Ex-judge Gets 27 Months on Evidence From Hacked PC 610
netbsd_fan writes "A former California judge has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for possession of illegal pornography, based entirely on evidence gathered by an anonymous vigilante script kiddie in Canada. At any given time he was monitoring over 3,000 innocent people. The anonymous hacker says, "I would stay up late at night to see what I could drag out of their computers, which turned out to be more than I expected. I could read all of their e-mails without them knowing. As far as they were concerned, they didn't know their e-mails had even been opened. I could see who they were chatting with and read what they were saying as they typed."
Waits for it.. (Score:4, Funny)
Why Evidence Resulting from Illegal Search OK Here (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Evidence Resulting from Illegal Search OK H (Score:5, Insightful)
Judges should be brighter than that.
Re:Why Evidence Resulting from Illegal Search OK H (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Waits for it.. (Score:5, Informative)
Now, if he'd collected the information at an officer's request, that would be a different matter.
Re:Waits for it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waits for it.. (Score:4, Informative)
In all honesty I agree with this precedent. Of course I also think that they should try their hardest to find and prosecute the person that found the stuff in the first place.
Re:Waits for it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waits for it.. (Score:5, Interesting)
They do. Usually they don't even do it anonymously, it just gets recorded in the paperwork as an "anonymous tip".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In fact they do. It's called a bench warrant. Legitimate bounty agents are registered, licensed, and bonded.
Re:Waits for it.. (Score:5, Funny)
Lousy summary (Score:5, Informative)
Also... (Score:5, Informative)
On /. it used to be that you didn't RTFA, but now I think that it is now time you didn't RTFSummary! Editing and summarising are just crap!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. And no, I don't feel I need to justify my reason to you. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The script kiddy part... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The script kiddy part... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The script kiddy part... (Score:5, Funny)
Never in my life has blindly applying a stereotype yielded such positive results! I laughed at first, and then it hit me. As irony would have it, the double bladed sword in this case is that I just blindly applied a stereotype, that hit the nail on the head through the dark, only to realize that I just made fun of the very guy that the world sees me as.
Oh cruel irony! It doth smite me mightily! Twice.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My parents were too cool to have the likes of me around. They kept giving me wedgies and calling me 'geek boy'. I'll get them back when they're old and senile and I get to choose whose basement they live in!
Mom, dad, I'd like you to meet your new 'roomie', Mr. John Dvorak. You kids play nice, now!
Re:The script kiddy part... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The script kiddy part... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Altho it should be referred to as "chatroom lingo" or somesuch.
Far out
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bust the buster? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Funny)
Could I have worded that any worse?
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:4, Funny)
"I plead not guilty, your honor. I had no intent to masturbate."
Use the gun defence: "I was just cleaning it and it went off!"
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
While his actions are most likely altruistic, he should be punished for his deeds and then be enlisted by some the Canadian police and do it legally.
Terrified on both counts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but he could also view any email correspondence by that judge, which could have included sensitive court material.
Show me a judge who handles sensitive court correspondence by e-mail and I'll show you a judge I dearly want to smack in the face really, really hard.
he should be punished for his deeds and then be enlisted by some the Canadian police and do it legally
I wouldn't find it at all more comforting that the guy who has the job (self-appointed or not) trolling through private e-mails has a badge. Wouldn't that make him *more* dangerous to the average privacy-loving John Q. Whatever?
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this type of evidence really admissable? It's not like the hacker can be trusted, after all he DID illegally hack into computers. Perhaps it was his intent to incriminate somebody. He was able to monitor a large number of computers and it just happenned to be an ex-judge's computer that had the pictures? It may be true, but it's a damn big coincidence.
It's not the pictures, it's the diary (Score:5, Informative)
Not only has the judge admitted the diary was genuine BUT ALSO a former victim came forward and spoke AND the police found the diary to seem real enough.
At no moment did the judge contest the fact and pretend to have been victim of some spyware/virus.
Therefore the ex-judge can be judged, even if the hacker will also be :
- Told (once more) to stop breaching into people's computers because it's illegal.
- Told to get an actual job at the police to be able to do it legally.
Re:It's not the pictures, it's the diary (Score:4, Informative)
It's equally illegal for the police and private citizens to trespass. The only difference is that the police can get a court order to do it legally.
