Child Porn Probe Uses Live Internet Wiretap

rrkap writes "The Sacramento Bee is reporting that Jason Heath Morgan, a suspect in a child porn case was subject to the first 'live internet wiretap.' According to the story, 'Technology used in the surveillance is very similar to a phone tap. Agents attached a monitoring device to Morgan's phone line, then tracked his Internet activity from remote computers.' This packet sniffing was authorized by the PROTECT Act - officially Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act, which authorizes such tapping of internet connections."

For the love of Jehovah

[Anonymous Coward]

Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today

Will these forced acronyms never end?

Re:For the love of Jehovah

[Anonymous Coward]

PROTEECT? Can't they at least spell properly?

Re:For the love of Jehovah

[Anonymous Coward]

> > Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today

> PROTEECT? Can't they at least spell properly?

Okay, I'm all for speling korrectlee butt neether:

"Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to Exploit Children Today"

nor

"Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End Children Today" would get much support during an election year.

Re:For the love of Jehovah

[identity0]

As it stands, I guess "PROTECT Act" stands for either:

"Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End Children Today Act" - An act that shall finally address the growing menace to today's society: children. Yes, we will outlaw children forever, and end the suffering of untold numbers of would-be parents. Won't someone think of the children?!

or "Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to Exploit Children Today Act" - Children are our most valuable resource. Why should we spend money educating those brats, when we can put them to work in the forced-labor camps? Either that, or lawmakers want to 'exploit' children without those messy child molestation trials. Won't someone think of the children?!

Re:For the love of Jehovah

[einhverfr]

Note to moderators-- I see this discussion as on-topic because it relates to revisionism of names/acronyms etc. which was a thread of this discussion.

First, I would hardly call the large number of possible titles available to be used "neutral." Such titles as Adonai Tzabaoth (iirc Lord of Hosts), Elohim (tough one. I translate as "Pantheon" but could be translated as "Great Plural Male/Female God").

Secondly, since you link to Watchtower.org, I Know you are probably not allowed to read this, but---

Aryeh

Re:For the love of Jehovah

[Roland Piquepaille]

Will these forced acronyms never end?

WITH-FANE

Re: For the love of Jehovah

[Black Parrot]

> Will these forced acronyms never end?

How 'bout -

"Law Against Media Exploitation - A Constitutional Regulation Of New York Media.

Re:For the love of Jehovah

[pipingguy]

Is this a Backronym [wikipedia.org]?

Not .. Exactly

[CrankyFool]

It sounds like when they investigated him the act was not in force yet and they had to actually get a judge to agree to the tap; that makes this not a particularly interesting or scary story -- judges have had the ability to approve taps to compromise our privacy for a long, long time now.

It looks like PROTECT might make this at the discretion of the prosecutor which is, obviously a Very Bad Thing[tm], but it's not all that relevant in this case, it seems.

Re:Not .. Exactly

[txviking]

Until some of those cops hacks into someone's wireless hub and produce the evidence themselves

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not far fetched to assume an overly zealous agent might consider planting evidence on a computer either. They already do this in a variety of other cases. Sometimes they are caught at it, a lot of times they aren't, and you can't tell. And there's a lot of prior cases to prove the point, the miami cops busted planting guns on suspects, trying to clear themselves of murder. the texas prosecutiors and cops who "flaked" (that's the cop slang term for it, it's so common, taken originally from gold mining and planting gold flakes I think to make a mine look better)) hundreds of people in this small town with drugs that weren't drugs, getting convictions, sending people to jail.

There's just something spooky about it. Child porn is a real problem, but we can't deny government lying isn't a problem as well. It's a serious major problem, ongoing, chronic. Just now on drudge headlines they are investigating a secret service guy for falsifying evidence/perjury in the martha stewart case. And remember the FBI "crime lab" tests scandals of a couple of years ago.

The bad guys commit crimes, but we have a much harder time exposing the "good guys" who really aren't. Look at all the controversy about iraq now, the weird circumstances around 9-11, prisoner abuse, etc.

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Re:Exactly

[julesh]

Gnutella, Freenet, and other file sharing networks are rampant with child pornography. I have yet to see any outrage in particular over this.

Then you haven't been looking very hard. Most file sharing discussion boards have frequent "what can we do to stop all the child porn... nothing, it's technically impossible to stop this kind of thing" threads. (E.g., this one [shareaza.com]).

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[account_deleted]

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The problem is

[Adolph_Hitler]

Just reporting files to the FBI does nothing. The name of the file does not tell you it is or isnt child porn. The file itself might be on the computer but this does not tell you that the owner of this computer is the child pornographer who created the file.

So it's more complicated than simply arresting random people who have files with the wrong names or who have kiddie porn files. This does absolutely nothing to stop the creation of these files and you only are arresting the people who share it.

To me it seems to be more of an attack on P2P and internet freedom than an attack on childporn. Everyone knows the childporn is produced offline yet everyone is focused on the internet? This would be equal to going to the ghettos and trailer parks to arrest drug addicts. Yes of course you will find drug addicts if you look for them but arresting them does absolutely nothing because the drug dealers will continue producing more drugs.

In this situation we have to remove the producers of child porn and by doing so, the child porn will eventually become too rare to find and won't be floating around on kazaa. I don't really see how tapping peoples internet connections has anything to do with stopping childporn, it seems more like invading peoples privacy. If there is a wiretap used it should be to monitor the activity of the computer, not monitor internet activity.

