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What do you believe a government should do (what lengths it will go to) to curtain the internet when the internet could be used to cause instability or used as a weapon? The two links below provide two completely different contexts.

1st Link is to a Huffington Post article details circumvention of internet users in Egypt against government's attempts to crack down on media outlets.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hani-almadhoun/egyptian-entertainers-hac_b_815454.html

2nd Link plus quotes describe the effort of Western Powers in clamping down on those that are supposedly responsible for cyber attacks tied to Anonymous.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/28/fbi-issues-warrants-involvement-cyber-attacks/#

The Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to elaborate Friday on the status of more than 40 search warrants the agency issued throughout the United States on Thursday, as part of an ongoing investigation into recent coordinated cyber attacks against major companies and organizations.

An FBI spokesman refused to tell FoxNews.com whether arrests had been made or were expected, instead referring all questions back to a press release the agency issued late Thursday announcing the warrants.

The FBI also said that the United Kingdom's Metropolitan Police Service had executed search warrants that had resulted in five arrests. The suspects in custody are identified as young men from the central and souther England area, and range in age from 15 to 26.

Targeted suspects are members of a group called "Anonymous," which coordinated cyber attacks against companies like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard after the companies had dropped support for WikiLeaks. "The FBI is working closely with its international law enforcement partners and others to mitigate these threats," said the agency in a statement. England, France, Germany and the Netherlands are also participating in similar investigations in their own countries.

Dutch officers arrested two teenagers last month on suspicion of involvement with the cyber attacks, they are awaiting trails set for later this year. The members of Anonymous called the cyber attacks, "Operation Payback," and accused the companies who refused to support WikiLeaks of squandering Internet freedom.

The attacks known as, "distributed denial of service" or DDoS assaults, were designed to overwhelm the targeted servers causing the websites to go down. The attacks were facilitated by software tools the group makes available for free download on the Internet, the FBI said -- a tool the agency noted did not mask the identity of the attackers.

Such conduct is considered illegal, and if found guilty suspects could face up to 10 years in prison.

The airforce has started what is basically a cyber police force, tasked with taking down hackers. If they've committed a crime, let them be punished.

So, you are saying that every member of anonymous is now under scrutiny from the feds? So if anyone goes on 4chan's /b/ section, they can expect a knock on the door from a battering ram sometime in the near future?

/devil's advocate

No, just if you've actually committed a crime, such as hacking or piracy, or distribution of illegal materials.
Going on 4chan is (sadly) legal and okay. Looking at child porn and stealing emails from people's accounts are illegal, and these people cannot hide.

micahaphone wrote: Looking at child porn and stealing emails from people's accounts are illegal, and these people cannot hide.

So, if someone were to start a thread here, or anywhere else for that matter, entitled "Funny Kitten Playing with Yarn" that contained a picture of a nude 10-year-old would any person that clicked on it, and subsequently viewed the image, have committed a crime? What if that person were themselves, 10 years old or, more controversially, what if a 16-year-old viewed a picture of a nude 16-year-old?

Okay, I'm pretty sure that I'm not accurately representing the law in that small blurb. I guess "downloading or having significant proof that a person is actively looking for cp" would be a better way to put it, but I was going for brevity.

I'm no expert on the laws, ask one if you need your off-topic questions answered.

micahaphone wrote:Okay, I'm pretty sure that I'm not accurately representing the law in that small blurb. I guess "downloading or having significant proof that a person is actively looking for cp" would be a better way to put it, but I was going for brevity.

So, if a person puts up a photo of a girl who is 18, and look younger, and people take it as to be cp, post CP on the thread as they take it he is looking for more, and he is prosecuted, how would he have a defense? "She looks 16, but she's 18"?

dogma wrote:So, if someone were to start a thread here, or anywhere else for that matter, entitled "Funny Kitten Playing with Yarn" that contained a picture of a nude 10-year-old would any person that clicked on it, and subsequently viewed the image, have committed a crime? What if that person were themselves, 10 years old or, more controversially, what if a 16-year-old viewed a picture of a nude 16-year-old?

You're on shaky ground from the start. I think technically you'd be guilty of something in both cases though they probably wouldn't make a big thing of it. If you saw the image and then went away from the webpage and deleted it you'd probably be in the clear. But things don't vanish from your hard disk easily, you'd have to argue that it was a genuine accident. Of course if you were frequently having accidents of that nature then they may query the sorts of websites you tend to look at.

