Nach Einschätzung eines russischen Polizisten entwickelt sich sein Land zur Hochburg für den Handel mit Kinderpornographie. [intern.de]
09:20 |
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Dieses Signal ist deutlich: Eine Gruppe von Porno-Händlern, die heimlich Aufnahmen von nackten Sportlern gemacht haben, wurde zu einer Geldstrafe von 506 Millionen Dollar verurteilt. [intern.de]
09:19 |
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Zu sechs Jahren Haft und Unterbringung in einer psychiatrischen Klinik hat das Landgericht Münster am Mittwoch einen 41-Jährigen wegen der Verbreitung von Kinderpornografie im Internet verurteilt. Die 1. Große Strafkammer sah es als erwiesen an, dass der Mann im großen Stil Videos und Fotos über das weltweite Netz geschickt hat, die brutale Misshandlungen an Kindern zeigen. Er soll einer der Köpfe eines internationalen Händlerringes gewesen sein. Das Urteil ist rechtskräftig. [...] [heise]
13:33 |
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Three members of Madrid's regional parliament are fined for viewing pornographic websites during a debate on domestic violence. [BBC News Online]
09:22 |
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Im Internet nannte sich der Mann aus Münster "Principal". In der virtuellen Welt war er Gründer und Chef des "Round Table". Dessen 31 Mitglieder kamen regelmäßig zusammen, um Foto- und Videodateien auszutauschen, Dateien, auf denen sexuelle Gewalthandlungen an Kindern und Jugendlichen gezeigt werden. Rund 1.000 Fotos und 190 Videosequenzen hatte alleine der "Principal" in seiner Wohnung, als die Polizei ihn im November 2001 festnahm. Seit zwei Wochen muss sich der 41 Jahre alte Mann vor dem Landgericht Münster wegen der Verbreitung pornografischer Schriften verantworten.
In Deutschland hat es laut Staatsanwaltschaft Münster bisher kaum vergleichbare Fälle von Kinderpornografie im Internet gegeben. Ein Computer-Spezialist des Bundeskriminalamts (BKA) trat am Montag in dem Prozess als Zeuge auf. Er bezeichnete die bei dem Angeklagten gefundene Stückzahl kinderpornografischen Materials als "unglaublich hoch". Die Dateien zeigten gravierende Fälle sexuellen Missbrauchs.
Auf die Spur des international agierenden Kinderporno-Ringes war das BKA durch den Tipp eines österreichischen Journalisten gekommen, der seit Jahren auf diesem Gebiet recherchiert hatte. Die wahre Identität von "Principal" habe erst im Verlauf der Ermittlungen festgestellt werden können, sagte der BKA-Experte am zweiten Verhandlungstag vor der 1. Großen Strafkammer. "Der Angeklagte hat sein hohes technisches Wissen genutzt, um seine Spuren zu verwischen."
Als die Beamten des BKA und der Polizei Münster im November 2001 mit einem Durchsuchungsbefehl vor der Wohnungstür des Verdächtigen standen, lud dieser gerade eine Videodatei von einem Mitglied des "Round Table" aus Spanien auf seinen Computer. Anhand des sichergestellten Beweismaterials konnten in den folgenden Wochen die Aufenthaltsorte der übrigen Mitglieder des Kinderporno-Ringes ermittelt werden. Im März dieses Jahres wurden ihre Wohnungen in elf Staaten in einer vom BKA koordinierten Aktion durchsucht.
Gegen alle Verdächtigen wurden nach Aussage des BKA-Beamten Strafverfahren eingeleitet. Drei von ihnen, darunter ein Deutscher aus Hamburg, hätten sich daraufhin das Leben genommen. Ein Amerikaner sei in den USA zu 130 Jahren Haft verurteilt worden. Er soll für die Herstellung von Videos seine Tochter missbraucht haben.
Der Angeklagte in dem Prozess vor dem Landgericht ist weitgehend geständig. Er war bereits 1999 wegen der Verbreitung pornografischer Schriften zu sechs Monaten Haft verurteilt worden, verstärkte aber nach Verbüßung der Strafe seine kriminellen Aktivitäten. Das Urteil wird für den 4. Dezember erwartet. [heise]
19:44 |
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[court: check of credit card or National-ID card number is not enouth to protect children from adult websites.]
