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Child Porn As a Weapon
VoiceOfDoom writes "Want to get rid of your boss and move up to his position? Put kiddie porn on his computer then call the cops! This was the cunning plan envisaged by handyman Neil Weiner of east London after falling out with school caretaker Edward Thompson too many times. Thankfully, Weiner didn't cover his tracks quite well enough to avoid being found out — earlier boasts about his plan to friends at a BBQ provided the police with enough evidence to arrest him for trying to pervert the course of justice. Frighteningly, however, between being charged with possession of indecent images and being exonerated, innocent (if 'grumpy') Thompson was abused and ostracized for eight months by neighbors and colleagues. With computer forensics for police work often being performed by 'point 'n click'-trained, nearly-retired cops, or languishing in a 6-month queue for private sector firms to attend to it, the uncomfortable question is raised: how easily might this trick have succeeded if Weiner had been a little more intelligent about it?"
Don't f* with the IT guy like at restaurant you don't f* with the people who handle your food!
...the obligatory Weiner name.
Moving on.
The idea of this is sick...it's no different than accusing a teacher you don't like of rape. Even if you are found innocent, there is still a stigma attached to you that will never fully dissipate within your community. People around you will always have this accusation in the back of their minds.
Whatever happend to using a whoopie cusion, or putting a flaming bag of poo on someone's doorstep?
Living With a Nerd
very very easy... every time I here about someones brother or uncle got caught with it on their computer I always try and explain how easy something like this would be and we shouldn't jump to conclusions. But they always do anyway.
The weapon of the future. The more things we make illegal, the more things we can use as legal weapons. marijuana, kiddie porn, anything that they can outlaw they can also plant it in your house and stick you for it.
how many governments get rid of "undesirables" by planting child porn on their computers.
Throwing a baggie of pot behind your toaster is just so passé these days...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
He's lucky he wasn't murdered while the cops were messing about.
As for "how easily might this trick have succeeded if Weiner had been a little more intelligent about it?", I'd bet it has succeeded in the past, repeatedly.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
...people aren't successfully pulling off this "trick" already?
trying to pervert the course of justice
No pun intended.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
use an encrypted drive and lock down your machine when you arent using it?
In most states, you'll be a registered sex offender for taking a leak in public -- i.e. down a dark alley after a few too many pints. Should it be illegal? Yeah probably. Should it be ambiguous whether you raped a kid or couldn't hold your bladder? I dunno, I don't write laws so I shouldn't have an opinion. Maybe the slashlawer can opine on why these are similar things.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
First off, it sounds like his "trick" DID succeed. The guy's life was hell for 8 months...
/b/. Do you know what was in all of those thumbnails that you scrolled past? Do you even WANT to know? ;)
It's scary to think about, but it wouldn't be all that difficult to frame someone like this. You wouldn't even have to get access to their computer. I imagine it would be as easy as getting an anonymous pay-per-use cell phone, texting someone illegal pictures for a few days, and then reporting them to the police. Maybe they wouldn't get convicted, but their life would still be ruined by the allegations.
Something like this could even happen by accident. God forbid someone rummage through your cache after you spend an hour browsing
EXTREMELY easy. I'm surprised it hasn't started happening frequently already. As much as we (as a society) demonize people for even being suspected of this crime, I'd hesitantly say it does happen frequently already.
It would not be easily discovered as everyone in the chain of justice is quick to assume the defendants are guilty, and may not do as thorough a job as they should looking for evidence of a setup. Easier to parade around your captured "predator" and get good press, then to search for the truth.
I've seen it firsthand; an old buddy of mine admitted one day that when he was 19, he got drunk at a party and slept with a girl who lied about her age by a single year. She was 17, not 18, which is under the legal age in my state. Today, he is a registered sex offender, cannot vote, has trouble finding work, and cannot live in most communities. He has to inform the communities he is allowed to live in, which makes everyone immediately assume he's some kind of monster after their children.
Was my friend kind of an idiot at 19? Absolutely. But does he deserve to become a lower class of society for the rest of his life over his (ultimately harmless) mistake?
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
This guy should get the same sentence that the guy he framed would have gotten. However, this is the obvious consequence of severe punishments for simple possession of something that is easy to obtain, and a commodity as opposed to things like guns which can be identified, traced etc. I'm sure people do this with drugs.
Did you both miss the part where this guy was a janitor?
Did you miss the part where the IT guy got caught, shit for brains?
Not surprising, the culprit is an MCSE.
Why bother with child porn.
.. .
Judging by the stories that have been posted on here over the last few months, you only need to post some thing like “I’m going to bomb X” on a message board under a false name.
Before you know it, the target will be held under anti-terror laws that make being prosecuted for the possession of child porn look like a viable and preferable option.
- - I'm a bit worried about typing bomb and X in a message board as it is. Bye all....
VERY easily. In fact, I'm tired of Taco not approving my posts. From here on out, I'm posting k1dd13 p0rn with his alias and cc:ing the Feds. Just you wait. Just you wait. I'll show you now, Taco! HAHAHAHHAHAHHA!
Recently there was a big stir caused here over proposed plans to make the defendants in rape cases anonymous. For some reason it was decided that this would be terrible, as anyone accused of rape is obviously guilty and so deserves no protections... Something about this strikes me as simply wrong - and it applies in this case as well.
The way our society is geared up we don't just have trial by court, but trial by media; if the media decides someone is guilty, then it doesn't matter what the court decides, the defendant is screwed. In my opinion, defendants should have the right to anonymity especially in "socially disgusting" cases such as most sex-based crimes.
Of course, these days child porn over here could consist of stick figures, so the actual laws themselves could do with a serious overhaul - remind me again why mere viewing of material should be illegal?
This kind of stuff is exactly why we need to care about privacy even "if you have nothing to hide". The law is not perfect. We need to build in safeguards to prevent it being abused, not just to catch the criminals.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
jurys most of the time are to dumb to think of that.
We need smarter jurys on computers or some to say in the jury room that any one of your can be in the same place for just 1 pron or other pop up.
To protect minors when accused of a crime. Yet the public has NO understanding of a charge and a conviction. This all too easy to accomplish. And what is worse is that it is so easy. At least with drugs, the "planter" still has to purchase and carry them. With the internet "Doing it with Goats" will provide lots of ammo for the would be planter. With the way people guard their passwords the planter doesn't even have to hack in or carry the material at all, nearly 0 risk. With Remote desktops, you don't event need to physically be at the computer.
So now when someone is accused, they are plastered all over the news without being convicted. The public paints them as guilty, and the accused, innocent or not, is ostracized.
It makes me wonder if we should protect the names of accused in cases like this until a conviction. Then again, a lot of the people charge are often in a position where I would really like to limit their access to our youth. A tough call either way.
It would be hard to even go after the guy alerting the police to the charge. It could simply be the IT admin doing a routine audit finding something that was "planted" by the janitor.
I think the only real defense is not to p!ss people off enough to go to these lengths.
"Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us. "
There's a difference between an IT monkey and a janitor? Since when?
Except that this occured in the United Kingdom where failure to disclose the passphrase is an imprisonable offence with an unlimited tariff (it's in the terrorism legislation). So no, don't try that one.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
ask Julie Amero about this and that was over software that the school failed to pay on time to keep it up to date.
But since this case was in the UK....
If you *DON'T* tell the police your passwords for encrypted files / folders when arrested / charged then it's an automatic "Go directly to jail do not pass GO and do not Collect $200" for up to 2 years (or untll you tell them the passwords!)
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Remember email bombing? Thousands of anonymous emails with gibberish. How about spam? Now we have kiddie bombing.
It's time we treat child porn as an internet virus and create antivirus scanners which detect child porn and automatically delete, wipe, and report any image saved in the backround with limited user interaction. I don't want to and should not have to risk being prosecuted for possession of something which was sent to me by mistake, uploaded to me, or otherwise infiltrated by trickery, hacking, or anything of that sort.
If we treated child porn as a virus then the only people left who would have large collections of child porn would be the individuals who actually like child porn.
All it would have taken is for the villain NOT to talk about it. That's all! In other words, any psychopath would have pulled this off and utterly ruined the poor bastard's life.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is primarily why it should not be illegal just to possess a certain set of bits and bytes on your machine. You can make it so you can fool the best of forensics experts. And most law enforcement who does the analysis simply use lame-brain software to scan for the kiddie porn files.
It would be easy, for instance, to write a virus that would spread to your machine, download kiddie porn, create fake tracks that would fool forensics, and then delete itself without a trace. Can you imagine if something like that got out and infected millions of computers with kiddie porn?
Well, for one, it would probably end this nonsense of destroying people's lives simply because they had the "wrong" files on their computer!
Not to mention nailing people for files on their computer does NOTHING to stop the production of kiddie porn. As always, law enforcement is focusing on the wrong end of the problem. They should be going after the guys who pervert children in making the kiddie porn. Why don't they do this? Oh, I get it -- too much work. Poor kids. Too much bother for Law Enforcement to go after the REAL perverts. Sorry, kiddies.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
the obligatory Weiner name. Moving on. The idea of this is sick...it's no different than accusing a teacher you don't like of rape. Even if you are found innocent, there is still a stigma attached to you that will never fully dissipate within your community. People around you will always have this accusation in the back of their minds. Whatever happend to using a whoopie cusion, or putting a flaming bag of poo on someone's doorstep?
