Here's a reason you should be concerned about internet privacy. Forget stupid "nothing to hide arg

It REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY pisses me off when people say "I don't care about the government or corporations are becoming so intrusive." I really can't put into words how much this arguement pisses me off. I see it here on ATS often too... and that really makes me

Well here is one reason. Meet Adam:

Around two years ago, six ICE agents entered the home of a 20-year-old man named Adam while he was sleeping. They put a gun to his head and informed him they had a warrant to search his premises for child pornography.

Adam is a musician and was a frequent user of the peer-to-peer file-sharing website Limewire, which he used to download and share music videos. The search of his computer hard drive yielded 2,331 videos, most of which were music and a small portion of which were adult porn. Two suspect child porn videos featuring girls aged 16-17, and another video apparently featuring a three year-old, had been downloaded and deleted.

Adam claims that the downloads were accidental, and that although he occasionally indulged in adult porn (like many men his age), he has no interest in child pornography (CP), never sought it out and deleted the downloaded items as soon as he realized what they were. The fact that the forensic evidence showed that the items were never viewed and that there was no record of any keyword searches that would indicate he was looking for CP would seem to back up that claim.

But it didn’t matter: Adam was charged with possession of child pornography, and was warned by the prosecutor that if he did not plead guilty, the charge would be upgraded to distribution (as a file-sharing site, Limewire is an automatic distribution tool), so he would then be looking at 15-25 years in a federal penitentiary. Seeing no way out, he took a guilty plea, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, 15 years of probation and a lifetime on the sex offender registry.

Rawstory

You see, even if you haven't done anything knowingly wrong, they can still bust down your door for stupid reasons and arrest you and convict you on basically trumped up charges with todays laws.

As our privacy and liberty are steadily eroded this will become worse and worse.

The NSA is now monitoring everyone and if they don't have it will soon have the ability to crack all encryptions that make your normal email and web clicks safe now: ats thread on this.

Now is the time to take action.

First of of wake up and realize your privacy DOES matter.

Second start spreading awareness.

Third start writing your congressmen.

And if you can - run for office, or become active in your party. If your tired of all these fed up corrupt politicians, become a non corrupt politician and help change the system.

There are a lot more of us, and the law is mostly still on our side - for now.

Sounds like there is alot more to the story than appears... Sounds like a total waste of effort/time to do what the FBI or whatever did.

reply to post by EmperorXyn


It is not uncommon for prosecutors and law enforcement to charge anything they can to get easy convictions and pad numbers. Shows them as being more efficient and effective during reviews.

This is hardly a case of "not knowingly doing anything wrong".

He was, after all, downloading music through Limewire. While a widely acceptable practice, this is still illegal in the United States.

Sooner or later society and the law are going to have to come to terms with the fact that that garbage is all over the internet and a viable way to differentiate predator pervs and people who are just unlucky or reckless with their internet travels.

It doesnt do anyone any good to hammer down on some poor schmuck who did a ctrl+A download on a search term before leaving for the day. It doesnt do anyone anyone any good to raid the homes of people who stupidly click through a dozen redirects and land on this filth.

Resources are better spent elsewhere. Yet it's a hot-button topic so a wrong-turn on the net or stupidly downloading crap p2p gets you burned at the stake.

It was about this time last year that ICE raided some house but it turned out to be somebody else using the wifi.

It's become the new war on drugs. Expect a lot more people to be screwed over before any balance or sense comes to the scene.

And why the hell is ICE doing these raids?

This very literally is something that can happen to anyone. Given the amount of traffic, security holes, worms, workarounds, jerks who just think it's funny, that are out there paired with the governments impeccable bureaucracy sending raids to wrong addresses or issuing warrants for wrong names everyone from your kindergartener to your grandma is potentially under the knife.

Dont even get me started on that "lesser charge" game they play. Innocent people plead guilty all the time when it looks like it's the only way out.

As far as privacy goes, whenever anybody says "Ive nothing to hide" ask them if they lock their doors. Then, why if they've nothing to hide? Right, bad guys.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Ice does the raids because they View CP as trafficking, falls under their jurisdiction because most of it comes from overseas.

So they track it like smuggling so hence ICE is involved.