Wer das Zeigen von Internet-Inhalten, die Jugendlichen nicht zugänglich gemacht werden dürfen, lediglich an eine automatische Überprüfung von Ausweis- oder Kreditkartennummern knüpft, wird den gesetzlichen Anforderungen des Jugendschutzes nicht gerecht. Das hat das Amtsgericht Neuss in einem bereits Ende August gefällten, aber erst jetzt veröffentlichten und noch nicht rechtskräftigen Urteil entschieden.
Angeklagt war der ehemalige Geschäftsführer einer Düsseldorfer Firma, die das Webangebot "Clubhardcore.de" auf einem Berliner Server betreibt. [...] Die Abrechnung erfolgt nach bekanntem Muster über einen sogenannten Highspeed-Dialer, also ein herunterzuladendes 0190er-Einwahlprogramm, das die Telefonrechnung pro Minute um rund 2 Euro anwachsen lässt &150; davon allerdings erfährt man vor dem Download nichts.
Das Gericht hatte sich jedoch nicht etwa mit Betrug oder anderen Tatbeständen auseinanderzusetzen, die dem Internet-Beobachter im Zusammenhang mit 0190-Dialern vielleicht als erstes einfallen würden. Es ging in Neuss vielmehr um die Frage, ob der Zugang zu den Hardcore-Inhalten über den Dialer hinreichend gegen den Zugriff durch Kinder und Jugendliche abgesichert war. Der Richter verneinte diese Frage und verurteilte den Angeklagten schließlich wegen "Verbreitung pornografischer Schriften" zu einer Geldstrafe in Höhe von 3500 Euro.
Die Clubhardcore-Betreiber verwendeten zur Kontrolle, ob ein Interessent volljährig ist, eine simple Abfrage mit automatischer Plausibilitätskontrolle durch ein Programm. Abgefragt wurden wahlweise Personalausweis- oder Kreditkartennummern. "Perso"-Nummern, in die ein passendes Geburtsdatum einkodiert ist, kann sich allerdings jeder ohne Aufwand aus dem Internet ziehen: Bereits eine einfache Anfrage bei der Suchmaschine Google genügt, um entsprechende Fundstellen zu erhalten und sich dort per Mausklick sozusagen Volljährigkeit auszuleihen. Das probierte der Richter in der Hauptverhandlung selbst aus und kam zu dem Ergebnis, dass es sich bei dem Kontrollsystem um einen "Scheinschutz" handle, der auch von Kindern auf leichteste Art zu umgehen sei. Jede menschliche Kontrollmöglichkeit, etwa am Kiosk oder in der Videothek, sei einem solchen Verfahren weit überlegen. Schon in der ausdrücklichen Zusicherung von "Anonymität" ohne jegliche Erfassung personenbezogener Daten habe die Betreiberfirma außerdem signalisiert, dass es ihr schlichtweg egal sei, wer ihre Angebote nutze.
Dafür sprach nicht zuletzt auch die Tatsache, dass die Clubhardcore-Betreiber schon 2001 eine Abmahnung von der in Mainz ansässigen Zentralstelle der obersten Landesjugendbehörden für Jugendschutz in Mediendiensten erhalten hatten, die darauf aufmerksam machte, dass das Webangebot keine wirksame Alterskontrolle aufwies. Diese Abmahnung wurde offenbar ignoriert, was sich für den Ex-Geschäftsführer schließlich als Bumerang erwiesen hat: Er muss, wenn das Urteil rechtskräftig wird, als vorbestraft gelten. [heise]
18:53 |
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HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania -- WorldCom, the bankrupt long-distance voice and data services company, was ordered by a judge to deny access to five child pornography sites to its Pennsylvania customers, the state Attorney General said Wednesday.
Montgomery County Judge Lawrence Brown gave WorldCom five business days to comply with the order, which was the first court action taken under a new state law to protect children from exploitation by blocking access to sites with child pornography.
00:00 |
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German officials are apparently attempting to prove that the PISA results
(Germany is pretty much at the bottom of the pack in regards to education
world-wide) are true and anyone, no matter how ignorant, can be a politician
in Germany:
The German Federal Government and the State governments have agreed to new
measures for protecting youth from pornography on the Internet: according to
the "Financial Times Deutschland" (http://www.ftd.de/pw/de/FTDPRAR3MUC.html)
all such content is banned from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m.
No, this is not April Fools' Day. Really. The German government seems to
think that when it is 11 p.m. in Germany, it is 11 p.m. everywhere else. And
that all those XXX folks on the Internet will happily turn off the sleaze
during the German day when the kiddies are awake.
