Malware Can Download Child Porn To Your Computer 586
2muchcoffeeman writes "The Associated Press tells the story of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was arrested in 2007 after child porn was found on his state-issued laptop computer. He was eventually cleared of all charges after some digging by the defense found that the laptop was infected with malware that was 'programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.' The article also discusses the technical aspects of how it could happen and about similar cases in the United Kingdom in 2003."
Flying the false flag (Score:3, Interesting)
If everyone downloads kiddie porn, then that makes it really hard to pick out and prosecute the people who do it deliberately.
This case was kinda stupid in that it went faster than humanly possible. I expect that newer versions will be a bit more subtle.
Personally I think trojans like this are a good idea precisely because they make it difficult to prosecute someone for having a copy of the stuff -- possession of kiddie porn is just another thought crime and prosecuting it is complete hypocrisy. The politicians like it because it is 1000x easier to prosecute someone for having a copy of kiddie porn than it is to catch and prosecute the people manufacturing it. The politicians get their public back-slapping for a job well done, meanwhile the children who are really being hurt by the creation of the stuff aren't any better off than they were before.
Its a case of the politicians deliberately not thinking of the children at all, only their careers, but proclaiming that they are protecting children -- 100% hypocrisy.
Re:Rources (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:40 sites per minute? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because there is, to my understanding two kinds of "child porn".
1) The "core" material that is clearly children, clearly porn and prosecuted as such pretty much everywhere.
2) The "fringe" material that is teen but maybe not 18, suggestive poses, artistic or not so artistic nudes, CG art, stories, roleplay or whatever else that the US may consider child porn but at least parts of the world do not. They're an endless source of easy convictions that make it appear that they're tough on all the nasty bogeymen.
For example, here in Norway there was a "child porn" conviction that I read about in the paper, where the defendant disputed that any children was involved, and it quoted part of the main actress' bio. I found this very strange so I googled for it and it was "Tiny Tove", who was a Danish porn star that starred in a lot of dubious movies in the 1970s but was 18+ in all of them. None the less, he still got convicted because she was playing a much younger role in the movies and that is illegal in Norway. In other words, it's not "child porn" in 95%+ of the world and you can download it from any adult site or p2p network. If you turn off safe search on google you don't even have to do that. But if I did that, I'd be watching child porn under Norwegian law. It's just so fucked up you wouldn't believe it.
Re:A new name for this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.
Maybe it does. Hmmmm....
Re:Legalise the posession of child porn already (Score:5, Interesting)
Our governments claim that it is essential to stop people downloading and possessing regular media from P2P services (outside of official channels) because it decreases the ability and motivation of media producers to produce new media.
Our governments claim that it is essential to stop people downloading child porn off P2P services because it increases the ability and motivation of child abusers (or more commonly now, children) to produce new child porn.
I think there's something fishy here.
Re:Flying the false flag (Score:2, Interesting)
I must respectfully disagree with a number of your points.
possession of kiddie porn is just another thought crime and prosecuting it is complete hypocrisy.
The act of possession means it is no longer a thought crime. It is a crime in the United States to even view an image of Child Pornography.
The politicians like it because it is 1000x easier to prosecute someone for having a copy of kiddie porn than it is to catch and prosecute the people manufacturing it.
There are ways to catch the manufacturer, but what other freedoms will be lost in the balance. Shall we have to provide ID to buy a Camera?
Re:A new name for this? (Score:3, Interesting)
When 1% of your population is in prison, you can be sure the vast majority are actually innocent. No culture is that wicked.
An inhuman feat... (Score:3, Interesting)
...so of course he's innocent.
What if he intentionally contracted this 'malware'? It seems to do a good job of diverting the blame.
Re:Grain of salt. (Score:2, Interesting)
I can think of two possibilities:
Framing. This is where the target gets the malware which downloads child porn to the computer. Pretty effective attack, if you ask me. It's obvious that it worked, too.