Anyone who produces childporn most likely uses Windows and one of the digital camera programs. Shouldnt law enforcement work with the makers of this software and hardware to allow them to tap just that software or access JUST the pictures on a computer? Or movies if movies are the problem could still be handled in such a way so that it does not require a wiretap.

However...

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with an automated approach is defining what is child pornography. When one person hears that term, they may assume the image is of an adult having sex with a child. Another person may assume it's pictures of naked kids. Another person may assume it's as little as a provacatively posed fully dressed child. The hard-core stuff is easy to spot, and most everyone agrees it's a problem. It's when you get narrowly focused groups trying to get everything labelled child porn that you run into di

Re:Why are we so focused on the internet?

[Minna Kirai]

The way to stop childporn has nothing to do with P2P or the internet.

The real way to stop child porn is to sit back and wait for Moore's Law.

Within 10 years tops, computer graphics will have gotten so good that there is no longer any reason to use actual human actors in porn- whether children or adults. Criminal's won't take the risk of using real children when they can just buy "3d Poser 2015" for $199 and crank out 100% fake pics.

Remember that in the USA, illegal child porn is only pictures whose production actually involved the sexual abuse of children- not just ones that look that way.

Re:Why are we so focused on the internet?

[RPoet]

Don't be sure sure. While IANAL, the minute you can produce child pornography with computers only, miles away from any child, it too will be outlawed (if it isn't already). It is moral hysteria, and it's in power.

why does the junkie matter?

[Adolph_Hitler]

Stopping the junkie does nothing to stop the creation of childporn. Why does it matter if we stop the spread of child porn vs the creation?

Stopping the creation of childporn is very obvious, we know why we must do this, children are being hurt by this. Childporn thats already created and being spread around Kazaa by millions or thousands of people, what do you gain by arresting each person?

Same goes with nuclear weapons, we have no right to tell other people they cannot create them if we have them. This

Re:Exactly

[julesh]

Forgot to comment on this in my previous reply.

How do we prevent child pornography, how do we report it? I would suggest that plugins be provided to automatically scan for these items and forward significant results to the FBI or the ISP that the user is coming from. At the very least we have a moral responsibility to create software that prevents child pornographers from proliferating on the Internet.

And how do you propose we do this? All right, a few years ago it might have been vaguely feasible to stick a keyword-scanner plugin that automatically reported anything that looked dodgy, but these days about 50% of the legitimate content (that is, people trying to promote perfectly legal porn sites, just about the only completely legal purpose file sharing networks are regularly put to) has strings of keywords added to the end that don't have anything to do with the content. There are tens of thousands of files out there with either "lolita", "underage sex", "1[23456]yo", "schoolgirl", or some other keyword that might once have meant something, but a very high proportion of these aren't what the keywords suggest, and the filename tends to make this clear. I remember coming across a whole bunch of files that were labeled "not underage porn".

Until we have working AI that can analyse the content of the files and come to at least a 99% accurate conclusion, there is nothing that can be done on a technical level, as far as I can see.

Sorry.

You're asking the impossible...

[Kjella]

How do we prevent child pornography, how do we report it? I would suggest that plugins be provided to automatically scan for these items and forward significant results to the FBI or the ISP that the user is coming from. At the very least we have a moral responsibility to create software that prevents child pornographers from proliferating on the Internet.

...first off, how do you identify it? "Umm yeah I was just doing one-handed investigative work for the police, looking at those pics" Or are they going

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Re:Harm, Where?

[danila]

How about A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples [paedosexualitaet.de]. "Meta-analyses [based on 59 studies based on college samples] revealed that students with [child sexual abuse] (CSA) were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations genera

Re:

[account_deleted]

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Story of politics, pressure, and social hysteria

[danila]

This "study" by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman has been debunked. It is junk science, although it seems to be quite popular, in a self-serving way, among pedophiles.
It was not debunked - it was condemned by Spiegel, denounced by Congress - hardly a way to do science. Science by consensus always makes me suspicious and in this case the suspicion is valid.

Rind, Bauserman and Tromovitch have responded to their critics (or, shall I say "accusers") several times. Here is a link to one of such articles, The Condemned Meta-Analysis on Child Sexual Abuse Good Science and Long-Overdue Skepticism [findarticles.com] (via FindArticles [findarticles.com]):

In July 1999, the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin published our review of fifty-nine studies that had examined psychological correlates of child sexual abuse (CSA) (Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman 1998). We soon achieved an unexpected honor: our paper was unanimously condemned by Congress. In the aftermath, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER has published two commentaries, one denouncing Congress (Berry and Berry 2000), and the other denouncing our study (Hagen 2001). We would like to offer our own thoughts about this astonishing story of politics, pressure, and social hysteria--the antitheses of critical and skeptical thought.

