get the husband of a co-worker with whom he was obsessed jailed backfired on Ilkka Karttunen, 48, from Essex in the UK. His plan was to get the husband arrested so that he could have a go at a relationship with the woman. To do this he broke into the couple's home while they were sleeping, used their family computer to download child pornography, and then removed the hard drive and mailed it anonymously to the police, along with a note that identified the owner."
Hasn't this dude ever heard of 4chan? Or dating sims? Or sanity?
Living With a Nerd
He's also out the postage to mail the hard drive.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
>>>"then removed the hard drive and mailed it anonymously to the police, along with a note that identified the owner."
You don't provide proof that you broke into a private house.
Instead you go home, wait a few weeks, and then send an anonymous tip that the homeowner has been asking for underage photos on the net, and you suspect he downloaded child porn too. Let the police take it from there. THEY will do the breaking-and-entering, remove the drive, and investigate.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The difference between for you getting put in jail and separated from your children for a week and you getting put in jail and separated from your children for a decade is the sloppiness of the guy framing you.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The answer doesn't seem to be in the article, but why would they search Karttunen's house after arresting the guy he was trying to frame? I understand how he would have been implicated after they searched his computer, but how did they figure out that they needed to search his house in the first place?
Either way, guy is an idiot for copying the guy's hard drive to his own. And an idiot for trying the whole scheme in the first place. And an idiot for getting caught when it seems like it would be hard to trace that back to somebody.
The idea seems entirely workable. The way he did it is a liiiiittle bit crazy. Stealing and mailing the hard drive to the police? Really?
Just set up a trojan that continuously visits known blacklisted/flagged sites and downloads stuff. After a set period of time, it should self-destruct and destroy all traces of itself (except for the illegal content downloaded, of course). If the ISP or police don't pick up the illegal activity pretty quickly, send an anonymous tip.
Boom, one innocent person totally fucked.
I believe the only thing saving the family was the investigation of the stalkers house (and shed). Without that search warrant into a third-parties house, or without the retardedly self-incriminating evidence stored on his computer, the man accused would have been devastated.
Wait, this is UK, do they even need a warrant?
"“The lengths this man went to in order to pursue a fantasy were incredible,""
You mean he was a geek?
It's too easy to have someone's life ruined. Even being cleared of charges this person will still have a stigma attached to them. Poor family. To be ripped away like that from your family, your home because some psycho wanted a go at your wife. Investigation wise, they didn't find the hard drive with the man or trace any wrong goings online directly back to him, yet they still charged him with the crime. This seems out of whack to me. Grey area to be sure but to just take the anonymous at their word seems scary.
~ Ron Fitzgerald
Unfortunately in the UK they publish names of anyone accused of sex crimes in local newspapers so you can bet even with the husband in this case proved entirely innocent he might need to move house, have his car set alight, stones thrown through his windows, and have his name google-able to child porn charges. Plus the child services and new child protection scheme use just rumours to judge people so if he applied to, for example, because a football coach he might be denied (*you need a licence to talk to a child in the UK).
One question - Why was the wife or anyone else using the "family PC" not arrested? Or are only males arrested for child porn?
"Finnish Pedophile Immigrant Terrorist Threatens UK Citizen"
Unless jail goes down really hard, he isn't quite a Darwin -- and a little too convoluted for Leno's "Stupid Criminals."
I suppose if his jail mate has a crush on him, there could be some award for bad relationship choices.
Exactly.
It's trivial to ruin someone's life at this point using child pornography. Cracking a WPA password isn't nearly that complicated.
Also, note how the guy he was trying to frame was still arrested, and still barred from seeing his children, after someone sent the police a hard drive they claimed belonged to the guy. Of all the obvious frame jobs, this was dead sloppy, and yet the victim was STILL victimized by the authorities. I'm surprised they aren't summarily castrating people without proof these days. After all, won't someone think of the children...
Here's a better link to this discussion, one that better reflects its content:
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/04/02/1236232/Stalker-Jailed-For-Planting-Child-Porn-On-a-PC
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Although this is slightly off-topic, I'd just like to point out to all /. readers who might be wondering about his name: Ilkka Karttunen is actually a Finnish name. I have no idea if the guy has moved into the UK from Finland or if his parents/relatives have come from here. Well, idiots like him are pretty evenly split between nations anyway, so his nationality doesn't really make a difference. But I know there are people out there who went "What kind kind of name is that for a guy from Essex O.o?".
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
It is probably just a matter of time before the stalked gets thrown in jail for possessing child pornography as well. After all, we can never be too hard on people with child pornography, right? It's okay to murder people that have been accused of it, right? No? What's that? You're in favor of leniency for awful child rapists?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Just leave him a giant package of oxycontin. He'll just off himself.
The Article was dated 1st April - so we don't really know it's true.
Of course framing someone with child pornography is not new. It even works without breaking and entering. Police needs ages to "investigate" a hard drive. By the time they finally found nothing and dropped charges your wive might have left you.
It is nice to see that our educational system produces such marvelous individuals... NOT
Since the UK has "strict liability" laws (which IMO are exceptionally unfair and should be changed) he should have left the hard drive in the system and tipped of the police anonymously. In the UK, simply being in possession of child porn or a gun is enough for a conviction regardless of how it came to be in your possession.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Trying that sort of thing in the US is quite likely to get one's hide peppered with lead.
So this crazy dude goes to extreme lengths to get a husband put behind bars to have an adulterous relationship with the fellas wife? One of the big flaws was taking the hard drive out of the PC and mailing to the authorities. I think an anonymous tip would have been just fine.
