Germany Searches Credit Cards For Child Porn Payments 283
narramissic writes "According to an ITworld article, police in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt have teamed with credit card companies to sift through the transactions of over 22 million customers looking for those who may have purchased child pornography online. To date they have identified 322 suspects." From the article: "German data privacy laws allow police to ask financial institutions to provide data about individuals but only if the investigators meet certain conditions, including a concrete suspicion of illegal behavior and narrowly defined search criteria, according to Johann Bizer, deputy director of the Independent Center for Privacy Protection... In the case under investigation, police were aware of a child pornography Web site outside of Germany that was attracting users inside the country. And they asked the credit-card companies to conduct a database search narrowed to three criteria: a specific amount of money, a specific time period and a specific receiver account."
Now, by "sift through" ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now, by "sift through" ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, they mean sift through. Probably using database queries and things more complicated than grep. Banks don't keep all of their information in flat text files to be grep'ed for content -- they use way cooler toys.
Re:Now, by "sift through" ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Now, by "sift through" ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Also, most RDBMS implement linear search which is grep like. The use of the LIKE statement is even closer to grep and let's not forget that man
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You were saying ?
Re:Now, by "sift through" ... (Score:5, Funny)
You've never been in a tank, I guess (Score:2)
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His last set of code was trying to do about 10 million summaries of about 20 million records over and over...
I had to remind him that databases generally aren't stored in memory and if CSV parsing was so awesome in Python then no one in their right mind would deploy a database at all...
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Usually stored procedures can be dumped to DDL along with the rest of it.
Is there any good way to properly manager thousands of stored procedures, with source control, in an easy to define manner?
One option I have seen is to use Visual Source Safe, obviously this is a Microsoft solution and assumes Microsoft's SQL server, but I'm willing to bet that a little bit of digging will turn up something similar for Oracle. And in
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WHY?! (Score:5, Insightful)
People make my head hurt.
I have paid for porn (Score:5, Interesting)
Why, well first is convenience. I am busy and would rather be able to go to one website, enter in my search (usually redhead, teen and anal) and get the movies they have right there without having to sift through the results to see what is good. I feel my time is worth more then the money it costs to pay for the porn.
The second is guaranteed quality. I never wonder if I am getting garbage resolution, a misnamed video, or some other piece of crap. That is why I pay, the company takes care of all that.
The final reason is guaranteed download speed. I want my porn fast, regardless of how many other people are willing to share it.
Also it is not illegal, I am supporting the "artists" by paying for it, and lets face it, these people are getting fucked all the time (pun intended).
So there you do, those are the reason I have paid for porn.
honesty (Score:2, Insightful)
Please, this is Slashdot.
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Oh no! why did you tell me that? Now I'm not going to get any work done this week.
Re:I have paid for porn (Score:5, Funny)
I really wish there was a "-1 Too Informative" mod. :-)
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The same reason people pay for anything: perceived value of having it. Free porn is getting tougher to find on the net. I have no idea how difficult it is to find kiddie porn, nor do I want to know, cause that's just nasty. But, if you're looking for it, you're probably willing to pay for it.
And, I'm sure most of the places selling such things promise discrete billing, much like *any* adult the
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I, uh, hear that there's still tons of it on usenet.
Re:WHY?! - DOH! (Score:4, Funny)
I meant that I "hear" that about free porn on the net, not kiddie porn...
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You're assuming they're using their own credit cards... remember, we're talking about people who are already commiting a crime to begin with. How'd you like to have your credit card # harvested and then find out about it by having the Gestapo kick in your door? Yikes.
Darwin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Darwin (Score:5, Interesting)
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An even better question is why if you were someone offerring something illegal and reviled would you accept payment from something as traceable as a credit card transaction?
The conspiracy theorist in me suspects all may not be as it seems here, but the realist in me understands that both buyers and sellers are mercifully stupid.
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AFAIK they didn't catch the people receiving the money and only have the address of a mailbox somewhere in south asia (not sure, had my brain on powersave when watching the news apparently). The producers/sellers probably don't give a shit about their customers and apparently aren't as easily caught.
Also, stupidity might be a factor.
Doesn't even prove that... (Score:2)
No, it proves that someone paid this company something using a credit card with the suspect's name on it. Could be a stolen credit card, or possibly just a stolen number. Could even be a stolen identity used to obtain a credit card.
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Indeed. About two years ago, I had two transactions on my credit card which I could not identify, and called VISA to find out what they were about. They told me that one was to a company somewhere in Europe named littlegirls.com or something similar, and the other for the regis
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Re:Doesn't even prove that... (Score:4, Funny)
Is this [howstuffworks.com] a good site for that?