As a proxy. Somebody wants to get child porn and so they use this computer as a proxy to get what they actually want -- the computer downloads a bunch of porn and tells the writer what was downloaded through some covert channel. Since child porn is such a public crime, it will be completely obvious when the intermediate computer's owner is caught, so there is no chance of getting trapped in a honeypot and actually getting the writer. By the time anybody realizes what is going on (11 months down the road), the actual "bad guy" has moved on to somebody else.
Re:Flying the false flag (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually thought crime is often used to refer to something where all you're doing is sitting around not harming anyone (as opposed to victimless crimes).
Here's a fun thing from Denmark (age of consent is 15).
If I (32) have sex with a 17-year-old girl, that is perfectly legal.
If anyone takes a photo of it, draws it, writes about it in detail or films it - it is child pornography. And as I'm am the only 'adult' in this, I will bear the full brunt of the law's punishment. Even if she were to set up hidden cameras without me knowing it, I'd still be charged with manufacturing. It's classified as child pornography and not pornography with a minor (under 18).
But if no-one watches, it's perfectly legal.
That is fucking scary.
Re:Legalise the posession of child porn already (Score:4, Interesting)
There is not - nor has there ever been - a lucrative market for child pornography. Even before the laws that now ban distribution and possession of the stuff were written, and it was available (usually under the counter) from mainstream porn vendors, it just didn't sell very much. Today, with the internet, it's almost exclusively distributed gratis. That's something that people who've been raised to think of everything in transactional economic terms can't seem to grasp: child porn doesn't operates on supply-and-demand terms. So the argument that possession of child porn creates an economic "demand" for it which incentivizes pornographers to produce more... misses the point. Child porn is produced almost exclusively by people who enjoy child porn themselves. They distribute it not for profit, but for the simple reason that they want to share. Whether there's an audience of a dozen out there, or a million, they're going to do the same thing. Now, there are other arguments for the criminalization of possession of child porn, and those may or may not have merit. But the argument that possession creates demand is a fallacy.
Re:This guy was lucky. (Score:2, Interesting)
Your idea is antithetical to the government's goal to dictate morality, even when no victims exist.
You will be audited. Prepare thyself.
Even if you have nothing more than *drawings* of children having sex (like that comic called Y), you will be found guilty of this victimless crime.
Re:A new name for this? (Score:2, Interesting)
I hope I'm reading the parent wrong or missing something as I often do. People who molest children, or partake in child porn, are the scum of the earth. I can't believe what I'm reading here. There are intelligent people who believe it shouldn't be a crime, or a big deal, to possess child porn, or molest children and record it?
I know it's not popular to have morals or take a stand these days, but here it goes. People who get off on naked children are beneath the scum of the earth. There should be little leniency for these "people." The "humans" who use children for their own sexual pleasure are not normal and should be removed from the population post haste.
And anyone who disagrees is naive, inexperienced in life, or abnormal themselves and should seek professional help.
It's not popular having morals? I find your position immoral. Your kind is what lets the real predators off. We're so busy diverting resources towards people looking at pictures that we're not actually focusing on the funding and production of it.
It's simple, you go after with full force the people doing real harm. You put a stop to people aiding them in doing harm. Beyond that is silliness, which is what the GP is pointing out. It's silliness until it starts destroying the lives of productive members of society that have done no harm to anyone. But guess that's the price to be paid in any moral panic, whether it's drugs, commies, witches, jews or gays.
I feel sorry for you, truly. But keep enjoying your two minutes of hate, I hope it makes you feel better. Sicko.
Re:new? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's also a bit nuts when some Australian court can say, "Cartoons of children having sex is illegal." No victims; no crime.
If you insist on maintaining the equation between "crime" and the existence of victims while trying to come to grips with Australian (or any other jurisdiction's) Criminal Law you will end up with an ulcer. Remember in NSW it is a crime to leave your car unlocked when parking on a public street! Victimless crimes (including crimes that have merely potential victims, think: drug importation, traffic offences etc.) form the overwhelming majority of crimes.
