5 ms·

Well I don't salute him at all. Think about what he's doing. He is examining computers for illegal information. An illegal series of bytes. This is utterly ins

by sho 18y ago

Well I don't salute him at all. Think about what he's doing. He is examining computers for illegal information. An illegal series of bytes. This is utterly insane. You can make up whatever justification you want, but to me the very existence, the very possibility of existence, of illegal information is absolutely, 180˚ opposed to everything I believe in. As far as I am concerned, people like ErrantX are actively working to undermine free society. The fact that many of these illegal files are simply scans of magazines you could apparently buy, completely legally, over the counter, in the 1970s, just adds that last twist of "We have always been at war with Eurasia" doublethink frisson.

jpd 18y ago
Photography is strange; it exists solely to please the eye. One can say that the act of looking at it, is similar to how one would USE other sorts of information, and although that's not quite right either it serves well-enough (in reality intentions matter when talking about this issue, otherwise the cops that verify someone has CP are criminals themselves.) So, that said, it's not the HAVING the information that matters, it's the using of it. If I have your bank account information on my computer it's not illegal for me to have it (I think), but it would certainly give me jail time if I used it to take money out of your account.
aditya 18y ago
Right. And your free society would actually celebrate people that produce and distribute things like child pornography, hell, you'd actually sell your own children into the business, right? I'm sorry but anarchy and freedom from coercion such as taxes are good things that we'd be interested in talking about as hackers, but you're coming out in support of child porn to support your claim of freedom. There is no doublethink here, child porn is wrong, that is objective reality.
- sho 18y ago
  Wow, you really demolished that straw man you set up there. I'm not advocating child porn, nor anarchy, nor any other of your bizarre projections. Get a grip. "child porn is wrong, that is objective reality." Your proclamations of what is right or wrong have no place in "objective reality", my friend. Objective reality simply is. "you're coming out in support of child porn to support your claim of freedom" Well I didn't really mean to "come out in support of" it but why not, sure, for the sake of argument. And I presume you're "coming out" in favour of a world in which you can be thrown in jail at any time for the existence, on a computer under your control, of a copy of a photo you didn't take?
  - aditya 18y ago
    grin. sorry for sounding annoyed, that wasn't the idea (so much for being objective :) Since you didn't mean to come out in support of child porn (which is what it sounded like you were doing, by proclaiming the government shouldn't be able to go after our bits) - I think it's been determined in this thread that having mistakenly had a copy of a photo on your computer doesn't make you a user, or prosecutable by law. My point was that being associated with Child Pornography (user, distributor, creator) knowing that you're doing it willfully is wrong and should be prosecutable. Now I'm not sure whether we disagree.
  - ErrantX 18y ago
    I would like to say that I would encourage you to come and do my job before you try to make claims like these :) > And I presume you're "coming out" in favour of a world in which you can be thrown in jail at any time for the existence, on a computer under your control, of a copy of a photo you didn't take? This is precisely my job: to figure out if the suspect downloaded the image deliberately (which is a crime) or not (which isnt). As you might have gathered from my earlier figures 20% of the computers I look at are innocent (and I prove them to be)..... :) Your "freedom" is for the computer users and doesnt consider anyone else.
    - trapper 18y ago