This has of course caused an uproar amongst those in the know.
Spiegel-on-line wrote an open letter to the guy in charge of publishing this
nonsense, Frank-Walter Steinmeier
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,170361,00.html
[The sarcastic wit in the letter may not make it through Babelfish
intact, but it is quite funny]
What a sorry state of affairs. The risks posed by ignorant politicians may
yet be far more dangerous that the odd virus and software mistake.....
Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, FHTW Berlin, Treskowallee 8, 10313 Berlin
+49-30-5019-2320 http://www.f4.fhtw-berlin.de/people/weberwu/ [Debora Weber-Wulff via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 81]
00:00 |
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via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 78]
00:00 |
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Monday, 12. November 2001
Porn spam being sent in my name
I maintain a mail account at deja.com (continued by google), as spam
protection for my real e-mail account. Every now and then I log on and
delete the accumulated spam.
I logged on the other day and found a bounce notification message. I was
surprised at this and opened it. Imagine my surprise to find that the
original (bounced) message had been spam, apparently sent from me!
It seems that someone had somehow picked my e-mail address to use in forging
their e-mail header. Worse yet, the spam was porn spam.
How much worse can things get? Up till now, I at least had the comfort that
unsolicited e-mail (spam, viruses, etc) was in my control, and that with a
little care I could protect myself from most of it. Now, I don't even have
that. [Nickee Sanders via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 76]
00:00 |
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Friday, 27. July 2001
Kinderpornographie im Internet
Das Landgericht Würzburg hatte den Angeklagten unter anderem wegen mehrfachen sexuellen Mißbrauchs eines Kindes zu der Gesamtfreiheitsstrafe von vier Jahren verurteilt. Er hatte an einem 13-jährigen Mädchen mehrfach sexuelle Handlungen vorgenommen und davon zahlreiche Fotos mit der Absicht gefertigt, diese Fotos im Internet zu vermarkten. Gegen das Urteil hatten die Staatsanwaltschaft und der Angeklagte Revision eingelegt.
Die Staatsanwaltschaft erstrebte mit dem Ziel einer höheren Bestrafung eine Verurteilung auch wegen schweren sexuellen Mißbrauchs nach § 176a Abs. 2 StGB. Nach dieser Vorschrift wird mit Freiheitsstrafe von zwei bis 15 Jahren bestraft, wer in der Absicht handelt, den sexuellen Mißbrauch zum Gegenstand einer pornographischen Schrift (das können auch digitale Bilder sein) zu machen, die nach § 184 Abs. 3 oder 4 StGB verbreitet werden soll. § 184 StGB (Verbreitung pornographischer Schriften), auf dessen Absatz 3 § 176a Abs. 2 StGB verweist, stellt neben dem Verbreiten unter anderem auch das öffentliche Zugänglichmachen von Schriften, "die den sexuellen Mißbrauch von Kindern zum Gegenstand haben", unter Strafe. Das Landgericht hatte die Rechtsauffassung vertreten, die Veröffentlichung und Weitergabe solcher Fotos im Internet sei kein "Verbreiten", da dieses Merkmal nach herkömmlicher Auslegung eine körperliche Weitergabe erfordere. Die in § 184 StGB genannte Variante des Zugänglichmachens sei von § 176a Abs. 2 StGB nicht in Bezug genommen, da dort nur das "Verbreiten" aufgeführt sei.
Der Angeklagte machte geltend, daß das Mädchen im Internet älter - also nicht als Kind - vorgestellt werden sollte. Damit hätten die Fotos für den Betrachter nicht den sexuellen Mißbrauch eines Kindes zum Gegenstand. Da es aber bei der Verbreitung pornographischer Schriften nach § 184 StGB auf die Sichtweise des Betrachters ankomme, seien weder § 184 Abs. 3 und 4 StGB noch § 176a Abs. 2 StGB, der eine Tat nach § 184 Abs. 3 StGB voraussetze, erfüllt.