We conducted our research in the spirit of scientific skepticism, an attitude sadly missing in the CSA panic that arose throughout much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Beginning in 1984, sensational cases of satanic ritual abuse in daycare centers proliferated in the U.S., from McMartin in the West, to Fells Acres in the Northeast, to Little Rascals in the South. Staff workers were accused of such things as assaulting four-year-olds with swords and curling irons, forcing them in ritualistic style to consume feces and drink the blood of sacrificed babies, and molesting them in outer space or on ships at sea surrounded by sharks trained to prevent them from escaping. Meanwhile, by the late 1980s, a billion-dollar recovered memory movement had developed, and diagnoses of multiple personality disorder (MPD) mushroomed. All over the country, women were entering therapy with vague complaints such as feeling unhappy without knowing why, then emerging with "recovered memories" of bizarre childhood victimization--such as being sexually assaulted with hardware tools or vegetables--sometimes for many years, even decades, without "remembering." Often, these women were led to believe that this purported victimization had fragmented their personalities into a dozen, a hundred, or even a thousand alters.

Yet, over time, skeptics emerged-- social scientists, lawyers, and others who questioned the stories coming from daycare cases and therapists' offices. They provided empirical evidence showing how even bizarre memories can be implanted, how children can be manipulated and coerced into telling preposterous stories, how people can be induced to believe they have thousands of "personalities." Daycare cases ceased; convictions were overturned; some of the more egregious practitioners of MPD therapy were successfully sued for malpractice. But few people were willing to critically examine the core assumptions that led to these hysterical epidemics: that child sexual abuse is distinctively horrible (more horrible than any other traumatic experience or than family pathology), inevitably leaving scars that last throughout life (at least, without therapy). It was time to examine those assumptions.

Freud was the first to formalize a relation between CSA and psychological maladjustment. In his "seduction theory," he claimed that all adult neuroses are traceable to premature sex with an older person. He based this notion on a dozen or so patients, whom he pressured to recall seduction episodes using the same discredited techniques that would later be used in modern recovered memory therapy. He soon abandoned his

Re:Harm, Where?

[Chacham]

The harms from sexual predation have been answered by psychologists, law enforcement, physicians and so forth.

That is incorrect. Firstly, law enforcement knows nothing of the studies, they just do as they are told. Further, with the case at hand, a "protection service" is involved, not law enforcement.

Further, physicians can only speak when actual actions happened that caused damage.

Thus, the only group worthy of being asked are psycologists.

However, psycologists only see the cases where there was abus

Re:

[account_deleted]

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That is the purpose of Judicial oversight

[anti-NAT]

On face value, there appears to be nothing wrong with increased police powers, for example, the ability to detain somebody for significant periods of time if they are suspected of something, without allowing the detainee to contact their lawyer or make a phone call to the outside world. Law enforcement officials would only detain bad guys, right ?

The problem with this is that it is based on the assumption that the everybody within the law enforcement organisations involved are totally and 100% honest. Of

Re:That is the purpose of Judicial oversight

[rvega]

On face value, there appears to be nothing wrong with ... the ability to detain somebody for significant periods of time if they are suspected of something

Detention = incarceration = punishment when you have been convicted of no crime. I'd say that, on the face of it, there is something very wrong with giving the police this power. Since when does suspicion give someone the right to deprive you of your freedom? Don't forget that, in the United States at least, you have the right to a trial by jury of you

Very distrubing double think.

[twitter]

The PROTECT Act - officially Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today - gave authorities the right to tap into a suspect's computer to catch child abusers, including Internet pornographers. ... When Sacramento agents made their request in August 2003, the wiretap provision had not yet been used, and authorities had to convince a federal judge to grant the authority.

That article is very disturbing. It admits that the old system worked while glorifying the newfound ability of police to wiretap anyone they feel like. It's hard for me to understand how the reporters, Stanton and Walsh, were able to twist their brains into missing the big picture.

How on Earth can this case be seen a triumph of ghastly new police powers? This creep was caught despite the inconvenience of judicial oversite and due process. The issue is a simply put in the US Bill of Rights, amendment 4 to the Constitution:

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.

That is, your house will not be violated unless reasonable evidence presented and sworn too in a public court of law.

"Terrorism" and kiddie porn are declared serious enough to remove this protection but the removal for some crimes eliminates the protection for everyone. Without that public record and oversight, anyone can be tapped as a "suspect". The potential for abuse is enormous. PROTECT is a perverse name indeed.

oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

now if I can only set one of these babies up at echelon I'll know everything :)

Well, this doesn't bother me on privacy-wise

[DreadCthulhu]

This issue doesn't seem to be a big deal, for the privacy issue - the authorities did have to go to a judge and get a warrant first, just like they would for a phone tap or for an in house search.

Re:Well, this doesn't bother me on privacy-wise

[KoriaDesevis]

This shouldn't be a problem with privacy concerns. First, they had a judge willing to authorize the tap. Second, phone taps have been in use a long time. The biggest difference here is that they were tracking data, not voice. It's not a revolutionary change to the way things are done, it's just a technology being used in a very slightly different way.

Re:Well, this doesn't bother me on privacy-wise

[Curtman]

It's not a revolutionary change to the way things are done, it's just a technology being used in a very slightly different way

I beg to differ. If they present evidence at your trial where they have your voice on tape describing a crime, that's one thing.. But presenting a log of bits with your IP on them as evidence to a non-technical, ill-informed, pedophilia hysterical jury, they might just believe that it necessarily proves that you committed the crime. In this day and age of botnets, and sasser worms, that scares me a bit.

