IT Repair Installs Webcam Spying Software 606
Vapon writes "A lady noticed her computer was running slower after she had brought her computer in to be repaired. She took the computer to a second repair shop where they found that one of the problems was that her webcam would turn on whenever it detected her around and was taking photos and uploading it to a website. The repair technician that installed the software has done this to at least 10 women and has photos of at least one undressing."
WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on earth would he go to all this trouble when there's any number of friendly Filipino women out there willing to do the same at a low-low cost?
FBI and DHS (Score:1, Insightful)
FBI Agent: Why didn't we think of this?
DHS Agent: Because we already did.
Re:Speaking of technicians doing things.... (Score:5, Insightful)
so are "optimizations"
Never take your machine to one of those places, no exceptions.
That all depends on where you bought it in the first place. If you built it yourself, you have nothing to worry about.
Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a valid question (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the time in cases like this it makes them feel much better knowing that they have some kind of power over the victim. He could have of course found regular porn, but maybe in his mind regular porn is too boring?
Re:Lawsuit! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's illegal to secretly record people, especially in their own homes (reasonable expectation of privacy). If you install a little camera in your neighbor's ceiling, you can bet you'll end up in jail. This is the same.
On top of that, there is the computer hacking, not performing the correct service (after all, by "fixing" the computer he made it slower)
And while there is no "right to privacy" explicitly state in American law, the Supreme court essentially created it in rulings during the later half of the 20th century (I want to say this was Roe v. Wade, but it may have been before).
Even if there is no criminal case (which, as I stated above, I'd be quite sure there is) she could always go civil. After all bugging someone else's computer and posting pictures of them undressing on the internet without their knowledge is definitely something you could get a civil judgment for. If that isn't intentional infliction of emotional distress, I'd be pretty surprised.
Re:Shoot him (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm it seems I landed in a pub. Have you ever driven beyond the speed limit? I suggest you be shot as well.
Re:Speaking of technicians doing things.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cars, like computers, require a certain level of knowledge, and the required tools.
PC's have come to the point where they don't even require tools. I always bring my phillips screwdriver with me to fix a computer, and have realized that I rarely use it any more. The tools required are more likely anti-virus and anti-spyware cleanups, followed in popularity by hard drive replacements (and data recovery tools), and CPU fan cleaning.
For a car, there are more tools required, but the parts on different cars do the same thing. They may not be interchangable, but they look similar, and act identically.
Despite the "complexity" of the computer system, that's usually the rarer of parts to fail. If you can just follow a simple flow chart, you can repair a car. Does it start? No. Does it get air? Fuel? Spark? No. Repair the source for this component.
People have mystified the working of an automobile so much that it seems like black magic, but as we work on computers, others see our work as black magic too. Oh my gosh, you type on the keyboard, and stuff happens? Wow. It's not that dissimilar to turning a wrench and making a car work again. You just have to understand the underlying technology, and the rest falls into place.
Re:Lawsuit! (Score:5, Insightful)
A little offtopic but I don't understand why people say there is no explicit "right to privacy" in American law. I wonder if this was a talking point invented for some political reason at one point that filtered out into the mass consciousness somehow.
Anyway, Amendment 4: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The word "privacy" is not used but this is a right to privacy in a large sense, isn't it? That the government can't search you, can't search your house, can't go through your papers, without a warrant?
This particular case is more of a civil action since the government didn't do it, but I find it a little unreasonable to say there is "no" right to privacy or that the Supreme Court "created" all our privacy rights, when there is clearly at least some privacy explicitly written in the Constitution.
Re:Shoot him (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuit! (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps what I say next will end this 'privacy' argument once and for all, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
First you are combining two separate ideas, the common argument that the word 'privacy' is not in the constitution is true. HOWEVER, you say that privacy is never explicitly stated in any law, this is wrong. There are certainly many privacy laws that various states have that use the word privacy. Such as privacy laws to protect your medical records, financial records, some court records, etc.
Yes it is true that privacy is never explicitly stated as a right. But there is a reason for this. Privacy was not part of the venacular in 1700's colonies. Most writings during that time do not contain the word 'privacy'.
However, idea of privacy is certainly prevalent. Wouldn't you consider the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" very similar to the idea of privacy?
And I also must add, the Bill of Rights is only a list of some rights that we have, not the ONLY ones we have. Plus the ninth ammendment also states we have rights to things not specifically numerated in the constitution.
Re:It's a valid question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuit! (Score:4, Insightful)
For those that don't believe in God, the same rights can be dervived through logic.