In any case, you are in a tiny minority in not being offended by child pornography. Even in the US, where SCOTUS has found that CP per se is protected speech (and the offenders are the personae you refer to), the law of obscenity, which is determined by local "community values," will almost always criminalise CP.
Re:Legalise the posession of child porn already (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. In fact, almost all child porn is released to 'friends'. There are rings of child abusers, and they send pictures to each other. Not on the internet, or at least not openly on the internet.
At some point, someone in that ring is, in fact, in it for a profit, and he'll 'pirate' that image and sell it to other rings.
At some point after that, it will escape into the wild as some anonymous person puts it on the internet. Sometimes it will skip the middle step.
Actual child porn producers do not want that image in the wild, because very quickly after it ends up in the wild, the FBI will discover it, and track them down, or at least track the kid down.
What we need to do is decriminalize possession if the person cooperates with the authorities and helps them backtrack the image.
Re:new? (Score:1, Interesting)
To me it is new and very interesting. Just last week we buried a relative I haven't seen for many years . Apparently he went to jail for having child porn on his computer after a girlfriend reported him. After he served his full time he was homeless and could not get a job - let's face it who is going to hire some one convicted of having child porn? Apparently after six months of living on the streets he decided it was hopeless and he ended it. His body was found in an abandoned building along with a duffle bag of clothing several days after he died. I don't believe he was a pedophile, but was branded one by rules of society with the help of a distraught woman that wanted him out of the way.
Re:Legalise the posession of child porn already (Score:1, Interesting)
It isn't illegal to own a photograph of someone committing homicide. In fact, they print them in the newspaper.
Yes, molesting children is and should be illegal. Owning a photograph should not be illegal, no matter how despicable the content is.
Re:This guy was lucky. (Score:3, Interesting)
Your view also calls into question the existence of sites like this: http://clubseventeen.com/ [clubseventeen.com] [clubseventeen.com] (warning nudity). In that country, the Netherlands, 17 is the legal age of consent, so no crime has been committed in any of those photos
All persons depicted in Club Seventeen were over the age of 18 years at the time they were photographed or filmed.
So, um, yeah. Valid point, bad example.
As for the other example... yes, it's happened. Children have been taken away by CPS from parents who have taken pictures of their young kids in the bath - you know, the ones that every single family has. And while I'm inclined to generally agree with your viewpoint, I do take at least some issue with the second site which sells videos (and damned expensive ones, at that) of nudist activities that very clearly contains children. While clearly non-pornographic and non-harmful in nature, you know some people are getting off to it. No harm no foul I'd say, but it's certainly sleazy even if it's not technically illegal - and I'd have no trouble finding people that would say it IS illegal (not that their opinion matters unless they happen to be a juror).
And for the record, I'm blaming you if I get arrested now.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Grain of salt. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This guy was lucky. (Score:3, Interesting)
He's not the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
I see several people talking about how "gross" that guy is and maybe he "intentionally put the bot on his computer" and I thought that maybe I should put my 2 cents into this discussion since the same thing happened to me several years ago. I was charged with Possession of Child Pornography and I didn't do it. I didn't even know stuff like that existed, much less that it was on my computer.
I was a guy that always had fun hanging out with my friends and since I was one of the first ones to finish college and get a 'real' job, I was also the first one out of all of my friends to afford nice toys. Like a Flat-screen TV, every video game system, workout equipment, and a nice, fast computer. Friends came and went all the time. People may say I'm too trustworthy and I guess I wasn't thinking, but most of my friends had keys to my apartment along with my roommates. I'm sure you can figure out where this is going.
One day I get back from what was a 5 day party/drinking-binge with one of my friends who was going to college in another city a few hours away, and I notice that my apartment is messier than usual. I didn't think much about it at first but then I notice that my PC is gone. So I call my roommate and asked him if he borrowed it for a LAN party or something? (yea, that's how ridiculously lax I was with my friends) and he said no. Then on my PC desk, I noticed a detective's business card and a search warrant describing what they came to search for (they came sometime that morning and guess what they were looking for?) and what they took (PC stuff like HD's etc) and that they wanted to talk to me. I kind of did that whole out-of-body experience thing that people talk about where you don't really think this is happening to you and you get all numb and it almost feels like you're "watching yourself".