      For arguments sake, if sho had 10gb of <7yo children in sexual acts distributed amongst photos and videos on his computer, would he be guilty in your opinion? Sho - I would like to hear from you too.
      - ErrantX 18y ago
        Well yes I would report that as a positive: i.e. that I had found material. Depending on the grading of the images the CPS would then decide what to prosecute him with (i.e. all level 1's would probably get you a talking too and advice on places to get help if required, a decent number of level 5's would prompt prosecution). I'd also look at how he organised them. For example if it was a few 100 MB's of borderline images (even if we know they are illegal) and they were spread randomly in his porn collection then I would possibly consider it a negative. If then I found google searches for "download lolita" etc. and evidence of hanging out on 12chan et al then I might revise that view. Each case varies considerably :) as I am sure you can imagine. Currently possession of the material in large quantities is a crime. What legal reason could there be for holding that quantity on disk? (bearing in mind the checks and paperwork we have to go through to hold the material per the requirments of our contracts). That amount of data (10GB is a lot) would prompt me to look very closely at the sources and other activity as it would suggest distribution too (indeed I would be surprised if there were no distribution at that scale). 1 image wont get you jail time. 100 would depend on the context & the grading. 1000+ is, I hope, fairly obvious :)
sharkbrainguy 18y ago
I upvoted this because I didn't feel it was stupid (certainly not enough to hit 0 points). Condemning Gitmo is not endorsing terrorism. Condemning the idea of "illegal information" is not endorsing child abuse. Child porn is usually a result of child abuse. Child porn may be a contributing factor in child abuse. That still does not equate child porn and child abuse. I don't agree with sho, but I don't think is argument is stupid or invalid.
petercooper 18y ago
To me that's like arguing it's crazy to pursue anyone committing violent crimes because they're "just moving atoms around." That said, I think it's totally ridiculous they don't devote 100% of the crime fighting effort to eradicating producers, slamming down on abusing parents, etc. That they're wasting time on easy targets seems sick to me. The argument is that by killing the market, the producers won't abuse kids, but I ain't buying that because I bet a dollar to a nickel that there's always been a small section of society that has sexually abused kids for their own sick pleasure from it.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  The notion that child abuse would end because there would be no market for commercial child abuse is a stupid idea. It's also the kind of idea that so frequently bubbles up in law enforcement: the eradication of visible crimes is more important than the eradication of the unseen ones. It's also because the visible ones are so easier to catch and give so much more TV coverage. Going after the producers/abusers is the goal. Going after users do next to nothing to protect exploited children. I have seen a similar attitude when I followed the investigations after I had a laptop robbed here in Brazil. Police officials were much more worried about catching the guy with the gun than the guy who bought the computers to resell. If you take down the guy in the spike, the buyer can quickly recruit another. If you take down the buyer, the hub, the whole "market" collapses for a while and crime drops (or migrates to other activities). An that brings me to another story: when bank cashiers here started to use ATM-like equipment in their desks and had no meaningful amount of money easily accessible, bank robberies dropped to next to nothing. Interestingly, shortly after that, kindnapping spiked.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    The notion that child abuse would end because there would be no market for commercial child abuse is a stupid idea. [...] Going after the producers/abusers is the goal. Going after users do next to nothing to protect exploited children. Agreed, but that's exactly what I just said, lol :)