Regardless, it's really amazing what mental states people can put themselves into and trick their own mind into thinking their crazy actions are somehow good in nature and worth pursuing. However, I can't help but realize the wife's involvement in this? Something she did or may have innocently done caused this guy to think there was something there... or maybe there was some under-the-table stuff happening. Too many fish in the sea to be doing that, IMHO.
I don't know about the UK, but this has reasonable doubt in 50' high neon letters
It's not like he's actually a risk, at least for downloading the data and using it in the way he did. Now, if the guy had copied the material from his private collection into the victim's computer, that's another matter. On the other hand, there's all these zero tolerance laws...
Nasty divorce going on and the wife used the husband's work e-mail to sign up for all kinds of unsavory web sites. We ended up having to change his address and it didn't work out like the wife hoped.
People are complicated. It will be scary when they get bright AND complicated.
If someone does not like you, whether they be informant, stalker, or corrupt law enforcement, they can plant the gun, the drugs, the child porn into your possession and then arrest you for possession. This is why all laws which involve possession of an object, are fundamentally flawed because it does not make a difference is the possession is voluntary or involuntary.
So you write a Trojan, get the PC infected and have it do the downloading for you then report back. Then you leave an anonymous tip.
No breaking and entering at all.
Scary thing, is for revenge against people you don't like you can just drop those anonymous tips all over the place and have innocent people harassed and their stuff taken for review and their face all over the evening paper.. And if they just happen to have something they shouldn't, like say a MP3 they downloaded, they might get ruined financially..as a bonus.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"I was walking my dog, and I heard some strange noise and when i looked up I saw a computer thru his window, and you cant believe what horror i saw"
That will get you your warrant.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is a difficult situation for the police. On the one hand, it has "frame job" written all over it, on the other hand, what if it isn't? Arresting him was probably overkill, but limiting contact with children until the whole thing is cleared up makes some sense. The police clearly made more than a usual effort investigate at least, but still. I dunno what you'd call the "right" answer is here. (Except, obviously, don't have a sociopath break into your house and frame you for a difficult to defend against crime)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
By elaborate they must mean "retarded".
This is soooo clearly an April Fools joke. It's nowhere to be found except on blogs and only on April 1st. The name is clearly meant to be bad English for "I like cartoons", becomes "I lika cartoonen" becomes "Ilkka Karttunen".
Not sure about in the UK, but innocent until PROVEN guilty used to mean something across the pond.
It's just the dumb-ass media castrating police departments the world over. The media is all about front-page spreads ruining someone's life, but they're never about front-page spreads about what they printed ended up turning into blatent libel.
Fucking hypocrites.
Suppose you have a password on the PC. You see, without that linux "hack" it would be impossible to to the downloading. And the timing would be off also, since the owner might be able to prove show he was not at home at the time of the downloading. Then there is always the point that you will have to make a reasonable gues who was behind the keyboard at the time of the offense.
Last point "call the police" is not anonymous as well, since the telephone company keeps log who called who (and in case of a cell phone: where).
Planting fake evidence is not as easy as it seems if you want to do it perfect. Watching CSI does not help because the reality is much more complex.
Anyone else think it's weird when you see a story on /. front page title "Stalker Jailed For Planting Child Porn On a PC", to have to click a link labelled "View picture"?
He stole the hard drive and the family didn't notice that it was missing and report a burglary?
The original story was actually dated March 31st..
So let me get this straight - if someone broke into your house and swiped your car keys, then sent them along with an empty whiskey bottle to the cops, accusing you of DUI, you'd be just fine with having your driving privileges suspended while the cops investigate? I mean, after all, this completely circumstantial evidence *might* be true, right?
Law Enforcement's "chain of custody" is a tremendously important concept. The "evidence" the police received is horribly tainted, and shouldn't have merited more than a knock on the door and a conversation with the man being joe-jobbed.
Most of us Americans aren't weirded out when someone has an unusual last name for their area. Melting pot and all that.
I'm curious to know if the wife did anything to lead this man into this criminal obsession.
I noticed that all the other articles on the front page say Read More..., except this one which links to View Picture...
At first I thought it might be a link to a picture of the wife, who this guy was committing crimes for. Then I thought it might be a link to the pictures the guy was sent to jail for, which having downloaded would land anyone who clicked on them in jail.
I decided to risk it, but I don't see any pictures at all when I click. This must be some kind of psychological experiment.
Yes, that is very clear. I'm smacking myself for not seeing that earlier. It is abundantly obvious his name isn't just in another language.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I'm surprised they aren't summarily castrating people without proof these days
They are working on that. They did not get it passed in the last Jobs bill...Next time though...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Since they were sound asleep while this was happening who was going to be "peppering his hide with lead"? The gun fairy?
Mod parent up for car analogy.
Ilkka Karttunen is actually a perfectly normal Finnish name, so it's more likely he's a Finnish emigrant.
Most of us are Americans(TM) anyway, and have no idea where this "Essex" or "Finnish" you speak of is located.
Essex? Oh, that's over by Manchester, Gloucester, and Ipswitch...
Bow-ties are cool.
Well, seems that if you don’t have the brains...
I would have made the guy a friend, and in a not watched moment, put a USB stick in the computer, waited a few seconds for autostart to plant the stuff, pull it out, and be done with it!
On the other hand, I wouldn’t have tried to get a women that way anyway! How delusional can one be? :)
You know what they say: The cure for one-itis, is FTAG(N): Fuck / Flirt with Ten Other Girls (NOW)! ^^*
Or in other words: She is not special! EVER! Period.
