The Story of the Pedophile-catching Hacker 363
missing30 writes "A Turkish hacker seeding usenet groups with trojan horses has made it a habit to hunt down pedophiles trolling the groups. The cases go back to 2000, with the mysterious good samaritan responsible for several arrests. The man now has tacit approval from the FBI for his actions." From the article: "At the urging of Montgomery Police Capt. Kevin Murphy, '1069' eventually turned over more and more information that led back to a computer owned by Bradley Joseph Steiger, who had worked as an emergency room physician in Alabama. The hacker's finds included information from Steiger's AT&T WorldNet account, records from his checking account, and a list of directories on his computer's hard drive where sexually explicit photographs were stored."
I say the ends don't justify the means. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the police should be allowed to use illicitly gained information or that they should be allowed to encourage private citizens to commit felonies.
>
>"we have not seen anything to indicate that this person is other than...a citizen of Turkey."
> That turned out not to be entirely true: The FBI actually had made contact with "1069"
>through a U.S. phone number
>
Where does it end?
If it is OK to do to catch pedophiles then it is OK to do the catch terrorists and I know I've read several accounts of where patriot and other anti terror acts have been used for entirely unrelated crimes.
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Re:I say the ends don't justify the means. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called a "search warrant". (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise, anyone in
Oops. Sorry. Those credit card numbers were accidentally leaked, along with your Social Security Number and such.
But at least those Russian "hackers" know you weren't collecting kiddie porn.
Re:It's called a "search warrant". (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, they also can plant the pornography themselves, once they root the user's box.
Re:It's called a "search warrant". (Score:5, Insightful)
The patsy is busy with a trial followed by a long trip to jail, leaving no time for him to find mysterious credit card/mortgages/loans charged to his identity. Sounds like the way to get a long lead when your job is identity theft. Scary.
Re:It's called a "search warrant". (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's called a "search warrant". (Score:5, Insightful)
Hut part of me says, how is this different than an anonymous tip? What if someone called the police and said "I was using my roommate's computer and found these images..." and the police asked him to go in an investigate further?
Re:It's called a "search warrant". (Score:5, Insightful)
Creates a good "I've been hacked" defense (Score:5, Insightful)
If this guy's defense lawyer isn't a total retard, or if he doesn't blow it and confess under interrogation, he's going to walk.
All he has to say is "hey, I don't know where the porn came from -- my computer was hacked! The police even have proof that some mysterious Turkish guy was in my computer!" And what are the police going to say, ask the judge and jury to take the word of some anonymous guy on IRC, that he didn't plant the evidence?
When you do your 'investigation' that way, they're creating a hole the size of the Titanic.
Look, I don't like defending kiddy pornographers, but it seems like a pretty good defense that there's a good possibility that you're being framed, when all the evidence came to the police by way of some mysterious, psuedonymous foreigner who had the opportunity to plant the material themselves; unless Mr. Turkish Hacker is willing to come and testify, that is.
Sometimes vigilante justice is needed (Score:2, Insightful)
Vigilante justice is sometimes needed to fill the gaps, but society's the worse for it if the problem requiring vigilantes remains, or if the vigilantes remain unchecked.
Re:Sometimes vigilante justice is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
All that's happened is that authorities have given a green light for hackers to go after evil people online as vigilanties with absolutely no oversight, including this guy. And you think future hackers aren't going to plant evidence on innocent peoples hard drives for notoriety, or passes from the FBI? How do we know that that hasn't happened in this case?
Vigilante 'justice' is not justice at all. It is simply retribution, and will quickly descend into gang warfare if not stopped by impartial authorities. Regular, civilized impartial justice isn't perfect, but it's far better than the alternative.
Re:Plausible deniability (Score:3, Funny)
All the suspect has to do is claim that there's no way that the planted evidence is his, because all of *his* illicit material is encrypted. oops...
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Re:1069 is not a vigilante (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, because he said so? Otherwise, breaking into a computer is as close to tampering as it can get.
Unless you assume the victim of the hack to be guilty in the first place, then yes, there were no innocents.
I can't think how this whole thing could be any more fishy. You jump to judging the guy and praising the hacker, because the subject is child porn; or to apply the meme: "Won't somebody think of the children!"