Groucho Marx and The Three Stooges used the line long before that show ever existed. Though it's speculated to be a pretty old vaudeville joke.
So...if the guy had planted the pictures and an encrypted file, the victim would still be in jail? Bloody wonderful.
As someone who has worked in child protective services. I can tell you, as mentioned in the article; the mere accusation of being involved in child sex will ruin your life. I'm not commenting on his guilt or innocence, but look how many people were willing to believe the worst about Michael Jackson before any facts got out. I mean "the guy's successful and weird, so he must like little boys”!
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
Steganography is the way to go: if the police don't know that there's something there, they can't ask you for the password.
Since there's no way of knowing whether someone truly knows/remembers a password, the UK law is really just a variant of thoughtcrime. Appropriate for the land of Orwell.
I don't think the idea of encrypting is to prevent the police from looking as much as it is to prevent someone getting the data on there in the first place.
IT folks deal with a LOT more shit.
Remember to maintain your supply of
I smell old 4chan copypasta.
According to The Independent, the judge has added Weiner to the Sex Offenders Register for the specific purpose of causing the general prison population to identify him as a pervert and make him suffer, even though there is no indication that Weiner possessed this material for any purpose other than to screw up Thomson's life.
I think Weiner is a scumbag who deserves to go to prison, but he is *not* a sex offender and does not need to be kept away from children's playgrounds when he is released. I certainly don't agree with this tactic by the judge - surely placing people who are not sex offenders on a list of sex offenders renders the list meaningless for any monitoring or preventative purpose? And since when was justice about eye-for-eye revenge in this civilised society?!
"Life is pain Highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"
Westly, The Princess Bride
Even if a 6 year old gives you permission to photograph them naked doesn't mean it is right or socially acceptable.
Remember to maintain your supply of
There's a big shitstorm over political news submission skewing over at Digg, but the related bit is the online actions of one of the alleged co-conspirators-- namely, falsely accusing those involved in a Youtube youth group of being pedophiles.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Here in UKia (not the most sexually liberated country in Europe I have to say) whenever I participate in an organized race they have men urinals in the open, any passerby can see what is going on.
In Barcelona women that sunbathe topless in the beach are as many as the ones that don't, and it is not uncommon that both men and women use the showers in the beach (no curtains, so you are in full view of everybody) fully naked.
And so on and so forth.
When did you guys lost all sense of proportion?
A friend of mine is a high school teacher, and has been accused of abuse 3 times in 10 years. No truth to the charges, just vindictive kids trying to get revenge for imagined injuries, but each time was extremely stressful for him.
It's amazing how many people will believe the worst of someone they don't know just because some a-hole has laid false charges.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Would this put it under some type of a munitions export restriction?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I work in private sector digital forensics, I'd say about 30% of the criminal work I see, in regards to child pornography, was probably planted or probably not belonging to the suspect but because I can't objectively prove it I can't say that when I act as an expert witness. Technology incompetence of all parties (defense, prosecution, the defendant etc.) prevents the right questions from being asked and answered. It's stuff like that which makes me lose faith in the adversarial court system.
Are you one of those people who wrongfully conflates all nudity with pornography? The Supreme Court in the US has already ruled that pictures of kids naked, such as those in nudist families, do not automatically constitute child porn.
So the guy was killed for taking a leak outside.
There was another man who was killed because the previous occupant of the apartment was a registered sex offender and had moved out six months earlier. The killers didn't check that hard.
I understand they're now very sorry that they aren't around to protect their children anymore...
Personally, I think sex offender lists are a bad thing - if they're still dangerous, don't release them. As has been mentioned before, most offenders that target children go after kids whose parent's know and trust them.
You also get the problem that the list is contaminated - bad addresses, drunk pissers, slightly too-young girlfriends, non-pedophiles, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
http://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party)
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Not for drugs, not for explosives, not for child porn. Sorry, but it's just too easy to exploit (and there's the slight moral problem that possession is technically harmless). Distribution, sure. That would actually have a slight chance of working, and it's a lot harder to frame someone for it. But not possession.
I remember the good ol' times when the way to scare people to use secure software was arguing that if their machine/web site was unsafe, someone that could want to harm them could put there things about terrorism, drugs, or child porn (and link google to that to put the engine in motion). Botnets are now a bit more real scare tactic.
Posting anon so my mods aren't wiped.
In cases like that where there's an emotional element that may cause a jury to overlook the facts, one would be well advised to waive one's right to a jury trial.
A bench trial (judge only, no jury) works best in these cases because the judges are less likely to overlook the facts and the law for simple emotional arguments.
Sadly as the general public get's better at using computers we will see more of these cases come up. It's was inevitable.
Calling your enemy a witch or whatever and making it stick has always been a way to ruin his life.
In the 1990s calling your spouse a child- or wife-beater or a child molester was a too-common* ploy in divorce cases.
1600s and earlier, and today in some 3rd world areas - witch
1950s - gay or commie
1980s and later - pedophile
2001 and later - terrorist
Throughout history - traitor
*I don't mean to imply that it was numerically common or anywhere a close to a majority of the divorce child-custody cases, only that there was a spike during that time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The Film "The Net".
SouthPark's Wacky Molestation Adventure...
etc. etc. etc.
The problem of course is the assumption of guilt, which is a complete reverse of normal American law (Innocent until Proven Guilty). I recall my Dad (Professor at a major University) got hit with a few 'sexual harassment' complaints. Fortunately he had good notes. In both cases the young lady had actually offered sexual favors in exchange for grades, and he turned them down. And they then claimed it was his idea. Meetings with the Dean, hassle, etc... He and my Mom laughed about it.
It's a c/p of something Stallman said a few years ago.
Haha, that's even better, just tell the cops that you saw him opening an encrypted file and it came up with kiddie porn. You wouldn't even need to take the risk of downloading the porn yourself, just encrypt any old files and put them on his hard drive. He'll be unable to come up with the key and its off to jail for 2+ years. The risk, and squick factor, of your crime drops off considerably and the result is nearly (if not totally) the same.
The news of a person being found not guilty needs to be even bigger than the news that a person was accused.
O.J.?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Stating that a difference exists and claiming that is is big proves nothing. Would you like to elaborate on that difference, particularly on where the moral difference is. Why can a family photo album not be public on facebook?
I am not against child rape or anything like that but... seriously.... ambiguity is all fine and good most of the time, but we are talking about whats "socially acceptable" which seems to translate to "when its ok to send armed thugs out to 'modify' your behavior" then, I think it behooves us to spell out, in detail, exactly where the line is drawn and be absolutely clear about WHY it is being drawn where it is (and the convenience of police or prosecutors is NEVER an acceptable answer in my book; if their job is hard it is because it should be hard to divorce a person from his otherwise inalienable rights).
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Amazed that I didn't see a Donnie Darko post in here. Clearly the thing to do is to ban that movie so nobody gets any crazy ideas.
Not the same but the same.
Er um s/not against child rape/not in favor of/
I seriously need an editor.
(talk about the situations where that 1 minute between postings rule really blows)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
But there is a huge difference between taking a picture of little Sally in the bathtub for the home photo album than there is posting that same picture on your open-to-everyone Facebook page.
In what way? Apparently many people disagree with you as I've seen exactly such pictures on people's Facebook pages.
He said we needed smarter juries. He didn't say anything about whether he should be on them.
That just makes Stallman seem even creepier than he already comes across.
Thousands upon thousands of crimes go unsolved every day. If you do it correctly, no one ever even thinks to investigate it in the first place. The number of crimes that are solved are definitely in the minority, and usually only come about byway of accident. Shows like CSI are little more than propaganda, fooling the masses into believing that the police will find you no matter what.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I seriously need an editor.
Don't hire the ones that work for Slashdot.
It is not the job of the jury to think of that, or anything else. It is the job of the solicitor for the defence to think of it, the job of the barrister for the defence to present it, and the jury to decide whether it is plausible.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I am not against child rape or anything like that
I don't think that's what you meant to say.
Have you seen some of those icons in the "idle" articles? My eyes! They burn!
j/k.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As is often the case with knee-jerk solutions, this one isn't completely perfect, either. Reporting after a verdict is a great idea that will never happen for political reasons (the cops need to be seen to be doing their job in order to procure exceedingly larger budgets from their city officials). Reporting not-guilty, though, isn't perfect, if only because large swaths of the populace have bought into the cop propaganda: if they were arrested, it's because they did it, and if they were found not guilty it's due to some technicality, not because they didn't actually do it.
I'm not saying that I have the perfect solution - I don't. But if someone can solve these sociological issues, I'm pretty sure I could really get behind it. Because what we have now doesn't merely suck, it's misleading.
Perhaps the news media should only report on stories like that only after the jury has given their verdict.
But that doesn't make for good sweeps week stories or a way to drive millions of hits to your site.
No, that is a Victorian Era concept. Christian theology and philosophy hold that no one is born innocent and hold that no good can be achieved through evil means (which is what happens when innocent people are sacrificed "for the children.") This is basic theology 101 stuff.