P.S.: Now you know what was meant, when someone said “Cthulhu FTAGN”! ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
How about running a SECURE system at home? simply having the PC with logins and auto lock-out would have stopped this idiot sociopath in his tracks. Yes you can crack the passwords with physical access to the machine but I highly doubt the idiot had enough time to crack it without getting caught.
Better solution is to have drive encryption on and home security cameras that record.. Good luck getting access to the security hive or password files to start cracking a password before the owner wakes up. and you have nice video evidence to show the cops that someone broke in.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As soon as someone starts planting child porn on the hard drives of prosecutors, judges, politicians, wealthy oligopolists, and forensic investigators, things will change.
Of course I am not advocating that anyone do this. It would be very illegal and harmful to innocent people. I am just observing that extreme means like this could be effective in getting the law (and policies surrounding its enforcement) changed, which is really messed up.
Not directly related, but another very interesting (if disappointing) article from the BBC today about knee-jerk media reaction forcing the hand of the justice system, this time in terms of the drug trade.
Choice quotes from the latest expert resigning from the government's drug advisory board:
or its legit, and the name is pronounced :
Ill-Ka Cart-you-nin
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Several possibilities there:
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hey, in the US the second amendment applies to gay people, too! Poor limey bass turds...
"Not sure about in the UK, but innocent until PROVEN guilty used to mean something across the pond."
As I've already said elsewhere, that axiom relates to conviction, not arrest (on either side of the pond). Always had, always will. Half the time evidence required for conviction isn't found until after arrest. You can be arrested on any strong suspicion backed by reasonable evidence (like a hard drive which is clearly yours and clearly full of kiddy porn). It's not the job of the police to convict you, it's their job to collect evidence and arrest you once a sufficient amount exists. Does it suck? Yes. You got a better idea? No arrests till after conviction should work very well I'm sure.
One of the big problems with the current system is the assumption by many people that arrest is the same as conviction. This leads to: 1) People like you assuming that people can't be arrested until they've been proven guilty and 2) People who have been arrested for crimes that they were later found innocent of or even found to have had no involvement in at all becoming social pariahs. That's a completely separate issue though, and not related to this story.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Child porn is small potatoes. If he really wanted to ruin his rival's life, he should have used the computer to download movies with BitTorrent.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
But it can't be proven until it goes to court. To be arrested, you don't need proof. You only need probable cause. The judge is whom determines whether the evidence shows proof.
And there was probable cause at the beginning until more information came out, which put the evidence in complete doubt.
Do you do such implementation on your own home computers? Does your family members like it?
I'm not sure who exhibited more stupidity, the guy who mailed the hard drive, or the police, who didn't stop to ask who could have removed the hard drive in the first place before jumping on the husband.
The simplest course would have been to plant the photos and then give an anonymous tip to the wife.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Except...aren't they permitted to use "evidence" that was gained through other means?
Wasn't that the whole reason they were putting pressure on Google and other ISPs was because they could then use the information against someone without having to go through that nasty process called "getting a court order"?
This pattern of thoughtlessness is prevalent throughout society today, and is responsible for almost all of the terrible things we do to each other. It's just a whole lot more obvious how bad it is when you see it done by the police.
I think one of the key things we can do to avoid participating in it ourselves is avoiding busyness. Usually people are thoughtless just because they think they don't have the time to be thoughtful. That is certainly the case in police investigations where there is a lot of pressure to get a conviction.
Cracking a WPA password isn't nearly that complicated.
Well, it might not be that complicated, but only because brute force is the only method. If the key is of sufficient length and random you will likely never find it. Unless someone has actually fully cracked WPA in which case, please link it. I'm under the impression the current best attack is still the short length packet tkip thing. Maybe I missed something, I haven't really been following wifi security closely but I would think this would have been huge news.
I don't want to downplay the financial threat that the MPAA (and other copyright enforcement organizations) could pose, but they're nothing compared to the threat a child porn lawsuit would pose. I'm a married man with two kids and a respectable job. If the MPAA accuses me falsely of downloading/uploading movies, the worst that can happen is that I need to declare bankruptcy. Yes, that's bad, but my family might be able to survive it.
If, however, I'm accused falsely of possession of child porn, my reputation would be ruined with friends/family, I'd likely be fired (and nobody else would hire me), I could be forbidden from seeing my kids, my wife might even divorce me (though I'd hope she'd believe I was innocent). And that's even before I'm convicted of anything!
If the MPAA realized their mistake, I might get legal fees back. Otherwise, I'd be out my own legal fees. A hefty bill, but not something insurmountable.
If the child porn charges were dropped, I'd have still lost months of time with my kids, my job may or may not rehire me and people in my community would still think of me as "that guy that had child porn" (regardless of my acquittal). In short, my life would be in shambles and I'd have to rebuild virtually from scratch.
Yes, the MPAA/RIAA/etc can do great financial harm, but they can only dream of the "whole life" harm that a child porn charge can carry.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Not sure about in the UK, but innocent until PROVEN guilty used to mean something across the pond.
Yes, but that was before Reagan promised to "get the Government off the backs of the People" and made us all prove that we weren't drug-abusing illegal immigrants every time we applied for a job.
Now you're blaming the victim. *Should* they have run a more secure system? Probably, but that's neither here nor there. Running an insecure home system is not a crime. breaking into someone house to take advantage of that lack of security is. This is all completely incidental to whether they should have arrested him or not.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
What I haven't seen yet is anyone mention how stupid the entire concept of separating a suspected pedophile from his own family is anyway.
Plenty of guys will fess up to getting hard looking at 18-22 year old chicks, but no one would think that they need to be separated from their adult live at home daughters of the same age JUST ON PRINCIPLE.