It's scary how you dismiss due process because the crime gets to you on a personal level or whatever.
Re:It's called an informant and it's totally legal (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's called an informant and it's totally legal (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, the 'mystery hacker' basically came up with the evidence (he told them exactly where to find it, and he had ample opportunity to have planted it), but he's not in a position where he could easily testify. Because he had access to the defendant's computer (illegally), but can't come testify (because he's in Turkey, because the police don't know who he is, whatever), it seems like they're giving the guy a good defense that the evidence was planted.
It's just sloppy policework.
For a phyiscal-goods example, it's as if somebody dropped a dime on you and told the police that when they had broken into your car earlier in the day to steal your radio, they saw that you had a baggie of heroin in the ashtray. So the police go and arrest you, and find the bag of heroin. Without being able to track down the informant and get their testimony, or some form of physical evidence linking the bag to you in such a way that doesn't leave you with a planted-evidence defense, they have a pretty weak case. (Unless they can get you to confess, which is actually pretty common.)
I'll be interested in seeing what the outcome of this case actually is. If they guy doesn't negotiate some sort of plea deal, and the only thing they found on his computer was the porn that the hacker told them about, I think he has a pretty good chance of either getting off, or forcing the police to find some way of getting the hacker to come in and testify.
Allowing in evidence that was obtained in this manner would be a mistake, and justice wouldn't be served in the long run by it, even if the immediate consequence was letting the guy off the hook.
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I don't see how it's any different. Just because someone else is doing it for them doesn't make it any better.
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Here's an analogy: Let's say that your neighbor trespasses through your backyard and, in doing so, happens to look through your window and sees you molesting a child. If he goes to the police and says what he saw, should they be able to act on it?
Is it different if he silently broke into your house to steal some silver and happened to look into a room where you were doing the molesting? What if he happened to have a camera and took pi
Re:I say the ends don't justify the means. (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, I am not saying that is the instance in this case nor do I believe it, but vigilante justice opens up the whole system to abuse.
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When you have been investiguated for child pornography you can say bye bye to a normal life.
Think about what it can do to
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You don't mind if the government finds that your computer has been compromised by a hacker, who plants child porn on it, and you are convicted and have your life destroyed based on this "evidence" ?
How can any conviction be made against the victims of the "hacker" when the chain of evidence is clearly broken? Are we just supposed to trust he is an "honest" hacker? How can you get beyond any reasonable doubt under this premises: Your Honor, my compute
Re:I say the ends don't justify the means. (Score:4, Informative)
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Irrelevant, since once you gain control of a computer you can make it download anything you want.
Irrelevant, since there's no way to know when the hacker first gained access to the computer.
Irrelevant, because
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Re:I say the ends don't justify the means. (Score:5, Funny)
The phone rings at KGB headquarters.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is this KGB?"
"Yes. What do you want?"
"I'm calling to report my neighbor Yankel Rabinovitz as an enemy of the
State. He is hiding undeclared diamonds in his firewood."
"This will be noted."
Next day, the KGB goons come over to Rabinovitz's house. They search
the shed where the firewood is kept, break every piece of wood, find no
diamonds, swear at Yankel Rabinovitz and leave.
The phone rings at Rabinovitz's house.
"Hello, Yankel! Did the KGB come?"
"Yes."
"Did they chop your firewood?"
"Yes, they did."
"Okay, now it's your turn to call. I need my vegetable patch plowed."
http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=kgb.tx
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I don't wear a shirt you insensitive clod!
Re:I say the ends don't justify the means. (Score:5, Informative)
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If they are not going after this guy, then they are approving his actions, and he's effectively working for them, and the evidence is subject to 4th ammendment protections.
At least that's how it looks in my head
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Usually slash-think would be that this is the way it should be, the US should force it's standards on the rest of the world. I'm not sure they are approving his actions maybe it's more along the lines of procecuting fraud and hacking for profit has an overwhemling priority for the department that does such things.
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We don't, but fascists like you have knee jerk reactions based on the charges not the evidence or integrity of the evidence or any of the facts in evidence. One of those facts is that an FBI agent perjured himself on the stand to obtain the conviction.