And such a court order can't usually include randomly spying on people, hoping something will turn up.
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever a politician wants to push some privacy invading law he has only to utter the magic words "kiddie porn" and there's no rebuttal. If a hacker invades your privacy and reads your e-mail that's terrible; unless he suspects you're a child molester, in which case he's a "hero".
One of the funniest, most well adjusted people I know was molested at six; it doesn't scar you for life, a savage beating from bullies just might though. Why do we practically encourage bullying but go to any lengths to stop child molesters?
Obviously here I have to clarify my stance, or people will start taking out their pitchforks.. Child molestation and kiddie porn is revolting, but what about getting stabbed? What about being forced to take addictive drugs and prostitute yourself to earn them? What about privacy?
No-one in power has the guts to say "we're going too far", because then they'll be labeled as a sympathizer.
What about the child prostitutes that everyone knows about, but won't donate money to build good orphanages to put them in? We go to any lengths to stop the abuse of children, unless it costs us money. If Brett is such a anti-child molester hero why not get a job, and donate money to take kids off the streets?
Because Brett just wants an excuse to get a rush from "hacking" (ie installing a trojan on gullible users computers, the nirvana of incredible hacks). He's just like loads of other "hacktivists"; working and donating money just isn't as exciting.
I'm not saying the evidence shouldn't be counted, but I do think calling Brett a "hero" for reading thousands of peoples e-mails for years on end is absurd.
Out of those thousands of people were any of them not child molesters? I'm guessing the majority weren't, since he has only a couple of arrests attributed to him. Would you call Brett a hero if you were one of the people he had been monitoring for years? Personally I'd want to lodge the end of my boot up his asshole.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
WHERE? I mean... that's terrible...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The world is a crappy place. If you need to come face-to-face with it for it to sink in, then you do - but a lot of people don't. But making jokes about it is some people's way of dealing with it - if you can't make fun of something, you're probably taking it too seri
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Re:US of A (Score:4, Funny)
WHERE? I mean... that's terrible...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That seems a bit low. According to http://www.coolnurse.com/marriage_laws.htm [coolnurse.com] , the minimum age (without parental consent) is at least 18 in all states. With parental consent does seem to be significantly lower, though many states seem to require court approval or similar for people under 16.
I wonder how common such young marriages are?
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the evidence shouldn't be counted. It was obtained illegally, by a vigilante. What kind of a precedent are we setting here. That some self righteous group of private citizens will take it upon themselves to police everyone else. There's a recipe for disaster if ever there was one.
Brett isn't a hero. He's a zealot. A criminal zealot. I don't care how may witches^Dpedophiles may or may not walk free. Frankly I will trust the pedophile before I trust vigilantes, because at least with the pedophiles you know where they stand.
Vigilantes are just hungry for blood and power. Guilt, innocence and even the crime itself are secondary concerns to them.
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:4, Insightful)
No pitchforks here. I agree with you - when the accusation includes anything at all similar to 'kiddie porn', the high moral ground has been occupied, and it seems like everything else goes out the windows
Glad to see the ex-judge busted, but wouldn't trust the kid as far as I can throw him. He weirds me out at least as much as the judge.
I mean, you can't argue the result here. But the method sure creeps me out. By focusing on child porn images, this dude gets to stalk 3000 people. And he does is by distributing a trojan, and manually reviewing the material on target computers.
The alt.comp.virus FAQ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/alt-faq/pa rt3/ [faqs.org] references a backgrounder on the legalities of computer crime. It's venerable (1998), so I don't know to what extent the author's assertions are still accurate, but he is pretty clear: Distributing a virus affecting computers used substantially by the government or financial institutions is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. So if this had ended up on a qualifying computer, the kid would (should) have been busted. Furthermore, Most states have statutes that make it a crime to intentionally interfere with a computer system. These statutes will often cover viruses as well as other forms of computer crime.
The referenced document can be found at http://www.loundy.com/E-LAW/E-Law4-full.html#VII [loundy.com] in Section D.
As well, if the judge hadn't admitted the journal in question was his, and disclaimed knowledge of the images, how far could they have gotten with this prosecution? The kid admits distributing a trojan, how far is it from there to distributing material? I think a defence lawyer could have a field day with this, but IANAL, just another guy with an opinion.
