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US Government: There's Child Porn On the Megaupload Servers Judge!
Fluffeh writes "In the ongoing Megaupload saga, Carpathia, the company that hosted Megaupload, is in a tough pickle. The EFF wants the data to remain on the servers so that users can get legitimate data back, the MPAA doesn't want the servers back, because it will lead to piracy. Megaupload wants to buy the servers to get all the data, but isn't allowed to as that would have the servers leaving the court's jurisdiction. The U.S .Government won't pay Carpathia for the time that the servers are sitting idle and has a new song in its repertoire by announcing yesterday that the servers 'may contain child pornography,' which would render them 'contraband' and limit Carpathia's options for dealing with them."
Why won't someone think of the children!?
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
There's Communist propaganda on them there servers, or in the 1600's there be witch craft on em!
Isn't collective punishment a crime against humanity? Might as well shut down the entire internet because there is CP on there. Might as well shut off the phone system because pedos use it. Might as well place everyone in the country under house arrest because pedos.
Christ, get me out of this shithole banana republic.
Fourteen days.
That’s the minimum sentence for someone convicted of possessing child porn.
Maybe thats Kims play...
Jose T Oliveira Jr.
Jesus fucking christ the US government and its excuse for a "justice" system is evil. Evil fucking pieces of shit.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I see a lot of hard disk crashes in the near future.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
"May contain" is insufficient. If the government has confiscated these servers, then they have the ability to determine for certain whether the servers do, in fact, contain child pornography. If we're playing the wild conjecture game, then servers may also contain the date of the Messiah's return; or the true location of Amelia Earhart; or the cure for cancer; or the recipe for the best chicken pot pie ever. Let's not limit ourselves to a ham-handed grope for an excuse by law enforcement. To law enforcement: If there is child porn on the servers, copy the files to an evidence drive, delete the originals, then allow access to the legally permissible files. Genius. If a drug operation is detected at 123 Main Street, you get to secure that house, not the entire county.
why are they not paying the landlord for holding the servers? and don't they have the right to sell them off to recover costs or at least wipe them and then sell them off?
The US government wouldn't try to use communism as a boogyman. Terrorist! Get with the times!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This us an example of why I think cloud computing and in particular cloud storage is risky. At any time some government somewhere may decide to seize the servers for some reason that has nothing to do with you. Then where's your data?
Or they may go out of business-- not just the people you thought you were dealing with but possibly subs in some unknown country.
There are Pedophiles amongst Humanity. The only solution to this threat is the complete extermination of all human life.
Thank god we live in a world where suspicion alone does not constitute a crime
Well....I guess we used to. I guess it all goes out the window when it comes to "piracy".
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
BTW, Bill Gates has tons of child porn on his computers and that is a fact, in fact most Republicans host and profit from child porn and I can proof it. They all own shares in companies that index the internet and when you do that, you are going to index child porn sooner or later. With the introduction of image search and the thumbnailing of said images on servers owned by the search engine companies such as Bing, these companies have child porn and serve the images to the world. Since these companies run their search engine for profit, they profit from child porn and so does anyone who has shares in them.
By the same token, every ISP transmits child porn and every airline and postal company out there traffics in it too. Just recently a man in Hollland was arrested on a flight with childporn, since KLM did not refund his ticket, they profitted from the rape of children.
Disgusting ain't it?
Funny, that this kind of logic is never used in the US to hold gun companies responsible for gun crime. Maybe it is a clear message, pedo's just got to up their campaign donations.
Did they try the old terrorist spiel yet? Can't be far behind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How about the whole attitude of the governments in developed countries "to prevent" crime?
It started with the recognition of the right of the shitty Middle Eastern state called "israel" to "preventive" strikes in the 70s, then the excuse to "prevent" something is used universally and pervasively through all spheres of government/private citizen interaction.
Stupid speed limits (55mph) on highways, stupid laws on school buses, stupid TSA, the hunt for any Muslim who dares to estalblish Shariah in his own land by hand.
If you, westerners, were worth a dime of your own beliefs you would fought tooth and nail to incorporate the following article in your man-made "constitutions":
- government cannot limit freedom of individuals under a pretext to prevent crime
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
We're watching Carpathia being placed in this chokehold to send a message here to other data centers: This could be you.
So there "might" be CP on the Megaupload servers. OK, hard to disprove an allegation like that, especially because some of the material on the servers is likely to be encrypted. But there "might" also be CP on one or more of NASA's servers, or on LoC or CIA servers. Also hard to disprove. And there is an even greater likelihood that CP exists on servers belonging to the FBI or TSA.