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Why would you want to operate a legal business in combination with an illegal one? So you get the profits of the legal business with the risk of the illegal one? Ever seen a drug dealer sell Aspirin?
(Of course, assuming that production of child porn is actually illegal in the producers' jurisdiction which probably holds true for most of the landmass of this planet.)
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You're talking about Germany here. Mounir El Motassadeq has just been found guilty of aiding and abetting murder in 246 cases (passengers and crew of the 9/11 flights) and membership in a terrorist organization, and has been sentenced to the maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
While I don't have the faintest idea what the maximum penalty for owning child porn is in Germany, they certainly won't get any more than that. Some of them will - as I heard
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Law [dict.org], n.: In general, a rule of being or of conduct, established by an authority able to enforce its will; a controlling regulation; the mode or order according to which an agent or a power acts.
Enforcement [dict.org], n.: The act of enforcing; compulsion.
Agency [dict.org], n.: The faculty of acting or of exerting power; the state of being in action; action; instrument
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I mean, the definition of politician doesn't include crook either, but then, the reality...
Re:Darwin (Score:5, Informative)
No, I think the OP is broadly correct in his use of the term. Being jailed and presumably being put on some German equivalent of the sex offenders list does not improve one's reproductive chances.
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Done correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing!
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Sounds to me like a fishing expedition.
Hope those Germans haven't been purchasing music on AllOfMp3....
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Actually, I don't think you got me. My point is that if the German government can do broad searches to find who has made transactions on a chil
If you mod MobyDisk up... (Score:2)
Re:Done correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm... The population of Germany is roughly 82 million, and they are going to "sift through the transactions of over 22 million customers". It seems to me that those darn Germans are going to do it by considering half the adult population as suspects.
Re:Done correctly (Score:4, Insightful)
SELECT * FROM transactions WHERE account_to = '4234534543254' AND amount = '19.95$' AND transaction_date BETWEEN '2005-12-31' AND '2006-06-31'
It's not slam-dunk evidence, because they might have operated legal sites which also got paid to the same account, cards get stolen and so on. But if your card has been paying the same fee to the same account as a kiddie porn site during the same time, that's plenty grounds for reasonable suspicion. This isn't a fishing expedition any more than if they asked the DMV who owns a blue Audi A4 1995-model, and they ran the query against the whole DB. If they don't hit, they get squat. Sometimes the anti-law enforcement brigade on slashdot really get their panties in a bunch over nothing.
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Let's see...
- We have 22 million CC customers.
- The police presented the CC companies with a warrant saying that the CC companies should check their databases for people who have bought from a specific site, since, as TFA explicitly stated the police isn't allowed to access the databases.
- The CC companies scanned their databases and returned to the police those accounts that were used to buy from that specific site.
Come on. I'm somewhat protective w
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I strongly suspect this will end up with 322 people remembering they lost their card a few months back - And I'd feel inclined to believe most of them, though no doubt the courts will put them through the ringer over this.
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And in the mean time, they will have their computer equipment confiscated (which will no doubt turn up some "illegal" material for some of the 322), and they will have an arrest record, and quite possibly lose their livelihood and family. No matter if cleared of the charges, they will be
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only if the investigators meet certain conditions, including a concrete suspicion of illegal behavior and narrowly defined search criteria
--Sounds like a warrant."
Without judicial oversight this is not a warrant.
Moreover a warrant requires the j
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Because capitol hill blue is the bastion of unbiased and accurate reporting. From your linked articles (which by the way, are the same article, just parrotted by different blogs):
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Our elected officials in all three of the branches of the government have been disregarding the original intent and meaning of the constitution for decades.
Congress abuses the "interstate commerce" and "general welfare" parts of the constitution such that nothing is outside their power.
The executive does whatever the hel
Scheisse! (Score:5, Funny)
MANN) Nein, nein, das ist nicht ein kidipornen! Dis ist die regular wholesome scheisse videos mit conzenting aldulten gefichen mit die turdenpoopen.
POLIZE) Ach! Ve are mischtaken. Zo zorry for gewasten du timen, proud zitizen. Gutenhaben, unt enjoy die turdenpoopen!
Fine by me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks, you did society a service. (Score:3, Funny)
My card was stolen (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think they'll buy that. (Score:4, Funny)
That excuse only works on your wife, or your girlfriend.
I know it works on my wife, and my girlfriend.