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The hacker may be a hero in his own eyes.
But, to a judge, the only question is whether his evidence is relevant and admissible.
Private citizens aren't held to the same standards as the police.
One of the funniest, most well adjusted people I know was molested at six; it doesn't scar you for life, a savage beating from bullies just might though. Why do we practica
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it could just be the reporter exaggerating for effect.
Either way, here's the relevant part of the second article:
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
He should be locked up for whats done already and to put a stop to his creepy voyueristic behaviour once and for all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, really, don't. This guy knowingly, systematically broke the law for an extended period, invading thousands of people's privacy in the process. He should spend the next few months in jail. He should then spend the next few years prohibited from going near anything that has the slightest chance of spying on others: networked computers, camera or video equipment, binoculars and telescopes, the works. If he ever talks about anything else he saw during the period to anyone, he should automatically spend the next few years in solitary confinement. And he should be banned from holding any public office that requires access to confidential information for the rest of his life, including any possibility of ever serving in the police or security services. There are enough good people on the right side of the law that we don't need ethically unstable people in that sort of position of responsibility.
Seriously, privacy invasion is one of the nastiest things you can do to someone. It's subtle, but as with related concerns like identity theft, the damage can be life-changing and can last a very long time. With modern technology making covert surveillance and data collection on a massive scale a realistic possibility, the only defence is to annihilate the people who would abuse such technology to violate the basic rights of others.
This guy should not be hailed as a hero. He should be made an example. And the evidence against the judge should be given zero weight in court as a matter of legal principle. The end cannot justify the means in cases like this, or the world will become a very nasty place to live.
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's an informer of the worst kind. What's the difference between this guy and people who spied on their neighbours for the gestapo and stasi? He did it for the children? Keep telling yourself that when your frienda and neighbours start getting hauled away on fantasy charges.
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that, but it's a very short step from vigilante pursuit of evidence to actually planting evidence, because after all you KNOW that $target WOULD do $evil if only he knew where to get $evil, or whatever excuse is politically convenient this week.
As I recall, that was exactly what happened back in the days of the informer leagues you mention.
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a damn trojan ... it makes guesses ! (Score:5, Interesting)
The program is a damn trojan ! Most of the other virus/trojan software that use dat on victims' hard drive to disguise themeselve make wild guess based on file name and file type and pull mostly random MS Word
Now in this case we're speaking about a very specific situation. You know you're looking for JPEGs. You know those JPEGs may have "kid", "sex", "naked" or similar keywords in their file names (at least 1 file out of the 3000 is bound to have such a name). You know other messages in the same thread read by preps have similar name.
It's just enough that in some case the program will display an image (and given that at least 3000 of the JPEGs are porn, surely a huge percentage of all JPEGs, there's a huge chance that, just by luck, the trojan will find one of them). Even if finally it's a wrong image (some of those funny joke-pictures circulating on the net), there's still a proportion of users who'll think "Hm... It's only one of those jokes. Too bad, I already have one", instead of suspecting something.
Too little users will realise that there's something wrong and too little will alert the other readers of the thread. By then, several people will have executed the trojan. Then if the hacker have posted a lot of different mails using several different identities and on more than a few threads, the number of the victims will be high enough.
If it works with viruses pulling random DOC files (where the chance is little that the two person will work on the sme subject), it's bound to work in this case (huge proportion of the JPEGs are genuine porn, all readers of the thread are potential pronographers).
(It's like writing a trojan that spread it self on the mailing list of linux kernel developpers, and maskarade itself using ".c" or ".diff" files found on victims hard drives. It's bound to work).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's irrelevant though, and I think you're missing the point: the guy who did this WAS NOT a cop, and has none of the legal protections that they do. He gets cut no slack to "uphold the law" because he is not charged with doing so, nor is he legally allowed to enforce it.
Re:Bust the buster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegal evidence (Score:5, Informative)
And why the script kiddie isn't in jail? Spying and breaking the privacy of many thousands of people (the blurb suggests it was way more than 3000) isn't something to shake a stick at.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Once the ex-judge's computer had been hacked by "some guy" the state of that system should be considered to be tainted. Who's to say that Brad Willman wasn't using that system as a proxy?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, like that doesn't happen in the "drug war". Besides in this case the cops obtained the evidence legally since the guy gave it to them volantarily, they could also drag his arse into court if they wanted to be politically "brave".