Re:Well, this doesn't bother me on privacy-wise

[woodlander]

I'm glad you aren't not worried. At this point in history, government lying is a well developed art form.

I find it most interesting that no one speaks up for the rights of the individuals as long as the cops can say 'it's for the children'.

Before You People Start Ranting

[Pave Low]

From the article:
When Sacramento agents made their request in August 2003, the wiretap provision had not yet been used, and authorities had to convince a federal judge to grant the authority.

The court order was granted, with a requirement that two groups of agents be involved in monitoring Morgan. The first scrutinized his computer use and culled out everything not related to the investigation. The rest was turned over to the second team.

Everything was by the book here. Now, it's just that computer users aren't invulnerable to using the Internet to commit crimes, the Feds have caught up.

Re:Before You People Start Ranting

[henrik]

And then the two groups of agents met over some beers after work and exchanged all the details.

Re:Before You People Start Ranting

[Tim C]

Yes - due process is due process, no matter what a person is accused of.

People involved in creating kiddie porn are scum, but that's no reason to treat them differently, especially before their guilt has been proved. In fact, if anything given the general attitude towards crimes of this type, even more care should be taken.

A few years ago here in the UK, there was general outcry after a little girl was abused and murdered; it sparked off a number of demonstrations by people demanding that the public be made aware of the locations of known sex offenders. During this time, a paediatrician was hounded out of her home and forced to move because people incorrectly associated her job title with paedophilia.

It's a highly emotive issue, and so you have to be very careful. Saying the wrong thing to the wrong person "because it's kiddie porn" may well get innocent people killed.

Re:Before You People Start Ranting

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

During this time, a paediatrician was hounded out of her home and forced to move because people incorrectly associated her job title with paedophilia.

After Marc Antony's "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech which incited the mob:

Third Citizen: Your name, sir, truly.
Cinna the Poet: Truly, my name is Cinna.
First Citizen: Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.
Cinna the Poet: I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
Fourth Citizen: Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
Cinna the Poet: I a

Re:Before You People Start Ranting

[ThisIsFred]

And that's a problem with a mob of reactive, angry citizens. Despite what may be the best course of action, the government ends up handling the highest profile problems first. Sometimes, those problems aren't the worst. It's hard to argue with logic once emotionalism and media hype take over.

Not the first...

[JohnnyCannuk]

I believe this is exactly how the RCMP and the Montreal Urban Community Police (MUC) caught Mafia Boy back in 2000....

Implementation

[beachplum]

Just curious, I realize a lot of slashdotters have jobs where you have to help with implementing some of these things, how do you feel when asked to assist?

Re:Implementation

[MoonFog]

What is the problem in it? If you've read the article you'd see that there is no difference here compared to tapping a telephone, it's just the first time it's been done this way. If they can catch child pr0n people with this stuff I'm all for it.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Implementation

[Eggplant62]

What is the problem in it? If you've read the article you'd see that there is no difference here compared to tapping a telephone, it's just the first time it's been done this way. If they can catch child pr0n people with this stuff I'm all for it.

What he said. There are some sick fux out there who think that children are sexual playthings. If I were King I'd be all like, "OFF WITH HIS SCROTUM!!"

Re:Implementation

[bconway]

What about when it's for copyright infringement? That's still illegal, you know.

Re:Implementation

[MoonFog]

By taking down these people they are effectively removing parts of it. If you're talkign about servers, remember it's the legislation in the country where the server is located that applies, and it's that governemnts responsibility to track them down. If they don't want to, there's nothing American or European governements can do but put pressure on them. At least with this, they are fighting the P2P spreading of it.
A lot of these people produce the pr0n themselves and distribute it, it would be hard to de

Re:Implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

"You've got to remove the people, that's the only way to fight this problem. "

Get rid of the people?

Child 'abuse' has been around for thousands of years and probably thousands more. Ask the year 0 Greeks if they enjoyed sex with children (someone below the age of 18). Their clay pots seem to suggest they did.

A more sensible approach seems to be needed to solve the harm, if any harm exists, with regards to sexual relationships between children and adults or children and children.

Re:Implementation

[Draknor]

A more sensible approach seems to be needed to solve the harm, if any harm exists, with regards to sexual relationships between children and adults or children and children.

Sensible? Who said anything about being sensible?? Actually TALKING about sex - in this country (US)? Are you crazy? The bible-thumpers won't stand for that! Much better to punish the "evil people" rather than try & fix the system that forces them to be evil! After all, we are the righteous, the just!

Now, where did my copy of 1

Re:Implementation

[bruthasj]

I'd feel great.

Good Idea

[Timesprout]

This is one of the more rational and intelligent responses I have seen to address what is a hugely emotive issue.

Umm...

[Kjella]

...first off it's approved by a court order, so no problems there. Second, what's the big deal about "live" as opposed to "near-real" time? I mean computer logs are kinda like a tape of a regular wiretap. Yes, you might have an officer to listen in "live", but unless that's about something going down in the next few minutes, does that matter?

What's more surprising is that they haven't been able to do this before. drop a LOG line in iptables and you can have a complete log of every packet, live. Somehow I fail to see the big difficulty in this...

Kjella

Re:Umm...

[Vellmont]

What's more surprising is that they haven't been able to do this before. drop a LOG line in iptables and you can have a complete log of every packet, live.