Define "Broad" (Score:3, Insightful)
A specific search would be "We have sound suspicions that a bloke called Wolfgang has been accessing this list of kiddie porn websites. Could you provide us with a list of transactions Wolfgang has made to them please."
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A specific search would be "We have sound suspicions that a bloke called Wolfgang has been accessing this list of kiddie porn websites. Could you provide us with a list of transactions Wolfgang has made to them please."
That's not a search at all though. That is just asking for Wolfgang's credit card statement, which could presumably just be done with a regular warrant given the sound suspicions. I don't understand how searching for records of people paying the subscription amount to a known kiddie porn purveyor during the time he was known to be in business could be construed as overly broad.
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You see, to ask a question like yours,
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Law of diminishing returns? (Score:2)
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Re:Law of diminishing returns? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Law of diminishing returns? (Score:4, Insightful)
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All 22 million of them.
Before responding... (Score:2)
1) You're a troll
2) You don't know how a database works
3) You don't know how to read
Using only your innate powers of deduction, which of these three options can you eliminate right now?
My point being that, who's the troll here? The guy who asked about the effectiveness of going through 22 million records only to obtain 322 viable hits? or the guy who decided to take personal shots at the original post?
Well, obviously a database search
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Well, you're assuming they're done. Maybe they had just finished searching suspect #323 when this article went to print.
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a) The site was either altready shut down or operates in a country where it's not likely to be pursued,
b) the site already had customers and
c) the possession of child porn is illegal in Germany.
The police isn't trying to stop people from accessing the site, it's trying to find the people who bought the child porn. For that, knowing which CC accounts were used is more helpful than telling CC companies to block all transactions to that company (which probably would involve lots of red tape anyway)
Why would someone use a credit card? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone steals your number, buys kiddie porn, and now you're the suspect.
Re:Why would someone use a credit card? (Score:5, Interesting)
so this only catches the stupids ones (Score:2)
To the contrary (Score:5, Insightful)
In the U.S., people are being prosecuted right now for making and selling child porn even though the prosecution agrees that no nudity or sexual activity is depicted. In the U.S., at least one 16 year old girl has been charged with child abuse and child porn production for taking a cell phone picture of herself nude and sending it to a boyfriend. (Yes, the child she was charged with abusing was herself. Think on that a while, but don't blame me if your head explodes.) In the U.S., we have people sitting in jail convicted of possessing child porn for, among other things, having cartoons of young-looking characters having sex. (I'm at work, so filtering prevents me from searching for links; you can google them as easily as I can, though. For the first case, look for "Pierson" who's being prosecuted in Alabama.)
Yes, everyone is probably right that in the instant case this is a reasonable way to proceed. But I'm still not comfortable with it. I don't trust LEOs to not be idiots, to not be grinding political axes. Dangerous stuff, this. If it's backed up with searches that find people in possession, great. But be warned - due to identity theft or whatever reason, there will be some false positives. The people who are the victims of those false positives are just a short distance away from having their lives utterly ruined without adequate justification.
There must be better ways of investigating this sort of thing.
some points (Score:2)
Second, the authorities in Germany state that everything was done legally and that it's not a case of 'dragnet investigation', since neither prosecution nor police had access to all the data but instead the search was conducted by the CC comp
Needle in haystack? (Score:3, Insightful)
Disclaimer: IMO anybody who hurts a child should be exterminated.
What % of children die from disease or other 'preventable' causes in Germany?
Would efforts be better spent helping them?
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I also feel that spending the money working with the appropriate foreign government to arrest the purveyors of the child porn for sale is the better course of ac
"Likely that children are being exploited" (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? You mean kids don't like being kidnapped, enslaved, and raped?
Get a clue, dude. Child Pornography is the most vile and evil industry hell has concocted. Maybe there's a cure for pedophiles; if so, please cure them. But until then, the children's needs trump the pedophiles', and most certainly trump their exploiters. Those who'd rape a child for profit deserve the most severe justice.
Every civil society feels this very strongly, and rightly so. Unfortunately, that's why societies tolerate their government eroding civil rights - in the name of fighting child porn.