*Sigh* Physical Access == Pwnage.
The victims house was broken into!
Undetected access to any windows machine is trivial, you don't even have to bother cracking or overwriting an administrator password for something like this, boot a live CD, drop your incriminating files in a "hidden" directory and set the ownership of them to be the victim. Pop the circuit breaker before leaving with a paper clip for a plausible reason as to why the machine is off or prompting for a logon. Done and done, you are out the door and no one the wiser.
As for surveillance. How many homeowners
A) have a properly maintained video survellience sytem?
B) record the INTERIOR of the premises with a UPS capable of sustaining it for any appreciable amount of time.
Linux boxen are not much better. I would assume, since adopting Intel, a Mac is similarly trivial to suborn.
I would be just as vulnerable. Even with the above average expertise and knowledge I have in these matters, I have over half a dozen machines (windows server/xp/vista/7, CentOS, fedora, ubuntu, macbook, etc) most of which I have not bothered to install whole disk encryption, some have not been booted in YEARS and I would have no idea if someone managed to break in and Pwn one of those until the anonymous tip brought the LEO knocking on^W^W breaking down the door. The solution presented is not much practical use in the real world against a determined, slightly less inept, sociopath.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Hint: if the hard drive isn't in the suspect's computer, or even his house, when it's turned over to the police, that ought to be a HUGE red flag.
Nowhere to be found except for blogs and the not-yet paywalled Times of London, England.
because I am a single male living in a child heavy subdivision I have a good dose of paranoia. See I have dogs. Well the yard is fenced and what do kids always want to do. Play with the dogs. While I know most of the kids parents some will bring a friend whom I don't know. I let the kids play with the dogs in the fenced yard; its large; and I maintain a healthy distance, usually sitting on the back porch. I can then keep an eye on the dogs and kids without having to worry about someone wondering.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The obvious right answer here is to never let your wife leave the house. If she's barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, no one will get obsessed with her and try to break into your house to plant evidence against you.
IANAL... But I play one on
Also, even if that machine was secured, encrypted and such, the perp could take out the hard drive (it helps if the PC has more than one drive), format it with FAT32 (no ownership information), fill it up with kiddy porn (altering the file dates) and then send the drive to the police.
The police would still investigate, the guy would still be called a pervert until he managed to prove his innocence.
cygwin has touch and I am sure you can find a tool to change data and time which is native windows as well.
Physical access to the machine negates even the most powerful security. Pull the hard drive, mount on a USB interface, and BAM all security gone. Only full drive encryption is going to stop that, and quite frankly that is overkill for most everyday computing.
Good-bye
Kart - oon - en, actually.
The house was locked; You can't really get much more secure than that. The lock-out procedure on the house failed, again, can't fault the owner.
Wireless alarms at all windows and doors. They are amazingly inexpensive and super easy to install. The only way to get in without tripping an alarm is break through a wall. My house is made of brick and stone so I imagine the noise that would cause would wake me up as well. For intruders that are not deterred by alarms or the homeowners being awake, I have some hollow point 357 rounds with their name on them and a Castle Doctrine which allows me to legally act with lethal force in the event of a home invasion. My wife and I both have a lot of range time with the Ruger to ensure we know how to use it in the event we have to (it's also a TON of fun).
Of course none of that matters if I'm not home. My primary concern is the safety of my family though, so the system I have takes care of that. In any event, the alarms are loud enough you can hear them a block away. It's quite deafening. The neighbors would be alerted in the event of a break-in and they're all the type that would call the police in that situation. We'd do the same for them.
The total cost of the alarms was under $100. That's total. The maintenance is the cost of batteries which have to be replaced once every couple years. It took about 30 minutes to set all of them up and required no technical knowledge. Heck, installing them was about as brainless as it gets. I'm surprised more people don't have a similar setup.
In any case, sadly England does not afford its citizens the same liberties to defend their house and home. I'm very glad to hear the police got the culprit. It could have ended much worse.
You don't provide proof that you broke into a private house.
Then you can't risk breaking into the house to download the porn.
You might be seen. You might be caught. Trip an alarm. Be confronted by his wife. His kids. His housekeeper. There is so much that can go wrong.
It's no surprise really when you make your departure in a body bag.
The geek as criminial is playing out of his league. Too clever by half. Arrogant as hell. Reckless beyond belief.
Barring him from seeing his children was absolutely NOT appropriate. Now, his children have had the trauma of seeing the police come and take their dad away for no reason (as far as they're concerned, after all, he didn't do anything wrong) and being kept from even seeing him after. They will never again feel as secure as they did before the incident.
As for the evidence, they did have cause for concern, but they also had nothing like an intact chain of evidence. They had a hard drive that was in the possession of an anonymous person for an unknown period of time. The fact that an anonymous person had the drive to mail proves that an unauthorized person had access to the computer and the home as well. They had perfect evidence of child porn (it was on there after all) but terrible evidence as to who downloaded it.
It was a difficult situation, but unless they want to be routinely used as a weapon against innocent people, they need to tread very lightly until they have solid evidence. Considering how insecure most people's PCs are and how rampant bots and spyware are, PC based evidence is particularly low quality anyway.
There have been a few incidents of anonymous "tips" about drugs being used in similar ways here in the U.S. The police have a habit of practically destroying a home when they search for drugs, so it is possible to cause someone a terrible trauma and many thousand in damages for the cost of a pay phone call. Innocent people have gotten killed due to false reports here.