Not really!
The Judge can still put you on the "Sex Offenders Register" for life.
You don't need to be convicted of a crime to get on that register in the UK, you just need to be charged with it.
It usually works out better to plead guilty and you only serve 1/3 of the sentence, so you would be out in 6 months (and on probation for another 1/3) and you'll be off the offenders list in either 5 or 10 years. A bit better than 2 years inside and on the list for life!!
In the UK any conviction you have served can be taken off your record after 10 years (The person has "paid his debt to society" and is considered "spent") if the custody is less than 2 years.(I think!) so he can still have a "normal" life...
(IANAL but Scottish law is a bit different that English law in most cases..)
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
You are automatically condemning millions of ignorant people. Posting something on FB that is legal for personal possession and not restricted by a license or copyright should be fine.
This becomes a major pain in the ass for enforcement, because once a legal photo has been bundled or torrented with illegal content by a third party the feds will identify the original legal poster as a target for inquiry.
Pain in the asses must be tolerated if we are going to move our country forward in a sane manner.
What you do is secure shred it. Torrents are tricky because they could add distribution on to possession, but as a general rule, if you're view pages via HTTP or FTP and it turns out to be child porn, all you have to do is shred the file. Do so immediately. If it isn't visible when they check the computer, assuming they do, they can't charge you for possession. In order for it to be possession it has to be accessible.
Granted that's not perfect, but it's not likely you'll be charged over a couple images that were immediately and unrecoverably deleted.
Someone finds child porn on you computer and you are instantly and forever labeled as the most disgusting form of human being imaginable.
I think people would rate you worse if they found similar pictures of you and your children in the same frame on someone else's computer.
But I get your point.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actually, the FBI tried for an entire year to break into a suspect's Truecrypt encrypted volume. And failed to succeed at it, so the Mexican government had to let him off as there was no other evidence available. At least that's if my memory serves.
jurys most of the time are to dumb to think of that.
We need smarter jurys on computers or some to say in the jury room that any one of your can be in the same place for just 1 pron or other pop up.
Smarter juries? Good luck with that.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
This weapon does more harm to those 'making' it then those it is deployed on. Truly a bad idea though, now this chump is going to be brought up on the charges he intended for his victim.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Pa school web cam people should get the same child porn changes as this guy got and in this case they seem to be covering it up and maybe even have someone picked out to dump it all on who may of had little to do with the overall case and or only had a part in it and the top people want to get off.
Assuming the firm still exists in some way, shape, or form, a letter to its HR department apologizing and explaining what you saw may get this guy off of their "not eligible for rehire" list.
These days, with past-employers not willing to give out anything other than the dates of employment and a yes/no to eligible for rehire, removing this black mark from this guy's work history will help him.
If you know how to reach the guy a letter of apology to him would also be helpful.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That why shows like Dexter are so great. Forensics is a powerful tool, but it has to be pointed in the right direction.
I don't want to give pedophiles, molesters or child porn sickos a free pass, but it's a crazy that law enforcement can seek a conviction on something that is so open to outside tampering as a computer in a place of work or in a public situation. Anyone could hide a file 10 or 20 folders deep and the user would have no idea. It's just way to subject to let prosecutors use this as the only means to obtain conviction. I'm sure if a person really is in to child porn, pictures on their computer is one of many things that could bring a conviction against them. Does law enforcement really need less to seek conviction in cases because of the moral wrongness of the crime, regardless of if the person is guilty or not? It almost seems like the salem witch trials all over again.
Wow, that makes it one of the most clever troll copypastas I've seen. It's like a GNAA post, except almost on-topic!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Anything that can be used as a weapon, will eventually be used as a weapon.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Now they know who I am and that I read an article with "child porn" in the title, aw man, they're coming to get me as we speak. >.
ad astra per alia porci
>how easily might this trick have succeeded if Weiner had been a little more intelligent about it
That is an awesome plan, but how would you call the cops with an anonymous tip, they can not go and get a warrant to search your place based on a tip without confirmation...and to get confirmation you need to get int the house, catch22...so whether he did or not have the p0rn, I do not understand how this was able to proceed further...being the one to call the cops on the guy automatically places you under assumption of either assist to the crime (you saw it yourself) or may have been trying to plant it on him...so they would keep you around to question just in case, so that being the case, I assumed he would have placed the call anonymously, no?
Then again I not RTFA
than sprinkling a crime scene with DNA from folks who earlier donated (willingly or otherwise) samples to solve an earlier heinous crime, or comply with some other regulation. No more stone-cold whodunnits for the coppers! Coming soon to law enforcement near you.
I would say the overlap is higher in the years starting with "1" than almost any other decade in a person's life.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I disagree. I've worked in both industries. As an IT admin, I have yet to be slapped or had a plateful of food thrown my face. I've never been punched in the junk by a child while leaning over a table to deliver food, then yelled at by the parents for almost dropping the food without a word to the giggling child who's winding up to do it again. You really want to compare having to go into work at 2am for a downed server once in a while or putting up with an idiot PHB to working 16hr shifts on your feet with no break and a screeching boss?
I also make at least 4-5 times more than I did in the restaurant business. In an air conditioned office. With actual benefits like health insurance and vacation days (not that I get to use my vacation days much, but at least I *have* them...) Generally sitting on my butt too. At my busiest I'm still just sitting on my butt. I might be busy tapping away at a computer and having users calling me and whining about their slow connections or stupid problems, but it's still heavenly compared to working in a restaurant.
I dare you to quit your IT job and go work in a restaurant for a few months. Then feel free to come back and say that again with a straight face.
ad astra per alia porci
I actually think that many people don't comprehend the distinction you are making unless it is forced upon them to realize it, insane as that is. The people with pointed opinions on this easily get so rabidly fixated on child porn that they become unable or unwilling to distinguish between people who through no fault of their own are sexually attracted to children, the subset of those that look at pictures of children, and the subset of those that actually molest children. Next time you have the misfortune of overhearing a rant against child porn, observe that (most probably) there will be no distinction between "pedophiles", "possessors of an illegal photograph" and "child molesters". They are all just "pedophiles" and equally blameworthy. This is the real and insane reason for opposition to pornographic drawings of imagined children - anyone who would like to look at such a thing is at the level of a child molester, and we don't want to do anything the benefits child molesters. I can't recommend trying to bring sanity to this topic anywhere but in an anonymous arena such as this, by the way, because sanity would benefit the (non-child molesting) pedophiles, and that raises the question of why you are talking the case of child molesters if you are not one yourself - that is how this particular insanity survives.
Not surprising, the culprit is an MCSE.
That’s Microsoft Certified Solitaire Expert, right?
Ignore this signature. By order.
Kent Brockman: Now, here are some results from our phone-in poll: 95% of people believe Homer Simpson is guilty. Of course, this is just a television poll which is not legally binding. Unless proposition 304 passes, and we all pray it will.
If any of you seen what is required to be a law enforcement forensics investigator in the US, you would be pissed.
In most departments the forensics investigator is the poor bastard who has some computer skills.
He gets selected to take a couple of encase or ftk classes and then they use a confiscated computer, add a write block to it and there you go.
Now lets say you get a CS degree, work for a while and decided that you want to do forensics. The odds of you getting a job is next to impossible.
In fact you will be specifically told that they do not want you around. There is a hatred of "nerds" in the law enforcement community.
Not only will you have to go back to school to get an associates in criminal justice, you will have to go through the police academy
and then work as a beat officer for several years before you will even get a chance to touch a computer.
Now lets look at requirements for other kinds of forensics. All of the other forensics fields have lab type people who are specifically trained in their field of expertise. for example, an dna specialist will have at least a masters in biology, a forensic pathologist, has an MD, a ballistics specialist usually has a degree in physics, or engineering. But a computer forensics specialist usually has a high school degree, maybe an associates degree in CJS, and must meet all of the active physical requirements as a patrol officer.
Note. I work in infosec and perform forensic investigations for private, defense cases, and the university level.
Every time I go to a continuing education class, encase/ftk, or other. There will be several leos in there that have no clue on even the basics on how a computer works. As a result the majority of the training is "point and click" as mentioned in the article.
In the days when everyone ran dos, this was doable.
At these classes I will point out the above issues and ask why computer forensics is differnet than any other forensics field.
I will point out that computers have gotten much more complex and standard procedure for most law enforcement agencies if they run into anything but a standard unencrypted windows computer is hand the case to the state police, or the feds, since they lack the skills to even process a linux box running reiserfs. Hell, what am I saying, most of them can not process a macintosh since the tools out there are windoze based and have very limited mac capability. So in order to investigate a mac, one must have core unix skills and treat the case as they would treat any other unix system. Yes there are newer tools to macs, but they suck. So be prepared to go through plists and file system attributes.
Their usual comment, you have to pay your dues son.
Imagine how much trouble the administrator would have been in had it been 'Illegaly obtained MP3's' instead of illegal pictures..
Despite creepiness, it does raise an interesting question: To what extent and in what ways is a child harmed by "pedophilia" (in quotes so as to include pubescent minors) in which they are honestly a voluntary participant? How much of that harm is due to either reaction of others towards the scenario or treatment for it?