The problem with all these accusations of online behaviour is that ultimately it's difficult to prove who was using the bandwidth. Many networks are open or easily hacked and who is to say you are the only person using your wireless? You aren't responsible for the actions of someone illegally using your bandwidth to carry out crimes, there's no point in ignoring it, people do get falsely accused because of unauthorised use of their bandwidth or because their IP address has been assigned to a person who *has* committed crimes.

If you were liable for the behaviour of others using your wireless then all these pubs and restaurants and libraries and banks and other businesses that allow people to freely to use their wireless would be liable for any crimes from downloading child porn to music file sharing. Well that clearly isn't the case because you don't hear of them getting demanding letters from music publishers demanding that they pay up whatever fee they think of or they'll go to court.

The only way to prove a damn thing is to seize their computer. Maybe that works for crimes where the police get involved like child pornography but not for file sharing because the police tend not to raid houses for someone downloading a few MP3s.


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chowderhead13 wrote:

micahaphone wrote:Okay, I'm pretty sure that I'm not accurately representing the law in that small blurb. I guess "downloading or having significant proof that a person is actively looking for cp" would be a better way to put it, but I was going for brevity.

So, if a person puts up a photo of a girl who is 18, and look younger, and people take it as to be cp, post CP on the thread as they take it he is looking for more, and he is prosecuted, how would he have a defense? "She looks 16, but she's 18"?

Isn't it the case in Australia they have laws against photographs that look under 18? So if an adult women with small breasts and a young face is photographed it could be illegal because she could be construed to be younger.

micahaphone wrote:Okay, I'm pretty sure that I'm not accurately representing the law in that small blurb. I guess "downloading or having significant proof that a person is actively looking for cp" would be a better way to put it, but I was going for brevity.

I'm no expert on the laws, ask one if you need your off-topic questions answered.

As I recall, anyone who receives or transmits child pornography is guilty of possessing it. The question is then whether or not someone who has accidentally viewed child pornography on the internet is guilty of receiving child pornography. Criminal acts obviously require intent, but that establishment is subject to the judgment of the court; making it an arguable proposition, rather than one of categorical certainty.

I think your situation of a misleading thread title would be justifiably considered accidental.

Howard A Treesong wrote:
You're on shaky ground from the start. I think technically you'd be guilty of something in both cases though they probably wouldn't make a big thing of it. If you saw the image and then went away from the webpage and deleted it you'd probably be in the clear. But things don't vanish from your hard disk easily, you'd have to argue that it was a genuine accident. Of course if you were frequently having accidents of that nature then they may query the sorts of websites you tend to look at.

Yeah, that latter case is certainly how intent would be established. Truthfully I'm more curious about the mutual exchange of questionable images between parties both under the age of consent. I know that, when I was in high school, that sort of thing happened all the time.


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micahaphone wrote:I think your situation of a misleading thread title would be justifiably considered accidental.

Yeah, that is probably too obtuse of an example. A better case may be a thread titled "porn".

micahaphone wrote:I think your situation of a misleading thread title would be justifiably considered accidental.

Hey, I'm not quite sure how news of Hacktivist treatment in different countries have turned into an argument for setting parameters for arresting people, but hey, the thread goes where the thread wills...

chowderhead13 wrote:So, you are saying that every member of anonymous is now under scrutiny from the feds? So if anyone goes on 4chan's /b/ section, they can expect a knock on the door from a battering ram sometime in the near future?

/devil's advocate

Lets not confuse people who actively participate in DDOS attacks and organize the efforts/write the code with the idiots that post boob threads on /b/. Anonymous isn't a cohesive group, except when it is. Not everyone claiming to be is in it and not everyone that is in it would want to be identified that way. Thats what happens when you coordinate actions under a vague term like "anonymous".

dogma wrote:Yeah, that latter case is certainly how intent would be established. Truthfully I'm more curious about the mutual exchange of questionable images between parties both under the age of consent. I know that, when I was in high school, that sort of thing happened all the time.

Well there was the 15 year old girl charged with making and distributing child pornography... of herself.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm

I would have thought that considering the only person being hurt was effectively herself then talking a bit of sense into her would have been the most sensible course of action. But no, police raid her house and charge her.

Here's another...

http://www.wtae.com/news/18469558/detail.html

Save charging people for actual perverts, there has to be a more constructive way of tackling teenagers sending naughty pics of themselves to each other without charging them with serious sexual offences.

