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?'"
What an appropriate charge. Also, this guy can rot.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
All of the above combined
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Should have been much longer in my opinion.
Who in their worst nightmares would could have thought that anyone could stoop to do what he did?
This clearly illustrates that until lay persons learn to think otherwise in terms of privacy and security on systems and networks; nothing is going to get better.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
This isn't surprising when you have laws forbidding the possession of information and a stigma that persists if someone were to openly come against ridiculous laws simply forbidding possession of information.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'll tell you inmates one more time, quit playing with Mr. Weiner.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
'Who in their worst nightmares would could have thought that anyone could stoop to do what he did?
When I was growing up, my dad once told me something along the lines of, "Boy, think of the worst, meanest, most downright, terrible thing you would be willing to do to someone that you truly hated. Now, you can safely make the assumption that someone else out there could come up with something worse if you give them enough reason. Remember that."
I always did.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
If you RTFA, you'd know both the man and his family were subjected to months of abuse while the investigation proceeded, and the abuse occurred because the guy framing him leaked the charge to the news media. Yes, he should have changed his password, but that just puts him in the same category as the overwhelming majority of people who don't keep their office computers sufficiently secure.
And yes, for many people, being accused of pedophelia IS worse than being charged with murder. I know a man who lost his job, his house and his family while his case dragged through the courts. The whole town thought he was guilty. He was beaten twice, once very severely. The kids who accused him eventually recanted their stories, but the damage was done. So you can take your self-righteousness and shove it straight up your ass.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
While I can understand some naivity, it's not like computer kiddie porn is the first witch hunt.
Whether criminalizing kiddie porn is a good idea or a bad one (I can understand the viewpoint of the porn enabling the crimes / creating the demand), when you have thoughtcrimes on the books, everyone really should be expecting that sometimes innocent people will be harmed. I think that when someone says they can't believe it would happen, they probably really mean that they think it'll probably never happen to them. Probably.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Shit, it's basically impossible to keep your computer "sufficiently secure" from anybody who has physical access to it all weekend like a co-worker. If someone wants to plant something on your machine, they're going to be able to do it. Even if you're paranoid and encrypt your hard drive and take your laptop home with you every night someone can still come in and stick a keylogger in your keyboard. Then it's just 10 minutes one lunchtime and you're forced to literally live under a bridge, alone and penniless until you die. That's the power of invoking one of our cultures most forbidden taboos.
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
Good for them, exercising a bit of restraint while the suspect was not yet proven guilty!
"So you can take your self-righteousness and shove it straight up your ass."
I agree, I'm troubled by what more people than me are calling the 21st century equivalent of the Salem witch trials, made even more cogent by these frame charges. Every one of the supposed "witches" were simply accused of witchcraft by a group of four bored teenagers. The lives of the entire family faculty of McMartin PreSchool were destroyed because one child lied. Mere possession can land you in more hot water than murder? That's ridiculous. I'm not condoning pedophilia, but I think people & media are caught in a sensationalism that rivals yellow journalism from the 1900's.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Attempted 1st degree murder will get you more jail time than 12 years. You would only get a shorter sentence for killing someone if you didn't intend to kill them (manslaughter).
Think of how much jail time and beatings in prison Thompson would have received if this plot hadn't been foiled. Weiner should get that + a few extra years for being a dick and going to the media about it. He tried to ruin someone's life, and deserves at least the fate of what Thompson would have gotten, plus a little extra.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
As others have pointed out, you were a contractor. Your choice. And this is your side of the story, I'm sure it leaves out some details. If you had an actual case, you could go to court. But you don't, do you? And so you daydream about ruining someone's entire life. Did you know the idea of "an eye for an eye" was originally not seen as harsh,because it was meant to replace "Your life for an eye." Of course nowadays, even "an eye for an eye" is seen as unjust. But you seem to think that even "an eye for an eye" is not harsh enough.