It's not really their fault, the real computer forensics people are buried under a mound of work that would take years to work through even if the police agencies stopped sending new stuff. So the police are forced to move to people who are, shall we say, less than optimally qualified? I have no problem with the police using evidence garnered from people who actually know what they're doing, it's just that that doesn't happen as often as it should. And while waiting for the PC to be competently reviewed (8 months in this case) the accused is presumed guilty by everyone from their family, to the workplace, to the police.
About a decade ago, before the peak of current paedophile hysteria, I had a pen pal from Poland. A real pen pal. A girl, too. Yes, I know it sounds incredible, but there you go.
Anyway, we joked around about nude photos, so she sent me one of herself. When she was about four.
Nowadays, that kind of letter could land me in prison, given a hysterical enough judge.
Yet I don’t see the big deal anyway. I grew up in a nudist family. I am certain a number of people own my nude photos. Nude child photos, at that. I am even well aware of the risk that some paedophile, somewhere, wanks looking at my picture. And I cannot see any evil in it. In fact, if that helped that person defuse their urges, thus making them less prone to actually molest a child, good for them. And for the children left unmolested.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I am not against child rape or anything like that
I don't think that's what you meant to say.
No?
The Dr. begs to differ.
"Lost time is not found again."
Yes, you need to know who is guilty first, then gather the evidence that proves it.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Maybe actually read the GP's post?
but should this kind of shit happen, cops will be unable to decrypt your system.
Step 1: News reports "An arrest was made today in a $CRIME_DUJOUR case."
Step 2: Trial happens.
Step 3: If guilty, news reports "Mr. X, who was arrested for $CRIME_DUJOUR 5 weeks ago, was today convicted and sentenced to $TERM years."
If not guilty, news reports nothing, optimally, or that "The suspect arrested for $CRIME_DUJOUR was not convicted."
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I think for capital murder and the most violent rapes, at least one state had no numerical limit. As a practical limit though even the smartest, most emotionally mature kids under 11 or 12 would not pass an adult-competency hearing under that state's pre-trial rules.
However, if you had a hypothetical 6 year old child genius who was emotionally similar to a typical young-adult murderer, they could put him behind bars for life.
I don't know if that state ever put in a hard limit or not.
On a more rational note, some states don't allow kids under a certain age - typically 7-ish but sometimes older - to be prosecuted as juveniles. A 6 year old could kill someone then do it again at age 8 and the 2nd crime would be a "first offense."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Stallman does resemble pedo bear a bit, doesn't he?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The not guilty news needs to be big even if you aren't a rich and infamous former football star who actually has more money than the prosecutor's office.
Those questions can be answered once the pedo apologists can provide a legitimate case of a child completely on their own seeking out to have a sexual relationship with an adult (cases of a 14 year old having sex with say a 16 or 17 year old don't count). The problem is that they can never provide such an example and thus always make up these bullshit "No true scotsman" cop outs.
The point is that legally speaking, there is no such thing as an underaged person voluntarily participating in a sexual act. They are legally too young to have the capacity to consent. A 15 year old consenting to a 40 year old is seen (legally) as impossible. The generally accepted theory being that a 15 year old is going to be so naive and manipulable by a person of much greater experience that there can not be true consent. Is this always true? No. Can this also be true with people of legal age? Yes. But the law has to draw a line somewhere. And while less harmful than physical force, emotionally manipulating someone who is unready for it into sex is still harmful to that person. As a society, we have decided this is a harm from which we wish to legally protect persons under a certain age (who are seen as being more vulnerable to this).
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
And if you do something non-socially acceptable, you deserve to rot in PMITA prison for the rest of your life.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
How did you go from reading "Janitor" to equating that with the time you worked at a restaraunt, presumably as a waiter?
Yeah, food service sucks. That's why you got a degree and a better job. All us IT guys are just making jokes, not personally attacking your history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_crucible/If you don't learn from the mistakes of the past, you risk repeating them. Although I think that Norman Mailer alone can't change millennia of basic human cognitive dissonance. If you're not a witch, you must be a communist. If you're not a communist, you must be gay, or a paedophile. You must be those things because the mob demands something to beat down so it can reinforce its model of 'normal' and 'right'.
Certainly explains your username, hmmmmmm.
This question can not be answered without pinning down the definition of "child".
In some legal jurisdictions an 18 year old person having sex with a 17 year old person is considered a pedophile while in others an 80 year old could have sex with a 14 year old without any legal problems whatsoever.
There's a stronger case for asserting that a prepubescent individual can not give informed consent than there is for asserting that someone 15 years, 364 days, 11 hours and 59 minutes can not give informed consent.
Groucho Marx and The Three Stooges used "micropenis boy"? Man, I guess I don't watch enough vaudeville.
Not only are the Romeo and Juliet laws too narrow or non-existent as your friend found out the hard way, the penalties go from "not a crime" to "felony sex offender" over the difference of a single day: If she's 15, it's a felony, if she's 16, she's legal. If you are 18 and she is 16 and you are 2 years apart less one day, it's legal, if you are 2 years apart exactly, it's a felony.
America needs to have some common sense. People who date teenagers 3, 4, or 5 years apart from them or who trade pornographic pictures of themselves with their boy- or girlfriends who are age-peers are typically NOT the same guys who are going to molest children or grow up to have sex with teens more than 5 or 6 years their junior, ever. They are not the same guys who will look at kiddie porn or under-18 porn of people more than a few years younger than themselves once the normal-teen-curiosity and its-forbidden-I-want-to-see-it novelty wears off. Yes, the 19 year old dating a 16 year old should be subject to restraining orders and even misdemeanor charges if he's been warned before, and yes, the teen-sexters (all of them - the subject, photographer, sender, and receiver) should be warned and if it happens again with willing age-peers face misdemeanor charges, but they should not face punishment that will stay on their records for more than a few years nor should they face punishment that will keep them out of college or have career-blacklisting effects.
Now
*the 25 year old sleeping with a 15 year old who is not in a public marriage or marriage-like relationship (i.e. they would be married with the parents' blessing if the law allowed it)
*the 18 year old having intercourse with an 8 year old whether or not physical force is used, or
*anyone over about 13 or 14 violently raping anyone
are who sex crime laws were primarily written for.
They were arguably also written for people who exhibit personality traits that show that if unchecked, the person would likely do these things in the future. I have not looked at the studies (are there any good ones?) so I don't know if being a 14 year old fondling your 8 year old sister or using child pornography over an extended period of time is an indicator of the "harder" crimes listed above, but it's obvious many lawmakers and many in the general public believe it is. For better or for worse, what lawmakers believe and what they think the public believes translates into policy far more often than the results of good academic studies.
Obcynicalstatement: Get tough on crime laws are almost always written and passed in part to ensure re-election.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
But age of consent isn't the same as adulthood, at least not in most countries. For example, in my country age of consent is 14. So an adult have the right to have consentual sex with 14-year old. However, pornography featuring someone who is 14 years is still illegal.
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
What's worse is that you could dump a random set of bits on someone's computer and claim it's an encrypted drive of kiddie porn. There'd be almost no way to prove otherwise, unless a really bad PRNG was used to generate the sequence.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
The original allegations were made in 2006. It is now 2010 and the guy that framed him is finally being convicted and sentenced.
Are defendants in other, similar-prison-sentence crimes anonymous before conviction?
Anonymity of criminal defendants makes sense in the following cases:
*Innocent people such as the person's family, neighbors, (former) employer, etc. would face irrational negative consequences.
*If acquitted, whether due to a technicality, lack of evidence, or proven innocence, the defendant would suffer irrational negative consequences.
To put in another way:
Those who live in societies that actually presume "innocent until proven guilty" have a lower moral claim to need anonymity than people who live in societies that don't.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Columbo did it first.
These people were sharing them voluntarily and there was no one who could see them shouting about pedophilia and child porn.
It is said for a reason: if you are innocent, go for a bench trial; if you are guilty as hell, go for the jury and try to get their sympathy.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I was working at HP as a consultant. One of the machines in my cubicle was running the officially approved HP Linux distro, which was set up to cycle through all the available screen savers, one of which put up quotes from the fortune files, one of which was the Zippy the Pinhead fortune file which contained the quote "I want to kill everyone here with a cute colorful Hydrogen Bomb!" I never saw it on my machine, but months later, a security guard walking through at 3am sees this come up, immediately goes on point, and reports me as a terrorist. I'm called into a meeting, told "It was on YOUR machine, so it's obviously YOUR responsibility!" and suspended from work (with pay, which is stupid for a contractor). A week later, I'm called back in; due to my coworkers efforts, they have finally discovered that ALL the Linux machines were configured to do that. No apology offered, but I'm allowed to come back to work, and my project that I was on the critical path for is behind a week. Of course, I spent that week off applying for other positions, and a month later I got an offer for a better job closer to home, and said "bye-bye!" to HP.
The point is, shit can show up on your computer completely by accident through no fault of your own. Telling people "It's on your computer, therefore it's your fault!" is a pretty naive reaction.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You mods are wiped anyway, it just doesn't tell you.
Its pretty hard for the average joe to be trailess on the net these days. And dangerous to create your own.
