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Click This Link, Go To Jail
from the wide-open-to-abuse dept
Declan McCullagh has written up an article about a questionable tactic used by the FBI to go after people looking for child porn. It set up a honeypot server and then posted links to it on a forum frequented by those who are looking for child pornography. It then used the IP address of people who clicked on the link as enough evidence to charge them with a crime. In the specific case McCullagh discusses, the guy was found guilty of simply clicking on that link. Of course, it's always difficult to separate out legal discussions like this from the fact that it involves child pornography -- which immediately sets off an emotional response. The problem here, though, is that the evidence on which the guy was found guilty could be used to find many people guilty of many things. The FBI didn't even track the referrer log -- just who went to the site. In other words, if someone had taken that link out of the forum and posted it on another site, a blog or sent an email around -- and anyone clicked on it without knowing anything about the link, they could have broken the law. This is open to tremendous abuse. If all you need to do to get someone convicted of child porn charges is get them to click a link, that doesn't seem right. Furthermore, in this case, the only other evidence was two small (admittedly questionable) thumbnail images, that there was no evidence that the guy looked at. In other words, to have enough evidence to convict someone and send them to jail for years (and get them listed as a sex offender), you could just send them an email with a link and some thumbnail images attached. If they click on the link (even if they don't ever look at the attached files), that's enough evidence, according to this case. That seems incredibly problematic.
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Or even don't click the link and still go to jail.
Theres at least one plugin for Firefox that will download a page in the background before you ever click on it (such as if you hover your mouse over the link) for faster browsing.
Another plugin can download all links that point to images or video on a single page in 1 click instead of having to manually save each one.
And as far as webserver logs, there's no distinguishable difference between a link you actually clicked and one a plugin cached or saved for you.
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Re: Or even don't click the link and still go to j
At best, that kind of information is enough for a warrant for a search of the computer. But clicking a link and then no other evidence is enough for a 10 year sentence and 15 years registered as a sex offender?
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Re: Or even don't click the link and still go to j
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Re: Or even don't click the link and still go to j
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Bots, spiders and aggregators.
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scary country
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Favicon.ico are next
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Egregious Abuse of Stupidity
Seriously though, the lawyers involved must be truly retarded.
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Ignorance
"Against logic there is no armor like ignorance."
- Laurence J. Peter
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Worse than stated
I wonder what happens when an invis frame is embedded in a rouge doubleclick ad and the server gets hit will a billion requests from random people around the country.
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Re: Worse than stated
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Entrapment
Above reader responses are all valid, but too technical. Start with basic principles.
FWIW (and without citation) web browser cache is considered possession. Subject wasn't even charged with possession, but mere intent.
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I think we've found...
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Rickroll
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That being said, if the FBI threw this guy on the ground when he opened the door and then entered his house for the search, how did the guy destroy his hard drive and flash drive?
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Re:
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> click on a link and get a search warrant issued so
> the FBI can take a look at your computer
Read the article. The dude was convicted for clicking the link.
> That being said, if the FBI threw this guy on the
> ground when he opened the door and then entered his house
> for the search, how did the guy destroy his hard drive
> and flash drive?
Also in the article. Basically the dude had destroyed these before anyone showed up at this door.
The guy might be a perv, but convicting someone because an IP address is associated to a weblog is really scary shit.
IP spoofing anyone?
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Once again, the idiotic lawmakers have done it aga
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And then there's malware...
This is off-the-scale stupid. The people responsible should be publicly identified, publicly fired, and publicly blacklisted from all law enforcement activities for life. We simply can't tolerate people in positions of power who have such clearly inferior intellectual abilities -- they're not good enough to be public servants.
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Links to jail
I would be suspicious if students printed pictures or stayed on the sie, but you can't be rediculous--and the FBI shouldn't be either.
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cool
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What If
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So
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What is disturbing, is that some log file is enough to get a search warrent. Hopefully they had to show a lot more evidence then just one click, before they could get a search warrent. That would set a presidence (sp), saying you can search anyone's house and computer if your "illegal link" was accessed from there.
In a broader sense, this hurts the internet as a whole. It makes the FBI a sort of internet terrorist. I understand the child pornography issue, but if you take this to a maxum, the government can use any information you or your computer give as evidence as long as they own the site.
Think of it this way: It's not thier fault your computer got a virus that uploaded your whole hard drive to an FBI server.
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Re:
But like most people, I bet you've never really done much about it. And so it will continue...
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That's the Law
That's just the way the law and "justice" operate in the US. This isn't really all that new either. Even before the Internet it was a felony to receive child pornography in the mail. They didn't to show that you requested or even wanted it. Just that you received it. It was, and still is, an easy way for any enemy to ruin your life. All they have to do is to anonymously tip off the postal inspectors that you are receiving child porn in your mail and then mail some to you.
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The biggest distributer of kiddy porn is...
I remember reading about a kiddy-porn-through-the-mail case back in the late 1970's or early 1980's where it was revealed in court that the biggest distributer of KP in the US at that time was actually the US government itself running various "sting" (honeypot) operations. Looks like things haven't changed much.
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Re: The biggest distributer of kiddy porn is...
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Would anybody have a copy of the link?
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Re:
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It seems that all reason and common sense goes right out the window as soon as "child pornography" is mentioned. Child abuse is wrong, but is it any reason to start the modern equivalent of a witch hunt? From what I've read, child pornography wasn't even illegal until the late 1970s or early 1980s. Was there a child abuse epidemic back then? If not, why is it considered so much more a problem today that people have to be locked up and have their lives ruined for even attempting to look at it?
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you asked for it...
http://tinyurl.com/2usdx4
have fun with it.
if you click it yourself though make sure you're behind several proxies, or at least one with a power level of over 9000.
The two pics are totally questionable btw.
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what a joke
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a good idea...
You then spam the world and see how many pieces the FBI server falls into.
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I don't buy the FBI
I'm not doing a good job of expressing my point. Grown ups having sex with children I can see and in a sense support criminalizing. But going to prison for 10 years for looking at something seems extreame
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