by sho 18y ago

jpd 18y ago

Photography is strange; it exists solely to please the eye. One can say that the act of looking at it, is similar to how one would USE other sorts of information, and although that's not quite right either it serves well-enough (in reality intentions matter when talking about this issue, otherwise the cops that verify someone has CP are criminals themselves.) So, that said, it's not the HAVING the information that matters, it's the using of it. If I have your bank account information on my computer it's not illegal for me to have it (I think), but it would certainly give me jail time if I used it to take money out of your account.

aditya 18y ago

Right. And your free society would actually celebrate people that produce and distribute things like child pornography, hell, you'd actually sell your own children into the business, right? I'm sorry but anarchy and freedom from coercion such as taxes are good things that we'd be interested in talking about as hackers, but you're coming out in support of child porn to support your claim of freedom. There is no doublethink here, child porn is wrong, that is objective reality.

sho 18y ago
Wow, you really demolished that straw man you set up there. I'm not advocating child porn, nor anarchy, nor any other of your bizarre projections. Get a grip. "child porn is wrong, that is objective reality." Your proclamations of what is right or wrong have no place in "objective reality", my friend. Objective reality simply is. "you're coming out in support of child porn to support your claim of freedom" Well I didn't really mean to "come out in support of" it but why not, sure, for the sake of argument. And I presume you're "coming out" in favour of a world in which you can be thrown in jail at any time for the existence, on a computer under your control, of a copy of a photo you didn't take?
- aditya 18y ago
  grin. sorry for sounding annoyed, that wasn't the idea (so much for being objective :) Since you didn't mean to come out in support of child porn (which is what it sounded like you were doing, by proclaiming the government shouldn't be able to go after our bits) - I think it's been determined in this thread that having mistakenly had a copy of a photo on your computer doesn't make you a user, or prosecutable by law. My point was that being associated with Child Pornography (user, distributor, creator) knowing that you're doing it willfully is wrong and should be prosecutable. Now I'm not sure whether we disagree.
- ErrantX 18y ago
  I would like to say that I would encourage you to come and do my job before you try to make claims like these :) > And I presume you're "coming out" in favour of a world in which you can be thrown in jail at any time for the existence, on a computer under your control, of a copy of a photo you didn't take? This is precisely my job: to figure out if the suspect downloaded the image deliberately (which is a crime) or not (which isnt). As you might have gathered from my earlier figures 20% of the computers I look at are innocent (and I prove them to be)..... :) Your "freedom" is for the computer users and doesnt consider anyone else.
  - trapper 18y ago
    For arguments sake, if sho had 10gb of <7yo children in sexual acts distributed amongst photos and videos on his computer, would he be guilty in your opinion? Sho - I would like to hear from you too.
    - ErrantX 18y ago
      Well yes I would report that as a positive: i.e. that I had found material. Depending on the grading of the images the CPS would then decide what to prosecute him with (i.e. all level 1's would probably get you a talking too and advice on places to get help if required, a decent number of level 5's would prompt prosecution). I'd also look at how he organised them. For example if it was a few 100 MB's of borderline images (even if we know they are illegal) and they were spread randomly in his porn collection then I would possibly consider it a negative. If then I found google searches for "download lolita" etc. and evidence of hanging out on 12chan et al then I might revise that view. Each case varies considerably :) as I am sure you can imagine. Currently possession of the material in large quantities is a crime. What legal reason could there be for holding that quantity on disk? (bearing in mind the checks and paperwork we have to go through to hold the material per the requirments of our contracts). That amount of data (10GB is a lot) would prompt me to look very closely at the sources and other activity as it would suggest distribution too (indeed I would be surprised if there were no distribution at that scale). 1 image wont get you jail time. 100 would depend on the context & the grading. 1000+ is, I hope, fairly obvious :)

sharkbrainguy 18y ago

I upvoted this because I didn't feel it was stupid (certainly not enough to hit 0 points). Condemning Gitmo is not endorsing terrorism. Condemning the idea of "illegal information" is not endorsing child abuse. Child porn is usually a result of child abuse. Child porn may be a contributing factor in child abuse. That still does not equate child porn and child abuse. I don't agree with sho, but I don't think is argument is stupid or invalid.

petercooper 18y ago

To me that's like arguing it's crazy to pursue anyone committing violent crimes because they're "just moving atoms around." That said, I think it's totally ridiculous they don't devote 100% of the crime fighting effort to eradicating producers, slamming down on abusing parents, etc. That they're wasting time on easy targets seems sick to me. The argument is that by killing the market, the producers won't abuse kids, but I ain't buying that because I bet a dollar to a nickel that there's always been a small section of society that has sexually abused kids for their own sick pleasure from it.

rbanffy 18y ago
The notion that child abuse would end because there would be no market for commercial child abuse is a stupid idea. It's also the kind of idea that so frequently bubbles up in law enforcement: the eradication of visible crimes is more important than the eradication of the unseen ones. It's also because the visible ones are so easier to catch and give so much more TV coverage. Going after the producers/abusers is the goal. Going after users do next to nothing to protect exploited children. I have seen a similar attitude when I followed the investigations after I had a laptop robbed here in Brazil. Police officials were much more worried about catching the guy with the gun than the guy who bought the computers to resell. If you take down the guy in the spike, the buyer can quickly recruit another. If you take down the buyer, the hub, the whole "market" collapses for a while and crime drops (or migrates to other activities). An that brings me to another story: when bank cashiers here started to use ATM-like equipment in their desks and had no meaningful amount of money easily accessible, bank robberies dropped to next to nothing. Interestingly, shortly after that, kindnapping spiked.
- petercooper 18y ago
  The notion that child abuse would end because there would be no market for commercial child abuse is a stupid idea. [...] Going after the producers/abusers is the goal. Going after users do next to nothing to protect exploited children. Agreed, but that's exactly what I just said, lol :)