Police Could Charge Data Center Operators In the Largest Child Porn Bust Ever 199
sarahnaomi sends this report from Motherboard:
Canadian police say they've uncovered a massive online file sharing network for exploitative material that could involve up to 7,500 users in nearly 100 countries worldwide. But unlike past investigations into the distribution of child porn, which typically involve targeting suspects individually, police have instead seized over 1.2 petabytes of data ... from a data center responsible for storing the material, and may even attempt to lay criminal charges against its operators, too.
"What we are alleging is occurring is that there are individuals and organizations that are profiting from the storage and the exchange of child sexual exploitation material," Scott Tod, Deputy Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), told Motherboard at a conference late last month, after speaking to a crowd of defense specialists. "They store it and they provide a secure website that you can log into, much like people do with illegal online gaming sites."
"What we are alleging is occurring is that there are individuals and organizations that are profiting from the storage and the exchange of child sexual exploitation material," Scott Tod, Deputy Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), told Motherboard at a conference late last month, after speaking to a crowd of defense specialists. "They store it and they provide a secure website that you can log into, much like people do with illegal online gaming sites."
1.2 what? (Score:5, Funny)
1.2 pedobytes.
Re:1.2 what? (Score:5, Funny)
1.2 pedobytes.
According to the article, they seized more than 4 times more child porn than the Library of Congress has.
But unlike past investigations into the distribution of child porn, which typically involve targeting suspects individually, police have instead seized over 1.2 petabytes of data—more than four times the amount of data in the US Library of Congress
I'm kind of surprised that all congress could only manage to accumulate 300TB of child porn.
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Budget cutbacks.
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And then there is the one guy in the basement, whose job it is to decide "is this child porn good enough for Congress" and then upload it to a server for Congressmen to access...
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In careful consideration of this, and in light of the seriousness of the problem, I have determined that the appropriate reaction is to seize Canada. I'm pretty sure that congress will determine the commerce clause covers it, anyway. I'm writing my crook^w legislator this evening.
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That reminds me of Jimmy Carr's most Offensive jokes:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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1.2 pedobytes.
According to the article, they seized more than 4 times more child porn than the Library of Congress has.
Depending on how much child porn the Library of Congress has, that might not be that much.
Re:1.2 what? (Score:5, Insightful)
1.2 pedobytes.
According to the article, they seized more than 4 times more child porn than the Library of Congress has.
But unlike past investigations into the distribution of child porn, which typically involve targeting suspects individually, police have instead seized over 1.2 petabytes of data—more than four times the amount of data in the US Library of Congress
I'm kind of surprised that all congress could only manage to accumulate 300TB of child porn.
Actually, they seized 1.2 petabytes of data, not child porn.
The situation is that this is a data center. So that means SANs and virtual hosts. SANs mean that you don't just have a 1-to-1 relationship between a hard drive (or even a hard drive array) and a computer. And virtual hosting means you don't have a 1-to-1 relationship between a server and a website. So I'd bet my paycheck that they went in with a broad net, grabbing every SAN that they thought contained child porn. In essence, they grabbed the whole data center so that they can figure out just how much of it...and which of it...is actual evidence.
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They probable siezed the entire contents of the datacenter, just to be sure they got everything offending. Might mean a few thousand customers will be inconvenienced, but it's the only way to be sure.
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They probable siezed the entire contents of the datacenter, just to be sure they got everything offending. Might mean a few thousand customers will be inconvenienced, but it's the only way to be sure.
The only thing this is "sure" to do is absolutely kill the formerly thriving data center / cloud computing business in Canada.
With that much data, they barely have the justice / investigation capability in the ENTIRE COUNTRY to sort through it all, and it demonstrates without a doubt the capaiblity that they DO have is technically ignorant to the point of not being able to read labels and cross reference it with customer records.
The result will be more, but more distributed hosting of such things there
Re:absolutely kill ... cloud computing business (Score:2)
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Some days I just wish America's Hat would just fall the fuck off.
Don't feel bad about that. They feel the same way about Canada's Underwear.
Why stop at Operators? (Score:2)
Charge Intel for making CPU's!
Charge Microsoft for making computer software!
Charge Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone!