No, they wouldn't have been able to get into the house at all. You see, owning a Gun(tm) in America(R) makes you Safe(tm) and Invulnerable(tm) because everyone is too scared to attack you because you have a Gun(tm) and can make them Eat Lead(R) if they do anything bad to you. It doesn't matter if they have the advantage of surprise, better tactical positioning, or are able to prevent you from getting at your Gun(tm), your Gun(tm) makes you Invulnerable(tm). Buy a Gun(tm) today: It's your Patriotic Duty(R).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No, I live amongst a large Finnish community. One family for example, last name is Nuutinen. Pronounces their last name, N-YOU-Tinen
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Not sure about in the UK, but innocent until PROVEN guilty used to mean something across the pond.
In Britain, you're innocent until proven guilcup.
Ezekiel 23:20
Or to cut a window with a glass cutter. Or to jam the wireless sensors (they'll fault, but not alarm).
You guys got it all wrong.
You see, the framer was framed. The supposed target faked the break-ins, and planted all the evidence (computer data, credit card and financial data, and photos) in Karttunen's garden shed computer (which was easy enough to do - it's in a garden shed for pete's sake!).
He then mailed the HD to authorities.
It's all so simple, really - poor Karttunen never knew what hit him.
OOooooh, I want the movie rights for this! =P
the assumption by many people
Such as, for example, the US government, for whom being arrested for some crime is sufficient to bar someone from travelling to the US on the visa waiver scheme?
Evidence is a tricky thing. I'd have to say from what I know of the law (and IANAL), that drive is worthless as evidence, or even as a hint to start an investigation on anything but a B&E charge. The computer may have the guys personal information on it, but even that can be faked.
The chain of custody isn't always quite so cut and dried. At one point, there was an investigation where I showed up to work where I found a man with a federal badge. He wanted to know about an incident that I honestly knew nothing about. I listened to what he had, and then followed it through to the source, and collected the appropriate information. The investigator told me "I can't ask you for this without a warrant, but if you give it to me it would make my job easier."
At that point it's all in who did what, and who's getting screwed. In my case, there was a server of another client compromised and used to attempt breaking into a federal network. When the client discovered it had been compromised, they pulled the machine for evidence (or to be cleaned later), and restored the data from backups to a clean machine. They were absolutely willing to hand over the machine, as long as they'd get it back. The only person getting screwed would potentially be the person who broke into their server.
While I didn't deal in physical evidence, it was hearsay, which wouldn't be admissible. If I had gone and picked up the machine, there wouldn't be a good chain of custody. With the client's permission I sent the investigator over to them.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Yeah, I would venture a guess that if my computer didn't boot up because someone stole the hard drive then I would report a break in. If he was "smart" enough to copy the hard drive first so I wouldn't notice it's absence, how do you explain the duplication?
"I'm surprised they aren't summarily castrating people without proof these days. After all, won't someone think of the children..."
With that policy, there soon won't be any children to think of!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
He not only committed burglary. He not only possessed child porn. The stupid knave DISTRIBUTED child porn--in addition to perverting justice.
Hope he gets a few years to think about it!
Agreed; easiest, safest way to ruin someone's life, and lots of different ways to do it.
Woosh. I'm pretty sure the GP was being facetious. You don't generally refer to child porn as "small potatoes."
Also that gun in your home always defeats the gun the perp has. It has something to do with ballistics, somehow the bullets can only fly away from your bedstand.
> Now, his children have had the trauma of seeing the police come and take their dad away for no reason
Yeah I find it ironic that a lot of this "protect the children" stuff often traumatizes or hurts the kids more.
Just like when they arrest kids for sending nude pictures of _themselves_. Or when some 15 year old's 17 year old boyfriend gets jailed for X years and she gets told what they did together (consensually) was child molestation...
IMO, children would even be less scarred if they happened to be exposed to some random pervert's genitals, than if they were exposed to the Government, especially at a tender age.
With the former, all the parents have to say is - that guy is sick, and there are such sick people in the world, just avoid them where possible, and most kids will take it OK.
Whereas, if the cops come and arrest your dad, and all sorts of bad things are said about him, it's bound to be more traumatizing. And if he actually loses his job, your family is going to have a rather different lifestyle.
Interesting. We could pass a law requiring that any time a newspaper is forced to print a retraction (not a simply typo clarification, but a real retraction for cause), that it has to take the same amount of space on the same pages as the original story/stories. That might make them a little more careful about what they run.
>>They were absolutely willing to hand over the machine, as long as they'd get it back.
I had a friend whose computer was confiscated for an investigation. He got it back 4 years later.
This was in the 90s, when a 4 year old computer was completely unusable. At least he got some of his old source code back, I guess.
Epic fail on your part. please RE READ his entire post twice before responding. don't even try to tell me you can Pwnage a password protected pc in less than a few minutes while adrenaline is pumping hard and you are in full paraniod mode because you are in the middle of a B&E and do it in a way that wont alert the user...... "hey my password is missing what gives?...." Give a good hacker about 4 hours in a calm safe environment? yup I can crack the password and do the deed and leave no evidence. I can't in less than that unless the password happens to be 1234 or on the post it note stuck to the monitor. The windows password crackers are not that effective unless the password is horribly simple. Yes you CAN quickly replace the password, but that is a red flag that will appear the second your mark touches his pc.
Plus encrypting the drive, LIKE LUMPY SAID, completely blows any ability even the Super Uber 1337 hax0r has in doing this quickly. I don't care even if you were the Head Alien lead NSA crack cyber team with a 708IQ and cyber brain implants... you wont do it in under a week if the drive is RSA encrypted like Ubuntu allows you to do on install, or any of the inexpensive windows disk encryption setups will allow you to do.
P.S. the slightly less inept sociopath was completely and utterly inept.. are you saying you are mostly inept?