Clearly, all servers connected to the internet should be impounded, until they can be proven free of CP.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
... were the data on the Megaupload servers being stored unencrypted?
If I were offering a service like Megaupload, I'd encrypt all the data, give the uploader the key, and then forget what it was. I'd build a decrypter into the client-side download engine, so anyone downloading the files can type in the key (into their browser) so they get the original plaintext.
That way the hosting service has plausible deniability, and can say something like "We're offering a secure service to our users -- we encrypt your data to give you the assurance that we, ourselves, aren't snooping on you." They're still subject to DMCA takedowns, if someone comes to them with a URL and key, but not subject to fishing expeditions like this one ("show me everything on your servers, hey look kiddie porn").
All the serious kiddie porn folks are probably off on Freenet anyway...
Child p0rn, not good, that means we will be able to prosecute the US government for being in the possession of such materials....
Seriously though, this is what I do not like about these situations...the gov. takes whatever they want whenever they want with no regard for accountability
to the users of megaupload that paid for legal service and are using it legally....and the gov. ties the hands of any company dealing with this along the way....to me sounds too much like a setup , a precedent being set so they do not have to do it again with another megaupload in the future...
Did megaupload not have backups though, or all those taken too?
Maybe we can shut down facebook to investigate? Or, when you reach a certain size, you're immune to prosecution?
Nice to see the America way of corruption and greed, lies and boogie-man politics are as alive as ever. What a crock.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Why can't users' have the fast track option where they can elect have their data verified by the FBI, by giving the Feds specific legal permission to investigate without the need for a warrant. FBI checks their account for CP and Copyright Infringement. If their account is clean, their data is given back, and then purged from Megaupload as it is no longer evidence as it has been confirmed that suspicions were false for this particular user.
If the account has CP or infringing materials found, then the user has CHOSEN to incriminate themselves and can be among the first to have legal action taken against them (which they deserve for wasting FBI/DOJ time) and does not exclude action against MU themselves.
The FBI can put whatever terms they want in the optional agreement, including providing encryption keys, passwords, etc. but will also be balanced with special indemnity that the information recovered is to remain confidential and destroyed like an NDA if no illegal materials are found. Account holders don't have to give up their passwords/keys, they can wait out the full legal process and see what happens like anyone else if they want to.
All the legit users will probably come forward and will clear the way to concentrate on the remaining accounts, potentially freeing up some servers by consolidating all the remaining accounts' data together.
This is a great full-proof way of destroying any information based business: claim there is a possibility they got child porn.
YouTube could have child porn: Let's take down YouTube!
Facebook profiles could have child porn! Lets take down Facebook!
Apple engineers could keep a stock of child porn on their secret labs: Let's raid the Apple headquarters and confiscate all their equipment!
Any computer could be used to store and view child porn! We must confiscate ALL computers!
The Internet could be used to send child porn! We must turn off the Internet, go back to a time where television and newspapers rule the world, to protect us from child porn.
Really, who needs SOPA PIPA ACTA when you can just claim "child porn" and get a free pass to do whatever the hell you want to do.
Yes, but the thing is. They would shut down the Mailboxe Etc for the investigation. If they found evidence that employees were involved it might be shut down for a long time.
I was talking to a relative who was a federal agent from the mid 70s through the mid 90s and saw the rise of the Department of Justice to the behemoth it is today (including the DoJ take over of the FBI from top down). His perspective comes from being a Treasury special agent and he said that the DoJ has been like this for a few decades now. It's just that ever since they began to rapidly expand, they've gotten a bigger mandate and set of resources to throw their weight around. In general, they've been a total rat's nest of corruption for several decades now in a way that makes most of the other departments look like paragons of virtue.
The fact is that if you look at some of the absolutely wicked shit that comes out of them in terms of things they want to do, it is stuff that leaves you thinking "do these people literally conspire daily against the constitution?" The DoD and CIA had their problems with rendition and torture, but the DoJ takes it to a level that goes well beyond anything that has come to light about what those two actually want to do (rather than are compelled by Congress or the President). The DoJ frequently writes briefs and memos that go the other way around, letting or justifying Congress or the President do wicked shit.
AND seizing all the mail received or sent there as "evidence."
Where is the warrant describing the things seized? Does it say anything about the data I uploaded?
Does it say anything about the data of Carpathia's other customers?
If elections could change anything, they'd have been outlawed ages ago. My guess is that people simply voted for the lesser evil. Which he probably even was, compared to the alternative of corpse/dud bombshell combo.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But you can't prove they DON'T contain child pornography!!