If we treated child porn as a virus then the only people left who would have large collections of child porn would be the individuals who actually like child porn.
Obviously, you have never been asked by a friend/colleague/distant relative/person you've just met in the supermarket/someone who knows someone you've went to elementary school with/a guy that just happens to speak the same language as you (sort of)/someone claiming to be an actual human being on an internet forum somewhere - to "fix their computer" or "clean the viruses from it".
Just what kind of computer nerd ARE you?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In some legal jurisdictions an 18 year old person having sex with a 17 year old person is considered a pedophile
Such as? Most states I've looked at regarding such things have exceptions for cases like that to the statutory rape rules.
And modern knowledge of how people freeze to death is very much dependent on Nazis who actually froze people to death and wrote about it.
Does that mean that you wouldn’t accept modern medical treatment for hypothermia? After all, according to your logic, by so doing you are perpetuating the Nazi’s crimes.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Ok, that's just ridiculous. If I am legally allowed to have sex with a person, I should be legally allowed to view them having sex (I'm not really into blindfolds). I have never heard and can not imagine a justification for this legal distinction.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Witchcraft, communism and drugs were the older tools government used to get rid of undesirables, now a bit out of fashion. This is just more of the same. As any Russian who survived the Stalinist era just how easily evidence can be manufactured.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
CP laws are pretty messed up with the mandatory sentencing in some states being greater than for the actual rape of an adult. Last month here we had two cases come up with police being involved in crimes, one was for CP, and he got 8 years, and one was for rape, and he got 5. I think something is definitely amiss.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I have a friend in prison because of the witchhunt that's out. He's by no means a saint but the last thing he would do is molest children... in fact, he was one of the witch hunters.
He, like many people I'm sure, set up a fserve on IRC in CP rooms to send viruses to people. One thing he wrote would email the FBI from the computer of whoever downloaded it and say exactly that the email was generated by a virus that was downloaded from a CP sharing channel.
The problem with these channels is some bots that crawl fserves for things will randomly send images to people to try to get their ratio up. So my friend ended up getting quite a bit of this and deleted it.
Many months later the FBI woke him up with a gun to his face. They took the computer and anything else they saw as relevant. They told him not to go anywhere, but he did. Only problem is the dumb shit went back.
Being that the filesystem was probably FAT32 since he was running 98, undelete would be trivial assuming nothing needed those tables again. Knowing how the law works when it comes to child porn, however, they probably wouldn't need anything other than that IP showing up in that channel on IRC.
I'm sure if he exercised his right to allocute he could have explained the mess and maybe changed things around, but he listened to his lawyer and played the marionette. Now he's in prison and I think he's got like 8 years left and when he gets out he'll be a "sex offender", all because someone thought he looked at some pictures.
It won't change, people are going to continue with this madness, this guilty until proven innocent that occurs with rape or child molestation. I'm afraid to be near children or to have any of my own lest someone dare cry witch on me.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I thought of doing this about five years ago, but ultimately decided the target just wasn't worth it. I just didn't hate the guy that much, but also: First off, one would have to acquire kiddie porn, which is first off disgusting, and also highly illegal. The second part involves not only covering the tracks you leave, but also laying a convincing trail of evidence suggesting that the target in fact did it himself. Doing that takes a lot of time and work, and just isn't something that any asshole can successfully do.
Haha, that's even better, just tell the cops that you saw him opening an encrypted file and it came up with kiddie porn. You wouldn't even need to take the risk of downloading the porn yourself, just encrypt any old files and put them on his hard drive. He'll be unable to come up with the key and its off to jail for 2+ years. The risk, and squick factor, of your crime drops off considerably and the result is nearly (if not totally) the same.
This is so delightfully evil. Brits should try it with their officials’ computers. Use strong algorithms and encrypt a Rick Roll or something like that.
That may be the only way to repeal that law.
Ignore this signature. By order.
This comment is about as coherant as the typical Timothy-posted story. Explains a lot.
I suspect there are a lot of things I would / one would / you might confess to, if the alternative was unshakable opinion by everyone you meet that you *actually* raped a 4-year-old last year,
I might be having trouble threading my way through the 47 commas in this sentence, but are you seriously suggesting that you would confess to owning child porn, just because the FBI says they have evidence of it? Even though it would almost certainly ruin your life?
You seriously have that much of an unshakable belief that the FBI couldn't possibly be wrong that you doubt your own memory?
Comment of the year
California
North Dakota
Virginia
Wisconsin
because sanity would benefit the (non-child molesting) pedophiles
Sanity would benefit us all in not spending taxpayer money prosecuting and locking up or officially monitoring people who aren't worth locking up.
It would improve the economy by not taking away employment options from people who do not need to have their careers restricted.
It would, well, I could go on but I'm sure everyone reading this can add their own reasons why sanity helps the general public.
The insanity benefits those who are employed by the prison and probation and sex-offender-tracking industry.
It benefits non-sex criminals who are more likely to get away with crimes or suffer less punishment as scarce taxpayer money is diverted to pay to prosecute, house, and track sex offenders.
Remember that the next time a repeat burglar-offender breaks into your house and it turns out he was paroled early due to overcrowding and the sex offender who was deemed not a risk of reoffending and who was closer to finishing his sentence was kept behind bars for political reasons.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Prosecutors hate smart jurors. This is why intellectuals are often booted during voir dire.
That's Microsoft Certified Solitaire Expert, right?
Almost, but not quite.
MCSE is actually Mine Sweeper Consultant / Solitaire Expert.
This space unintentionally left blank.
It's really easy to forget that lots of people have a harder working life than us office drones.
Thanks for the wake up call.
Everywhere in the US, the minimum age to model or act in pornographic material is 18. Below that and it is considered child porn, and to make matters more ridiculous there’s no legal distinction between “child” porn where the girl is 17 and child porn where she’s 7.
Only a dozen states set the age of consent at 18, however. Most of them have the age of consent set at 16, and in the rest it is 17 [list]. Additionally, many states have Romeo-and-Juliet-type laws so that if the two people were close in age they aren’t guilty of a crime, or might be guilty of a misdemeanor instead of a felony. However, all of the states in which you can legally sleep with your 16- or 17-year-old girlfriend will still charge you with possession of child pornography if you get caught with a nude picture of her (and possibly charge her with production of it, and – absurd as it sounds – teens have actually been charged with distributing child porn on the mere rationale that they could be hacked and the hacker might gain access to the photos!).
It makes absolutely no rational sense and needs to be fixed, but politicians aren’t about to make child porn laws less strict. That would be political suicide when their enemies use that to claim that they are soft on pedophiles.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
We open ourselves up to a great deal of risk by owning and operating computers. It would probably be best if we quit using them. I'm thinking of going to a text-only terminal for my internets, because as far as I know you cannot be prosecuted for ASCII art.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You can't look at them if they aren't taken genius.
So those people that 'can't help it' and 'just look', are very much dependent on those that actually molest children, and take photos of it.
There is no distinction, you can't just look without perpetuating the other.
That is sound if all we are talking about are actual photos taken from molested subjects. However, when you start factoring animations, drawings, or literature, as in, written words, it starts to become beyond absurd.
Writing about murders in crime dramas certainly doesn't land the writers in jail, nor does it convict the producers with actual murder, so why should writing/drawing about underage sex be any different?
This is exactly why sex-crime suspects need to have their identities shielded until convicted. Even if exonerated tons of damage can and usually does get inflicted by public perception, of which the lingering effects can be extremely destructive.
Glenn Sacks talked about this subject just this morning:
http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4954
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
The question this should raise is "How often is this done without being detected?"
The extant laws are designed to be abused. That may, or may not, have been the intention, but that's the design. If it wasn't the intention, that just proves what kind of idiots passed the laws, and signed them into law. If it was the intention, then you need to wonder why laws were passed designed to make it easy to fraudulently convict people.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
C: Look, matey, I know a DEAD parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
O: No no he's not DEAD, he's, 2152! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Tennessee.
A few others would charge the 18-year-old with a misdemeanor instead of a felony.
And all would consider the 18-year-old to be a pedophile if you follow that statement with “...and has a nude picture of the 17-year-old”.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
What would you have said it it was rm.tar?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If you just check the anonymous box, yeah, but not if you log out.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Everywhere in the US, the minimum age to model or act in pornographic material is 18.
I can't speak for all states, but Rhode Island allows girls as young as 16 to work as exotic dancers so long as they work less than 20 hours during a school week.
How did you go from reading "Janitor" to equating that with the time you worked at a restaraunt, presumably as a waiter?
Yeah, food service sucks. That's why you got a degree and a better job. All us IT guys are just making jokes, not personally attacking your history.
He was just pointing out that it's not true that IT folks deal with more shit. Neither literally nor figuratively. When the toilet overflows and seeps into the server room, IT isn't called in to mop it up. When someone pukes on their keyboard, IT's role is to walk down with a new keyboard after the janitors clean up the mess.
Granted, the janitor isn't going to get called at 3am because Exchange is down, but I'd rather log on at 3am to clean out the porno-spam that filled up my disks than clean up the disgusting mess someone left on the bathroom floor. Besides, at least IT has control in building a reliable solution that won't go down, but Janitorial staff can't do anything to keep an 8 year old kid from puking all over the carpet.
