ITT: CP

[WangyJohn]

The Finnish police and National Bureau of Investigation have created a list of 1700 sites that all Finnish ISP's must now censor from their clients, as they are suspected child porn sites.

Good thing right?

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/02/19/0252236.shtml

Well, no. Out of the bit over 1000 sites critics managed to track down only 9 included actual child pornography, and one of them was borderline, some of the rest of the sites included links that would eventually lead to child porn. Largely, the the remaining 800 sites were completely legal porn sites (including the top four hits for "Gay Porn" on google), and even some completely irrelevant sites, including a online doll store, and tech support sites in Thai. Worst part is, the block can be circumvented with any simple proxy.

But what is the most egregious mistake, is blocking lapsiporno.info (chilporn.info), which is a site that criticized the police' efforts and the block list, including a list of url's blocked and short descriptions of the site's contents (with the real cp site's URL's not shown).

All in all, the operation was a complete and utter fuckup from the authorities, only to be underlined by the farcical criminal case against the creator of lapsipono.info

Child Porn is the great Satan, which everyone agrees on as a Really Fucking Bad Thing™, and the kneejerk reaction is to give the police full freedom to do what they see fit. Sure, it's a bad thing, it's probably the worst misuse of the freedom of the internet (after MySpace, curse you!), and should be cracked down. But the methods used are wrong, do more harm than good, and only serve as a way for politicians to shine their halos and claim results.

[Halo299]

i wish someone would shine me.

i really don't know what to say, other than that is bullcrap.

-halo

[Boring 7]

Ah, the CP train.

It's probably so extra-scary because people are having less kids, so rather than being used to having lots of rug rats (not to mention expecting half of them to die off) they have one precious little snowflake that they cannot afford to lose. That, and every time the MSM runs out of real* things to talk about they manufacture "predators could get your child, BE AFRAID!!!!" stories.

*You know, like Britney's new haircut or Anna Nicole's unremarkable anus.

[Leeloo]

Read it on slashdot.

We have a similar list here. I haven't run into it myself, as I have been running my own DNS server for years (have to keep my sysadmin skills up ) When it was introduced, they promised that it would only be used against foreign kiddie-porn, and not be the slippery slope against anything that the powers don't like. When a danish site was added to it, without the owner getting contacted (not even by the police looking for kiddie-porn), it was labeled as a mistake.

Apparently, nowadays the two biggest distrubuters of kiddie-porn (it's not the slippery slope, right?) is allofmp3.com and thepiratebay.org, neither of which have been convicted of anything (not even distributing music / movies) yet.

They haven't started censoring critical people yet, though.

[Swordsman3003]

I do believe we like to discuss 'who watches the watchers' around these parts.

[ManaUser]

I don't know that much about Finnish politics but this seems to reflect a sad state of affairs. Not so much that they passed a harmful and ineffective law, but how they're now abusing it for clearly un-(Finnish)constitutional purposes.

Though, I'm almost surprised the US hasn't tried to do something similar already, considering the current administration also has no problem with walking all over the constitution.

Err, come to think of it, a California judge did just recently order a domain registrar to delist wikileaks.org (still reachable at wikileaks.cx).

[Xero]

wtf is with your people
this is a CP thread!?

[Kittyboymuffin]

What is that Wikileaks thing? (And the .cx link doesn't work for me ...)

[ManaUser]

Wikileaks is a place for people to publish ("leak") secret documents, specifically documents that reveal business or government misdeeds.

Not sure why the .cx addy wouldn't work. But you can also try http://wikileaks.org.uk or just skip DNS and go to http://88.80.13.160

[Ghastly]

We just had a massive CP bust here in Ontario and they claim there may be as many as 15,000 arrests yet to come. One of the people busted was a 14 year old boy right here in Hamilton. Of course the paper didn't tell what he did, only that he was arrested. It could well be as simple as him e-mailing naked photos of himself to friends. Perhaps he was looking at photos of girls around his own age in a blatant fit of adolescent curiosity. Or maybe he was looking at toddler-con. Who knows. This is Canada so he might have only been looking at lolicon hentai.

When a kid that young gets busted I think what's most important is seeing he or she gets counseling (unless it's the case of them e-mailing naked pics of themselves to friend in which case a stern lecture and discipline from their parents should be enough). Jail is only going to make things worse.