Of course, you also can't prove that unicorns DON'T exist, but that's irrelevant, of course. Now, go watch American Idol or the terrorists win.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The us govt claims there might be child pr0n on the Megaupload servers. I remember when they had proven beyond any doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction so excuse me if I'm inclined to doubt their judgement.
The federal government's computers may contain child porn. We should seize all of them now!!
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
To quote Totenberg it wasn't the truth that mattered: “It's the seriousness of the charge".
No brain, no pain.
And I'm highly allergic to those nuts. But you think anyone cares?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Right, because the previous administration was so adamant about preserving civil rights...
Back under your bridge, troll.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Suppose there was a large apartment building, and child pornography was found in one apartment. Should the government have the right to indefinitely hold the belongings of the residents of all of the other apartments in the building?
While I hate to admit it, the DoJ might have circled so far around crazy that they ended up back in sane, sorta. Screaming 'child porn' has become the Goodwin of law enforcement, BUT megaupload did indeed have quite a bit of the stuff, though not nearly as much as some of the other lockers since many people who were posting it wanted to make a buck and thus used ones that were heavier handed in their 'upgrade to pay' pattern and shared revenue with the poster. Oddly enough those sites are still up... so we start circling back from sane into crazy again.
Megaupload's model was not like Dropbox: it was not a storage service but an advertisement/subscription sponsored distribution service. (And it had deliberate incentives to encourage the distribution of copyrighted content and effectively ignore the takedown obligations required by the DMCA...)
Thus the files can't be encrypted binary blobs, because the point was that anyone with a URL should be able to fetch the file, so encryption wouldn't help on the storage.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Some folks just complain about spelling and grammar to be pedantic. In this case, however...
Including or omitting punctuation is really important. The headline is, "US Government: There's Child Porn On the Megaupload Servers Judge!" Think the missing comma changes the meaning?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Carpathia knew what Megaupload was, they might have believed Megaupload would be covered by DMCA protection, but other services were refusing to work with them.
If you read the indictment, for example, they mention how Google pulled adsense from them after copyright violations.
For DMCA protection you need to 'not have prior knowledge' of the infringement. Carpathia can't plausibly claim that, and so Carpathia are not an innocent party in this.
In North America nobody is safe from the hand of the god damned moral police. People are fucked up, live with it. If they want to do something about child pornography go find the people that are making that shit. It is not a valid excuse to attack file hosting companies with, they didn't make the crap and they don't endorse it. There is a part of me that would love to see the world burn because I would rest assured that the idiots who propagate this kind of crap will be burning a bit faster than me.
This is completely unrelated to the issue at hand... however it is relevant to the parent:
A lot of people who commit crimes against children *are* people that have other mental/social issues. No, having such deficiencies doesn't make one an abuser, but it certainly doesn't disqualify somebody from being one either.
Two recent cases in Canada:
a) Randall Hopley (abducted a child)
b) Allan Schoenborn (murdered his three children)
They'd basically qualify as the types of socially-inept persons mentioned.
While some people are good at masking it, one must be mentally ill in some fashion to commit such harm against a child. Often such illness manifests itself as awkwardness in other parts of life.
Again, being socially inept (or mentally unsound) does not in any way make one an abuser, but at the same time it hardly excludes one from being such a person any more than does a businessman in a suit+tie.
I believe that they hashed files so that if several copies were uploaded at different URL's, then only one was actually stored. That wouldn't work if files were individually encrypted.
You don't think it might be time to stop treating this as a strict liability crime, do you? That'd be just awful!
Notice the magic word "may".
Do they have actual evidence? Do they have a reasonable cause to assume this? "may" means nothing. Heck, I'm not even disagreeing much, by sheer volume of data and stupidity of people, I wouldn't take any bets that there isn't any kiddy-porn on there somewhere. Maybe just some manga with drawn characters appearing to be underage (which in many jurisdictions qualifies as child-porn).
But the real issue is that "may" should never be a qualifier for anything. The US government may be hiding aliens. Obama may have a secret grudge against me personally. Saddam may have had WMDs we just never found. Bin Laden may still be alive. Today may be Wednesday.
All of those "may" are true in a sense, but they are of very different likelihoods. So stop with the "may" bullshit and tell us how likely it is and why you think so.
Seriously, if I were a judge and one party came forward with an argument like that, I'd fine them for disrespecting the court. Obviously, they think I'm as stupid as fuck if they try to convince me what is essentially an empty argument devoid of any content whatsoever.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
may contain child pornography
May? MAY?!?
Yeah, and I may be a terrorist, with 5 nukes in my house, ready to blow the fuck out of the nearest airport.
I may be able to push a button on my wall and cause my house to transform into a missle launcher and blow the local precinct sky high.
I may have a legion of ninjas that are ready to murder every government official when i click my heels 3 times.