Re:Why stop at Operators? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why stop at Operators? (Score:5, Funny)
Charge Intel for making CPU's!
Charge Microsoft for making computer software!
Charge Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone!
Charge Al Gore for inventing the INTERNET! Now that's a crime...
Secure is now illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
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Just because I know it's going to happen: Everybody, please keep in mind - Canadian police means it's Canada and not US Law that matters.
But I had the same thought as you. Sure, 1.2 petabytes is a huge amount of data, but at ~$200/terabyte, that's 'only' $200k worth of data, and easily reachable by many commercial businesses that are 'data intensive'.
Should a car rental place be liable if one of their customers is using their cars to run drugs? What if they're one of their bigger customers? How about th
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You are a little off track in you car analogy. The space in not just rented it is managed and redistributed to more akin to a taxi service. So if taxi drivers where driving around picking up and distributing illegal materials, are they guilty, hmm, good bloody question and one that most certainly 'NEEDS' to be investigation. Once the investigation is complete, they can then decide whether or not prosecution is appropriate and then of course guilt or innocence can be decide in court. The data hosting and ex
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You are a little off track in you car analogy. The space in not just rented it is managed and redistributed to more akin to a taxi service.
I stand by 'rental car' as opposed to 'taxi' because of the level of hands-on personal interaction required of the data, IE 'none'.
I agree though, they need to go after the producers. Though at this point I can't help but think that many of them have probably already been punished, or are even dead.
Re:Secure is now illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
For posterity, nowhere does the article claim that the 1.2 Petabytes is all child pornography. The company claims that most of the data is not, but I guess that is a secondary issue. Holding the company responsible is idiotic unless they were complicit in the crime. Did they refuse to take action that the courts claimed they needed to with the data? Try to hide the data when cops came looking? I don't see any of those things, so IMHO this is a scare tactic attempting to get people to do what GP stated: "have companies snoop through all user data" which is asinine.
I'm of the personal opinion that people involved in child porn should be jailed for life without parole if they are found guilty. The rule of law can not be tossed out the window because of my emotion on the topic. That is called chaos or anarchy, and we are supposed to be civilized.
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They are just leaning on them to try and scare other companies into being less respecting of privacy or building systems that don't allow them to police their own systems.
don't for get google for linking to sites as well. (Score:2)
don't for get google for linking to sites as well.
why not also go after EACH ISP as well.
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its on the internet....
you are on the internet.....
therefore you are guilty for possessing illegal materials!
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Were they aware of the contents?
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In my limited experience seeing these cases go by, no.
It's usually hard to convict these child porn cases unless you can demonstrate that the perpetrator action's were knowing and willful. Yes, some of the laws aren't like that and are strict liability, which sucks. Yes, some unwise prosecutors indict on absolutely ridiculous cases, and that sucks. But in general, if you're going to actually get a conviction in court, you really need to be able to demonstrate that the guy did it knowingly and willfully.
Even
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This is not correct. Real actionable CP cannot be reached by accident.
I know of a situation where there was a complete web snapshot taken of a large East Coast (US) major name university. It turns out there were a lot of links to porn and other disreputable (drugs, gambling) web addresses. This was not because the school was a nest of porn watching drug taking gamblers, but d
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There's more to the Internet than the Web. There is certainly CP that can be accessed accidentally. It's true that it doesn't really happen all that often. (It mostly happens with people on P2P file-sharing systems who execute vague searches for porn and then mass-download everything.) But it doesn't matter -- the defense can and does make a legitimate case that it *could* be accidental unless you demonstrate intent to a reasonable degree.
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After researching the legal issues, it was determined that nothing you could find on the easily accessible internet included CP
That depends on your definition of CP. Does a naked kid on the beach or in the bathtub count ?
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Personally I think that's going too far and we should be worrying about crimes committed against children instead of being thought police. Go after child molesters first - there's been more effort going after Kim Dotcom by playing the child porn hosting card than going after a convicted child rapist like Polanski.
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I've spent a lot of time on the shady side of the internet. I've yet to find any real CP. The closest I've seen are artistic depictions - though I note that in many jurisdictions including the UK where I live, possessing even an pornographic artistic depiction of a character that resembles a minor is illegal.