There seems to be a fundamental miisunderstanding of how the law works going on in here.

For example, it doesn't matter who is being 'hurt', as it were, the law makes any possession of and dissemination of pornography featuring a minor illegal. Was she in possession of pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. Did she transmit pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. She broke at least two laws, both of which are felonies (the article actually shows at least 3 laws). She is hurting more than herself. She also probably isn't going to be harshly punished either, so lets not pretend she's doing life in an adult prison. She has only been arrested, not convicted or sentenced.

The problem is that she transmitted them. If she had kept them to herself no one would be the wiser but now there are pictures of a minor floating around the world ad infinitum. She sent them to people who sent them to people and someone will upload it to the net. Of course everyone who saw the picture is also now possibly guilty of felonies as well now. You are creating new CP. These kids aren't going to be doing serious time but they did break the law and CP is not an insignificant issue.

Ahtman wrote:There seems to be a fundamental miisunderstanding of how the law works going on in here.

For example, it doesn't matter who is being 'hurt', as it were, the law makes any possession of and dissemination of pornography featuring a minor illegal. Was she in possession of pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. Did she transmit pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. She broke at least two laws, both of which are felonies (the article actually shows at least 3 laws). She is hurting more than herself. She also probably isn't going to be harshly punished either, so lets not pretend she's doing life in an adult prison. She has only been arrested, not convicted or sentenced.

Obviously they broke the law, there's no question of that. The question is whether or not minors committing these crimes should be treated in the same way as adults. For example, the girl in the first article must , if convicted and the crime cannot be expunged when she turns 18, register for 25 years as a Tier II sex offender; from my reading of the law anyway.

In either case, the third charge, sexual abuse, strikes me as the oddest. Can a person sexually abuse himself? Obviously under the law minors are not granted the same ability to grant consent as those of majority, but it still seems very odd outside of technocratic considerations.

dogma wrote:

micahaphone wrote:Okay, I'm pretty sure that I'm not accurately representing the law in that small blurb. I guess "downloading or having significant proof that a person is actively looking for cp" would be a better way to put it, but I was going for brevity.

I'm no expert on the laws, ask one if you need your off-topic questions answered.

As I recall, anyone who receives or transmits child pornography is guilty of possessing it. The question is then whether or not someone who has accidentally viewed child pornography on the internet is guilty of receiving child pornography. Criminal acts obviously require intent, but that establishment is subject to the judgment of the court; making it an arguable proposition, rather than one of categorical certainty.

Actually the case of child porn is quite interesting.

Pornography that includes actual children is 100% illegal but there is, sadly, a way around that.

Any pornographic material that is either hand drawn, computer modeled, or created in any sort of artificial fashion is still legal.

However, anyone who commits a malicious hacking attack is doing something illegal. The media is going to clump 'anonymous' as a group because they don't know what 4chan is(yeah right).

halonachos wrote:
Any pornographic material that is either hand drawn, computer modeled, or created in any sort of artificial fashion is still legal.

not in the UK, depicting cartoons or animations of children in sexual situations is illegal.

and interesting is not the word I would use...

dogma wrote:

Ahtman wrote:There seems to be a fundamental miisunderstanding of how the law works going on in here.

For example, it doesn't matter who is being 'hurt', as it were, the law makes any possession of and dissemination of pornography featuring a minor illegal. Was she in possession of pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. Did she transmit pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. She broke at least two laws, both of which are felonies (the article actually shows at least 3 laws). She is hurting more than herself. She also probably isn't going to be harshly punished either, so lets not pretend she's doing life in an adult prison. She has only been arrested, not convicted or sentenced.

Obviously they broke the law, there's no question of that. The question is whether or not minors committing these crimes should be treated in the same way as adults.

I don't really see that as the question as all we are talking about here at the moment are charges. There has been no court date set or venue determined. They will most likely all be charged as minors and get some probation. I can not see a good argument made here to charge them as adults, which they would have to do to ignore that they are well under the age. The sexual abuse charge will most likely be dropped. Now, if it does come to pass and they are all charged as adults and the child abuse charge stays we will have something to talk about in that area.

This really just goes back to show that the surest way of getting in trouble is to be stupid. A 15 year old knows they are a minor (as they are typically reminded constantly) and that CP is illegal. If they just kept the pics to themselves it wouldn't be a problem, but like a robber that brags about a hiest, they had to share pics with multiple people and/or put them on the internet.

dogma wrote:more controversially, what if a 16-year-old viewed a picture of a nude 16-year-old?