Do regular users do this? nope. but lumpy presented it as a way to protect yourself from this. that yes you can do things that will either give you a tipoff that something happened or dramatically increase the time it takes for someone to do the deed. And every minute you increase that time the greater the chance of catching them. On another note: get a house alarm and security cameras... the screaming alarm will give him 60 seconds to plant the evidence before a shotgun blast will be fired in his direction. At least in my house.
Honestly, with how easy it is to plant evidence, and how readily the courts accept fabricated evidence as truth, most people should be protecting their computers better. anything you can do to slow down the attack increases your safety.
Unless its a crap alarm any sensor going offline (even jamming) will set off the alarm.
sorry, but your Hackers movie and all the 007 movies you have watched are not real.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
How about running a SECURE system at home? simply having the PC with logins and auto lock-out would have stopped this idiot sociopath in his tracks. Yes you can crack the passwords with physical access to the machine but I highly doubt the idiot had enough time to crack it without getting caught.
The article said he had "repeatedly" broken into their home. Plenty of chances to plant a hardware keystroke logged and get their passwords.
"People who have been arrested for crimes that they were later found innocent of or even found to have had no involvement in at all becoming social pariahs."
Have you got a favorite link or anything? I'm curious.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Sort of.
In the U.S. (at least in those parts where firearms ownership isn't restricted by local laws), criminals tend to break into homes which are (or at least seem to be) unoccupied so as to avoid a possible confrontation with an armed occupant.
In the U.K., there is almost no such deterrent --- and a strong legal dis-incentive against citizens defending themselves or acting to deter attempts at theft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)
(this varies from state-to-state and Tony Martin's actions would have been completely legal in Texas)
A belief in gun control, is the belief that the woman who is found tied up w/ her own stockings, raped and beaten to death, is somehow morally superior to the woman who has to explain to the police how her attacker got that fatal hole in his anatomy.
Have you got a favorite link or anything? I'm curious.
Here you go.
"Not sure about in the UK, but innocent until PROVEN guilty used to mean something across the pond."
Please don't lecture the Brits about "innocent until PROVEN guilty". They were the ones who gave it to you, they were using it at least 1000yrs before the ink dried on the US bill of rights.
From what I have read the only person who abused his rights was the sociopath who framed him. It is not libelous to report the FACT he was arrested for possesing kiddie porn and any parent who puts their kids first will understand why the cops MUST act the way they did.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Exactly.
It's trivial to ruin someone's life at this point using child pornography. Cracking a WPA password isn't nearly that complicated.
Also, note how the guy he was trying to frame was still arrested, and still barred from seeing his children, after someone sent the police a hard drive they claimed belonged to the guy. Of all the obvious frame jobs, this was dead sloppy, and yet the victim was STILL victimized by the authorities. I'm surprised they aren't summarily castrating people without proof these days. After all, won't someone think of the children...
I think someone was thinking of the children when they took the pictures and videos...
sorry, too soon?
Be seeing you...
looks like Clone's got himself a stalker bot. better watch out or you might end up with more CP on your computer!
Innocent until proven guilty doesn't mean you can't be jailed until you get your trial.
How can I DUI? I don't have my car keys.
Spelling, grammar, punctuation? We need something that checks logic.
are you saying that a 4pt one-liner retraction on page B-22 isn't good enough for you?
Sure, they're permitted to use evidence gained through other means. The important thing to remember about ISP records is that the ISP is going to have data retention policies, procedures for accessing such data, security measures, etc. You can, at least, reasonably determine if the traffic logs you get from an ISP are legitimate.
But a hard drive sent anonymously through the mail, that someone only claims belongs to someone else? That's worth no more than an anonymous phone tip. It's completely unverifiable and you have no idea where it really came from.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
There is no justice in the justice system. Even if you make it through without being found officially guilty your life will be, at best, severely damaged by the financial and social costs. In this new era of global persistent memory via the internet an arrest does not go away. The most obviously example: When this guy applies for a job his potential new employer will find out that he was once arrested for child pornography. Less obvious is that anyone he gets close to in any way will likely find out. He will start to become friends with someone, they'll google his name one night and bam: WTF he was arrested for kiddie porn?!?!
His life will never be the same.
I think most people discussing this post here aren't quite aware of just how things work in this regard. The guy who set up the frame no doubt was aware that it didn't have to be a perfect frame job. It just had to be good enough that he didn't get caught as the framer. He failed at that, but otherwise he completely succeeded in fucking this guy over.
What the justice system really is is an injustice system. There is not guilty, which is the minimal injustice of financial and social punishment, and then there is guilty which carries punishments that often do not match the crime (e.g. 15 years of being ass raped in hell for selling pot to a narc).
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31706790
Hilarious. Don't listen to this fool clown. He made a complete spectacle of himself in the url above.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31706790
Hilarious. Don't listen to this fool clone, the CLOWN. He made a complete spectacle of himself in the url above.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31706790
Hilarious. Don't listen to this fool clone the CLOWN. He made a complete spectacle of himself in the url above.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31706790
Hilarious. Don't listen to this fool clone, the CLOWN: He made a complete spectacle of himself in the url above with nothing but errors on his part.
Also, note how the guy he was trying to frame was still arrested, and still barred from seeing his children, after someone sent the police a hard drive they claimed belonged to the guy. Of all the obvious frame jobs, this was dead sloppy, and yet the victim was STILL victimized by the authorities.
Quite likely the innocent victim still has a record of his arrest and biometric samples held by the police. Such records being very likely to misinterpretation by CRB/ISA.