Julie Amero did allmost did time due to pop up pro (Score:2)
Julie Amero did almost did time due to pop up pron, the school being late in paying for the web filtering software, and the a sub being told do not trun off the system.
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I'm not sure a persons want to risk their freedom if they were to ever to be accused of something and was relying on technical details as a defense. I think for the average jury all the prosecution would have to do is say "We found this horrible image of a child on their computer" and instantly they are
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Oh, no. You do not want your defense to rest on technical details. Rather, a common tactic (admittedly, among people who are guilty) is for the defense to claim that it was an accident or malware and demand that the prosecution show intent. The defense can then hammer on the prosecution's expert witness (forensic investigator) and back them in to a corner where they're having to explain technical details. This makes the jury unhappy with the prosecution.
Displaying the images you found in court works pretty
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Pros3cut0rz need to periodically run for reelection.
Not in this case. Crown Attorneys in Canada are civil employees, not elected positions.
Willful blindness and Post Snowden (Score:2)
So they are guilty for providing secure online storage. Apparently you aren't allowed to supply secure storage, you have to snoop through your users content to make sure its not illegal... Also land lords much search all apartments, banks must search safety deposit boxes, storage rental owners must search their units.
If they provided secure online storage, they shouldn't be guilty. If they were providing secure online storage to people whom they knew or should have known were hosting porn of underage people, they should suffer a significant legal penalty. If they were providing secure online storage to people whom they knew or should have known were hosting child porn of preteens then they should be burned at the stake.
There is such a thing as willful blindness. The sheer quantity of data involved is going to make it
Just because they call it pedo doesn't mean it is (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a file sharing site, it almost certainly is 1.2 petabytes of regular porn, movies and music. But its encrypted so they don't know.
How do you force decryption? You play the "think of the children" card.
So they threaten the file host to get them to install some sort of webbugs and remove the decryption. Presumably they're threatening lots of the file hosts in a similar fashion.. "remove the encryption or well find one pedo file on there and claim its all pedo and bust you with screams of 'military grade hardware' and 1.2 TB drives.. blah blah blah.
What this means is that a file host refused to comply with their mass surveillance demands and so they're playing their pedo panic card. Perhaps the terrorist card will be played after that.
And people like you will do your marketing (and it is clearly marketing) for this. You even talk like one " If they were providing secure online storage to people whom they knew or should have known". Right.
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If it's a file-sharing site, there's always the possibility the child porn was just an excuse - the real reason being that you can't bust the doors down so easily for copyright infringement. If pressure was applied politically to get the company closed down, a search to find something illegal follows. That would explain the huge volume of siezed data: Police grabbing every server in the building in order to force the datacenter to cease operations and drive them out of business.
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What this means is that a file host refused to comply with their mass surveillance demands and so they're playing their pedo panic card. Perhaps the terrorist card will be played after that.
And people like you will do your marketing (and it is clearly marketing) for this. You even talk like one " If they were providing secure online storage to people whom they knew or should have known". Right.
They reported a hosted site where you sign on to exchange child porn. If accurate, that's a good thing for them to go after.
Obviously if it's done with ulterior motives, like in response to a failure to comply with the NSL equivalent up there, it is a bad thing.
As to how I talk, you have to talk that way if you want to establish the boundaries of someone's liability, civil or criminal. You need to have the possibility to prosecute someone who deliberately looks the other way while crime is happening, or e
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"Hosted" still doesn't mean "knew it existed". It just means that it happened to live on their servers.
For a rare non-car analogy, my GMail account "hosts" thousands of attachments I've received over the years, many encrypted (I don't send personal info through any third party in cleartext). Anyone who "knows the password" can get in and view them. Some of them, I've even share
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The system of plea bargaining is a perversion of justice and should be gotten rid of as soon as possible.
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So far no, you're not required to snoop through user's content, even in Canada.
But presumably since they were making money off of this, some or all of this content was being distributed. My guess is that the cops found themselves a way into the distribution chain and traced it back to a source large enough to warrant giving themselves a public pat on the back. You know, like an investigation is supposed to work.
I bet Vic Toews is crying that this didn't happen 3 years ago. His warrantless wiretapping bil
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* - if it were in america, i will admit i dont know canadas laws all too well
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You don't have to be actually breaking the law, the cop just has to have a reasonable suspicion that you might be.