So it's OK? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The FBI isn't doing anything but opening their mail, though. What should they be doing? Throwing out genuinely incriminating information purely on principle or something? Vigilantism is an awkward area. Doubly so when the vigilante is in a country outside your jurisdiction. Triply so when the guy seems to only be targeting pedophiles. Technically what
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Yes, they should. It's the same reason evidence from illegal police searches is thrown out. If the judge is going to say "bad, bad FBI! you shouldn't have done that to get this evidence which we will now use to find in your favor!", why wouldn't they keep doing it?
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You're obviously a pedophile. (Score:4, Funny)
yeah (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah (Score:2, Funny)
Evil identity theif by night.
Does it hold up in court? (Score:2)
Re:Does it hold up in court? (Score:5, Informative)
The legitimate law enforcement agencies use illegally gained information on a regular basis.
How do they get away with it? They don't present that particular information in court. They leverage that information into admissible evidence by converting it into probable cause for a legitimate search. This is the very problem with widespread, illegal monitoring of the public and why the public might be inclined to support the practice, at least until they become the target.
KFG
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I think that is fair enough. Of course I am Danish.
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They're not prosecuting based solely on an email attachment full of hints. You can be fairly sure they're only using it to observe the guy and get a warrant. The evidence they convict with is probably more like the actual hard drive full of kiddy porn from the guy's system and chat logs of undercover agents getting child porn from the guy. Hard to argue it was plant
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Unless of course you had some reason to believe that a hacker had installed a rootkit on the guy's pc.
I believe... (Score:2)
Of course, this is not true if there are specific statutes that apply (i.e., laws concerning the recording of conversations) -- but as far as the Constitution goes, if a private citizen found evidence that police couldn't get without a warrant and turned it over to police, I think it can be used.
Yeah, what's the next step? (Score:5, Insightful)
But your honor... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Interestingly though, if they catch someone stealing an Internet connection via unsecured wi-fi, it's the person who is using the connection that is at fault, not the person who's fa
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I am not yet a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but I'd say there are two problems here. The first is that judges and juries don't understand technology the way we do, and all they will have to go on is expert witnesses, whom the prosecution would deliver as well as the defense. The second is that when the DA offers a deal, which they will given the desire for an easy conviction,
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The images are a problem if they encourage people to go catch kids to make those images.
If a guy is unlucky enough to be a pedophile, he is expected to avoid sexual satisfaction as to avoid harm to children. You can't expect something that's probably genetic or in any case not in the control of the person to be controlled (i.e aroused by child porn) but you can expect him to do whatever is necessary to not act upon those urges.
The pictures of the WTC are not th
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As far as I understand, the rationale behind child pornography laws isn't the arousal, it's the implicit support of child pornographers. The Supreme Court struck down the parts of COPA that made virtual c
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What about me? (Score:2, Funny)
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Only if you try to sue them.
Does this terrify anyone else? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Does No Good (Score:2)
Any even remotely intelligent agency will turn away from "help" like this, because it will only jack their asses up in the end.
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Nonsense. 4th amendment doesn't protect you from burglars who catch you growing pot in your basement and tip off the cops. Just like it's not a 1st amendment violation for your boss to tell you to shut up and get b
a little liberty, for a little security. (Score:5, Insightful)
What if third party multinationals are allowed to hack into US systems to aid in the capture of terrorists? Obviously, there was a large amount of evidence provided that made sure the pedophiles being caught were definitely guilty, but couldn't evidence just as likely be planted?
What's even more concerning is that this person doesn't seem to be a third party hacker from Istanbul, but an American citizen (note the american telephone number). If this is the case, isn't this a message saying vigilantism (which strikes at the very base of authority, the fact that it is only the government that is allowed to use force against it's citizens) is accepted? If it is accepted in catching pedophiles, which is a pretty black and white case, what about when it enters the gray areas? What about when it starts being entangled with constitutional rights? (Due process of law seems to be a big one involved).
I believe the authorities involved might very easily have started on a slippery slope. Who knows where it will lead? How much do we value due process? How much do we value freedom? How much do we value results, irregardless of how they were gotten?
But remember:
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
A quandry indeed.