OTHOH: The politics of peodophelia makes this a very neat cover for anyone in the industrial espionage or black-mailing bussiness.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... just because evidence was gathered illegaly doesn't mean it can't be admited. IANAL but I seem to recall provisions in the law for this. If you are law enforcement... then they are obligated to obey certain rules of conduct. On the other hand, ordinary citizens are not required to. I also seem to recall the fact that wiretaps cross boarders are totally admissible... at least according to moaning canadians
Real world example (Score:3, Insightful)
The intent is different but the end result is that one illegal act is uncovered during a less illegal one. Usually they let the lesser act slide, although there's still 2999 people that were hacked and I can't see why they'd let the hacker walk on those charges.
Son of a ..... (Score:5, Funny)
The son of a coffee shop owner, Mr. Willman, a.k.a. Omni-Potent,
And he stayed up all night .. night after night ... I wonder what kept him awake ?
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I'm curious how you people think about this (Score:5, Insightful)
-> clear violation of privacy of thousands of people
-> use of that information for private gain
-> passing off vigilante-collected information to the police
-> (plus or minus) collecting that same porn
All this obviously without a court order, or even being in the police force.
This is also seriously worse than the riaa has ever done. So what should the punishment for the hacker be ? Clearly he cannot go free, despite having caught this criminal.
Re:I'm curious how you people think about this (Score:5, Interesting)
-> clear violation of privacy of thousands of people
-> use of that information for private gain
-> passing off vigilante-collected information to the police
-> (plus or minus) collecting that same porn
All this obviously without a court order, or even being in the police force.
This is also seriously worse than the riaa has ever done. So what should the punishment for the hacker be ? Clearly he cannot go free, despite having caught this criminal.
Re:I'm curious how you people think about this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm curious how you people think about this (Score:4, Interesting)
This mans snooping through the personal lives of 3000 people seems to me a far greater crime than a little kiddy fiddling and the fact that he is stupid enough to go to the Police with the results of his illegal, voyeuristic "investigations" just illustrates the sort of fantasy world he is obviously inhabiting. This man needs to be locked up, for his own good as well as the good of the people he is "investigating".
protect children (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds about as bad as it can get.
From the article:
"He... ignored police threats that if he didn't stop he'd be arrested for breaching privacy"
I guess since "His motives was always to protect children who can't protect themselves", it is all ok.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair enough I'm also doing it for my own enjoyment but if at the end of day I rob 3000 old ladies and happen to find one who can be prosecuted for the crimes I've uncovered than I agree thats absolutely fair enough.
Hacker Must be Prosecuted for Committed Felonies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hacker Must be Prosecuted for Committed Felonie (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't work that way. If a burglar breaks into your house and finds your child porn stash, then reports it to the police they can prosecute you all they like. The laws against illegal search and seizure only applies to law enforcement. The burglar is still guilty of breaking and entering though.
However, if that burglar is told "it's ok, you can keep breaking into people's houses as long as you report any child porn to us" then the burglar has become an agent of law enforcement, and any case after that point should be thrown out. If they refuse to investigate or prosecute cases where they suspect the same burglar has been at work, they're equally much doing so.
In order to make this work he should never have identified himself, never been in contact with law enforcement. He should only have left a package at their doorstep, never allowing any contact that could make him an agent of law enforcement. Those rules are very strict exactly so that you can't have a "pseudo-police" that doesn't need to follow the rules. Anyone who's paid any attention to history would know why that would be a very bad thing.
Shocking that this is allowed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If one hacker does it for 'good' (Score:5, Insightful)
But similar to what posters earlier have pointed out - How can we solely trust a trojan writer? How do we know that the hacker didn't simply set people up? Once he had taken control of their computers he could have planted the files himself.
Not to mention the fact that he must have broken into a great many innocent people's computers and read their emails. I wonder if they will be so happy of the methods that this superhero used.
If he knew the places pedophiles frequent, why didn't he just forward that info to the authorities, he can't claim that they weren't putting enough effort into fighting child pornography.