Many, many years ago as a teenager I got stopped by an on-foot cop (I was pulling out of a fast food place). Turns out he recognized the license plate because the car (my mom's) had been stolen (for joy rides) several times before (easy to hotwire, and predating ignition locks in the steering column). I wasn't breaking any law, but the stop was justified on suspicion. Since the last name an
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As a Canadian, I was recently pulled over to the side of a highway by an officer on foot.
Well you obviously weren't pulled over for speeding, now were you?
Everyone Must Police their users! (Score:2)
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First, the DC would not know the number of users. Second, 1.2PB is not that much. It can fit into a single rack, of which a DC may have hundreds.
My guess would be that whoever is suspecting DC personnel does not understand the technology involved. Same as you.
So what, the DC are gonna be gatekeepers now ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So what, the DC are gonna be gatekeepers now ? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ignorance is no excuse." ...ahem...even if there's no possible, reasonable, or legal way of ever knowing.
I believe the phrase is "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." It means that if you willfully commit an act, and that act happens to be illegal, then you are criminally liable even if you didn't know the act in question is illegal. That is to say, you don't have to have to form an intent to break the law, you merely have to form an intent (and act on that intent) to commit some action, and that action has to be illegal.
What's at issue here isn't ignorance of the law, but ignorance of the facts, and that, oftentimes, is an excuse. Although possession of child pornography is illegal in most jurisdictions, almost all the statues generally say something along the lines of "it is unlawful to knowingly possess...". There is a very practical reason for this: absent the word "knowingly", anyone could simply e-mail anyone else some images that are illegal, and the recipient could be criminally liable for possession even if they hit the delete key immediately upon seeing it. Defendants could e-mail such images to prosecutors and judges and said prosecutors and judges would be guilty of the same crime the defendant is accused of.
So it is very relevant here whether or not the owners, administrators, or employees of the data storage service knew that they were storing child pornography.
Symantics (Score:2)
I'm usually not one to defend this, however as you more or less say, the devil is really in the details. The Courts really rely on wording such as "Knowingly" and "Reasonable" and "For the Purposes of". I don't know the details, but there are plenty of excuses of commercial enterprises that are really illegal operations with a thin veneer of legality.
The crux is if they can prove that they knowingly did anything illegal, and if it was reasonable for them not to know, and if the services provided were for th
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Anyone who thinks that tens of thousands of pages of federal laws can be boiled down into "don't steal" and "don't commit assault" is an idiot. How about "don't copy an MP3 file" or "don't create, possess or distribute a piece of software to circumvent DRM"?
The OP is right. We are neither free nor safe because the federal government has created so many laws that we're all guilty of something.
http://harveysilverglate.com/B... [harveysilverglate.com]
"Even the most intelligent and informed citizen cannot predict with any reasonabl
1.2 PETABYTES??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Something isnt adding up. That's the kind of volume I would expect for an aspiring XHampster and a much wider legit audience, petabytes of child porn just doesn't seem possible. That's what, a couple of hundred gigabytes for each of the accused? Potentially hundreds of thousands of hours of video? Who the hell could have produced that much????
This sounds like BS to force datacentres to give backdoors to the feds.
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If you read the article, they cops have custom password hacking software. It's more likely they just seized everything. There's probably 1TB, of actual child porn. But they got a warrant so they can go through the rest of the data...illegally...just to be sure.
Re:1.2 PETABYTES??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here. If we assume 1GB/h, that would be 1.2 million hours of film, i.e. 140 years. That is a bit much to be credible. Seems to me some people are trying to abuse the victims even more in order to get more funding and more surveillance laws.
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SummaryBait (Score:4, Informative)
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not let facts get in the way of Internet outrage.
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Yes, but it's interesting it's even being talked about. Normally, when a crime is committed, you don't also immediately consider indicting the owner of the facility it happened in...unless there's specific evidence they're involved that isn't being made public.
If this is the garden variety case where there's no reason to think the data center operators are involved, then of course this is massive overreach.