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For all the reasons you've listed 1069 isn't performing performing any good, but a grave injustice. He's providing a means for our government, which must be transparent and subject to the limitations of law, to circumvent the well-placed constraints on governmental p
a morally bankrupt response (Score:3, Interesting)
Hard to believe a caring human being could hold such a morally awful position.
Looking at the facts of the case as stated, the result appears to be that two children were saved from sexual servitude or even horrible deaths and that two pederasts were jailed. If what we are told is true, justice was clearly done -- if you wish to refute me, please identify who is being unjustly treated. The childen? The crimi
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What you said was that it was a "grave injustice". It was not: I proved it: you did not succeed in refuting that.
I'm not sure where these mentions of sexual servitude or horrible deaths are.
Why, it's in the referenced article that you didn't bother to read. The FBI investigator claimed that
I think its great (preparing for flame) (Score:5, Interesting)
Before I get the crap flamed out of me I will remind, it's just my opinion.
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You forgot the little word "alleged", as in there's no evidence.
And no, a private third party coming up with incriminating stuff isn't evidence. That's what Police are for. Remember? Due process and such? You must have already heard it, although it's slowly getting rotted off over there.
Sometimes us civilized folk think you hillbillies never made it out of medieval times with witch hunts and all that. Exchange witches with pedophiles and you're right on track again. Yep, very civiliz
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There was nobody involved in this story who touched kids, as far as I understand. The alleged crime in question was storing illegal images.
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But here's the problem. How do we know that this guys wasn't framed? How do we know this guy in Turkey didn't plant those photos there? How do we know that there is even a 'guy' in 'Turkey'? It could be some kind of revenge act from a person across town.
I think one of the worst miscarriages of justice would be to be falsely accused of pedophelia -- even if you eventually cleared your name, people would always suspect you got away
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First you OK illegal searching of people's computers 'to save the kiddies'. Next you OK illegal searching of people's homes 'to save the kiddies'. Then you go down a list outlawing or making penalities harsher to unrelated things now that 'to save the kiddies' mentality has caught on and everyone is riding that train.
Pretty soon you can't even take a piss in the middle of the woods without a flying camera bot shooting you in the back with a tazer and hauling you to the nearest detent
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"This guy could be doing some real garbage cracking, screwing with legit business and good people, but, he didn't."
How do you know he didn't? There is nothing to stop him from doing both good *and* evil. In fact, the FBI seemed to give him a pass on his hacking activities for the good he was doing. What a great opportunity for someone who wanted to do a little evil on the side.
Your heart is a liar (Score:5, Insightful)
Your heart lies to you. It tells you about the good things that could be without pointing out their unlikelihood or the bad alternative outcomes.
If 1069 never went after non-pedophiles, and if he never presented false evidence, and if the FBI's use of that evidence didn't violate any rules and encourage the public to come to accept illegal activies from the police, then this could be a good thing. Break any of those ifs, though, and the result is a terrifying distopia that I want no part of.
My heart agrees with you: pedophiles are scum, and as a parent, their mass death wouldn't bother me one bit. However, my brain thinks that we need to step back and re-assess whether we want to revert to vigilante justice, and that due process and rules of evidence are far more important than any individual situation, regardless of how horrid it may be.
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Ah yes - anything for children, rights and due process be dammed.
And I should note in passing, that possession of pictures != abuse of a child by possessor. Except, that legally it is - which is thoughtcrime, which is a Bad Thing. By extending the same legal principle - all those pictures of murder victims in true crime books? Possession
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And what if the Turkish guy is the kid toucher, and just put some pictures there to frame a guy? Black hats do that kind of stuff all the time, just to fuck with people (see: Freenode getting hacked, DALNet being DDoSed, random person getting their credit card numbers stolen, etc.). Sure, he may have put a Trojan on some pedo newsgroups, but then someone else packages that up as "Britney Spears Nude.scr" and forwards it to all his friends, and bam, the Turkish guy is hacki
The Name of the pedophile is Bradley J. Steiger? (Score:2, Informative)
And pedophilia can be treaten in non-medical and medical therapies.
I don't see a reason to disclose the Name of the pedophile. But I guess that's what infotainment is all about, right?