There's also a rather obvious piece of sexism in the Times report, which refers only to the victim's wife as "the victim"...
It is a difficult situation for the police. On the one hand, it has "frame job" written all over it, on the other hand, what if it isn't?
Is being a police officer, especially a detective, ment to be easy in the first place?
The police clearly made more than a usual effort investigate at least, but still. I dunno what you'd call the "right" answer is here.
Sounds like the problem here is with the "more than a usual effort" part. Which implies that the police typically don't do their job properly.
The simplest course would have been to plant the photos and then give an anonymous tip to the wife.
Who the wife is going to believe, her husband or some anonymous caller?
Law Enforcement's "chain of custody" is a tremendously important concept. The "evidence" the police received is horribly tainted, and shouldn't have merited more than a knock on the door and a conversation with the man being joe-jobbed.
Especially if this was before they were aware of the rather strange burglary.
Every responsible home computer owner should have no problem spending a few bucks to have a EAL7-certified system with full hard drive encryption built. Everything else is an invitation to hackers and getting sent to prison for having child porn is really your fault if you don't take your security seriously.
Of course that's just to defend from the people who somehow managed to penetrate the meter-thick bunker door to enter your house (superterranean homes are dangerously irresponsible) and evaded the multiply redundant security cameras, IR detectors and tripwires without waking you.
If your home and computer system can't withstand a concerted all-out attack by any combination of any agencies or armies on the planet you really deserve what you get.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
How about running a SECURE system at home?
Not possible to do.
If you would have read the summary or article, the person broke into their home.
There is not a single computer system on the market that will prevent against a physical attack that is under $100k.
Even the expensive ones don't STOP physical attacks, just to slow one down with the idea that the armed guys with guns will show up before the attack succeeds.
If you can't afford armed guards and a fortified building to put it in, there is less than zero reasons to even bother with a physically secured computer (Since by definition at that point, it is not)
Not a single electronic security measure you listed or could list would stop this type of crime.
Maybe stop this one single act of this type of crime, because it seems this guy wasn't too bright, but it will do nothing for any other case.
Yes by now I know it's true. But still: Taking out the hard-drive to send it to the police?
I understand that - I think my point was that the media then takes this arrest, parrots their latest "ZOMG child molestor" and when it turns out there's nothing there to substantiate the claims, they aren't forced to eat their words, while the victim (the original suspect) is now burdened with his name forever being linked to every google search on child pornographer.
I understand and support the arrest process, on reasonable suspicion, but there has to be suitable repercussions for people involved in fucking up.
Like the idiot police departments who shoot up grandma in a no-knock drug raid based on faulty intel. Those people need to do hard time. Personal responsibility is GONE when it comes to police departments and the media, and we as citizens are expected to have any? Okay, I know I digress, but you're right, except where you think I think people can't be arrested. I'm mostly arguing for your point #2.
Thanks, but how about this.
"In this sense, everyone was a victim of ... a system that in seeking to prevent abuse was shown capable of participating in and fostering a kind of abuse as damaging as the abuse it sought to prevent."
http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume2/j2_4_7.htm
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Again, I don't blame the cops - I blame the court of public opinion. This guy is going to be stygmatized for life based on a crime he didn't commit. And like others have argued better than I can - the Great Google Memory hole will remember this guy.
Even for an AC, mod parent up.
The McMartins weren't the only ones.
Day care sex abuse hysteria
Never underestimate the willingness of ambitious prosecutors to railroad an innocent person if a case gets huge publicity. And never underestimate the American people's capacity for moral panic.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Just wait for ACTA.
"I am not prepared to continue to be part of a body which, as its main activity, works to facilitate the potential criminalisation of increasing numbers of young people."
Come now, I think we can all heartily agree that the world would be a far more pleasant place if the act of being a "young people" were criminalized. ;P
Mission Impossible is the real culprit here. Aside from starring Tom Cruise (seriously, am I the only person who thinks he looks just plain creepy?), it had the wonderful scene with the magically secured computer room. The one with the big thick secure door, but access via a vent system big enough for people to crawl around in. The one with the supersensitive floor that will detect a drop of sweat falling on it, and with temperature sensors that will detect someone in the room (but you're ok as long as you don't get too nervous), but absolutely no motion sensors. You know, because they're so ineffective compared to checking for changes in the rooms temperature. Oh, and lest I forget, the laser grid on the vent cover... with magical lasers which apparently will pass through rats, but are stopped by human beings. Since the guy waiting in the vent was molested by a rat, we have to assume that there's a serious infestation, so laser sensors that can tell the difference between rats and people are the only explanation. That, or a wizard did it.
Furthermore, the disk in "evidence" is stolen property.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Depends. There *are* vegetophiles, you know!
Before or after she finds the CP on the computer?
Before or after she finds the CP on the computer?
It doesn't matter, it won't be believed before and after.
"the Great Google Memory hole will remember this guy"
Yes, and it will also remeber he was framed. I'm all for educating the court of public opinion but what's the alternative to a free press reporting news about arrests, etc? - Censor everything the state does until it has come before a judge?
"This guy is going to be stygmatized for life based on a crime he didn't commit."
Natural justice is rare since most crimes can't be undone, someone paralised by a drunk driver will never get their life back. Sure some people will only remeber this guy was arrested for kiddie porn - it sucks to be a victim of a frame and that's why the framer is behind bars.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Apparently apk doesn’t take kindly to being beaten.
Well, in this case, they didn't care if they got it back or not. They had hundreds of machines. I believe that they got it back in about a week.