But I've never been arrested for these things. Why? Because may shouldn't be good enough for the fucking law.
Good grief. I don't care one way or another about Megaupload, but holy shit has our legal system gone to fucking hell.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Nope, you couldn't. Because behind the scenes Megaupload used content deduplication: multiple users who uploaded the same content would get different URLs, but it was stored in a common store.
Not only was this needed for efficiency, it was also needed to implement Megaupload's fake-takedown system: it would allow a content provider to take down single URLs pointing to a file, but the file itself never went away and any OTHER URL pointing to that file would still work.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Ah, the joys of cloud computing.
Proverbs 21:19
Pull the drives, hand to government as possible evidence, done.
The predominant purpose of such services is hosting warez and pron. Anyone using them to store that which they haven't backed up is a fool and should have known better. There may be a technical protection under law but that doesn't negate stupidity.
EULAs should be changed to remove any obligation to do more than host. Storage is cheap. Those who refuse to back up their data deserve to get screwed.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I mean... if *ANYTHING* contains child pornography, then it is illegal? *ANYTHING*????
Should this not, then, be applied to the brains of all convicted child pornographers, whose brains would have loads of it stashed away in there?
In other words, if anything that has child pornography on it is illegal, then it must follow that this means mandatory lobotomies for child pornographers.
Hey.... it's for the children, right?
This should make you a fan of SpiderOak cloud storage. See, not only is your data local, it's encrypted locally before uploading. Even the feds - or the MPAA - gets their hands on the server there is no way to decrypt the data there. Even SpiderOak doesn't have the keys. Unless there is a specific reason or evidence to support that what you have there is infringing, they shouldn't even be able to get a warrant to require you divulge the key or show them your local storage.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Microsoft's Bing probably has it too, in droves. In fact, any decent crawler may have it.Why sholdn't they? You don't realize until it is too late I guess.
I "may" have a nuclear bomb in my basement. I "may" be able to fly by flapping my arms really fast.
May is such a loaded term, and then combined with the magic boogie-man of "child porn", why, that's a justification for just about *anything*.
And while we're on this subject, why don't we go after the RIAA for Child Porn? I mean, it seems like a pretty fair deal, we have plenty of proof:
Ringo Starr: "You're 16, you're beautiful and you're mine" ...and others. Hell, half of the RIAA's catalog is about jailbait. I think the FBI needs to investigate.
Gary Puckett: "Young Girl, get out of my mind"
Sting: "Don't stand so close to me"
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
They couldn't get away with confiscating the customers' property without due process, though. Sure, the shop might remain closed, but all you as a customer would have to do to get your property back would be turn up at the investigation HQ, provide proof of ID and ownership of the contents of a particular box, and fill in forms to demand its return. Either they'd have it within the week, or you wouldn't be able to move for the circling vultures^Rcivil rights lawyers.
Child Porn is indeed one of the root passwords to the U.S. constitution, along with "terrorist". We will soon have "intellectual piracy" on the list.
But invoke any one and apparently the rule of law becomes the wrong kind of blind.
Deprivations of ones data can can threaten ones life if it is medical data or the finincial data necessary to ones survival. Granted, putting such data on exclusively Megaupload or similar services might not be prudent. But since we -don't- know what is in there "the side of caution" on which we should err would be to leave the data accessible in the name of justice.
Said justice might well be a matter of life or death to someone.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
You'll forgive me if I don't reply to any replies. I'll be preemptively shooting each of my hard drives to remove any risk of being suspected of having child pornography.
And all my CDs, DVDs, USB drives, and floppies.
Don't forget your bookshelves. That copy of Lolita is just praying for a Fed to find it. Oh, and I see the movie's playing on cable, so you're now proven to be actively infringing. James Mason must be spinning in his grave. What on Earth was he thinking?!?
I see your public library has a copy too, so you're exploiting children every time you pay your taxes, you bastard!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
....is now considered contraband.... but is allowed to operate full out...
"We're protecting the people from porn" is the same excuse the Chinese government uses for its censorship of the Internet.
Now you're starting to get it. Problem is, it's their ball, their bat, their backyard and their rules, with no possiblilty of a change in venue to make things 'more fair'.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
stored as memories in your neural net! everyone is illegal!!! lock everyone up, including the lawmakers. they can't disprove they've never seen kiddie porn.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Just another way to circumvent due process.
No warrant?? Just say, "I heard that house has CP in it!"
This signature is false.