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I about guarantee mass arrests of the employees of the data center and 1 to 3 years unjust imprisonment for all of them until the day before the trial with maybe a few going to trial or have half of the employees get time served in plea deals, sentencing them all to have a felony record and to work for low wage jobs the rest of their miserable lives just because, well, just because.
I hope to God that I am wrong on this!!! PLEASE
Great cause, dumb ass cops (Score:5, Interesting)
They say "To access the files, many of which are password protected, the cops developed password-cracking software in-house that is slowly sifting through the mountain of information."
Uh... I'll translate this to, the files are all protected with easy to remember, dictionary based passwords and they wrote a script which uses a rainbow list to try each one which is why it's so damn slow.
When you read shit statements made by whoever provided the interview to whoever actually performed it and realize they're both clueless, it becomes really hard to take the rest of the article seriously. It's like when you read a CV from a fry boy at McDonalds who writes "Food preparation technician", you just can't expect everything else to be embellished in order to sound more important.
Another example of "STUPID!!!" is :
"The volume of information is so expansive that in order to store and analyze the data safely and securely, police had to purchase storage hardware similar to what was used by Canadian military forces in Afghanistan."
Computer crimes forensics has to be handled very carefully. If you alter the data, it's inadmissible in most courts as it's tampering with evidence. The FBI paid millions to write data handling procedures following the public beating they took on the gloves in the OJ case. So, it's important to have a backup and some way to read the data without altering it... or they need to keep a copy.
A 1.2 petabyte SAN can be done in 16U for analysis using 6TB drives and Cisco 3160 servers. For unaltered storage, there are tape drives. They're slow and they're inefficient, but they're an accepted medium for evidence.
So, making dumb ass statements like "we needed 1.2TB of hard drives and a workstation" as making some idiotic remark like how they've gone war zone grade was just LAME!
Nailing the data center is a great idea EXCEPT!!! they probably run almost all that crap through Tor and use BitCoin now. So, if there is actually any real traceable information to be had, they just passed up their best opportunity to planting a proper honeypot and actually busting the people using the site. They could have put "dating sites" like "find an anonymous live show in your area" and the pervs who are using telephones can provide their locations via GPS. Then they can track and bust them.
Instead, they've just done what the police have found so successful with the Pirate Bay and the site will be moved somewhere else next week or month and they won't have a clue what to do about it.
Let's be honest, these fool cops probably just secured the safety of the pedophiles for a while longer.
Re:Great cause, dumb ass cops (Score:5, Insightful)
To access the files, many of which are password protected, the cops developed password-cracking software in-house that is slowly sifting through the mountain of information.
So the real take away is that they have no idea how much of this 1.2 PB is actually child porn. What they have is a file sharing / web hosting service with 1.2 PB of data, provided by users, some of which they know is child porn.
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"Developed password-cracking software in-house"
Brilliant. Have some amateur develop it, instead of using an established product written by an expert. Great idea.
Reminds me of the time (no joke) a Secret Service agent asked me to get data off of a PC that had been used for a credit-card scam. At the time I was (iirc) a college freshman or maybe sophomore, majoring in EE, who happened to program as a hobby. At the time I felt pretty flattered - only in retrospect did I realize how crazy this was. I had full,
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When the police want to make your life hell they can arrest you every other week, trumping up charges and dropping them within hours, and seize your property until you can't pay your lawye
Second source? (Score:2)
Is there a second source for this? I can't find anything outside of the linked article. E.g. In Google I can't find anything about OPP child porn busts since Sept 2014; I can't find anything about this on the OPP home page; nor in the last month or so on EFF blog (EFF provided a quote for the article).
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Sept 2014
Yeah, that's probably it. Sounds like about the right amount of time before it would be reported on Slashdot.
Great... (Score:4, Interesting)
These are the same fucking retards that can't even properly secure evidence when Wynns government decided to violate the data protection laws and deleted not only primary, but backup data when there was a standing warrant regarding to the massive scandal relating to the gas plants. You'll have to excuse me if I don't have any faith in the information provided at all. Hell, their general force is in 80/90's era computer technology.
What's gonna get good is that they pulled a blanket seizure with a warrant that was for specific data. That's a no-no guys, the judge stated one thing you stupid idjits did something else. I'm going to hazard it'll get to court and the entire thing will be thrown out because they overstepped the bounds of the original seizure warrant.