Evidence was labeled inadmissible (Score:4, Informative)
Constitution is a good thing, even if it protect liberties, even in this case. However when government wants to overstep their boundaries its fair game anyway. However overstepping their boundaries won't work, because it won't let them successfully prosecute criminals, as it will fly in the face of the constitutional rights.
How can you find them guilty..? (Score:5, Insightful)
To do this he broke into systems and spied without a warrant, probable cause, or any authority whatsoever. Most of the people he did this to were innocent, but in any case the 'evidence' he found cannot be used to prosecute with. I doubt if he has much concept of the 'chain of evidence' anyway, so it will be inadmissable for all sorts of reasons.
'Never mind', you say, 'he has gained valuable intelligence. The authorities can mount a raid later and do things properly'.
But by his own admission these target machines have been hacked by a person anxious to 'find' kiddyporn distributors and users. Surely this makes ANYTHING on that system suspect thereafter? When accused, all the judge has to do is claim that he has never seen these photos before, and they must have been placed there by the hacker. Indeed, from TFA I think that is a credible possibility.
Not only has this idiot committed a nasty computer crime by hacking into innocent people's machines, he has messed up the possibilities of any future prosecution of people who may or may not have been involved in an actual crime.
{irony}
Of course, the above is only going by the Constitution. Everyone knows that nowadays the rule of law is suspended whenever:
Patriotism is mentioned
Children are mentioned
Global Warming is mentioned
Security is mentioned
Road Safety is mentioned
{end irony}
None of the cases he's uncovered will ever succeed (Score:5, Insightful)
And every single child pornographer he's uncovered will do the same. Many of them will get away with it, and precedent will be set.
There's a reason why we have search laws. Willman has now tainted the evidence in thousands of child porn cases, by his own admission. That's pretty much the definition of "well meaning idiot."
Re:None of the cases he's uncovered will ever succ (Score:3, Informative)
However, I think you didn't read the article. This matter is closed without appeal. He plead guilty. It's over.
A lesson to be learned here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Reasonable doubt then has a good chance to keeping you free. If evidence is not properly gathered from the very beginning, how can proof beyond a reasonable doubt ever be presented?
This guy copped a plea, though, so much of the background is moot at this point. But I have seen many other cases (typically surrounding divorce where the woman would like to secure custody of children and such) where people's lives had been ruined on the basis of an accusation that could not be defended easily enough. As the article shows, this guy's whole life fell apart during all of this and while the resources of the prosecution are unlimited, the resources of the accused deteriorated and suffocated while he defended against the charges.
We, the public, will never know the full truth of this. A confession after all the strife he faced is nothing short of coerced and tainted.
Did the Judge ever touch a child? (Score:4, Insightful)
The hacker could have placed the pictures there...
I think this is way too shady.
Even if they were his pictures... isnt it a thought crime?
LOTF (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, mod me flamebait because I didn't think of the chiiiiildren. It's still a fact that we yell and cry about the horrors of tyranny if people are forbidden from reading any book they like, but in our own culture people don't have the freedom to look at any pictures they like. And there are cases where people have been sentenced for child porn that was created digitially, with no actual childs harmed.
thank you for the object lesson in propaganda (Score:3, Insightful)
"Welcome to the Land Of The Free, where you can be locked up for two years for driving your car."
that sounds downright awful, right? except i neglected to add that the guy locked up for driving his car was DRUNK. do you think that bit of information changes the situation?
so you go:
"Welcome to the Land Of The Free, where you can be locked up for two years for looking at pictures."
damn, what an evil place!
oh... i think that changes things a bit
by cutting out ke
here is some intellectual charity for you (Score:3, Insightful)
do you understand that concept?
if you understand that c
I say give 1 medal and 3000 tresspassing charges (Score:3, Insightful)
The end doesnt justify the means.
How many of the 3000 where innocent ?
It's for the Children, uuuh, uuuuh (Score:4, Insightful)
thousands of yearsand will still be around long after the internet is gone.
Sadly child molestation is not even by far the worst thing to happen
to a child. War and starvation are what KILL hundreds of thousands
of children each year(!), and do speak to that little african girl
who had her right leg blown away if she'd rather stripped and danced
naked in front of dirty old men than step on that Made in U.S.A
land mine. Talk of old men abusing children, that little girl had
a virtual sit on Donald Rumsfeld's abusive lap instead.