Re:Speaking of technicians doing things.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, taking a bunch of modular components and sticking them into a laptop chassis (10 minutes work, 15 if you're clumsy) doesn't count as "building".
Your "what I really meant" followup doesn't change the fact that your previous post was glib nonsense. Less lip, more thought.
Re:Shoot him (Score:3, Insightful)
So let's say we take your advice. Death penalty! Suddenly this guy has nothing to lose. What happens when the police come for him?
Having a gradient of ever more severe punishments for ever more severe crimes is a good thing. You never want to be in a situation where a criminal at large is already certain of getting the maximum possible punishment.
hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that a majority of men have watched or are watching porn, and the numbers are steadily rising for women too, I'm not so sure. Chances are half the guys at the office, the taxi driver if you use one at any point, at least one of the clerks at the supermaket you visit, maybe even one of the doctors who've treated you, etc, are into porn. If porn taught that, you'd notice it.
Plus, I don't know... I thought porn was about _sex_. I don't get the mentality that it's all some kind of (preferrably male) plot and power game. There _are_ people of both sexes who enjoy sex, as just that. Not as some form of power game or currency, but as just, you know, two people having an intimate moment and some fun too.
So, really, I don't get it when I hear it that porn is somehow teaching males to exert power over women. (Read your quote too, if you don't know what I'm talking about.) Or that anything that happens in there is only for the male's pleasure. Apparently regardless of whether it's one on one, two guys on one gal, two gals on one guy, or just two lesbians and no guy involved, it surely is only a depiction of something where just the guy gets any pleasure there. Apparently even if what's portrayed is one guy going down on his SO, it's still only for the guy's pleasure. And apparently demeaning, abusive or otherwise unwanted and unwelcome for the woman, if it involves sex in any way.
Women are occasionally known to have orgasms too, you know?
Plus, it's a depiction of an act which isn't just natural, but millions of married people are doing it right as you read this. And that's not even counting the unmarried ones. Is it really that much worse and harmful than a depiction of someone being beaten up, shot, stabbed, burned alive, or the other stapples of TV and movies? I mean, if people take what they saw in movies into the real world, wouldn't it make more sense to worry about those who watch war movies?
But, anyway, anyone who thinks that any kind of sex is inherently demeaning or submissive for the woman, well, at least do us guys a favour and don't marry :P
Re:Woman? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, Taco posted the story, so it should have been "tens wimman's".
Re:It's a valid question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of technicians doing things.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Modern cars tell tell you what they think is wrong. The ecu is giving strange data, it must be wrong. Replace ecu. $$$ Oh, looks like a cable insulator rubbed off. Replace wire. $ Hmm, a bracket broke, replace bracket, hey everything is working! Ok, where is my money back for replacing a computer that most likely was working correctly? Oh, we can't do that... bitter? Me?
Re:Speaking of technicians doing things.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, what sort of non-modular pieces would you like to use when you build your computer? Transistors? Atoms?
Last time I checked, power supplies, motherboards, video cards, CPUs, RAM, hard drives, modems and network cards, etc. used to build a desktop computer are relatively modular as well...
Re:Extended warranties are rip-offs - no exception (Score:2, Insightful)
Keys fell from your keyboard but you are still seriously recommending that people buy from Apple ? Are you joking ?
I've bought an IBM PS/2 [wikipedia.org] keyboard back in 1994, it had never lost any key and still works like if it was still brand new.
Re:Shoot him (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't keep wasting tax dollars on court cases for stupidity, which is exactly where this case will go.
You should move to North Korea or China if that's the sort of country you want to live in. I prefer to live where you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and where the punishment fits the crime.
I'm sick of you assholes trying to turn my country into MORE of a police state. Shoot yourself for treason and save the government the trouble.
Sue the webcam maker (Score:4, Insightful)
> I smell a lawsuit.
You want to know who I'd like to sue? The idiot who designed the webcam. They all have a light that is supposed to let you know when it is on. But of course it is just software in the windows driver and can be disabled by any idiot with a hex editor. THAT is the crime here.
You should be able to trust that light. That mofo should be hard wired to go on whenever the CCD is charged or when data is actually being sent. And it should have a delay (a simple capacitor would do) to make sure it stays lit for at least 1.0 seconds anytime it is triggered to stop single frame caps being hard to spot.
The light's specific purpose is to notify the user and it is obviously DEFECTIVE. A mandatory recall or two would drive the point home to the hardware makers about putting vital safety functions into the driver.
Re:Extended warranties are rip-offs - no exception (Score:5, Insightful)
Keys fell from your keyboard but you are still seriously recommending that people buy from Apple ? Are you joking ?