Child Gender (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always wondered... when one thinks of child porn they imagine ugly, balding guys taking advantage of little girls. Do these people ever make stuff like older women taking advantage of younger boys? You'd think there would be some interest in that sort of thing among those kinds of people.
For the record I have no interesting in "researching" this and landing in jail for it, hence the question.
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Two former Covina-Valley Unified School District teachers previously charged with misdemeanors for allegedly supplying booze to underage students on a San Clemente camping trip were charged Monday with felony sex offenses.
Melody Suzanne Lippert, 38, of Covina, is accused of playing “matchmaker” for co-defendant Michelle Louise Ghirelli, 30, of West Covina, who is charged with having sex with a 17-year-old boy, according
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Pretty sure 17 years old doesn't count as "child", so that doesn't answer my question. Ah well... one of those mysteries I'll never solve I suppose.
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It does for legal purposes in many jurisdictions.
Sex and age laws get complicated. Here in the UK, for example, it's legal to have sex at sixteen - but illegal to supply pornography to someone of sixteen. They are only allowed to look at the real thing. And if they record their perfectly-legal sex, that's production of child pornography.
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I can answer your question: yes, they do. You don't have to look for illegal content, you can:
1. Look for "fantasy stories" published by "child lovers". You'll find plenty that involve female adults with male or female children, indicating a - for lack of a better term - demand for that market.
2. Google "woman charged for creating child porn". You'll find at least a few cases of women who molested young children (preteens) and distributed the resulting material.
You can also look up cases like Karla Ho
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Because Republicans snuck a ban into a completely unrelated port security bill that they knew nobody could vote against right before an election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006#Legislative_history
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How does that make a difference in Canada?
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in Canada, lotteries and gambling are typically run by government institutions.
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And that makes US laws matter, because?
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because wires don't follow political boundaries
your fiber is our fiber and visa versa. it's all bound up. a message you send from Vancouver to Halifax may/ probably crosses the border into the USA
and If i am in Chicago and i send a message to Anchorage, that goes through Canada
Canadian and American data is intertwined
and our authorities coordinate and cooperate in managing that in ways that would make both Americans and Canadians uncomfortable if you don't want eyes from another jurisdiction seeing our data
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That doesn't make a hill of brans anyways. The answer is US law does not matter in canada unless a treaty makes it matter or a US citizen in US jurisdiction is involved in violating a US law. And the later is only to the extent the US can convince Canada to enforce a warrant or extradite someone to the US or otherwise lawfully brkng the people or companies into US jurisdiction (nab them at the airport or something).
The reason it was brought up is because organized democrate trolls were marshalled to trash t
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man you alex jones herp derps are fucking retarded
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because wires don't follow political boundaries
your fiber is our fiber and visa versa. it's all bound up. a message you send from Vancouver to Halifax may/ probably crosses the border into the USA
Regardless of the physical path the 1's and 0's take the US can't arbitrarily declare things illegal and expect the rest of the world to follow suit.
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They aren't deterred by whether or not the laws they pass are within their power under US law either.
I guess that would be un-American ;)
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I interpreted the question as independent of the article.
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Because Republicans snuck a ban into a completely unrelated port security bill that they knew nobody could vote against right before an election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006#Legislative_history
How is that even a legal thing that they can do that?
Not Dumb.... (Score:5, Informative)
Not stupid. Just clickbait.
If you actually read the article, it says "charges will likely hinge on the degree to which employees knew such activity was taking place." Nobody is going to get charged unless there's evidence that they knew they were hosting child porn and did nothing about it.
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Not stupid. Just clickbait.
Nobody is going to get charged unless there's evidence that they knew they were hosting child porn and did nothing about it.
In my opinion they would have to know specifics. I'm sure that employees of the the phone company know that abusive and threatening calls are made sometimes, but that shouldn't make them liable.
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Not stupid. Just clickbait.
If you actually read the article, it says "charges will likely hinge on the degree to which employees knew such activity was taking place." Nobody is going to get charged unless there's evidence that they knew they were hosting child porn and did nothing about it.