CP is one of those beautiful "easy button" issues for lawmakers. You can get away with passing any crazy law you want if you can find a way to wrap it up in "protecting our children from sex/porn/predators". Anyone who opposes you must be a child molester.

What's even better is you can use the media to totally destroy anyone you want simply by arresting them on suspicions of having CP. It won't even matter if you find anything or not, whether you can make the charges stick or not. Just get their name and address in the papers and public opinion will destroy them. The papers might print a paragraph if the charges don't stick (i.e. were bogus) but that won't matter because people will just assume "oh he's one of those computer savy pedophiles who knows how to hide his stash of porn".

The whole hysteria over sex crimes makes me believe what we may need is legislation banning the publication of the identities of sex offenders until they are found guilty in a court of law. Even then lives will probably still be destroyed on false charges.

I was reading that one of the tools they used in the recent busts was software developed by the FBI which as well as identifying the IP of your computer also identifies your computer's serial number. The software was developed in particular to catch war drivers (people who leach off other people's wifi). Hopefully this will decrease the number of raids on innocent victims of hijacked wifi networks (which happens more often than you might expect).

But while it's certainly great that the FBI can now track the activities of a specific computer on the internet by its serial number... it's also pretty freaking scary to think your computer's serial number of leaving its mark on the internet. I had no idea.

I suppose eventually the pedos will get around that simply by not registering their serial numbers, or buying used computers out of state.

CP is a very complex issue. Should production be illegal. Fuck yes! That's a no brainer! Should the willful distribution be illegal (I specify willful to differentiate it from being who have their networks/computers hijacked by trojans to distribute CP), hell yeah. Should possession be illegal... here it starts to get a little bit into "slippery slope" territory.

On the one hand I hate seeing the simple possession of any information no matter how sensitive or controversial made illegal. But on the other hand, "dude, it's fucking kiddy porn". That's not even getting into the "having pictures of a murder does not make me a murderer" argument.

Lawmakers simply sidestep any meaningful debate on the topic by simply using the "anyone who opposes what we say is right is a pedophile" tactic.

Here in Canada our anti-child porn laws are so strict that you can be busted for clicking a blind link to a kiddy porn site, receiving an unsolicited e-mail containing CP, or even browsing an image board like 4chan if you happen to click on a thread that some jackass posted CP to. One image in your cache is all it takes to get busted (never mind the fact that real pedophiles don't have a single image in their cache but rather CDs and DVDs loaded with thousands of images).

It's actually a very scary thing when you stop and think about how much power our societal frenzy over CP gives our government. So much easier to plant a DVD-R full of CP on a crime-scene than a bag of coke too.

Anyways, while I certainly welcome intellectual and academic discussion on the topic here, I think it goes without saying that links to CP/CP Portals and definitely CP itself will not be tolerated.

[Xero]

wait wait wait
computers dont have serial numbers

I can think of two things you're reffering to
a MAC address on the interface, which all modern NICs let you change
and windows CD-keys, which I can change at a moments notice

[Leeloo]

Two things:

Should distribution be illegal? Distribution for money, yes, on the suspicion that the money will in one way or the other end up in the hands of the producer, or someone else who would be willing to become a producer for that money. But how about distribution for free? There's no incentive for the producer, so that argument is out. From my point of view, if that JPG can make just one pedophile masturbate instead of molesting just one kid, it's worth legalizing it. And if giving away all the crap that has already been produced for free can lower the price (supply and demand, you know) enough that just one producer finds a better way to make money, it's worth it.

And second... Your computers serial number is not floating around on the internet. Not sure which serial number it is, but the only one that's reasonably standard is the MAC address. Anything else, they would need a trojan to get. The MAC address is *a little* easier, because it's actually sent over the network... to the nearest router. If you're connected directly to the DSL modem, that means your providers router. If you have a router between, your computers MAC address only goes to that router (and that routers MAC address goes to the next one). If you're on a wireless connection, the nearest router will be the access point. So either they'd need a trojan on the war-drivers PC, or a log file from the owner of the access point - if he has such a log.

[Ghastly]

wait wait wait
computers dont have serial numbers

I can think of two things you're reffering to
a MAC address on the interface, which all modern NICs let you change
and windows CD-keys, which I can change at a moments notice

Maybe. The article probably did the usual job of completely botching the tech. I did think it odd because as far as I knew the serial number on my PC was simply something printed on a sticker by the manufacturer and not something embedded into the architecture of the machine itself.