Der Bundesgerichtshof ist der Rechtsauffassung der Staatsanwaltschaft gefolgt. Zunächst gelte, daß § 176a Abs. 2 StGB alle Varianten des § 184 Abs. 3 und 4 StGB, also auch das Zugänglichmachen, erfasse. Sodann hat der Bundesgerichtshof geklärt, was unter "Verbreiten" und "Zugänglichmachen" bei Internetseiten zu verstehen ist. Ein Zugänglichmachen liegt schon dann vor, wenn eine Datei zum Lesezugriff ins Internet gestellt wird. Die bloße Zugriffsmöglichkeit reicht aus; nicht erforderlich ist, daß auch ein Zugriff des Internetnutzers erfolgt. Ein Verbreiten liegt vor, wenn die Datei auf dem Rechner des Internetnutzers - sei es im Arbeitsspeicher oder auf einem permanenten Speichermedium - angekommen ist. Dabei ist es unerheblich, ob der Nutzer die Möglichkeit des Zugriffs auf die Daten genutzt oder ob der Täter die Daten übermittelt hat.
Zur Frage des Alters der abgebildeten Person hat der Bundesgerichtshof zum Tatbestand der Verbreitung pornographischer Schriften entschieden, daß stets dann, wenn es sich tatsächlich um ein Kind handelt, das Tatbestandsmerkmal "sexuellen Mißbrauch von Kindern zum Gegenstand haben" erfüllt ist. Nur in den übrigen Fällen (etwa bei Zeichnungen oder einer tatsächlich älteren Person) kommt es auf die Beurteilung des "verständigen" Betrachters an.
Der Bundesgerichtshof stellt klar, daß diese Entscheidung nicht den Provider betrifft.
Im Ergebnis hat der Bundesgerichtshof daher die Revision des Angeklagten verworfen und der Revision der Staatsanwaltschaft stattgegeben.
BGH, Urteil vom 27. Juni 2001 - 1 StR 66/01
Karlsruhe, den 27. Juni 2001
[BGH Strafrecht]
00:00 |
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Thursday, 24. October 1996
Child Pornography Hoax (Edupage, 24 Oct 1996)
The FBI is saying that the recent widely distributed e-mail message inviting
recipients to buy child pornography is a hoax; the message was apparently
sent from New York City. (*Ottawa Citizen*, 23 Oct 1996, A4) [Edupage Editors via risks-digest Volume 18, Issue 55]
18:04 |
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Tuesday, 22. October 1996
Risks of taking porno spam at face value
The following is the text of a letter which I faxed to The Editor, London
Evening Standard, today:-
As the recipient of two different versions of the e-mail message supposedly
advertising child pornography, I (like many others) at first assumed it was
genuine and complained to our e-mail postmasters.
Although they take this sort of misuse of the Internet very seriously and
are investigating it, they pointed out that the message is extremely unlikely
to be genuine, particularly since it contained the name and home address of
an individual. This opinion is shared by UKERNA, the authority responsible
for the academic network in this country.
It is probably a ``spam'' or hoax in which a message is sent by a malicious
person in such a way that it appears to come from someone else. The motive
was probably to discredit or to cause other damage to the individual named
in the e-mail message, damage which the article in your edition of 21
October has aggravated, since it actually names this person. A little
elementary fact-checking would have been advisable.
(I was also amused to see that the messages I received came from electronic
addresses on the America On-Line (AOL) service provider. AOL achieved fame a
short while ago by allegedly refusing a subscription from a user on the
grounds that four of the letters in the name of his home town constitute a
rude word! [RISKS-18.07 and 08])
Peter Mellor, Centre for Software Reliability, City University, Northampton
Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK. Tel: +44 (171) 477-8422, Fax: +44 (171) 477-8585 [Pete Mellor via risks-digest Volume 18, Issue 55]
11:32 |
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Tuesday, 16. May 1995
AOL Used For Sting by Miami TV Station
A Miami TV Station (WPLG) set up a sting operation on America
Online that resulted in the resignation of a VP at the Denver Post.
In an attempt to show how easily strangers can approach unsupervised
children on online services, the TV station created an AOL user that
pretended to be a 13 year old boy. A birthdate was clearly listed in a user
profile and the 'boy' spoke like a 13 year old who liked swimming and
skateboarding.
A user named 'Ken4boys' spoke with this 'boy' in private chats and said that
he would be coming to Florida soon, and asked, "How about a hot-oil massage
from an older guy". Ken4boys did meet an actor at an agreed upon place, but
within seconds found himself facing a TV camera and an investigative
reporter. When this news story made it's way back to Denver, Ken resigned
his position as VP of Marketing at the Denver Post.
The anonymity of online personas seems a major risk here for all involved.