Let's see... as a former IT guy, I've worked on thousands of computers over the last 20 years. A few dozen have had a key or two break/snap off (typically a well-worn one like a space bar, command key, letter "s", etc.). Probably five or six of those were Apple systems; the rest were mostly a mix of Dell, Sony, and Toshiba. Seems perfectly reasonable that it would happen now and then, even to the best of hardware.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, really, I don't get it when I hear it that porn is somehow teaching males to exert power over women.
Well then, my friend, you're just not thinking it all the way through.
Woman has spent EONS perfecting her control of the male's life via sexual gratification. Huge layers of our social structure are based around the notion that sexually-powerful women get to select the most worldly-powerful men. The very notion of monogamy is centered around a single woman being a husband's source of sexual gratification - and, as they say, if momma ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy.
Porn short-circuits this. When a man wants sex and the woman would rather use it for leverage, he can say 'fine bitch - be that way' and break out the porno.
INTERNET porn makes it an order of magnitude worse by allowing you to consume a HUGE amount of porn anonymously, and often at little to no cost. So for a lot of men there's little to no risk involved in 'betraying' their controlling woman and getting gratification from another place.
In short it isn't about the act of looking at porn giving power to men. That part isn't true. But few are willing to state the opposite argument, that is in fact true - that sex gives power to women - so this reverse-argument gets made by proxy...
Re:Lawsuit! (Score:3, Insightful)
The no explicit "right to privacy" crowd are the anti-Roe v. Wade crowd. They've done a very good job of inserting that meme into the public consciousness, and it has certainly helped them in the "war on terror".
Re:Speaking of technicians doing things.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Extended warranties are rip-offs - no exceptions.
Trust me on this: not buying the extended warranty on an Apple product is a good way to get it to break after 91 days.
Re:If you've got nothing to hide... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuit! (Score:4, Insightful)
Who the hell modded this insightful?
Amendment I: The government CAN NOT restrict religion or speech
Amendment II: The government CAN NOT restrict citizens from keeping arms
Amendment III: The government CAN NOT quarter soldiers in your house
Amendment IV: The government CAN NOT search and seize your affects without a warrent
etc.
Re:If you've got nothing to hide... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a valid question (Score:3, Insightful)
Horseshit.
Many happy, well adjusted couples watch porn together, and it's not even remotely about a power game. Therapists recommend porn to people -- it's a perfectly normal part of sexuality.
There is lots of porn which is very much about a bad power dynamic or doing whatever you wish to a woman (convicted Max Hardcore [google.com] for example), and I personally won't watch stuff which involves choking or other things which are getting into the abusive realm, because it's something I find offensive and it defeats the purpose of porn.
Not all porn depicts imbalanced power dynamics or treats women like things to be abused. Much of it shows people who are very enthusiastically engaging in something that most everyone does at some point.
In this case, the guy installing the software either had some really uncontrollable fetish which he indulged himself in (no excuse), or just did it because he could and thought he could get away with it.
I'm not defending all porn as good, but it's also invalid to say all porn is bad. Tarring all consumers of porn with the same brush is as bad as doing it to any other group.
Cheers
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the original article [arstechnica.com] at Ars Technica:
Re:hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
As counter intuitive as it may sound, monogamy is better for most men, and polygamy better for most women.
You may think this odd, as a man would prefer to have many women rather than one. But the thing is, most men wouldn't get to be in that situation - only the very top men would, who would monopolize most of the women, or at least most of the desirable ones. Leaving most men to have far fewer options, or even have no chance at a wife at all.
And why would a woman prefer to be one of many? Because as the saying goes, "Better to be the king's mistress than a peasant's wife."
Re:hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. I've read that elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to track in the real world. For example, what explains the correlation between polygamist societies and women's power/rights/etc? Most, if not all, polygamist societies are male-dominated, are they not?
"Better to be the king's mistress than a peasant's wife."
Many women would find it better to have control over her man, any man, than to have to constantly compete for power amongst many other women. Particularly as she ages and the new wives keep getting younger and younger.
Again, it just doesn't track with reality.
Re:Sue the webcam maker (Score:5, Insightful)
This is stunning...
Aside from the fact that you've had a wee rant about an article you didn't read, anyone who is capable of hacking a piece of software with a hex editor is more than capable of shorting a circuit board or even, y'know, damaging the light (especially if it was already in his hands for technical repairs).