Except where's the machine with the huge hard-drive that's intercepting all the packets and logging them? You can't run iptables on the cable modem.

The interesting part is just that they've got some kind of device to sniff cable or DSL modems and send them somewhere to be analysed. Then you'd have to put everything back together again into meaningfull data (including intercepting binary transmissions). It's _far_ more complicated than a simple tap of a voice line.

Re:Umm...

[The Analog Kid]

Yes, that and the fact that there is nothing compelling an ISP to log everything, there is no law requiring them to do so, if the do, they can't delete the logs because that would be destruction of evidence.

Re:Umm...

[jafiwam]

It's only destruction of evidence if there is an investigation and the ISP is aware of it.

Until then, it's just data.

After however... its a crime.

PROTECT Act?

[dupper]

Brought to you by a commission of Acronyms Sliding into Silliness through Halfwits Appending with Thesauruses Simple-mindedly (ASSHATS).

This is MUCH better.

[Shoten]

With technology like this in place, it becomes harder for the government to justify the need for less discriminate and more easily abused capablities like Carnivore/DCS-1000 or their demands that VoIP wiretapping capability be built into ISP networking gear. If they can tap someone's net connection like their phone line, they don't need to have things installed in every ISP to be able to track what someone does.

What on earth makes you think that...

[Kjella]

"Look here, how much we can do when we wiretap one person. Imagine what it'd be like if we could retroactively monitor everyone like this with a system like Carnivore. We could simply look up their logs and put them away!"

Of course, you could say the same about pretty much everything. Let's log all phone calls so they can go back and listen to everyone that chatted up or SMSed a kid, and track all our movements so we can see who flew/drove in to meet a kid, or track all money so we can see who gave a kid m

Seriously...

[222]

you still need a judge to ok something like this, and who *really* wants to bother supporting child porno slime.
These guys followed the letter of the law, and im glad they caught the guy. Case closed.

Re:Seriously...

[222]

Listen, I understand your concern. I thought about my own post before hitting submit. There is an enormous difference between someone that holds a different political view from yours and someone that peddles child pornography.
Notice in my post that i mentioned the word judge? Thats because one is still required to do this.
Im a liberal, and believe you me, when something fishy starts happening with surveillance of my internet connection, ill be screaming with the rest of you. However, thats not what happen

Re:Seriously...

[Jardine]

What is meant by child pornography in this sentence? Only pictures? Someone who is a day less then 18? Pictures of children taking a bath?

I've always wondered why I'm legally allowed to have sex with someone as young as 14 (the age of consent in Canada) but can't take pictures. Are people with photographic memories who have sex with those 14-17 producing child porn?

Re:Seriously...

[operagost]

No karma whoring, please. This is like a phone wiretap. It is acceptable when sufficient evidence has been gathered to convince a judge to issue a warrant. Abuse happens, but that's because there are evil people on both sides of the law. It's not the law that's at fault, just human nature. If the law becomes corrupt, say, allowing random monitoring, then it's tyranny.

Re:Seriously...

[Yartrebo]

I agree. Usually I don't buy the slipperly slope argument, but banning all moral indecency seems to be the goal of the Christian right wing. Furthermore, here is a defense in favor of allowing underage porn (personally, I don't like child porn and regular porn doesn't register much higher. I'm not sure of my stance on the issue, but I can argue both sides.).

The line between abusing children and underage porn is deliberately blurred. It would be much harder to convince people that underage porn viewers are sub-human (which a bunch of posts seem to assert) if distinctions were made between making and viewing the stuff.

If the same reasoning were applied to the 11th of September, we shouldn't watch the video of the planes hitting the building because it gives us a craving to go out and do it for real and because it supports the terrorists.

Watching underage porn doesn't hurt children, and any indirect links are tenous at best. Certain types (generally anything not involving traditional or anal intercourse with an adult) could probably even be made without much harm to children (well, outside of social problems induced by our society's extremely harsh views, but then one could easily blame society, not the child or parent). And then you have the computer generated or animated stuff.

And then there is the extremely stiff punishment for being caught and the large amount of effort directed at fighting it. Morals will keep most people from making child porn. Remove copyright privilages from child porn (say, by making it technically illegal, but with a private warning being the only punishment) and the profit-hungry pornographers will go away. As far as the remaining people go, the benefit has to be weighed against the costs. Is locking up a thousand or so people in jail and making it impossible for them to get jobs because of the social stigma worth it in order to save a few hundred kids being filmed for porn? And then you have the use value of that porn. Maybe I don't like it, but the people who want it probably do like it.

Finally you have the First Amendment issues. Underage porn is speech, and it is not [in general] hate speech, fighting words, or speech that will cause public disorder (like yelling fire in a theatre), so it should be protected under the First Amendment. I made this point last because a law should never be used as a reason to approve or disapprove of something, but many people seem to believe in the constitution as having moral authority in and of itself, so I'll mention it.

Child porn hurts children

[snStarter]

Child porn hurts children. It's a business with two sides: vendors and subscribers. If only one side is present there is no transaction and children will not be exploited because it won't be profitable.

So...viewing child porn is a part of the problem. Children must be protected against exploitation by adults - its why we have child labor laws in most first-world countries.

In the United States there is a Supreme Court decision that clearly allows for the definition of child porn as prohibited speech.