Given that they've charged a girl with possession of child pornography when she had nude images of herself on her cell phone? I think the sixteen year old is truly fethed.

And this is why I say our sexual crime laws are way too strict, politicians have jumped on the bandwagon of 'being tough on sex criminals' and they've made laws so harsh that they're beginning to hurt people just as much as they help actual victims.

Actually looking for articles, apparently that's now an incredibly common occurrence.

It is indeed, there are unfortunately tons of cases where people ended up the sex offenders registry because they went streaking through the college campus one night or something. And the worst part of it is, since the sex offender registry doesn't have levels or specify WHY you're on the registry, those people often end up either being harassed by others who think that because they're on the registry they're automatically a pedophile rapist or something, and thanks to city zoning laws (once again, spearheaded by overzealous politicians) often results in sex offenders who more often then not are guilty of something silly being unable to live where they want. Of course, most people hear the word 'sex offender' and immediately think the offender is evil, so it's unlikely that something will be done about it.....

This is why I dislike democracy....

Ahtman wrote:
I don't really see that as the question as all we are talking about here at the moment are charges. There has been no court date set or venue determined. They will most likely all be charged as minors and get some probation. I can not see a good argument made here to charge them as adults, which they would have to do to ignore that they are well under the age. The sexual abuse charge will most likely be dropped. Now, if it does come to pass and they are all charged as adults and the child abuse charge stays we will have something to talk about in that area.

Yeah, that is a good point. I skipped past that stage of the process in my reasoning.

Ahtman wrote:
This really just goes back to show that the surest way of getting in trouble is to be stupid. A 15 year old knows they are a minor (as they are typically reminded constantly) and that CP is illegal. If they just kept the pics to themselves it wouldn't be a problem, but like a robber that brags about a hiest, they had to share pics with multiple people and/or put them on the internet.

Well, ultimately, no one (that I know) takes nude pictures of themselves if they don't plan to give them to at least one person, so the real issue is probably taking the pictures in the first place.

dogma wrote:Well, ultimately, no one (that I know) takes nude pictures of themselves if they don't plan to give them to at least one person, so the real issue is probably taking the pictures in the first place.

Yup. Or as Chick McGhee would say 'No evidence, no evidence, no evidence". Excluding porn, probably every picture that ended up online started with the phrase "I swear no one else will see this".

In the heady days when the internet was solely the purview of the nerdy, I recall a guy in my high school soliciting a picture of all the popular girls posing naked on a beach. I'm sure it was given in confidence, but it ended up being put up in poster-size format on the boys locker room walls.

Good luck FBI, I am behind 7 proxies.

dogma wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:
You're on shaky ground from the start. I think technically you'd be guilty of something in both cases though they probably wouldn't make a big thing of it. If you saw the image and then went away from the webpage and deleted it you'd probably be in the clear. But things don't vanish from your hard disk easily, you'd have to argue that it was a genuine accident. Of course if you were frequently having accidents of that nature then they may query the sorts of websites you tend to look at.

Yeah, that latter case is certainly how intent would be established. Truthfully I'm more curious about the mutual exchange of questionable images between parties both under the age of consent. I know that, when I was in high school, that sort of thing happened all the time.

There have been a number of cases of schoolchildren in the USA being prosecuted for sending nuddy pics of each other on their mobile phones.


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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/16/kid_pic_prosecutions/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/31/kid_phone_pic_ruling/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/26/sexting_lawsuit/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/20/vermont_decriminalises_sexting/


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Back on the main topic, I don't see why the Internet should grant immunity from prosecution for criminal behaviour.

A lot of people seem to have this idea that because copyright violations, stalking, harassment, and business obstruction are done on the internet they cannot be prosecuted.

All of these things were done in the past by xeroxing, eavesdropping, sending poison pen letters and so on.

They were judged to be wrong for good reasons. The fact that they can also be done by internet does not make them right.

when I was in high school, that sort of thing happened all the time.

When I was in High School if someone found a Playboy it was treated with the reverence and awe, like a forbidden holy relic. The laws haven't caught up with the tech yet and the excessive and ease of access to porn, unheard of in days of yore, is leading to some sticky situations.

Ahtman wrote:

dogma wrote:

Ahtman wrote:There seems to be a fundamental miisunderstanding of how the law works going on in here.