And just to add, ive had a computer with internet since the early 90s, On the front wave of file sharing etc, and Not once have I "accidentally" downloaded CP...

Its amazingly easy to simply not get child porn on your PC, no amount of lame excuses there... I could understand if he was in say a multi person household that all used one computer, or had Unsecured Wifi access etc.

But the cops dont look for just one accidental download subpoenas and warrants would of been issued to his ISP that would of revealed a history of searches.

Originally posted by babybunnies
This is hardly a case of "not knowingly doing anything wrong".

He was, after all, downloading music through Limewire. While a widely acceptable practice, this is still illegal in the United States.

It is not illegal to download music. It is illegal to download copyrighted music... If you make and share music using p2p software is a legitimate means of sharing music.

Reply to post by benrl

I don't know if this qualifies as funny or paranoid or what but I was going to hit up Goolge to see if I could find stats of unintentional viewing or downloading but now I'm terrified to search for those terms.

Looks like I won't be searching for anything regarding multiplayer FPS's with control points or CP's anytime soon either.

Ever since I saw one of those news shows (20/20 or 48 hours or one of those programs) about this kid whose life was ruined because a Trojan turned his computer into zombie porn server the whole thing has jumped up the irrational fears list for me.

At least I hope it's irrational.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Limewire lol..... What a cesspool that place was. Stuff mislabeled for the lulz..... Both harmless and malicious misnaming as well.....

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
Ever since I saw one of those news shows (20/20 or 48 hours or one of those programs) about this kid whose life was ruined because a Trojan turned his computer into zombie porn server the whole thing has jumped up the irrational fears list for me.

At least I hope it's irrational.

Unfortunately not.

Fact is: under US laws, the authorities have the ability to rinse almost anybody's computer and find something to charge them with.

I no longer use email for important correspondence. Maybe I'm being 'irrational' too. But I bought myself a nice new pen and writing stationery and I'm happy doing it the ole'fashioned way.

Computer forensics is a joke.... If they want you, they got you. They can plant whatever they want, change the date stamp, and have some convincing paid expert come and testify. Most people have no idea about computers other than clicking on their email and IE icon, and will buy what an expert tells them.

The law is that you have to have child porn on your computer, possessing of it, making sexual moves toward a child and having sex with a child to get convicted of child porn. But it doesn't stop them from investigating you to see if you do have child porn on your computer. Meaning that some adult have to go through all your computer files to find the child porn. When they find the file? They have to watch the film to see if it is child porn. If it is proven to be child porn? Then they can convict you. Which mean, Adams most likely did had child porn on his computer.

The legal system is on the back foot when it comes to technology. It's slow, entrenched evidence based ways it having a difficult time when confronted with massive amounts of data and technical complexity. As with the times in the past, justice is only as good as the people working on it.

Cases like this are important to highlight some of the dangers, risk and uncertainty involved with online content. The line is not always a clear black or white situation but generally involves many shades of grey. With porn there are different age restrictions around the world but generally set around 16-18. There are not set standards and ways to tell the specific age of images that are available. With younger girls using make up and such to look older while the older women do similar techniques to look younger it does make it challenging to remain within the technical boundaries of the law at times. There is a very clear and large public demand for this material all around the world. With much of this content user generated, any form of regulation would be very difficult to implement.

Some progress is being made with better international collaboration to target and bring down CP networks. In the mean time I expect the law to make many more mistakes as it tries to remain clear and objective in a clouded situation.

reply to post by TKDRL


Absolutely. A corrupted government agency doesnt let The Truth stand in the way of their own fabricated truth. If they want to frame you, they do, and the gullible public buys it hook, line, and sinker.

But, everyone should be using a data-shredder for things they want to DELETE delete. Your normal OS, when you "erase" something, just rewrites the address of the file to make it appear to be free space to the OS, thus when you gather more data, the OS will start to overwrite the "erased" data, and up until that point, the information is just sitting there, fully intact. Ever wonder how your OS can delete like 20 gigs in half a second? Thats how

But even if you completely overwrite the data once, the data is still accessible using techniques that I am not completely up to date with ATM. However, the jist of it is, that all bits retain a sort of memory, per se, and with varying degrees of accuracy based on how many times that bit has been switched, an organization with the right tools and know how can reconstruct that old, completely overwritten only once data with high degrees of accuracy, essentially reconstructing the destroyed filed.