My ex-mother-in-law had her computer taken by law enforcement because a roommate was under suspicion of some nasty things. She got it back the next day. I guess things have come a long way, and they realize that a block copied drive is pretty damned useful. :)
I'd suspect if they sat on it for 4 years, they had a case against him, and didn't want him to have it back in case he was going to do something else with it.
I knew someone who was in a gun related crime. Well, more of an accident. A girl shot herself in the face. I don't try to understand how it happened, but I know stuff like that happens all the time (people doing stupid things and hurting themselves). Her boyfriend, the gun owner, wasn't even home at the time. He came home to police cars an ambulance, and police tape around his house. It took quite a while for them to release it to him, even after his girlfriend was able to talk again, and explained what happened.
Sometimes the process gets real slow, if they think it's in the best interest of the people involved. Their belief isn't always the way the rest of the world sees it.
Out of curiosity, what was the charge, and was he convicted?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Well, the plan to frame the guy obviously... He's never gotten the girl from this but still.
As countless others have already pointed out, the removing the harddrive part was stupid beyond words. Tainted evidence is not good if you want to get a conviction.
No, plan like this takes at least a few weeks to execute, and involves installing a back door on the victims PC.
Then you use it to search for CP, download and hide it (the victim must not find it, but the police should be able to). Repeat for a few weeks. Also if the guy has a child of his own, post a picture (there's probably a family photo album available on the PC) on some CP forums asking for takers on making CP with this subject. Set up a 'playdate', remove the backdoor and THEN tip off the police. You'll be burying the victim when the police finds all the material, another pedophile arriving there probably with material of this own, the forum posts, the picture of the victims child and so on. Nothing at all to link it to you, no tainted evidence, and a surefire conviction. If you really want to fuck with him, set up a website with plenty of pics accusing him of even worse stuff and hint at a reward if he has an accident in jail... You can be certain that the victim gets raped on a daily basis at least, and someone stupid in there just might try to off him...
Obviously a scheme like this is bad for 'getting the girl' but perfect for revenge! - Revenge is - as the Klingons point out - a dish best served cold... ;)
That is what government was invented for, and why we have cops and courts and laws and due process, instead of vigilantes. What if it isn't a frame job? If the government can't prove it's not a frame job, then the very best thing to do is..
Actually, that's the error, right there. It doesn't really make sense. He was suspected not of raping his children, but of collecting child porn. There were no even-remote allegations that he was a danger to his kids. There were no shadows of suggestions of hints, not even iffy-looking whisps of evidence that reeked of a frame job, that he posed a threat to anyone. The only evidence they had, was that he had chosen to obtain some child porn. No rape committed by this person had been reported or was even suspected.
That is Bullshit; British Judges typically make court orders preventing the identification of accused/victim in most of these cases.
Goggle "cannot be named for legal reasons" and is used by the local paper in this case.
That legal reason is a court order; breaching it is contempt of court and the interpretation of [b]identification[/b] is drawn very widely including often town, villages, schools, parents and not just names. That court order is usually lifted for the convicted party (but not always) but very, very rarely on the victim.
Well, they are summarily circumcising people. I mean, think about it: at birth, with no anesthetic (because that would mess the kid up, but this won't?), they unceremoniously deprive 40% of our children of their manhood! Ah, hell, there's only one person on here who agrees with such fervor, I keep seeing his sig. Yes, I'm bitter, I'll never have it back, nor the large amount of nerve cells that I also lost with that piece of flesh. And it wasn't even religion; it was "just what people did".
The other day I was thinking about drawing a picture of a child who had cut several of his fingers off, and was presenting his bloody hand to his mother, saying with pride, "See what I did mom? I'm helping my hands be more clean, too!" As a response to those idiots who believe that cutting pieces of your body off in non-medically-necessary surgery is a way to be more healthy.
And to bring this back to somewhat-on-topic:
I believe that working to make non-consensual circumcision illegal does far more real "thinking of the children" and "helping the children" than any amount of "making it illegal to possess evidence of a crime" will ever do. (By "non-consensual" I mean one needs to be an adult in order to decide to remove parts of their body -- not that parents could consent for their children, as happesn now.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I think that may be one of the "silver linings" of this event. Hopefully there will be more attempts like this that are discovered. If enough people hear about the damage being caused by a ridiculous law (possession of evidence that a crime was committed should not be illegal), perhaps that will either convince the legislators to fix the situation and repeal the law, and/or it may convince the police to tread more lightly when dealing with cases of such an ambiguous nature in the future (i.e., first person to investigate should be the person mailing the hard drive).
Of course, then I read the rest of your post about the drug "tips", and realize that we still have many legislative battles to overcome in order to be truly free. Which will likely never happen.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
>>Out of curiosity, what was the charge, and was he convicted?
It had something to do with breaking into the white house. :)
Ya. Of all the places in the world to mess with, that's probably pretty high up on the list of "don't screw with these places".
Then again, they seem entertained by my nightly prank calls (hint: 202-456-1414). "Is your refrigerator running? Then go catch it!"
It was more entertaining during the Bush years. "We're going to catch you and send you to Gitmo!". Now it's actually civilized with the normal response of "Mr. Smythe, we already know it's you. Come up with some new ones and we'll even laugh." :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I'm surprised they aren't summarily castrating people without proof these days. After all, won't someone think of the children...
With that policy, there soon won't be any children to think of!!
Problem solved, then. Let the snipping begin!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Man becomes obsessed with a co-worker and sought to end her marriage by breaking into their house, planting child pornography on the husband's hard drive, and then informing the police.
http://www.sefermpost.com/sefermpost/2010/04/ilkka-karttunen-plants-false-evidence-on-computer-to-end-a-marriage.html