That is cookie-based, not IP-based. Just FYI...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
From just a day or two ago:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime/Stupid-Crimes-1007644-100078474.html
A more infamous incident:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay_Letourneau#Relationship_with_Vili_Fualaau
Note that in the latter example, the couple have been married for the past five years. Sounds like you're the one with the "bullshit ... cop outs".
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Those questions can be answered once the pedo apologists can provide a legitimate case of a child completely on their own seeking out to have a sexual relationship with an adult (cases of a 14 year old having sex with say a 16 or 17 year old don't count).
How about an 18, 19 or 20 year old ? Not exactly an uncommon scenario, especially if the younger party lies about their age.
Nowadays, that kind of letter could land me in prison, given a hysterical enough judge.
Yeah, there have even been cases recently where teenage girls had to register as sex offenders for possessing/distributing nude photos of themselves. Yeesh.
But the crazy thing about pictures of nude children-- if you're not a pedophile, it doesn't necessarily occur to you that there's anything sexual about the photos.
That’s hard to believe. Citation?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
But the point is valid. Because Juries are pulled from the public we need a smarter public. Or at least a literate public.
But the crazy thing about pictures of nude children-- if you're not a pedophile, it doesn't necessarily occur to you that there's anything sexual about the photos.
If you are 15 and you are trading self-xxx-pics with your 15 year old boyfriend, I don't think there is any doubt that you both consider the photos sexual, in the same way two adults trading similar self-pics would.
Remember, for the purposes of child pornography in the United States, 17 = 7 = 0.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
He didn't jump from janitors to waiters.
The parent of the post he replied to said "Don't f* with the IT guy like at restaurant you don't f* with the people who handle your food!" and the post he replied to said "IT folks deal with a LOT more shit." His post refuted that idea since he's worked in a restaurant and IT and can attest to the fact that IT folks deal with a lot less shit than waiters do.
Or disproves it. They're allowed to do that too...
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
run surprisingly quickly in old blighty. If it happened in the US the poor fucker would have been in and out of court for a couple of years.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Did YOU miss the part where the moron blabbed about it at a BBQ? I hate to say it, but the poor bastard he set up got lucky. The "point n' click" thing is right on the money, especially with smaller PDs. I have had to deal with the police, both local and state, several times over the years at my shop, and while there are a few of them that really know their foo, sadly many are "clicky clicky next next next" types I wouldn't trust to install WinXP without fucking it up.
Sadly this is what happens when you have a witchhunt. CP has become the new "red scare" and you are guilty until proven innocent. Sorry I can't find the link but I remember reading last year about a guy losing his job, house, and spending several months looking at 50+ years, and the whole time it turned out the IT dept had disabled the AV and left the firewall off the laptop so it has a hole big enough to drive a semi through. IIRC the ONLY thing that saved the guy was some forensic guy HE HIRED showed that the files were being downloaded by batch files slamming the network and several IP addresses were accessing this machine from outside the network.
So I'm afraid we'll be seeing this a whole lot more, only we won't know about it. It will be "dirty perv caught with cp, says he's innocent" because someone who ISN'T a total moron will decide to get rid of them by pointing and saying WITCH! and if they don't have a REAL forensic team they'll go up.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
In most states, you'll be a registered sex offender for taking a leak in public
Slashdot loves the anecdote.
Facts tend to be more elusive.
I thought it would be a useful reality check to call up the sex registry of my home county.
It was not an easy read.
You do not make the list by pissing on the sidewalk.
You make the list after being convicted for the rape and abuse of young girls and teens - girls three years old, five year-old, nine years-old.
You make it by being good with your fists.
When pornography is a factor, it is often because you have been taking pictures of your victims.
I originally learned this from an acquaintance that has worked in RI in the Industry. If you want something more concrete than that, Google it.
I am even well aware of the risk that some paedophile, somewhere, wanks looking at my picture. And I cannot see any evil in it. In fact, if that helped that person defuse their urges, thus making them less prone to actually molest a child, good for them. And for the children left unmolested.
Without going so far as to say that such a person having a picture to wank to might be enough to make him not prone to molest a child (a real paedophile would not have enough with a picture, and the step from child porn wanker to raper is not small), but I think that if he can find such pictures on the web and it's enough for him,at least he won't inject money into the actual child porn industry.
I am one. So are about half of the people I associate with, most of whom believe similar along doctrinal lines.
Thanks for playing...
Child porn if the girl is 17, and allowed porn if she is 18.
Nice.
On her birthday, it's acceptable and legal, one day before, it is a major, pound-me-in-the-ass prison felony.
Yeah. Girls just magically turn into women on their birthday at midnight.
Outrage over teen stripper loophole
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
The age of consent in RI is 16, and as long as nobody snaps a picture there isn’t any child porn per se. Although most people would consider strip-clubs to be “pornographic”, a live woman stripping is not pornography in the legal sense. Actually I’m surprised that situation hasn’t arisen in more states.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
WTF!? Voluntary participant? How the hell can you be a voluntary participant under the age of consent? Like if they traded with you for a really awesome pokemon card?
A huge percentage of the kids in child porn are kidnapped and eventually murdered or sold as slaves.
it's under construction
I think the bigger question is, why did you have a four year old pen pal, and why were you joking about nude photos with a 4 year old? I'm not saying it's pornography, but i don't know any 4 year old that even understands the concept of joking about nudity let alone has a pen pal overseas...
Overseas? No no, we were on the same continent. It’s only overseas to you.
Ignore this signature. By order.
"Do not play computer games. That's a complete waste of time. Make computer games: then the guys around you are occupied, and you can work quietly." - Volker Claus http://www.fmi.uni-stuttgart.de/fk/menschen/claus/
... don't talk about committing the crime.
That is all.
As long as people insist on charging said 16 or 17 year olds with pedophilia, they count.
Also, if a 14 year old isn't harmed by sex with a 17 year old, I find it hard to believe she would be devastated by an 18+ year old either.
Since any case that comes out inevitably draws hysterical reactions, it's impossible to prove that any perceived harm was caused by sex rather than said reactions.
It should also be noticed that many countries have age of consent far lower than the USA, yet this doesn't seem to result in traumatized populations; for example, Finland has 16 and Japan has 13 - okay, bad example ;).
Basically, "pedophilia" has been extended from fucking kids to fucking teenagers, which is ridiculous and harms said teenagers since they get labeled sex offenders for fucking each other. Grow up, America, and get over this twisted obsession with sexuality you have. Even catholics are less neurotic about it than you.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
There are actually a whole load of reasons for the distinction.
1. When an underaged person consents to non-televised sex with someone, that person usually does it because he or she enjoys the act. When an underaged person does porn, there are usually one of two reasons for it: either to make money or because that person wants to make his or her partner happy, but with the expressed condition that the porn be kept private. Either way, creating and distributing such porn is considered more degrading to the person than simply having sex with that person.
2. In a number of jurisdictions, it's not legal for everyone to have sex with an underaged person. In some places, for example, you're only allowed to have sex with a 16-year-old if you're under 19. But pornography can be viewed by anyone once it's out in the open, which makes your "if it's legal to do one then it should be legal to do the other" argument moot.
3. Pornography is an international concern due to the ease of distribution, so most countries have the same laws about child pornography, much like how most countries have accepted the Berne Convention. Age of consent is always considered an internal concern, on the other hand. Therefore, there are many different sets of laws concerning sexual consent but only one concerning consent to taking part in pornography. It should come as no surprise that these don't always agree, and in fact they do agree in some cases.
That said, some prosecutors go too far and completely ignore the spirit of the laws. There have been cases where a young man has been charged for having porn of his underaged girlfriend even though he's never shown it to anyone. Then they charge the girl for making and distributing child porn. Of herself. That sort of thing is completely absurd, but has nothing to do with the general validity of the laws.
Rob
That was only news because he did do it.
Learn to love Alaska
OK, I see you are not the Anonymous Coward with the family brain cell today.
We were both about 16 at the time. She sent me her old nude photo, taken when she was about four.
I’d thought that much was clear and one of the earlier posters seemed rather tongue-in-cheek about it all, but please try using your brain before lashing out.
See, people? Like that xkcd about IQ dropping as distance to cat decreases: whenever you mention children, it seems knee-jerk reactions also abound.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Teen strippers, 'gansett, coffee milk... man, I gotta move to RI.
--- Do you believe in the day?
uh.. i do believe the girl wasn't 4 at the time she sent the picture... she just sent a picture of herself *taken when she was four years old*
well, least i thought that was obvious
Nowadays, that kind of letter could land me in prison, given a hysterical enough judge.
You've waited this long, you can wait a little more. Even given a smart enough little genius, by most standards 14 is still way too young.
Because it's writing/drawing about sex, and America was found by witch-hunting puritans and is still plagued by Born-Again Christian assholes. It's very difficult to be rational when you confuse your personal likes and dislikes with those of God. Just ask Bin Laden.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Thankfully, Weiner didn't cover his tracks quite well enough to avoid being found out
Also that summary should really have read: "Thankfully, Weiner was a complete moron and just slightly more incompetent than the UK police who arrested and continuously harassed the wrong guy for seven months, since Weiner bragged about his devious plan to others before executing it, and thought that calling the police hotline from his own cell phone with the caller id blocked would really keep him anonymous."