Data shredders will give you options on how to destroy the data. Most any shredder will have an option for 35 cycles of overwriting, 8 random writes and 27 differing patterned writes. After that many passes over a segment of data, the memory of the bits is effectively impossible to recover as I understand it.

I use BCWipe for anything Im feeling paranoid about. Theres a lot of shredders out there though.

Originally posted by babybunnies
This is hardly a case of "not knowingly doing anything wrong".

He was, after all, downloading music through Limewire. While a widely acceptable practice, this is still illegal in the United States.

As other poster said above that downloading copyrighted music is illegal. Whenever the terms like torrents or limewire comes up, people always assume that it is illegal. Moreover this is not what he was accused of. Even after the forensics proved that the file was not viewed, prosecuting him just shows how low the government is. And the recent case of Megaupload raid just proves that they can come in any time and just beat your ass.

Originally posted by morpheusxxz

Originally posted by babybunnies
This is hardly a case of "not knowingly doing anything wrong".

He was, after all, downloading music through Limewire. While a widely acceptable practice, this is still illegal in the United States.

As other poster said above that downloading copyrighted music is illegal. Whenever the terms like torrents or limewire comes up, people always assume that it is illegal. Moreover this is not what he was accused of. Even after the forensics proved that the file was not viewed, prosecuting him just shows how low the government is. And the recent case of Megaupload raid just proves that they can come in any time and just beat your ass.

It also depends on the country and their laws. Canada has a special tax on all blank CD sales that was put in place through lobbying by the CMRRA to pay music copyright holders their royalties. If I remember right the last few years have produced about 450 million dollars in distributed royalties, but I would have to check the website to be sure. They are actually teaching this bit of information in schools/colleges/universities now.

Now that the idiots in our government have apparently signed ACTA (let's fix it cause it ain't broke, duh), I don't know what is going to happen to the CD music royalty "tax," but I expect they will leave it in place and try to get away with double-dipping like SOCAN did for so many years.

On the CP issue, I've never seen it on the internet, but then I don't look. If you come across it, report it, we don't need that crap floating around. I do know however that a malicious site can drop images and other data on your computer and the government does run malicious sites and honey pots for the purposes of entrapment and funding their bloated prison systems. Gotta get slave labour from somewhere, right?

Cheers - Dave

I'm sorry... I've never downloaded a child porn video ever, specially one featuring a three year old... so... "by mistake" its just too ridiculous to say.

OH man! Maybe I'm just lucky then... for ALL THESE YEARS I've been so lucky that whenever I go do something mcgyver's soundtrack kicks in.

Originally posted by babybunnies
This is hardly a case of "not knowingly doing anything wrong".

He was, after all, downloading music through Limewire. While a widely acceptable practice, this is still illegal in the United States.

That's what this was really about. They took the opportunity to stop him using Limewire. Maybe he was a political undesirable, too?

It looks heavy handed to raid someone's house over internet piracy. Looks much better if you say it was for "distributing child pornography". That way, you get the support of the "easily influenced', who are the majority.

Originally posted by babybunnies
This is hardly a case of "not knowingly doing anything wrong".

He was, after all, downloading music through Limewire. While a widely acceptable practice, this is still illegal in the United States.

Exactly what I was thinking! The cheapskate deserved to have his door kicked down and be woken up at gunpoint to have his entire life ruined and be potentially raped in prison and/or forced to join a racist prison gang in order to even survive! Next time you PAY for your music, buddy! If they hadn't gotten this guy off the streets, I don't know if I could sleep at night, just knowing that he's in his little thief's den, listening to free music! Wait! What??!! You mean... They let the maniac go free?? I gotta go... Suddenly I feel the urge to upgrade my home security measures.... Yikes! Just to imagine, that he could be hiding around any corner just gives me the willies!

It is ABSOLUTELY VITAL to fully encrypt your computer. Mine is fully encrypted with AES-256 bit protection. It will not even boot or load windows without a 45 character password. It is not that I don't have anything to hide, it is for privacy and personal protection.

Nowadays the smartphones come on proprietary hard to modify operating systems and you cannot install full drive encryption on the phones which should make people nervous.

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