The TV station was being fraudulent in its attempt to get a juicy sweeps
week story. Still it is worrisome that they were able to find someone who
appeared to use AOL to spice up his business trips. 'Ken4boys' also learned
the danger of anonymity, but it is difficult to feel sympathy for him. I
have been skeptical about the 'PCs are a danger to your kids' stories on
local news, but this is an impressive example.
I don't think that AOL is too happy about any aspect of this. [dtarabar@hstbme.mit.edu (David Tarabar) via risks-digest Volume 17, Issue 13]
15:23 |
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Wednesday, 12. April 1995
New Massachusetts password law invoked on hospital technician
Mark L. Farley, 34, of Lowell, was arrested on 9 Apr 1995. Working as an
orthopedic technician in the Newton-Wellesley Hospital, he allegedly
accessed a former employee's computer account to search through 954
confidential files of patients (mostly young females) for telephone numbers,
which he then used to make obscene calls. (He had pleaded guilty in 1984 to
raping an eight-year-old girl in Erving.) He is apparently the first person
to be charged under a new Massachusetts statute that makes it a criminal
offense to use someone else's password to gain access to a computer system.
He is also accused of stealing hospital trade secrets, and making obscene or
annoying telephone calls -- apparently from the hospital. [Source: Hospital
Worker Charged under New Massachusetts Password Law By MATTHEW BRELIS, *The
Boston Globe*, 12 Apr 1995.]
[Health-care records are increasingly the subject of privacy concerns,
because of their rampant abuse. This case has caused quite a stir in
the Boston area. PGN] ["Peter G. Neumann" via risks-digest Volume 17, Issue 07]
19:49 |
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Monday, 27. March 1995
Self-Censorship of NetPorn
When the movie industry was faced with government censorship and regulation,
they joined forces and adopted a voluntary rating system that classified the
maturity level needed to understand a movie. Such a system could work well
for the net because it could, like netiquette, spread beyond national
borders. Plus it might forestall strong arm laws like the Exon bill which
just passed the Senate.
Here's how it could work. Every person or company that places a WWW page on
the network could "rate" the contents of the page by placing it an
appropriate directory. A page from my collection of pages might have a URL
like:
http://access.digex.net:/~pcw/over13/deepkiss.html
The directory with the name "over13" indicates that the material in the page
"deepkiss.html" might not be appropriate for someone under 13 years old. I
imagine four major ratings like "over0" which is open to all, "over13" and
"over17" which contain greater indication that two people can do more than
talk to each other with their clothes on, and "over21" which is open to
everything.
How would this stop anyone? Kids can still type. Yes, but each WWW browser
could be programmed to avoid pages with certain ratings. Parents with young
children could place one of these controlled browsers on their computer and
be sure that their kids couldn't read rated pages. These browsers for
children could also exclude all pages without explicit ratings. This would
allow parents to keep their children away from any material that was not
explicitly cleared for all ages.
*Would this system work? The people on the Network already show a good
attitude for cooperation. Aside from few bold examples, most people carefully
follow the rules of netiquette. There is hardly any reason not to cooperate--
the cost is only a few seconds of time and a few kilobytes of diskspace.
*What about different cultural norms? This system offers a direct incentive to
classify material conservatively. People will rate their pages because they
want to be polite and sensitive to other cultures throughout the world. Not
because they fear the police. They are not censored, they are just providing
other people a chance to avoid potentially offensive material.
*Wouldn't people lie? Sure. There are always people who break rules. But they
could be punished by social pressure. A service provider might hesitate to
"censor" the Web pages of its customers because it believes in free expression.
But a service provider could ask its customers to rate web pages because it
is the polite thing to do.
*Why is this better than the Exon law? Legal measures must always be liberal
because the loser goes to jail or pays a fine. This is why we require
evidence and the costs of a jury trial. Social systems like this
can err on the conservative side. Nudists might not understand why the
rest of the world wears clothes, but they can rate their web page
"over21" for little cost.
Imagine the cost of prosecuting a nudist camp's web page for simply
being on the Net. The Nudists who might be from a liberal region like
California could decide to fight on principle. The trial would be
a battle of experts trying to pin down "community standards" on
a place like the Net. The Nudists would be broken financially. The
local district would lose out because the court would be too jammed
to prosecute normal criminals.
The NetRate system saves costs and accomplishes more! Legal systems
let the grey zone live. Social systems can restrict the grey zone
without stopping it.