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But you're just guessing as to what the contents of the site(s) in question were - all you know is that some LEA said it was illegal. The actual content may have been much tamer than you're thinking (or even completely fictional) - we'll never know. And (regardless of the country in which you live, apparently) it's against the law for you or I even to look and find out if we agree that it is illegal (or should be). I beleive I read somewhere that Canada even made it against the law to find out how to fin
Let's hear it for exploitation (Score:3, Insightful)
We live in a world now where parents have scant real freedom to raise their kids as they deem fit. How I raise my kids - how I let them dress, what beliefs I teach them, how they are educated - is not your business, not george bush's business, and n
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Wrong, german law allows it. (Score:5, Insightful)
German law on child pornography is universial, as long as a German is involved, it is the business of the attorney. So a German tourist fucking a little girl somewhere on holiday can be prosecuted in Germany. The law was changed like this after it showed that especially Thailand would not do anything to protect its own children. So the law was changed to be able to do something about it here (yes, I am German).
Therefore it is completely irrelevant, if the child was German or if the server was located in Germany. All what is relevant was that Germans were buying child porn, something which is very clearly forbidden here. Also what the headline doesn't tell, there are 20 teachers under the suspects and quite a lot of repeat offenders.
I am not happy about this either, as my credit cards were probably among those that were checked. But it really seems as if everything was done to the letter of the law. The law enforcment officers never saw the CC records, the CC companies were doing the searches for an exact sum, to a fishy Phillipene billing company in a two month time frame. Sadly the trail stopps at the billing company for now, because much better than going after the buyers would have been to get the sellers.
But to repeat, according to German law it is completely irrelevant where the child was, where the pictures were made and where the servers are located. And I think it was a good idea to change the law like this, because honestly I don't see why child porn from a German child should be prosecuted differently.
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Why not? (Score:2)
The children are likely not German, so they're not protecting the german children.
The servers are not in Germany, so they are not policing they're own internet.
They are telling people what they cannot do
While I'm by no stretch a fan of the government (any government, even though this one isn't my own) simply diving into private records, there is a certain line between reasonable and unreasonable. Swap the actions with the above arguements, for example:
What if they were ordering illegal merchandise? Perhaps
Re:Moo (Score:5, Insightful)
They are protecting the basic principle of Article 1 of the German constitution AKA Basic Law AKA Grundgesetz.
The children are likely not German, so they're not protecting the german children.
What is your point? That foreign children are less to be protected from abuse? The first sentence of Article 1 of the Grundgesetz reads "Human dignity shall be inviolable.", not "German dignity shall be inviolable."
The servers are not in Germany, so they are not policing they're own internet.
Again, what is your point? That Germans shall be able to behave in illegal activities as long as these are taking place on foreign servers?
They are telling people what they cannot do.
Which is basicly encouraging child abuse by exerting demand for child pornography.
What is the reason for banning viewing these things? The usual reason is protecting children from being exploited, but one, these are not German children, and two, there is no proof they were even exploited.
Regarding the children not being German read what I wrote above. Regarding point two: It is common sense that children can not give informed consent to pornography, so child pornography is in its nature exploiting children, wether they are being forced or by other pressure.
They are literally telling people what they cannot do in their own homes even when it doesn't hurt anyone.
If you think that children are not hurt by degrading appearances of themselves in pictures or films, or even worse, by being photographed or filmed while being subjected to degrading or painful or injuring acts by others you seriously need to take a reality check.
I know, i know, thinkofthechildren.
Yeah, little people with extra need of protection. Think about it.
It's only a matter of time before children are carted away and a young age to be protected from the evils of the world.
There is no need to that. Instead, there are laws and law enforcement doing that job.
And crap like this is getting modded "interesting", now even the mods are trolling.
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Muslims do not have rights.
Jews do not have rights.
You do not have rights.
Where does it end? Where's the cutoff? Everyone has rights. That's what makes things a "right", rather than a privilege. Those who break the law should be punished appropriately and measures should be taken to prevent reoccurance, but that does not negate that person's rights.
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The police had no access whatsoever to records of any transactions that didn't match their specific criteria. The didn't "examine" these records in any sense, and know nothing about them except that they don't match these specific criteria. There was absolutely no violation of the privacy of anyone who's not now a suspect.
Now, you may be able to argue that it's not the intent of the privacy law to allow the police to say "we have an unknown number of anonymous suspec
They will not end in prison. (Score:2, Interesting)
322 suspects are not punished before, so they'll receive
fines instead of prison. It's unusual in germany to go
to prison for your first misdeed. Except really hard crimes
like homicide, second degree murder, forays, raping of course.
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pedophilia is attraction to prepubescent children. these guys are not sleeping with the 17 year old, more like her 7 year old sister (or brother)
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The whole thread is already Godwined:
"Child Abuser" and any other Nom De Terror of the time or culture in which a discussion takes place is equivalent to and interchangable with "Nazi" and "Hitler".
-- Art's cocidil to Godwin's Law