Aren't the MAC addesses dynamic? I thought they were temporary an reassigned on a first come/first served basis each time machines logged on and off the network. The windows CD-keys seem much more likely, but wouldn't that just mean the pedos would just have to switch to a Mac or Linux OS?

The weird part of the article was it mentioning the police in Ontario were tracking more than 15,000 computers in the province alone that were downloading CP. WTF!? That just seems ridiculously high.

Part of me wonders how much interest is generated in CP simply because it is such a huge social taboo. It's kind of like the way the ban on pubic hair in Japan ended up creating a huge pubic hair fetish complex which it out of proportion to such fetishes in nations that did not have a ban on pubic hair in their porn.

[Leeloo]

Nope, the MAC address is burned into the network card. It's the IP address that changes.

Most network cards nowadays allow changing the MAC address through the driver, though, but unless that is done (manually), the one in the card will be used.

As for the serial on the sticker, some manufacturers put that one in the BIOS too, but that is manufacturer-dependent, and definitely requires a trojan to get hold of.

[Xero]

Nope, the MAC address is burned into the network card. It's the IP address that changes.

Most network cards nowadays allow changing the MAC address through the driver, though, but unless that is done (manually), the one in the card will be used.

As for the serial on the sticker, some manufacturers put that one in the BIOS too, but that is manufacturer-dependent, and definitely requires a trojan to get hold of.

yeah
Dell
only one I know that burns the key into mobo

and macs aren't burned in anymore, its just stored in the EEPROM, just need to find the right utility to change it is all, cheaper that way

[Leeloo]

Nope, the MAC address is burned into the network card. It's the IP address that changes.

Most network cards nowadays allow changing the MAC address through the driver, though, but unless that is done (manually), the one in the card will be used.

As for the serial on the sticker, some manufacturers put that one in the BIOS too, but that is manufacturer-dependent, and definitely requires a trojan to get hold of.

yeah
Dell
only one I know that burns the key into mobo

HP puts it in the BIOS. Not burned in though, I've seen a HP technician set it when we got a motherboard replaced.

and macs aren't burned in anymore, its just stored in the EEPROM, just need to find the right utility to change it is all, cheaper that way

There's no need to change the EEPROM, changing it in the driver works just as well. It disappears when you power off the computer, but just make sure the driver sets it on the next boot (should happen automatically on Windows where everything is saven in the registry, on other OS'es, you'd put the command to change it in a boot script). Unless of course you already downloaded kiddie porn, and want to erase the evidence, then changing the EEPROM might work.

[Xero]

well I'm just saying that using part of tracking is pretty useless if you can change it so easily

and I was not aware HP did it too
sucky

[ManaUser]

Though if it's true that there were 15,000 in Ontario (doubtful) we're obviously not talking about an elite pedophile cabal here. These would just be regular folks who probably think only Apple computers have MAC addresses, if they've even heard the term.

[Boring 7]

The 15000 number comes from about 100 Pedobear Aspirants and the 14,900 ants in CP addict #95's ant farm that sits with full view of his computer.

[Ce6]

wait wait wait
computers dont have serial numbers

I can think of two things you're reffering to
a MAC address on the interface, which all modern NICs let you change
and windows CD-keys, which I can change at a moments notice

Maybe. The article probably did the usual job of completely botching the tech. I did think it odd because as far as I knew the serial number on my PC was simply something printed on a sticker by the manufacturer and not something embedded into the architecture of the machine itself.

Aren't the MAC addesses dynamic? I thought they were temporary an reassigned on a first come/first served basis each time machines logged on and off the network. The windows CD-keys seem much more likely, but wouldn't that just mean the pedos would just have to switch to a Mac or Linux OS?

Mac OS X would probably not be a good idea. They have Serial Numbers.
Not sure how often (or in what manner) the SN is transferred, but I can read the one on my laptop with 3 mouse clicks (it's in the System Profiler under Hardware Overview)
Probably used primarily for warranty and customer service purposes, I don't know if it changes when the OS is upgraded (haven't done so on mine yet to check)
I also have 3 MAC addresses on this thing (Wi-Fi, Ethernet and Firewire), but I don't know about changing them.