And on top of all that, why the hell should the webcam maker be sued? Did they provide any guarantees that the webcam could not be hacked? Was it sold as completely secure and unbreakable? No? Then why are you so keen to drag lawyers into it and try to punish a private enterprise for the criminal behaviour of some asshole in an unrelated transaction? How about we don't try to make every single corporation and business run around nannying people in case some idiot with an ambulance chaser tries to make a quick buck?
Re:It's a valid question (Score:3, Insightful)
There's more than one kind of porn, you know (Score:4, Insightful)
O.K. Then riddle me this: why do _women_ watch porn, if it's strictly about men having power over them? Depending on what study you want to believe, even a _lot_ of women. One study claimed that 87% (yes, eighty-seven percent) of women aged 25 to 39 watch porn. I find that a bit _too_ high to believe, but there you go. Another claim, and from an ACLU activist woman no less, claimed that 40% of porn rentals in the USA are women, for a total of some 160 million videos per year. An erotica magazine claimed the same 40% women among its subscribers. So, you know, us men barely score 50% higher than women in porn rentals (60% rentals by men, vs 40% by women.) Go figure.
So, you know, why _do_ so many women watch it then? Some even pay for it (e.g., rentals.) Go figure. You'd think that something that blatantly and obviously about power over women, wouldn't turn so many women on. Are so many of you gals secretly masochistic, or what? Or maybe it's not that clear cut at all that having sex is some kind of humiliation and torture?
No offense, but I'd like to see some statistics about that "most popular" claim. Just how much of you find on the internet, doesn't say much about how many people watch that, let alone make it their primary motive there. Catering to niches can be sometimes disproportionately more represented.
Point in case: gay porn. Pretty much _everywhere_ you turn, you find gay porn thumbnails, although only 10% of the population are gay. A lot of us males actually lose erection at the sight of that, and, at least in the USA, I get the idea that a large segment of the population is outright homophobe. But judging by availability on the net, you'd think the majority of the people get off on male homosexuality. Sometimes extrapolating from an unrepresentative sample gets you that kind of thing.
At any rate, even so, the vast majority of porn _I_ found doesn't involve any pain or humiliation. Maybe because I'm not looking for that kind of thing. There _is_ plenty of it on the net, but not a majority by any reckoning, and, again, there's actually more gay porn than that. See the previous paragraph.
Just repeating it doesn't make it true. There's more than one kind of porn, you know? Much as I hate to rain on your self-righteous parrade (ok, ok, I don't), but not all porn is about punishing anyone in any way.
That may be so, but prostitution doesn't necessarily involve violence either. Pretty much everyone who goes to a brothel here (yes, they're legal), goes there for a fuck. You _can't_ get abusive to the gals there, any more than you could on a woman on the street, because the cops then want to get in the act. And they're as unionized as anything else here.
So basically again you're projecting your own androphobe ideas there, and have to see humiliation and abuse because that's what you already decided to see. In practice it's a bunch of women who do that of their own free will, same as any other job, and are decently paid for it.
Re:Lawsuit! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Constitution told the Federal government what it could do and said it couldn't do anything else. It had very few limitations on what the States could do. In fact, it was always intended that the states would be the primary guardians of civil rights, and that they would be primarily responsible for making and enforcing laws. One of the big fears of the Anti-Federalists was that the federal government would get too powerful, and start telling the states what to do, thus infringing on their rights to govern themselves (investing the power, instead, in a large, centralized body where the people of the states would have very attenuated influence).
You're right, the government serves the people. It doesn't serve the whims of dictatorial judges. That means that the people get to make rules that govern how they live. That means they get to make rules that shape their society. Invariably, there will be those who do not like those rules. Invariably, some of those laws will be stupid and/or unfair. Unfortunately, that is the cost of government. The beauty, especially in a republican government, is that over time, those things tend to correct themselves because people get tired of unfair, unjust, and stupid laws. All without judges sticking their noses in things.
Also invariably, there will be times when the government will step outside those bounds. That is why the states passed their own bills of rights in their own constitutions---to limit the power of the state government. That's why we placed a Bill of Rights in the Constitution (which did not apply to the states at all until the 14th Amendment was ratified). But even today, the Bill of Rights does not wholesale apply to the states. In fact, one of the reasons I like Hugo Black was he advocated "complete incorporation," meaning that the entire Bill of Rights should apply to the states. But he also recognized that the Bill of Rights was not license for judges to substitute their own judgment for legislatures'. It had very specific limits. When governments crossed the line, Hugo Black was the first to stand up and tell them "No." But he also respected the right of the people to govern themselves within those limits. That is what is lost on most of the Court today.