Slashdot Mirror
Man Gets 12-Year Jail Sentence For Planting Child Porn On Enemy's Computer
An anonymous reader writes with an update to a story we discussed in August about Neil Weiner, a man who sought to ruin the life of a school caretaker by planting child pornography on his computer. Weiner has now been convicted on two counts of possession of child pornography and one count of perverting the course of justice. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail.
"The judge told Weiner that his plot to have Mr. Thompson sacked and prosecuted very nearly succeeded. Police had been careful not to make public their arrest of the caretaker and only informed those at the school who needed to know, he said. 'But you gratuitously and spitefully informed the local press so that he and his wife suffered the distress of the unwelcome publicity which followed.' Mr. Thompson's health and that of his wife suffered. The judge said: 'There are still those who believe, and probably always will, that he is a pedophile. I am wholly satisfied that Mr. Thompson is innocent.' ... Weiner had discovered the caretaker's password by looking over his shoulder one day and been caught doing so. When Mr. Thompson was asked why he did not change it, he said he wished he had, adding: 'Who in their worst nightmares would could have thought that anyone could stoop to do what he did?'"
Dude, you were a contractor - you can be let go for any reason, even including "I don't like you". All I have to do is call the agency and say "Hey, XXXX is not working out, he's not a good cultural fit here...can you send someone else?"
If you don't like the instability of being a contractor, don't do it - become a permanent employee instead. (possibly for less money, but hey everything in life is a tradeoff)
Add the noose if anyone dies.
Not knowing much about UK sentencing, I could have been convinced you knew what you were talking about until I got to the above.
Rather than mod it offtopic, which it clearly is, I figured I'd post this as response so that other mods can mod it offtopic without getting the hell meta-modded out of them.
Excuse me, but DHS is larger than any three previously existing departments combined. At one time it was in danger of becoming half the executive branch's manpower. And that dept was the brainchild of the groups which still have sway over FOX News. They tell you they stand for smaller government, but they really only want to cut the regulatory agencies, and grow the others.
Drilling regulatory cuts really worked out well for us (no pun intended), and with the salmonella poisoning of Spinach, Peanuts, and Eggs in the recent three years, I would say that the FDA cuts must have worked out just as well. Bank regulatory cuts seem to have helped us tremendously, and I shudder to know what cuts we haven't heard about yet.
Perhaps FOX is just for all out unregulated economies. Maybe that's fine by you, but a truly unregulated economy works like a mugging. There's no protection for those who honor agreements under such a system, they are at a disadvantage to those who wield their money and power in unscrupulous ways.
As far as exposing myself to ideas, there's the daily drone of FOX on the lunch room TV. I would be glad to expose myself to any new ideas on FOX, but there aren't any. It's the same ideas we've heard since the late 80's.
By the way, FOX consistently rallies against the deficit, yet they rally against raising taxes. They think we can "starve" our government down to a smaller size by just denying them money. It's not a bad plan, if you are into surface level thinking. Try using their logic with your local bank concerning your mortgage; see how far it gets you.
We borrowed our deficit. The terms and agreements made to obtain that money are not going to un-write themselves because we're starving our loan repayments. In addition, if we even hint at weakening our resolve to honor those commitments, our national loan rating will slip. That will make this market crash look like peanuts as we watch the interest rate on 13 Trillion dollars hike up a percent.
You're smaller government plea falls on deaf ears when the graphs look like this. Naturally, you'll vote for the propaganda party, and I shudder to think what will happen to the debt then.
By the way, yesterday it was reported that if we just repealed all the Bush-era tax cuts, the budget would be very close to being balanced. Sure, you might call it a spend-and-tax plan, but it's better than a spend-and-borrow plan.
If you catch somebody at work doing it, report it to their manager immediately! I've had people fired for this, at IBM we are trained to swivel 180 degrees when a client is entering a password. This is non-trivial, DO NOT ALLOW THIS!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
It'd be interesting to see what percentage of those convicted of possession of child pornography claimed they were framed/had-no-knowledge-of-the-pornography
Part of the problem is that virtually everyone in the penal system insists they are innocent, especially those who are most guilty. Case and point; within the last few years here in MA, there was a convicted rapist who insisted for years that he was innocent. Eventually enough people supported him that he got enough attention and legal representation to have DNA tests done that were unavailable when he was convicted. The result? The tests confirmed beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt that he was the rapist.
...
Why would he demand a test that he should have known would prove his guilt? Who knows. Maybe he was protesting his innocence so much for so long, that when someone offered to get the tests done, he either had to play along, or 'fess up that he had been lying about his innocence. Either way, he's not alone. Given what I've heard about how pedos/rapists/kiddie porn collectors are treated in prison, insisting on one's innocence may be the only survival strategy many of them have. Bottom line: regardless of actual guilt, your survey would probably return 99.99% claims of innocence before and after conviction (not counting plea bargains).
That being said, actually knowing the numbers (assuming we had the appropriate crystal ball) you are looking for would indeed likely be interesting and terrifying. I'm sure it has happened. I've heard a few different people mutter something to the effect that they would like to plant something similar on someone's computer to get back at them. Each time, I've taken it as someone simply venting anger (if I had killed someone every time I said I'd like to, I'd be worse than Ted Bundy), but it's the kind of thing that sticks in the back of my mind sometimes. Just in case I see the intended victim's name in the paper someday
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
I think you're talking about 12 Angry Men.
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
Am I the only Slashdot reader old enough (and a porn consumer for long enough) to know the history of child porn laws?
It's amazing how many times I've needed to post something like: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1790178&cid=33671018