If your boss had a problem with you watching Fox News, it sounds like you were simply not a good fit. Why stay at a place you are not wanted, especially as a contractor? Do you not feel confident in your abilities to find work? If that's the case, perhaps you should not be a contractor. She did you a favor, enabling you to look for a job where your political views would not be an issue. If you were a real employee, you might have a case. If you had some sort of protections written into your contract, you might have a case. But that is not how contractors generally work, they generally work at the whims of those that employ them, and can be let go for any reason or none, at any time.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's technically infeasible (maybe even impossible) to secure a computer at your workplace from coworkers, even if you're an expert. Sure, you can make it harder for them, but in the end they can always get to you - be it with the OS install disk or a simple keylogger. The primary loophole used in this attack was not the victim's stupidly negligent password policy, but a justice system that makes it so very easy to frame people like that. Since it's a crime where you're guilty for mere possession of the material, nobody really cares how it got on your hard drive. You can say "I didn't put it there" all day if you want, fact remains it's there and you have it. The same mechanism applies to drug possession, which is also routinely used to frame people. Mr Thompson was just exceedingly lucky because his attacker was so mindbogglingly clumsy in framing him, then he got lucky again because police and the judge actually cared about the fact that he was "innocent". One can only assume that many people are not that lucky, the best they can hope for is a guilty plea bargain to reduce the inevitably draconian sentence.
He planted it and got 12 years. This guy DID IT with hundreds of kids and gets 8-1/2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-11403984 Doesn't anyone see what the fook is wrong here????
i have no problem with anything until the victim attempts to exploit the media to further harm a convicted and sentenced man.
that is a hypocritical act of malice and vengeance, and can only serve to discredit the justice system.
we'll all see how the show ends in <12 years, and whether or not continued agitation of the situation was the "good" move.
So even though he's been exonerated and the true criminal was successfully convicted, the innocent has no right to publicize his innocence? He was FRAMED for crying out loud. Who, if not he, should be allowed to vilify his attacker?
You'd be just as well off asking a rape victim to be respectful and grateful to her rapist.
So, how long HAVE you and the convicted been chums??
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
You're right. And, remember, Martha Stewart was tried on:
1. computer evidence that for all intents and purposes never existed. Some geek said "oh, I deleted the files, then deleted the logs to cover my tracks, but the incriminating files WERE there, once. I swear it." -- this was considered substantial!
2. shreds of documents from the same letterhead fixed-width type pieced together arbitrarily -- substantial!
3. the testimony of an agent who, for said testimony, later was sentenced to perjury -- substantial!
Who believes she's guilty? The whole country. Ask anybody.
Now, consider this: some perv gets caught, takes the Stewart trial precedents, takes this trial's precendents, throws a dart and picks a random person (or picks somebody whose dog crapped on his yard) and says "HE did it! HE put these here!" It wouldn't take a whole week for that perv to come up with
a. how he knows YOU did it
b. how YOU did it, when
c. WHY you did it
Even if he doesn't know you! Think about it! Sometimes, bad is bad!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
One of her best friends just called her. This woman's house was just raided by the FBI this morning. Turns out that her boyfriend was into child porn. I've hung out with them, he seemed like a regular guy. I liked him. Now I don't know what to think, or feel. I know I feel a little dirty just from having hung out with him. But I also feel some sympathy, because I know the guy, and before I found this out, I liked him. I can't imagine what his girlfriend is going through. Can you ever take enough showers to feel clean after that?
I know he had a screwed up childhood. I guess I just didn't know how screwed up. And now I can't help but contemplate his future. It isn't pretty. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, kiddie porn is inexcusable. But his life is over now. If I were somehow in his position, I know what I'd do. I know the man owns guns. There aren't many situations where suicide might just be the best answer, but along with painful terminal illness, this is one of them.
I just feel sick now, I could barely eat lunch today. The wife and I offered to help clean up after the mess the FBI left, tearing up the place. But cleaning the physical mess is only the first step.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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
Which is why, when cases like this come to the media, the media has the responsibility not only to emphasize that the charges are alleged, but to PUBLISH RETRACTIONS AND/OR PUBLISH THE RESULTS OF TRIALS THAT RESULT IN A VERDICT OF INNOCENT.
Unfortunately, too few media outlets do that - scandals sell, innocence doesn't. Perhaps the judges in such cases should make it a requirement that the local/involved media publish the results- and not buried in two lines somewhere on the back page.
I too know of a few people who have been falsely accused and exonerated - and when the subject comes up in ordinary conversations, I always make a point of stressing to the people I'm talking with not to get carried away with rumor and innuendo, because they could be next. It seems to get their attention, somewhat...
(About eight years ago I was asked to be a potential witness in exactly this same thing - because I had worked on this person's computer a few times before that. I was never called to witness, and he was completely exonerated, but the ugly commentary I heard in public around me during the trial was disgustingly reminiscent of what I've read about witch trials from the dark ages. I can certainly blame the wagging tongues of the local media outlets for THAT one. )
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.