What

well, for this type of thing

[ShadowRage]

internet wiretapping can be useful but the pointless-to-society-that-only-benefits-higher-up s type of wiretapping (such as spying on everyone at all times to get info on them (such as spyware) and to just get people on anything, and to get them on anything corporations feel they can get them on, etc) is bad.

certain things can be good, as long as people use them for the right reasons (as we know, doesnt happen) but it doesnt matter anyways, the FBI taps people all the time without them knowing it, but the

Going about it the right way

[Chatmag]

I'm glad to see that the Feds are pursuing predators online by using methods that will stand up in court, rather than the questionable tactics [chatmag.com] used by the vigilantes of Perverted Justice [perverted-justice.com]

Re:Going about it the right way

[KrisHolland]

"used by the vigilantes"

Vigilantism could work, just have them cut off all their penises, or for woman their breasts.

Also the sick species of Bonobo Chimps [wikipedia.org] should be wiped out since those animals fuck each other, even adult / child sexual intercourse. Such a sick fucking world we live in, we must reject anything that is disgusting or different from us and make it extinct.

Two sided

[QBasicer]

I don't know about you, but I hate this invasion of privacy the gouvenment is doing.

I have nothing to hide, and most people don't, but in a few years, everybody will be scared to click links because of fear of what might load, and the cops thinking they went there on purpose.

And yes, it will happen, and it pretty much already is (with cellphones and other methods of telecommunication).

Re:Two sided

[julesh]

Are you afraid to get onto a plane because somebody might have slipped a gun into your bag and claim you were trying to hijack it? It's about as likely to be a problem.

This tap was authorised by a judge, presumably because there was _already_ compelling evidence against the man, just not enough to get a conviction.

Non Smart Pedophiles? Question about Encryption.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't this guy use encryption, good encryption techniques would defeat the cops, them being the man in the middle.

Pedophiles are not smart enough to use encryption?

Good Thread

[Anonymous Coward]

I encrypt everything. I think some cops like to make shit up to prove their case (anyone remember Richard Jewel?). Encryption is the solution to this.

Also cops, like people, can be assholes. How many assholes did you know who might be cops now. If its >1 then you could be screwed.

Re:Good Thread

[AGTiny]

You could tunnel all of your internet traffic through a proxy server over an SSH connection. If you got busted you could quickly delete the private key so there is no way to recover the encrypted data. You could setup a telephone interface to do this so you could delete the file from jail in case you didn't have enough time previously. Would this classify as tampering with evidence? Probably, but that's gotta be a lesser charge than child porn or whatever else you are trying to keep them from seeing.

Re:Non Smart Pedophiles? Question about Encryption

[ArbitraryConstant]

If I ran an illegal site, or rather a site that was illegal in a country where lots of my customers were, I'd listen to my customers. I'd run everything with strong encryption.

Strong encryption in and of itself doesn't look suspicious. I run my own blog and I use SSL so people can sign in and look at entries I don't want to be publically visible. I use SSH for a ton of stuff. I use it to log in to my server when I'm at home on my LAN because it's conveniant. The first thing I do when I get to work is log

do they ever bust the guys making the porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the feds ever actually bust the guys making the porn in the first place i.e. doing the real explotation. Or do they always just bust some sorry shlub who tried to download some old .jpeg and never touched a kid in his life?

Re:do they ever bust the guys making the porn?

[Cerv]

I've no idea what happens in the US, but in the UK they do go after the people making it. They also go after the downloaders because, among other reasons, this provides them with the evidence (the child porn) to locate the people who made it. Also, until they've arrested and investigated the guy, how are they supposed to know whether or not he's making his own?

Re:do they ever bust the guys making the porn?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

The "sorry shlub"s comprise the market. If there's no money in child pr0n, there's no need to continue the industry. Yes, it is impossible to remove the market, but it can be cut significantly, with direct arrests and just fear of arrest.

Re:do they ever bust the guys making the porn?

[Xemu]

Something to think about. Biologically, once a person is mature enough to procreate they should start attracting members of the oppoite sex. This was accepted for a very long time. This is how it is accepted in every species except humans.

One of the things that makes us human is that we do not accept that it is "right" just because we can.

Example: Biologically, I am stronger than you and can kill you. It would be accepted in every species except humans.

That's right. Except humans. Except.

Who's at the computer?

[sam1am]

One of the advantages (assuming they use it this way) is a real-time wiretap lets them confirm who is actually *at* the computer when something's happening. A log, unless combined with large amounts of surveillance, can not necessarily be correlated back to an individual. But now, they can see illegal activity and go look at who's doing it while it's happening.

(Hopefully they are, and aren't just assuming the owner of a computer is the one breaking the law..)

Thats nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

In the netherlands somewhere in the nineties law was developed forcing isp`s to make their networks tappable. The first plan was based on the idea that this would be just as easy as with previously goverment owned telephone compnies wich always cooparated with police investigations. Internet providers howevery are many *many* small buisnesses that operate on much tighter margins and are owned by an entire diffren kind of people. And the goverment wanted to listen in on all of them. This became a big conflict. The conflict even gave rise to a very small group of people that figured that in order to meet these requirements cheaply, scaleable and securely an opensource implementation of the goverment proposed protocols should be made. The site [opentap.org] is still alive and contains a world of information on goverment imposed eavesdropping in all sorts of networks. (read the cyberpunks collection of standards and documentation, Or better yet get the more recent docs for free at etsi.org and the osi sites. Goverment acces is developed into standards nowadays which is ofcourse much cheaper then adding it when networks are up and running [cryptome.org]. This was demonstrated when german celluar phone users where billed for having their phones listened into ;-). This also includes some information on the biometric/rfid passport ideas that politicians think are a great idea becouse... you know terrorist and stuff, let pump millions in this and get on our way kissing babies and doing TV interviews okey?)