Re:The Name of the pedophile is Bradley J. Steiger (Score:2)
Unacceptable Bypass of the Law (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, yes, blackhat vigilantes... (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference is, when it comes to pederasty, I can't really think of many methods I wouldn't condone to cull the abomination. However, many people make a great logical fault in believing that they need to make the rules based on the exception (people that try and use pedophilia as the means to creating whatever laws they want) or in believing that the exception must fall under the same rules as all other crimes in being found and prosecuted, lest authorities create abusive legislature on the pretense of catching child molesters.
There is a middle road in all things, and vigilanteism makes a fine one for this. You don't want to give police the rights to do what a blackhat does to find a pedophile, but you want the pedophile caught.
However, the case in point is an exception. The man lives in another country and the FBI, of course, won't and couldn't file charges, but I don't believe that this constitutes "tacit approval"... although the FBI may simply be trying to send a signal to the blackhat community that reads something like "Sweet Christ, we have no fucking idea how to use computers (Database? The fuck is that?), if any of you guys wants to give us a hand in catching these guys, by all means, go ahead. Do whatever you can."
The feds can't approve of someone breaking the law, obviously, or acknowledge that someone without warrants or CARNIVORE can do the job better than the ol' FBI. But they can turn a blind eye to it, if only for the crime of pedophilia and nothing else.
If I recall correctly, wasn't there a hacker group in the U.S. that did this in the late 90's or are still doing this? I distinctly remember seeing a few adverts and hearing a few inquiries about people who wanted to join up in the old hidden IRC rooms way back when. Ah, sweet nostalgia... days of linux shell accounts, little sleep, and keeping an extra machine running only OS/2 Warp, if only out of spite, back when code came so easily. Christ, my mind has addled.
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PS any blackhat that can download files off your PC can upload them too.
PS any person with good contacts in federal agencies could have a hacker purport to find nasty things on your PC after planting them there and then have you arrested and smear-campaigned to death.
If you d
Steiger's defense attorney must have really sucked (Score:3, Interesting)
This whole case has so many holes that the defense could use, I'm amazed that they were able to convict. Stiger's attorney had to have blown it.
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If this guy is clever enough to deploy trojans, he's in the business of fooling people, and your typical "forensic specialist" would be a pushover to him. Your statement does not match reality... it may get more airplay because many expert witnesses, especially in the field of technology, are more politicians than technologists and the court doesn't know better, but it won't fly he
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Even if you can unambiguously date every file, that only makes a set up harder, not impossible.
Consider the following (rather extreme) thought experiment:
You create a trojan that
Mathematically, the ends justifies the means... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Trolling from the autorities (Score:2)
Also a friend of mine on a work visit in a US city, got out at night trying to have some good time, was asked by a
1069 (Score:5, Insightful)
2. The hacker was putting trojans in a newsgroup that existed for the sole purpose of distributing child pornography, which;
3. The arrested went to on his own volition;
4. The FBI didn't contact 1069 and have him hack others' computers; he contacted the FBI with the information;
5. The FBI investigated the arrested person and discovered that not only was he in possession of child pornograph but;
6. He was involved in the manufacture of it by taking photos of himself with his victim, aged 4-6;
7. Let him rot in jail.
Re:1069 (Score:4, Informative)
Why didn;t the FBI get a warrant and log in (Score:3, Interesting)
Gary McKinnon is "not a citizen of the United States and are not bound by our laws" and yet he was extradited to face trial in the US. He was accessing Pentagon, NASA, US Air Force and other DoD facilities in 2001 and 2002 the same time 1069 was breaking into private US citzen's systems.
As usual, it's one law for private individuals, one law for the poice.
Not (was:Justified) (Score:2)
Permitting this to continue sets a really bad precedence. Every dictatorial government always have convenient ... secret informants that conveniently produces incriminating evidence on the behalf of the government to demonize and convict undesirables. Affording the defendant to opportunity to face his/her accuser is essential to curb abuses.
How did it work though? A trojan? (Score:2)
I don't understand how people are falling for this.
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Entrapment is offering an inducement that is enough to convince law-abiding citizen to do something illegal. That's usually money, but it could be other things as well. It's a risky defense since it requires admitting the wrongdoing.