For example, it doesn't matter who is being 'hurt', as it were, the law makes any possession of and dissemination of pornography featuring a minor illegal. Was she in possession of pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. Did she transmit pornographic pictures of a minor? Yes. She broke at least two laws, both of which are felonies (the article actually shows at least 3 laws). She is hurting more than herself. She also probably isn't going to be harshly punished either, so lets not pretend she's doing life in an adult prison. She has only been arrested, not convicted or sentenced.

Obviously they broke the law, there's no question of that. The question is whether or not minors committing these crimes should be treated in the same way as adults.

I don't really see that as the question as all we are talking about here at the moment are charges. There has been no court date set or venue determined. They will most likely all be charged as minors and get some probation. I can not see a good argument made here to charge them as adults, which they would have to do to ignore that they are well under the age. The sexual abuse charge will most likely be dropped. Now, if it does come to pass and they are all charged as adults and the child abuse charge stays we will have something to talk about in that area.

This really just goes back to show that the surest way of getting in trouble is to be stupid. A 15 year old knows they are a minor (as they are typically reminded constantly) and that CP is illegal. If they just kept the pics to themselves it wouldn't be a problem, but like a robber that brags about a hiest, they had to share pics with multiple people and/or put them on the internet.

Surely there's a matter of discretion when applying charges, the police don't have to charge everyone. While what they did was stupid it seems the wrong way to go about handling the situation. If a 40 year old man was coaxing photos out of young girls then there's a clear situation of abuse/manipulation there, but it's not the same when teenagers do these things for their peers. For instance, loads of kids have probably masturbated thinking about some girl they fancy who their own age, which means they are spanking over a minor. If it was a 40 year old man getting his jollies off thoughts of 14 year old girls there'd be cause for concern, 14 and 15 year old kids just see each other as equals. It's the same as when two 15 year olds get caught having sex, it's treated as statutory rape, usually by the male. If a 40 year old was having sex with a 14 or 15 year old then again, there's clear issues there, but kids just see each other as equals and typically neither is a victim more than the other.

And the surest way to get into trouble is bring stupid? Yeah. Kids are dumb. When they are young and want to impress a mate they probably don't think taking a nude pic and showing them counts as "photographing a minor", they probably don't even think of themselves as being a 'minor' when doing stuff with friends or that what they do to themselves is illegal. Everyone knows that child porn is wrong, I'm not sure that people realise that you can abuse and make and store pornography of yourself illegally. It seems more of the technicality than the intent of the law. That's why a bit of discretion wouldn't go amiss from the authorities Kids need to be cut some slack in this area. Charging them with the same sexual offences as some predatory paedophile on the internet is not constructive. What they need is a firm talking to about the risks of their behaviour.

There are some countries where although sex with a minor is an offence, it's not so if their ages are sufficiently close, so kids around 15 and 16 would not be charged if one of them was underage, but someone who was into their 20s or older would be. Seems a sensible approach to not criminalise stupid behaviour in the rush to "be tough on paedophiles". It's not just 15 year olds that can get into trouble either. In the UK at least the age of consent is 16, but you are a minor until 18. This means you could be married and have a child at 17, but take a nudie photo for your husband and you've effectively created child porn. You can have sex at 16 and look at a naked 16/17 year old, but you can't take a photo.


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Kilkrazy wrote:
Back on the main topic, I don't see why the Internet should grant immunity from prosecution for criminal behaviour.

A lot of people seem to have this idea that because copyright violations, stalking, harassment, and business obstruction are done on the internet they cannot be prosecuted.

All of these things were done in the past by xeroxing, eavesdropping, sending poison pen letters and so on.

They were judged to be wrong for good reasons. The fact that they can also be done by internet does not make them right.

I don't think anyone has claimed the sort though. But as I observed in my first post, there's a gap between the law and technology. It's really quite difficult to prove who is using a piece of bandwidth at any particular point. For cases like child porn and terrorism the police probably swoop in and take all the equipment from the house, but they have the powers to do that.

But for file sharing, well that's typically not a criminal offence, music companies send letters out but if they wanted to check your computer to prove anything they'd have to hope to get a court order for you to comply, by which time you're destroyed the evidence if you have any sense. Which is why music companies want the civil offence of copyright infringement heavily criminalised and power to force ISP to cut off internet without solid evidence. Very dodgy because they seem to accuse the wrong people fairly frequently. Until they get their way they are left sending out threatening letters fishing for fines that they can't really hope to enforce.