If anyone has any suggestions or comments, I would like to hear them. I
think this system is technically simple, politically possible and something
that promotes greater understanding of people throughout the world. I am
working on a rating system that would encompass the thoughts of major
religions throughout the world. Please let me know if you're interested in
reviewing it. [pcw@access.digex.com (Peter Wayner) via risks-digest Volume 17, Issue 02]
23:46 |
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Friday, 10. March 1995
Two on net porn charges
Newspaper: The Times Higher Education Supplement
URL: http://www.timeshigher.newsint.co.uk/
Reference: page ii, Multimedia news section, 10 March 1995
Headline: Two on net porn charges
An 11-month investigation by West Midlands police has led to two men being
charged with distributing child pornography on the Internet. The charges
arise from a raid by police on the metallurgy department at Birmingham
University following information on child pornography passed to them by
federal authorities in the United States. ... The prosecution is seen as
[a] test case on what can be legally transmitted globally across the network
from computer hosts.
Jonathan Bowen, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Programming Research
Group, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QD, England. [Jonathan.Bowen@comlab.oxford.ac.uk via risks-digest Volume 16, Issue 89]
13:13 |
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Friday, 10. February 1995
Sweden-Pedophiles-Internet
>From the Associated Press news wire via CompuServe's Executive News Service:
APn 02/06 1228 Sweden-Pedophiles-Internet
By THOMAS GINSBERG
Associated Press Writer
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Pedophiles have found a home on the
Internet and exchange hundreds of pictures a week through
anonymous conduits, a researcher said Monday.
The statistics provided a glimpse at the scope of the potentially
illegal activity, which police fear can lure kids into sex. It
came from a study by Mats Wiklund, a researcher at Stockholm
University's Institute of Computer and System Science.
During a seven-day period in late December and early January,
Wiklund counted 5,651 messages or postings about child
pornography in four electronic "bulletin boards."
The author makes the following key points:
* Many graphics showed what appeared to be "adolescents engaged in
sexual acts." A few showed young children, apparently to attract
the interest of other pedophiles.
* The messages tracked and counted were a fraction of the total traffic,
since Wiklund was unable to track private e-mail and scanned only
about half of the porn-related groups he knew of.
* Most of the pornographic messages were sent through the anonymizing
server located in Finland.
* The Internet offers advantages to pedophiles:
"The Internet has become a channel of communication for
pedophiles," Wiklund said. "From their point of view, they've
found a green technology. You can be anonymous and still be
reached."
* Exchanging pornography electronically is a crime in many areas of the
world:
In most countries the distribution of child pornography is
illegal. Two years ago, U.S. police raided about 40 locations
where people were exchanging child pornography by computer.
Two Danes were convicted in 1993 of transmitting child
pornography to an estimated 6,000 people worldwide.
* 85% of the messages Wiklund scanned were fantasies about sex with
children or technical tips on how to transmit pornographic pictures.
* Law enforcement officials are still unsure of how to handle this
traffic:
Finnish detective Sgt. Timo Laine said it was unclear whether
the country's laws would apply to "electronic smuggling" by
computer. He said did not know whether police would take
action against the computer owner in Finland.
"We've never had this kind of case before," Laine said. "If
I transmit this information through the Internet, is it
considered smuggling?"
M.E.Kabay,Ph.D., Director of Education, Natl Computer Security Assn
(Carlisle, PA); Mgmt Consultant, LGS Group Inc. (Montreal, QC) ["Mich Kabay [NCSA Sys_Op]" <75300.3232@compuserve.com> via risks-digest Volume 16, Issue 81]
12:42 |
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Sunday, 31. July 1994
Porn Peddlers Convicted in Memphis
The Associated Press newswire (94.07.28 and 29) via CompuServe's Executive News
Service) reported on the recent conviction of Internet porn peddlers
The following summary is based on reports by WOODY BAIRD and ELIZABETH WEISE,
Associated Press Writers. The first, by Baird, deals with the legal issues.
"MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- A husband and wife were convicted of distributing
pornography via computer Thursday in a case that raised questions about how to
apply federal obscenity law to the information superhighway.
Robert and Carleen Thomas, both 38, of Milpitas, Calif., were each
convicted of 11 counts of transmitting obscenity through interstate phone
lines via their members-only computer bulletin board. Each count carries up to
five years in prison and $250,000 fine."
Apparently the Thomases sold pornographic graphics files on their BBS. A
Memphis postal inspector deliberately joined the BBS under an assumed name,
downloaded some of the pics to his system and then complained to law
enforcement authorities.