This wouldn't be entrapment since 1) non-pedophiles may have legitimate reasons to monitor that newsgroup. e.g., see the recent Salon.com article on kiddie porn researchers being frustrated since the feds don't have any exceptions for properly accredited resea
Thank you, from a real-life boogieman (Score:5, Insightful)
How very appropriate that the captcha Slash dealt me was "reject".
Re:Thank you, from a real-life boogieman (Score:5, Interesting)
Most child sexual abusers are not pedophiles (as in they're not attracted to children, but the child is just a convenient outlet of sexual frustration), and most producers of child pornography are not pedophiles (they are the Russian mafia, stone cold cynical when it comes to making money). Most pedophiles are not child sexual abusers. Please call a spade a spade; if you mean child sexual abusers, don't say "pedophile".
Re:Thank you, from a real-life boogieman (Score:5, Insightful)
Something like 10% of kids get sexually abused. (Exact figures are hard to come by.) Assuming that pedophiles abuse an average of 10 kids each, that means that 1% of the public are pedophiles. Do I think that it is reasonable, given how many people browse slashdot, that we'd have a pedophile who would comment in this thread?
Hell, yeah.
Now I can comment on this from the other side. I am not a pedophile, but I was abused so I know something about it. Pedophiles are just people who are sexually wired to be interested in children. The causes of how we get wired is unclear - just look at the debates on homosexuality. But it is clear that once you are wired, it is something that can't really be changed.
The fact is that many pedophiles are horrified at their interest. For instance the one who abused me tried his darnedest to pretend that it was a consensual relationship. And what he had the most trouble with was evidence that it wasn't. Which was copious since, in fact, it wasn't a consensual relationship. I'm glad that the pedophile we had commenting has not abused yet. However sexual desire is hard to control - the odds that he will abuse some day are very high. And child abusers do not seem to be curable.
And about victims of child abuse. First of all, most of what most people know about child abuse is all wrong. It is based on reports from people with false memory syndrome. Which, despite the memories of being abused, has pretty much nothing in common with real abuse. The most obvious distinguishing characteristic is that people who were abused don't forget about it. The second is that people who were abused pretty much inevitably have some evidence of the abuse - if nothing else then their grades drop. A far more subtle sign is that people who I know have been abused had different kinds of issues around the abuse - for instance we've had to fight guilt that we were in some way responsible for our abuse. (Yes, I know it is obviously not so - emotionally it isn't so simple.)
But that said, all of the things that you list as being inevitable for abused kids simply aren't. If you do nothing about it, those will all happen. Mental health professionals (ie they are paid for their mistakes) are more likely to hurt than help. But I can verify from personal experience that abuse can be overcome and you can become a healthy adult.
Re:We don't need no stinking cops! (Score:5, Funny)
That's a very disturbing fantasy you got there. May I check your harddrive?
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Believe it or not, some of the people working for the FBI
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The level of hatred isn't really justified, considering that the crimes of rapists, murderers and slave owners(they exist), are far, far worse. People never seem to get to the same level of arousal unless pedophilia is involved in some way. It's not even that major of an issue, despite its oversell by the media.
It's the 21st century's Two Minute Hate, so we can all wax apoplectic
Re:A man's computer is his castle... (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the New York Times article, and it was far from "chilling". I think it would be more accurately described as sensationalistic. What exactly were the pedophiles doing on the internet that was worse than storing dirty pictures on their hard drives? Chatting with each other? Oh the horror!
A ten-year prison sentence for knowingly abetting a felony on the Internet could help
Please explain, Captain Think-of-the-children, what you mean by this statement. Are you suggesting there should be a 10 year sentence for approving of certain actions? If I say, "I approve of girls having sex at the age of 15," I should go to prison for 10 years? So much for freedom of speech.
If crime in the U.S. reaches the level it has in the former Soviet Union, there will be no Bill of Rights left to protect.
This type of statement is often used to argue, "In order to save the Bill of Rights, we have to ignore the Bill of Rights." Complete rubbish. If you want to abandon the Bill of Rights and everything the United States is supposed to stand for, just come out and say it.