I can microscopically explain every detail of the whole ordeal, because even though I try, I will never forget it. But to make a long story short - I was eventually arrested and charged. My name was on the news in my local community and on the radio as well. The law enforcement went to my work and questioned my boss about how much "access to children" I had. (I never worked with kids so therefore I had "no access to children") but nonetheless I lost my job. There were even some people (old ladies who didn't personally know me) who wrote to the local paper asking the editor "why do they even give people charged with crimes like that out on bail?". I remember thinking "This can't be happening" and that someone's gonna come out and say it was all a joke like in the movie 'The Game' with Michael Douglas. I just couldn't believe it. I mean... I WAS INNOCENT and people were already condemning me for something I didn't even know existed.
At first I thought that the prosecutor would realize it was a mistake and apologize or something, but my lawyer sort of brought me to "reality" when he basically told me that I was DEFINITELY going to go to prison and that I was DEFINITELY going to have to register as a sex offender at least for several years after prison and possibly for the rest of my life. He was just trying to reduce the prison sentence and see what else he could do. He told me that since I was being charged with this crime there was no way in the world that I would "get off" despite not having any criminal record.
When the realization set in that my life was pretty much over... it got really bad. I felt as though my entire life up to this point was done and everything I ever worked for was over. I basically boarded myself up in the spare room at my parents home. It really felt as though the villagers were outside my Mom's house with pitchforks and torches just waiting to lynch me. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I lost 30% of my body weight in a matter of a couple weeks. I thought about suicide constantly... and every time I did I would begin crying. I would begin crying not because I was scared, but because I knew I wasn't thinking about suicide in a "passing thought
Standard of proof (Score:3, Interesting)
the courts need to raise the standard for proof of this crime. Just because there is CP on a computer should not be considered enough to prove the owner of the computer put it there. Computers, especially home computers running Windows, are inherently insecure and able to operate autonomously, subject to outside control without the owners knowledge. I can't think of any other possession we are less in control of, which is probably why there is no real analogous precedent for the courts to relate to.
The courts need to require that the prosecutor can show the owner DID download the material with knowledge, not just that it was there. The requirement for proof should be something like correlating an online conversation to a request for the material or carrying it on a DVD, purchasing it with the offenders card, something that shows it could not have been automated.
There is the potential for severe miscarriages of justice with the lax standard for proof presently employed which will inevitably lead to abuse and misuse of power. Once prosecutors have a slamdunk way to leverage a confession that will use and abuse it. All they have to do in ANY case is to look for a piece of CP on the defendant's computer, even if that has nothing to do with the case. No-one wants to go to jail for that and will confess to any other crime, even if they are not guilty. Look at the present case against prosecutors for manufacturing evidence if you don't believe they would do this. "there is no freestanding right not to be framed."
Lol (Score:1, Interesting)
You really just have no idea do you?
Well I was in the porn trade for a while, running the servers of pay sites. There is a LOT of money to be made there. It was very interesting, after years of having to explain every dime in IT, it was refreshing to make a pitch for a new server costing X and just get X plus a bonus of Y if it was done yesterday. And that was 100% legit porn. The reason I quit is because there was always that push/lure/risk of going in the wrong direction. Call to ask wether I was interested in setting up a new server room in Russia, money no object, no-no don't bother with an offer, just say how much you want.
Eheh.
There is a lot of money in the sex trade and a lot of money in child porn. Google "teenmodel". Oh, there is free stuff and then the "collectors" pay for "bonus features".
No money in child porn... that is like saying "well in holland everyone can grow their own pot, so there is no money in the drugs trade in holland".
Only a person completely out of touch with reality would make such a claim.