Currently, most big providers (I think mostly the ones owned by kpn including XS4ALL???) have machines in their network permanently to sniff traffic when a warrant arrives. This can`t be that hard, people keep saying the netherlands taps more phones then the US but real numbers that are reliable are very hard to come by (dutch link) [www.bof.nl]. These machines then tunnel the sniffed traffic to central collection machines. For this the "ITO" is peering with all major isp`s. The dutch internet service provider association has a couple of the sniffing machines provider can borrow if they dont have their own. I havent actually read the current version of these laws but in preivous version webhosters to should sniff traffic when asked to.

Ofcourse noone knows when this network is used, but it is safe to guess that the title of the first internet connection litened in to life by goverment snoops goes to the "hacking at large 2001" event (Lots of tents in a field, big network, lots of visitors and speakers on many topics and a big internet pipe). The then public traffic graph of the ASN of the goverment collection facility spiked really high during the days of that event ;-). I dont recal if it was this event or another one like it where people found out the police claimed to be dealing with "subversive anachist". When people found out about this T-shirts where sold with the text "staatsgevaarlijke anarchist", these where quite populair. OFcourse If this was the event the police was looking at then it would make sense that visitors where called dangerous, there needed to be a reasing for listening in.... what better reason then being anarchist-ish, terrorist-ish or terrorist-ish people releated, with a bit of pirate flavour to finish the mix.

Ofcourse, we can all look ahead at another fantastic episode in this series. Unlike other epic sagas (starwars) these episodes get not only bigger but also better and more exciting every time ;-) You see the European union has been buzzing with the idea of mandating the storage of traffic data of not only telephone providers but also internet providers (and hosters?) for years. But a new proposol [eu.int] for this idea has recently been introduced by Britan, France, Ireland and Sweden... Imagene being forced to store terrabytes of logs on 99.999999

Thing is...

[demonhold]

In the Macarthy (sp) era you only had to point someone and scream "red", "pinko", "commie" and that individual's life was done for. Down the drain for good...

What tell us that in the near future someone won't cry "pedophile" "child abuser" "terrorist" and your life goes down the drain. And nowadays evidence is soooooo easy to fake, and juries tend to be so damned illitare...

This is not the whole thing, though, with worms and virus and spywares doing the gods know what to your computer, using your storage for the gods know what purposes, who can assure us that we won't wake up some day to the sound of the police storming our door and the press cameras getting us labeled as "worse than scum" for the rest of our life...

Re:Thing is...

[praedor]

Uh...it is already that way now and it has nothing to do with evils such as the "Patriot Act", TIA, the PROTECT Act, etc. All that needs to happen to you is ANYONE point at you and yell, "Pedophile!" or "Rapist!". That's it. Even if you are absolutely innocent in all possible ways, you are "labelled" now, at least in your community, and you will have trouble. Any child disappearance, any rape, and you will fall under suspicion.

This is particularly true of people who are teachers or professors. All it

It's the Principle, Not the Case...

[One Childish N00b]

What happens when this is used as a test case for including the right to record the internet habits of anyone they like in the next draconian revision to the Patriot Act? They might have needed a judge this time but all the authorities would have to do is claim it will help them monitor terrorists and the current state of paranoia will have a good chance of pushing any proposed bill through, no matter how invasive.

Obviously I have no objection to getting another vile kiddie-porn peddler off the streets, t

I have 2 thoughts.

[Raven42rac]

1) Internet wiretapping has been going on for years, this does not surprise me.
2) It will be very difficult to garner any sympathy for these sickos from myself or the /. community.
Or any community for that matter.

Re:I have 2 thoughts.

[Raven42rac]

They already have been monitoring traffic, I do not like this fact, but one has to accept it as a fact of life. It is not like our Congress will do anything about it, they want to keep control. So the whole system of laws is broken and we should be thrust into Anarchy? These guys were breaking the law, the wiretapping did what it was supposed to do, catch badguys. I'm sorry, call me crazy, but these person's rights ended when they infringed someone elses.

Re:They always start with the most unpopular scum.

[Quila]

I agree with you in general, but in this case they had to prove to a grand jury that the tap was necessary and get a court order for it. I think that easily passes constitutional muster, as opposed to some PATRIOT provisions.

Always wondered, what qualifies?

[ylikone]

There is plenty of porn out there that depicts 18 - 19 year olds as being much younger (or so I here), are these kind of images also illegal and considered child porn?