Which begs the question, do only idiots and incompetents frame others? And what happens if the person doing the framing is smart enough, or semi-paranoid enough, not to use his own phone to call the cops? What will the UK police ever do should the super villains ever reach such a high level of sophistication and big picture cunningness?
That is why courts sometimes (but not always) considers the mental age of the person as well as the physical age. It might be better if there were rules mandating that mental age always be considered in all legal matters (regardless of what the legal matter is) and it might be better if psychologists and neurologists could produce a sufficiently clear description of how to identify said mental age so that a judge or jury could actually evaluate any such claim. Then there's the question of whether a person's emotional age is necessarily the same as their mental age and how significant that would be if it is different.
In short, the situation is certainly a mess and the science is nowhere near evolved enough to offer any useful solution. I don't see the legal situation even being fixable until the science is fixed, simply because there has to be a foundation built on something and you've got to have some measure of confidence in that something - or at least more confidence than in what exists at the moment.
Politically, there's never going to be any interest in investing in the research needed. Way too great of a risk of a backlash of being "soft on crime", as there's bound to be more adults before the courts with a retarded mental age than there are children before the courts with an advanced mental age. Psychologists will never take the risk of doing the research on their own, as politics drives the professional boards. No businessman is likely to take a gamble on investing in something that will have no payback for them and puts them at serious risk of scandal. And nobody else has the resources or the qualifications. Which means you won't see a change until society itself wants to change. Historically, that's usually a hundred or so years after the problem is first noted, so 2110 is really the earliest any reform is likely to start.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually I miss working in a restaurant. Bartending was a lot less stressful than my current situation. Dealing with management who feel they're better equipped to realign your priorities because some whiny end user doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Not to mention all of the forms, testing, approvals, and meetings I have to attend for something as simple as adding a missing semi-colon to a misbehaving program.
Now don't get me wrong, I make more money, have access to health/dental/vision/life insurance, pension, stock, and a 401k. I get paid when I'm sick and have several weeks of paid vacation.
I'm not about to trade all of that in, but when it really comes down to which job was more fun and less stressful, bartending wins hands down.
(They never made me login and bartend remotely after my shift was done)
I've become a slave to the almighty dollar just like the rest you.
^^vv<><>BA
And even he considers jury members dumb :(.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Don't hire the ones that work for Slashdot.
Slashdot has editors??
... and then they built the supercollider.
Ok, that's just ridiculous. If I am legally allowed to have sex with a person, I should be legally allowed to view them having sex (I'm not really into blindfolds). I have never heard and can not imagine a justification for this legal distinction.
Sure, that sounds somewhat hypocritical but there's also some sense into it. You can say that pornography with minors would be sexual exploatation of them, which isn't the case when they have sex with anothor person merely for pleasure and without being recorded.
Also, people who make porn movies are usually paid for it, and minors aren't allowed to work. So that obviously includes doing porn.
I could probably come up with a couple more both pro's and con's if I think about it while...
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
Sounds like a classic BOFH maneuver.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Nowadays, that kind of letter could land me in prison, given a hysterical enough judge.
You've waited this long, you can wait a little more. Even given a smart enough little genius, by most standards 14 is still way too young.
I don’t know how exactly you got to 14, but incidentally, that’s the age of consent where I live.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Except this has nothing whatsoever to do with "protecting" children but with fucked up Christo-Islamist (that is why they hate each other so much - too alike for comfort) religious bigotry where children are seen as "innocent" victims ready to be corrupted by the evils of "sin", sex being chief amongst them. If they had their way, the religious retards (and all those politicos and "law enforcement" opportunists who see power and money in it) would have the legal age of consent at 50, legal age for alcohol consumption at 60 but would gladly see the legal age to enlist in the armed forces lowered to 10, for fighting religious wars in foreign lands for fun and profit is a sure way to heaven...
That is the insane mentality that is driving the draconian and inflexible laws (in the US the legal age for having sex with a girl is already higher than that for tossing grenades into houses and then perusing the naked dismembered bodies of the said foreign girls).
This insane mentality can be further exposed by looking at what happens when children themselves violate the laws meant to ostensibly "protect" them: they are punished, in most draconian ways, for life. That is because instead of "protection" the real, thinly veiled, point of these laws is, and always was, fighting "sin".
Just one other little point that is usually overlooked: Most child abusers, sexual or otherwise, are NOT pedophiles. That is, they are NOT primarily attracted to children. They have other motives for their crime, or often are under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.
At least, that's what the data from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies shows.
However typically it is true. Where it isn't we have a Judge that can reduce a sentence.
Laws are supposed to be about protecting society and it's not a very nice society if any 50 year old can take advantage of a 12 year old raised on stories of waiting for a prince.
O.J? yes! The five cops?! Yes!
Freedom: the only end.
What I find interesting is that even having cartoons of child porn is illegal. Not sure I understand why that is.
The word pedophillia has been broadened by various interested parties. It means pre-pubescent children. It's wrong. Talking about "voluntary" is not appropriate for a kid of 9 or 10 when being led on by an adult. In any case, it's very fucking horrible.
Talking about sex with someone who is merely legally underage, is not necessarily pedophillia. A 17 year old is much more capable of making their own decisions generally without being overly-influenced, and is also much more ready for sex. People should be careful to not confuse pedophillia with legal definitions.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
They're not considered a pedophile. They're considered to have committed statutory rape. Don't fall into the trap of conflating the two. Pedophillia is pre-pubescent children only. Calling someone a pedophile because they had sex with a 17 year old diminishes the seriousness of pedophillia.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Orange juice?
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
erm. At 14 I was soooo smitten by a 35yo.
Never was going to get anywhere, she was married with a son the same age as me.
However, she knew I fancied her. She flirted (gently) with me. Had she been single and interested, I'm fairly confident it wouldn't have harmed me remotely to have had a relationship with her.
Trust me, 14yo often know what they're up to, and are generally physically more than sufficiently developed. Which is why I don't date girls that look under about 20, because it's just too hard to tell..
(Who am I kidding. My last two gf were both over 40)
I refer you to an interesting book.. I haven't read it, but the reviews suggest that the book claims that it is the reaction of others towards the scenario that causes the harm.
From a review written by a psychotherapist
That is a modern interpretation of a child's ability to make decisions about sex. Originally the statutory rape law in the UK was brought in to prevent parents forcing their daughters into prostitution, the theory being that by age 16 they would be mature and independent enough to resist.
When the laws were first made they usually set the age limit at 11 or 12. The minimum age for marriage used to be 12 here too, which of course implies having sex with the bride at that age and probably motherhood.
IANAP (psychologist!) so I don't know how that would affect a 12 year old but it seems obvious that different people would react differently. Maybe you could argue that 90% of people would be okay by age 16 but being older and wiser now I'm sure I would not have been a very good father at that age, or even clued up enough to use contraception properly. Sex education in the UK is not very good.
In then end I think it's the kind of problem that we need to solve at a societal level rather than legally.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They get punished the same way. Under US law every type of "sex offender" gets put on the same list.
Yeah, but by the time they decide not to charge you, you've been without your computer for 6 months (while they've been "analyzing" it) and your reputation has long since been murdered by the media.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
and it gets easier and easier with stuff like this. sure you can use it for a practical joke, but i see more potential harm than fun with this.
"To stop the terrorists."
Here in Indiana the age of consent is 16 and I have a friend whose boyfriend posted nude pictures of her back when they were both 16 onto his MySpace profile. Oddly enough the police investigated and said they couldn't do anything since she had consented to the taking of these pictures (albeit with the understanding that they would remain private) and that since Indiana law sets the AOC at 16 there was no wrongdoing. If I remember correctly they told her that this wasn't a violation of state law. (It was unclear but I'm pretty sure the game would have changed if he'd have made a single penny off of them) IANAL but I'm pretty sure he still violated some federal law but they never ended up pressing charges.
This poster is either a child molester, a willing aider, abettor and encourager and supporter of the making of child porn, or an ignoramus and an idiot. The Constitutional presumption would be that he is the latter. The post is also wildly off topic as the issue was how easy or hard it might be for someone to frame someone for possession of computerized child porn. It is impossible to make child porn without, among other things, a very real child labor law violation. Those who "only" buy and sell it are, among other things, just like people who knowingly buy and sell stolen tangible property, or maybe at least pirated IT. The poster's argument that distributing child porn on line is a victimless crime, and that the harm to the child victims really arises out of the conduct of their parents and the authorities, are palpably false and deceptive. Either the poster is a child abuser or he is willfully ignorant, but that statement of his and others’ is made either with knowledge of its falsity or with utter and reckless disregard thereof, so that, either way, he is a liar. How many children used in child pornography does he know? How many of them have also been subjected to indecency by contact, and how many aggravated sexual assault, as children? After his conviction and sentence for sexually assaulting and murdering several young women, and having no further motive to lie, Ted Bundy noted that pornography is where he started on this course. The same fact has been proven in the investigation of many, many other violent sex crimes against children and adults, including the very common finding of child pornography on their computers searched under warrants. In my law practice, and certain other privileged and confidential relationships, I very unexpectedly found myself representing and otherwise dealing with a large number of survivors of childhood sexual abuse. I know survivors of physical child sexual abuse who were not used in child pornography, but none of the smaller number I know or know about who were used in child pornography were not only taken improper advantage of in the context of child labor law, but also physically molested by those involved. A lot of child porn could not be made without committing felony sexual offenses. After unexpectedly finding myself deeply involved in such matters professionally, I have taken courses on child sexual abuse from nationally recognized experts who have, for example, explained the symptoms, which I have seen, of a child having been sexually abused [whether in the course of making child porn or by a socially, economically and politically prominent parent] before they were old enough to talk, much less understand the nature of these crimes. Why would anyone but a fellow pervert try to minimize the seriousness of the problems of child pornography, or to defend consumers of this evil and harmful product?