That's as far as the hubris here is concerned, now how about the
civil liberties angle. Here we have the "Uuuuh, uuuh it's for the
children"angle yet again but what is next? Does our sociophobic
sour drop gobbling citizen vigilante get to break into our homes
next and search them forillegal substances? Does he get the right to
assault me on a street and go through my pockets??
Damn summary. 3000 innocent people? (Score:3, Insightful)
The trojan was spread through usenet in specific pedofile newsgroups. Downloading an image file (wich is how the trojan was diguised) from such a group is NOT something an innocent person would do. Downloading childporn is a crime in most of the western world. End of story. If you download a file from such a group then you are apparently willing to commit a crime.
Oh yeah, "innocent" until proven guilty. Well by that logic the police makes a habbit about arresting innocent people all the time.
There is in the west the idea of a fair trial. I think the mistake made here is that some people think that means fair as in fairplay. The way that in golf a better player should handicap himself to make the game "fair" to a lesser player.
It does not mean that. Instead it means fair as in honest. No false evidence, a chance to defend oneself and such. At no time does it mean that the police should have to handicap itself to give a criminal a chance to get out of a conviction.
The problem is that it is hard to do this. We don't want the police constantly being able to search just anyone and anything they like BUT the countermeasure does lead to criminals using their so called right to privacy to hide evidence. THAT was not the idea but it is the sideeffect.
Privacy is there to protect the innocent NOT the guilty. Sadly it is impossible to have one without the other.
But it is still hard for me not to cheer this guy on. No I don't enjoy the idea of me being snooped upon just because I downloaded something innocent (the trojan was after all NOT real childporn) BUT this guy did get a man arrested who put his 8yr old daughter up for use by pedofiles. (another case mentioned in the article that this guy uncovered)
I am sorry, but that overrules a lot of privacy concerns for me. I am that most rare of slashdot readers. A middle of the roader. A moderate. I believe that communist, capatilists and liberals are ALL wrong. Their ideas are based on the idea that humans are perfect in one way or another when they are not.
This guy showed us that our rules of privacy and allowed methods of police investigation allow very serious criminals to go undetected and unpunished.
You might say that you consider your privacy to be worth the sale of a 8yr old girl. I do not. Maybe I am damned for that to live in a police state. But what is the alternative? A free society OR something much worse then a police state?
Look at russia, they went from a police state but I don't think they are exactly living in a free society either.
We should use this case as an eye-opener. Clearly there is a gap between the type of crimes commited and what the police is allowed to detect. If the police had been allowed to use this guy's methods how many pedofiles might have been arrested who are now still free to commit their crimes?
On the other hand, how much of our private lifes would we all have to give up to make this possible?
It is balancing issue and at the moment I think the balance favors the criminals too much. Consider this,"the innocent may have somethign to fear from the police, but they certainly have something to fear from criminals the police cannot touch".
Rule of Thumb (Score:3, Insightful)
Use Microsoft / Go to Jail ? (Score:4, Funny)
Stephan
Slashdot Meme (Score:3, Interesting)
Government spying on suspected terrorists w or w/o a warrant - BAD
Vigilante spying on suspected perverts w/o a warrant = GOOD
Re:More vigilantes please (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be limits on what can be done legally. And that script kiddie should be jailed, too.
Re:More vigilantes please (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's hard for the thinofthechildren masses to comprehend it, but there is a reason there are limitations to what the police can do, and they are not "those commies hate kids!"
Re:More vigilantes please (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find most disturbing is that this isn't discussed anywhere except Slashdot (which seems to be split about 50/50 on the issue of whether there should be one set of laws and standards for KP and one set of laws for "everything else"). Consider the outrage and public debate that the Patriot act sparked in the US - everybody had an opinion, it was debated to death (although it did pass), and will undoubtedly be one of the primary focii of the 2008 election. What about the PROTECT act that had been successfully used to prosecute posession of drawings? No debate. No discussion. No concern. Anywhere.
This means that either the 50% of /. that finds this line of reasoning irrational is completely insane or (more likely) the fear of being seen as a sympathizer is so great that nobody risks talking about it - not even the die-hard civil libertarians.