Not if it's 'evidence in an ongoing investigation'.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Great idea. Not gonna happen, though. Among other problems is the definition of kiddie porn. The laws are so elastic they can use a picture of my 2 year old granddaughter hugging the family dog as 'kiddie porn' if they can find somebody aroused at the sight of a toddler.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I'll grant you that all government can be dangerous, but if you look at the federal government as a whole, most of it behaves pretty decently. The CIA and DoD intelligence agencies have virtually no domestic jurisdiction. The military is regulated pretty heavily by the Posse Comitatus Act and prevented from being deployed domestically except in extreme cases of civil breakdown. Even most of the law enforcement agencies (most of them are actually outside DoJ) behave in a fairly hands off way.
The danger with the DoJ is that you brought enforcement on all levels short of the courts themselves into the hands of one department and leader. You have the FBI, our single biggest law enforcement agency, and the two stooges ATF and DEA. Then you have the US Marshals which used to be part of the federal judiciary since their purposes were entirely to support the judiciary (physical security, apprehending fugitives and escorting prisoners to and from the executive branch).
On top of that, you have all of the federal prosecutors and solicitors. So you have one department that provides a "one stop shop" of commanding positions relating to criminal and civil law. Since the FBI is now subordinate to the Attorney General, it can't investigate him. 30 years ago, the head of the FBI would have been able to investigate Eric Holder for Fast and Furious. Today, the FBI works for Holder! Or if you're an Obama lover, the FBI could have investigated Gonzalez for rendition and torture (oops, Obama's still doing those too). The point is, the main agency charged with investigating serious federal crimes outside of the individual inspectors general is now subordinate to a department run by lawyers.
There isn't a single hard drive that ABSOLUTELY CANNOT contain child pornography; they are all physically capable of containing the assorted 0s and 1s.
All my computers are full of CP. It's just that the bits are in the wrong order.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Your not showing up at the HQ and proving you own a box. Instead your asking the goverment to hire people to go into a mothballed warehouse find your data and then ship it too you. Not quite the same thing. Of course it is the goverments fault the warehouse was mothballed. You were not given notice to get your stuff prior to its closure. Also the data is digital so it is not as hard as physical stuff.
Well now there's no need to take such drastic measures. You can easily tell if your HDD has child porn on it - just look for any particularly large 1's trying to hang around or fit into particularly small 0's.
Are these servers part of an ongoing investigation? If yes, then you should be compensating the company for their use.
If no, do you have a court order prohibiting the sale of these servers (for whatever reason)?
If no, then I can't think of any reason why they can't sell these servers to whomever they wish. (And I'm amazed no-one's bothered trying the shell company gambit here - expect some random third-party to buy them any day now, who conveniently makes a deal with MegaUpload.)
I'm sure there is and I can prove it...
Once I find the correct one-time pad you encrypted it with.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
While some people are good at masking it, one must be mentally ill in some fashion [emphasis added] to commit such harm against a child. Often such illness manifests itself as awkwardness in other parts of life.
I can think of some other possibilities:
* Social conditioning: If it is culturally normative to use children for sexual purposes, then it's reasonable to assume at least some who go along with the social norm are not mentally ill. I can think of a few small groups of indigenous peoples whose sexual practices are considered child abuse in the rest of the world.
* Living what you know/not knowing any better: If you were sexually abused as a child and do to ignorance and brainwashing do not believe that the abuse harmed you, it's reasonable that you might do the same to your own children without being mentally ill.
* If you were abused as a very young child by an older child or teenager and but you do not remember the abuse as harmful and have never been exposed to the idea that sex with kids is bad, when you get to be an older child or teenager you may repeat the act on a younger child without any evil intent or mental illness.
* There are probably other cases where a person who is morally sound and mentally stable, but who is confused, ignorant, or simply acting on incomplete information is able to sexually abuse a child without realizing he is hurting the child.
I present these for the sake of completeness, not to excuse bad behavior.
Among adults in non-isolated societies, such cases are by far the exception among child molesters. The vast majority of child-molesting adults are either mentally ill and/or they know good and well that they are hurting the child and do it anyways. People who fall into such categories and who abuse children should be considered dangerously ignorant and separated from potential victims until their ignorance is cured and they have demonstrated they are no more likely to repeat such behavior as Joe Random Adult is to do such behavior the first time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well with that argument the defense should just say that the prosecutor "may have" child sex slaves chained up in his basement.
Yeah, and putting them in the correct order is so easy. A child could do it.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
I think we can stop debating the existence of child porn on MU's servers. Saying there isn't is like insisting that life doesn't exist anywhere but earth. Sure, we haven't found it yet but the odds are so overwhelmingly in the favor of existence you might as well state it as fact. But "probability" isn't proof, and our justice system is nothing if we allow decisions based on the truthiness of the situation.