You mean... since they were both 16... local authorities decided not to get the feds involved... and ruin his life forever?
+1 outbreakofcommonsense
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I LOVE the fact that this comment was rated (Score:5, Insightful).
Wow... I hope you've never done something socially unacceptable... like tailgate... or speed... or run the odd red light (accidentally or not)... or been drunk in public or one of the million other socially unacceptable things that most people do from time to time.
Child porn is flat out wrong. But the completely and utterly arbitrary line in the sand delineating when a child ceases to be a child and when they become a young adult capable of bearing responsibility for many/all of their actions is set way too high in most places.
I've seen 15 year old girls get fake ID's so they could go to a bar and pick up guys. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the guy, who brings them home (believing they're of legal age) and has sex with them is guilty of taking advantage of "an innocent minor"?
Now you only need to make sure the jury understands it, and is willing to actually abide by it. Especially in the face of OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN. Good luck with that.
annnnd *whoosh*
My sarcasm-meter was malfunctioning... just ignore the havokca in the corner ...
Apparantly everyone, including the security guard, seems to be blind and ignorant, not knowing that quote(s) shows up on other machines too...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
It's always been as easy as pie to plausibly slander or libel someone, just as it's always been relatively easy to murder someone. An intelligently done murder ought to be as easy to do as an intelligently done character assassination. I don't know...how far do we have to go before people will accept restraints without a "sez who?" response. (The short answer to "sez who?" is first one's own guilty conscience and second is God. Not necessarily in that order.)
Err, by consenting?
Oh, sorry, are you one of those people that think that because the mores and legal opinions of your society say one thing, then every other society in the world, and the millions of people who have lived in the past under different rules in what is ostensibly "your" society, are of necessity wrong. Most western societies had an "age of consent" (if they had one at all) in the early to mid-teens until around a century ago.
Very unlikely. Most of them are being fucked etc where most children have always been fucked : in their own family homes, at the hands of their close relatives, and with or without the active co-operation of their parents.
Oh, sorry, is that a little uncomfortable for you? Sorry, I'll get you some coarse sandpaper for your piles to make you more comfortable.
Check out the statistics - the most dangerous people for any child are now and always have been it's parents. It's a little thing called opportunity, y'know.
(This isn't denying that there is trafficking of children, kidnapping, etc ; just that the numbers are against your assertion.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
"That is the insane mentality that is driving the draconian and inflexible laws (in the US the legal age for having sex with a girl is already higher than that for tossing grenades into houses and then perusing the naked dismembered bodies of the said foreign girls). "
Nice try but not generally so. Some few enlistees join at 17 with parent/guardian consent, but age of sexual consent varies by state.
http://www.ageofconsent.us/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Perhaps the news media should only report on stories like that only after the jury has given their verdict.
The new of a person being found not guilty needs to be even bigger than the news that a person was accused.
Don't know how it works in other countries, but here in NZ the accused are usually given name suppression (the media can report the story but not the names of those involved) until more facts start emerging - often name suppression is not lifted until the verdict at the end of the trial.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Whoa, now. Presuming you were referring to me (being the person you directly replied to and all), I only proposed that those were interesting questions.
To what extent and in what ways is a child harmed by "pedophilia" (in quotes so as to include pubescent minors) in which they are honestly a voluntary participant?
^^ I would expect the frequency of "voluntary participants" to become more and more rare as you go younger and younger, but since we're talking "pedophilia" and not restricting ourselves to prepubescents here, I'd hazard that there's a lot of *comparatively* harmless "pedophilia" involving those who are in their teens that isn't reported because some people actually can be discrete when it's necessary.
How much of that harm is due to either reaction of others towards the scenario or treatment for it?
^^ This was a question that had never occurred to me before high school (late ninties), and the realization of exactly how many girls go after guys much older than themselves. One of them got busted with their boyfriend. She was seemingly perfectly normal and well adjusted aside from having a boyfriend a decade older than her right up until they were caught and he was prosecuted. After that she was a mess for a long time and got me thinking -- was it her "horrible victimization" at the hands of a "dangerous sexual predator" that caused her problems, or the reaction to the discovery of such?
Sometimes the harm from letting someone do something that is typically harmful is at a meta-level.
It can come in the form of allowing them to think "since it's okay for me, it's okay in general."
This is the reason we as a society prosecute traffic tickets and drunk drivers even if the only other vehicle on the road was the police car that ambushed them.
If a 17 year old sends an xxx self-pic to her boyfriend and suffers no consequences when she is caught, not even a warning, she may not realize that in many if not most cases in America, 17-year-olds who pose for porn do so either involuntarily ("white slavery"/captive prostitution), out of economic desperation ("Mom kicked me out, I gotta eat, my friend told me about an adult film producer who gives you a fake id, I think I'll try that rather than going to the homeless shelter"), or from being manipulated by a "boyfriend" who is more interested in her body and the money it can make him than her.
The problem with current sex laws is that they are designed to punish really bad people and protect society from those same people for the rest of their lives (or at least 10 years post-release, using the minimum time they will be on the sex-offender registry under federal blackmail) but they sweep in many others whose convictions look similar on paper but who are psychologically very different and whose recidivism risk is practically zero.
Sensible offender laws that provided reasonable punishments based on the actual harm done followed by adequate mental health care and supervision to protect society in those cases where it was needed would be less expensive, more humanitarian, and much more just than what we have now.
A mental-health approach to people who were a threat to society would also allow people who had not yet harmed a child or looked at pornography to be placed under supervision under the same guidelines as anyone else arrested on a mental health warrant and placed under supervision by a mental health court. The standards for a mental health warrant and for continuing supervision very strongly favor the individual's rights and they provide a high degree of confidentiality, but they can provide for involuntary commitment and hospitalization or involuntary outpatient treatment at any time if the evidence that this person is a current and imminent threat (or something very close to it) to others or himself warrants it.
Using a mental-health approach does have one downside: It's easy for the state to abuse this without any "sunshine." Unfortunately, America is rife with abuses by the mental health system to quietly remove "undesirables" from society or at least remove them from having any voice in society. This must be guarded against.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You could hang out your shingle as a defense expert, and do training seminars for defense lawyers on how to ask the right questions.
Of course, getting access to the computer may be a trick, since you'll have to do it at a place and time of the DA's choosing. Yes, I know the deck is stacked in that regard.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well done good sir.
Although you really did violate the spirit of the bet.
I'm glad they were honorable enough to pay off.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Err, minimum enlistment age is 16. Many of the states on that list have age of consent at 18. My point stands.
I've spent the last five years helping my son fight child porn charges. His ex-wife didn't like the fact that she was going to have to share custody of their two daughters and threatend to plant child porn on his computer. When he laughed at her, she went to the FBI. Lo and behold, they found tons of kiddie porn on his computer. It didn't matter that it was downloaded when he wasn't home, downloaded at rates impossible for his computer, none of it was ever accessed, etc., etc., etc. After the FBI got thru "investigating", the whole community was convinced that he was guilty of child molestation in addition to child porn. Kids who were at his house for a birthday party with a dozen other kids (and parents) told ridiculous stories, which were taken as gospel despite contrary testimony. The fact is, this is one of the easiest crimes to get a conviction. The FBI is well-aware that all they have to do is show a couple hours of the nastiest, sickest, most perverted child porn to a jury, and they would convict Jesus Christ. God help you if you're ever accused. Just ask my son.
The CIA says you’re wrong.
18 years of age (17 years of age with parental consent) for male and female voluntary service; maximum enlistment age 42 (Army), 27 (Air Force), 34 (Navy), 28 (Marines); service obligation 8 years, including 2-5 years active duty (Army), 2 years active (Navy), 4 years active (Air Force, Marines) (2008)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Next time you have the misfortune of overhearing a rant against child porn, observe that (most probably) there will be no distinction between "pedophiles", "possessors of an illegal photograph" and "child molesters". They are all just "pedophiles" and equally blameworthy.
You will also find an unfortunate lack of distinction between pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles. Preferring high school girls does not make you a pedophile, despite what the common person says.
have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
Well even if it is 17, it is still lower then the drinking or "statutory rape" age. Btw, I said "16" because that is the age here in Canada and I thought that NATO members were harmonizing this stuff.