There is a question not answered by the article - namely did the police grab, and are they hacking into, sites that had nothing to do with the website they knew hosted porn or are they hacking into everything hosted by the hosting company?
Re:Not Dumb.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not Dumb.... (Score:4, Informative)
Given storage work I've done, when you're hosting that much content and that much traffic, it's almost _always_ pornographic. I do hope that the Canadian courts can be sensible about what is specifically and knowingly hosted, and what is treated in a hands-off fashion like US "common carrier" standards require.
I'll be even more fascinated to see if any intelligence agencies know about child porn and refused to reveal or prosecute its source, due to a desire to keep their monitoring secret. We've certainly seen that in the USA.
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and even if it was, that is still legal is it not??
{tin foil} it could all be a cover for collecting other data. meaning they are using this because they figure no one will complain about it when this is the topic at hand. but if they told us what they really took, people might get angry {/tin foil}
Re:Not Dumb.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I was referring to the various reports around 2010 and 2011 saying that over 30% of the Internet content was porn. Those numbers have been called into question (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23030090), but from network experience and dealings with bulk storage and network traffic, I'll continue to claim that it's the most _likely_ content of any single Petabyte sized archive. I'll agree that it's not the only possible content of such a large repository.
You've a valid point that "it''s still legal" for ordinary pornography, at least in most countries. Child porn is the political leverage used to censor or filter Internet content in many countries. I'll be quite curious to see if this case actually involved child porn, or if it was merely distasteful or a means to get other traffic data for the prosecutors.
There was n infamous case about Amateur Action BBS, a very popular porn site that was framed for dealing in child porn. The frame failed, since they did not even open the box of content they hadn't ordered, but the postal inspector from Tennessee succeeded in convicting a California couple for content that was previously ruled to be constitutionally protected in California.. The history is fascinating: there was a good thread at the time in EFF discussion groups, still available at http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ma... [mit.edu] b
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> Adult pornography on the internet is actually illegal in the US
Could you provide a citation or evidence of this, please? There have certainly been attempts to regulate it, with mixed results. But even casual research leads very quickly to the Supreme Court case that struck down porongraphy provisions of the Communications Decency Act. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... [wikipedia.org]) And even that unconstitutional law attempted to restrict pornography to minors, not pornography as a whole.
There was a particularly
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When did pornography become illegal in the US? I was under the impression that pornography came under the umbrella of 1st amendment protected free speech. I think there have been a number of cases won by pornography publishers on these very grounds. It has been a while since prosecuting pornographers was a big thing, but I think there was some guy named "buttman" who made milk enima porn who was targeted a couple of years back and won. Obscenity has been illegal for almost as long as the US has been a c
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Pornography is and always has been illegal in many US jurisdictions. This is very much like online gambling. New York or California might tolerate this stuff but some grandstanding DA in Tennesee will decide to bring someone up on charges.
Doesn't matter where the server is hosted.
This has been going on with online services and cable TV since the 80s.
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Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. So, what's obscene? As Justice Stewart said, "I know it when I see it." Most current Supreme Court caselaw is Miller v. California, which has a three-prong test for ruling something obscene:
1. Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
2. Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[3] spe
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âoeIf you do become aware that something is there, there's a reporting obligation. But usually data centers aren't actively looking through their stuff, so it's reasonable to say that they wouldn't have come across that."
Most data centers don't make a point of snooping through all of their customers' data. If you want to open a data center that does so, let us know just how many customers found that to be an acceptable practice during your bankruptcy.
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It could be likely that one or more of the employees where account holders. But i agree, the DC has about as much right to snoop through your data as your landlord has to wiretap your phone or rummage through you closets and sock drawer just becsuse it is on his property.
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Not only that, they're probably not naive when it comes to this sort of thing. They know that if they don't want to be liable, they have to operate at arm's length from the data. Not only will they be able to tell their customers that they don't snoop, they're never on the hook legally for what their customers are doing because they're not involved.
Re:Terms of Service (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes - and THAT is what is wrong with the cloud. Unless you are encrypting it independently before uploading, your stuff is going to be scanned for various purposes. All of those purposes are detrimental to your privacy. It's great that they took down a pedo ring - IF they really took down a pedo ring. But, they are going to use this as an excuse or reason to continue spying on all honest citizens.
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