There are better ways of stopping child porn

[foidulus]

Than going after the consumers versus going after the producers(I'm not defending consumers in any way though). All this will do is ensure that the consumers use better cryptography etc to protect what they are doing. Just like they started to use the internet after the government went after the people who would order it by mail.
There is a different, and better way to catch these people. Most of these scumbags who make this stuff are quite proud of what they do, and often put both their faces and the faces of their victims in the picture. Canadian and US authorities have recently been using these faces to track down both the people commiting the acts and the victims. Going after the producers is a lot easier, and probably a lot more effective at stopping future abuse than going after consumers(esp. ones who don't pay any money), since the producers will probably continue to abuse new children regardless of whether or not they share the photos.

Interestingly enough

[Effugas]

The farther you get from an endpoint, the harder it is to actually reassemble the stream. This is because packets can take multiple routes to their destination -- if not through load balancing, then through asymmetric routes (i.e. the packets from the client to the server are taking a wildly different network route from the path taken from server to client.)

Asymmetric routing always seems to confuse people. It shouldn't -- the traffic on the freeways isn't symmetrical in each direction, and sometimes it makes sense to take one highway to work and another back.

Upshot of all this is that, while all the long haul fiber lines actually are probably tapped by someone or other, it's an enormously tricky problem to integrate the data accurately, and you ultimately still don't get as good results as having a direct feed a hop or two up from the endpoint being monitored.

Now, there have been tools for quite some time to do realtime stream monitoring -- Driftnet is a cheap (and occasionally very scary) one, but there have been solutions floating around the corporate space that basically reassemble a browser screen in realtime. I imagine the gov space has even nicer stuff.

You know, "tcpbust" (a sniffer with integrated safe reassembly, third party cryptographically signed timestamps, and a pony) would probably be a really interesting thing to write...

--Dan

Bozo filter

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

I'm surprised that the issue of the lack of encrypted communication in this case hasn't been brought up. Pretty much limits law enforcement into only catching the more idiotic cleartext perverts. Begs the question of gov't access to encrypted communications. I wonder how many privacy-loving Slashdotters would flip on this issue if they had young children. Teenage girls spend hours chatting online these days...

and then there's the "Trojan" defense

[scupper]

Remember this story for the UK:
Trojan horse found responsible for child porn [zdnet.co.uk]
Munir Kotadia | ZDNet UK | August 01, 2003
Excerpt:

This is thought to be the second case in the UK where a "Trojan defence" has been used to clear someone of such an accusation. In April, a man from Reading was found not guilty of the crime after experts testified that a Trojan could have been responsible for the presence of 14 child porn images on his PC.

Help catch the bastards!

[Xemu]

You too can help!

If you find child porn on the internet, please contact SAVE THE CHILDREN at http://www.rb.se/hotline/ [www.rb.se]

You are geeks, you can traceroute. Help make the world a better, safer place for children!

Child porn, a history

[Anonymous Coward]

The child pornography "problem" was invented by the Meese Commission back in the Reagan years, as a way around the Constitutional limitations on censoring pornography generally. If you actually read the 1985 Meese Commission report, they're quite clear about their intent. (There's quite a bit of material on line about the Meese Commission report, most of it critical, but the report itself is hard to find.)

So the next step was to criminalize pure possession of child pornography. (Molesting children was already illegal, but having pictures of it wasn't until the Reagan years.) This made it much easier for law enforcement to make arrests, and, significantly, provided much broader reasons for search and seizure.

Then came the child porno entrapment industry. Law enforcement started sending out child pornography and seeing who'd bite. This is far less work than finding real child abusers, but generates cases.

As with most forms of self-generating police activity, there's a tendency to lose touch with reality in such operations. In the complaint-driven end of law enforcement, performance is measureable - how many murders were solved, how many stolen cars were recovered. There are "customers" (people who report crimes) to be satisfied.

Self-generated law enforcement activity (drugs, porno, "red hunting" in the 1930s and 1950s, and today "terrorism") doesn't have "customers", so there's a strong tendency for it to get out of control.

The worst abuses come when self-generated law enforcement activity becomes self-financing through seizures. So far, child pornography and terrorism enforcement haven't reached that level. The "war on drugs" reached that level about fifteen years ago. For some law enforcement organizations, it's a profit center.

Re:Silly act names

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll introduce the PITA act for all the criminals they catch?

Re:Silly act names

[Roland Piquepaille]

PLAYFUL Act - Parents Legitimately Against Young Fellahs Using LSD Act

FUCKEDUP Act - Firemen Uneased by Cocker-spaniels Killing Effeminate Dandies Using Pot Act

Bad laws -- rule of thumb

[Compact Dick]

More thought went into the acronym than the law itself.

Re:Silly act names

[Soul-Burn666]

Significant Linux Advocating Site Housing Dozens Of Trolls?

Re:can someone explain this to me?

[KrisHolland]

Child pornography probably doesn't encourage people to go out and molest people, just like watching an action movie probably doesn't make a majority of people go out and start killing people.

The problem though is that child pornography may increase child abuse since it can encourage *the creators* to make more of it if they are paid for it. On the other hand it might also discourage child abuse as pedophiles relieve their sexual energy on the smut instead of on real children.

To further muddy the water t

Re:can someone explain this to me?

[kard]

yes, of course i can see that it's wrong when a 40year old man is having sex with a 6year old girl.
but i also think that it's wrong if a guy kills an other guy...

if i have a picture of that 40year old guy having sex with the girl, then it's crime. and if i have a picture of a guy killing an other guy, then it is not a crime. that's the paradox imho