Re:More vigilantes please (Score:5, Insightful)
Making a thing illegal and getting tough on it has never solved the problem any more than drilling holes in peoples' heads cured mental illness. The way to deal with this and the majority of problems is from a logical, measured, and scientific approach. Here's a couple of things to consider:
1. What aspects of our current social arrangement allow these problems (exploitation of other humans in the numerous forms it takes)?
2. Would we be better off to actually spend resources to study the problem?
3. How do people become that way?
4. If/how can we stop that from happening and/or detect them early on and/or fix them?
When subjects like this come up we're faced with this overwhelming emotional response that we choose to cloud or judgment rather than face the reality. We explain this away as all-too-human and bask in it. Just read comments online or talk to people about cases involving crimes of passion or the various incidents of parents (generally fathers) murdering molesters and abusers. The majority of reactions are "I'd do that too."
While I can understand that reaction and the comments that support it, they fail to engage the brain and understand the implications of such things. Which brings me back to the initial point, which is that the attitude the majority of the world holds towards crime is ultimately counterproductive and self-destructive. We owe it to the past victims and to the children and to ourselves to actually solve the problem rather than merely seeking vengeance.
When someone is abused it may as well be us or those that are dear to us. We should be less concerned with adding equal or greater suffering to the life that caused the pain as finding a way to understand why that pain was caused and constructing a world where less pain is possible. It's the old 'do you not destroy your enemy if you make him your friend?' situation where by eradicating a mental disorder that allows for abuse and exploitation we effectively destroy all child predators and their ilk.
I'm sick to death of "think of the children" assholes that are so damned blind with their emotions to recognize they're not solving a goddamned thing and that more kids will be harmed because they're too fucking slow on the uptake to actually set things right.
Sorry, I know this got a little bit repetitive.
Re:More vigilantes please (Score:5, Interesting)
That's part of it, but the other side of that same coin is that even if you do speak out against these sort of laws, you're ignored.
The problem is that the argument on issues like this are not rational, they are emotional. Regardless of how many good points one can mention against these sorts of bills, the opposition just goes, "but THE CHILDREN!!" And that's it. You've been completely blown off without ever really being heard; sometimes it's hard to understand why it's worth wasting your breath on especially, as you say, with the additional fear that you could be branded with them and worse than just ignored.
On top of that, it's basically political suicide for the people who actually vote of these issues to vote against them. It's dangerous. Even if your intentions are completely related to opposing a poorly-written law, you might never get the chance to tell your side. All it takes is for one person in the other party to go, "he wants to let child molesters run free!!" and the news to repeat that a few times and there is big trouble.
For the record, the PROTECT Act passed 84-0 in the Senate. After the House agreed and the two voted on the final language, it passed 400-25 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate.
Put it all together and it just doesn't seem worth it.
Re:More vigilantes please (Score:4, Interesting)
"For law enforcement agencies to outsource work under the table to unregulated vigilantes who are free to break the law as long as the authorities in question find them useful is a bad thing."
There.
The trouble is that the above concept takes a bit of thought, it takes thinking about history and following through the likely consequences and abuses of having police-sanctioned vigilantes to do the illegal things the police aren't allowed to. And the time it takes to do that thinking is time you don't spend just furiously repeating yourself until you become convinced you are right, a la this post above [slashdot.org]. Think of the children! Seriously, THINK of the CHILDREN!!! WHY WILL NOBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN????? AM I THE ONLY ONE SANE???@?!?!?!?!?@#$@#
That's what it comes down to -- everyone's got X amount of time to spend on it, so generally those who use less of that time in thought make most of the noise. I don't think it's necessary to postulate a state of fear or insanity.
Re:This is a really old story... (Score:4, Informative)
You're so smart,dumbass (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're even more stupid if you're relying on posting as an AC to protect your identity.
Which will be shortly after they subpoena Slashdot and track you down via your IP... assuming Slashdot would want to protect the identity of someone who wrote such a virus anyway.
You *might* just about have been able to put forward a plausible argument regarding the level of damage caused by someone who solely looks at photos. And that only stands up in the absence of *any* any form of payment- or even other forms of encouragement- to others who *create* such material. But neither applies to the "harmless old man" you describe.
(*1) Yeah, I know it's out-of-date and improbable. But I couldn't resist, sorry
Re:i think everyone here (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)