There's discussion of just what it means to try someone on the Internet under
local pornography laws which refer to "community standards." "The opinion was
designed to let local citizens say whether they want X-rated bookstores or
movie theaters in their communities and get judges out of the business of
deciding what is obscene, said Stephen Bates, a senior fellow with the
Annenberg Washington Program, a communications think tank."
However, if this approach is applied to the Internet, "federal juries in the
most conservative parts of the country could decide what sexually explicit
images and words get on the information superhighway, Bates said."
Weise's article covers reactions on the Internet:
"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Hours after a couple were convicted of sending images
of bestiality and sexual fetishes over a computer bulletin board, the Internet
was humming with warnings and protests.
"`If this case stands, you can bet there will be a hell of a lot more
prosecutions on the same basis in extremely short order," Karl Denninger of
Chicago wrote Friday on the computer network.'"
The EFF's Mike Godwin is reported as saying, "This case ... has one community
attempting to dictate standards for the whole country."
At least one BBS operator has stated that he'll quit as a result of the ruling,
although he didn't explain what kind of files his BBS stocks....
Michel E. Kabay, Ph.D. / Dir Education / Natl Computer Security Assn ["Mich Kabay [NCSA Sys_Op]" <75300.3232@compuserve.com> via risks-digest Volume 16, Issue 30]
23:54 |
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Wednesday, 13. July 1994
Quoth the Maven, Livermore!
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (one of the U.S.'s three nuclear
weapons labs) has had one of its unclassified Internet computers hacked
to provide a repository for 2 Gigabytes of pornographic images, storing
over 1000 pictures. (You thought a picture is worth 1000 words? In this
case it is worth 2000 kilobytes, i.e., 2 megabytes each.) This was
reported in a Los Angeles Times article by Adam S. Bauman (appearing in
the San Jose Mercury, 12 July 1994, front page); the Times article also
noted that the Software Publishers Association and the FBI are tracking
something like 1600 B-boards that contain pirated software. [Thanks to
Nachum Shacham for bringing in the clipping.] ["Peter G. Neumann" via risks-digest Volume 16, Issue 24]
20:31 |
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Tuesday, 29. March 1994
Pay-per-View failure lets adult station go unscrambled
Cable company adds unexpected Spice to subscriber's dinner hour.
A problem with a pay-per-view system caused all customers of the Greater
Media Cable TV service in Worcester Massachusetts to receive the unscrambled
broadcast of an Adult cable cannel offered by the system. The Spice cable
channel was unscrambled for 90 minutes between 6:00pm and 7:30pm on Monday
March 28th.
According to a representative of the cable company, Ed Goldstien, the
cause of the glitch was not known and an investigation was in progress.
Goldstien presented the cable company's apology and promise that it would not
happen again to subscribers over the local radio station WXLO.
The Greater Media Cable system uses a call in voice response system to allow
customers to activate the pay-per-view stations offered by the system. The
activation code for the customer's cable box is broadcast over the cable
system to unscramble the selected pay-per-view offering. RISKS readers could
speculate that this incident is an indication that a universal activation
code must exist for all cable decoders in the system. We could further
speculate that the voice response system could have broadcast this code in
response to a pay-per-view request of a single subscriber if internal tables
were faulty.
The RISK here is dependence on an automatic system to save cost when the cost
of its failure is not taken into account.
Mike Carleton mcarleton@zendia.enet.dec.com [mcarleton@zendia.enet.dec.com via risks-digest Volume 15, Issue 71]
18:37 |
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Thursday, 03. March 1994
Headline: "Child molesters use computer talk as bait"
This is the headline of article in the 3/3/94 Boston Globe on the front page
of an inside Metro/Region section.
For most parents, the thought of their child sitting in a bedroom and
skillfully using a computer is a source of comfort and pride"
Increasingly, however, the home computer has become a source of danger, as
manipulative child molesters reach out to unsuspecting children through
thousands of interactive and easy-to-use computer bulletin board systems."
... The news article triggering this discussion article is:
A 23-year-old Chelmsford [Mass] man pleaded not guilty to an attempted
kidnapping charge after he allegedly used a computer bulletin board to
attempt to coax a teen-ager into helping him abduct a young boy for sexual
purposes
The article goes on to explain BBS systems and how they allow impersonal
contact between juveniles and child molesters. Law enforcement officials in
Massachusetts have been concentrating upon (and getting publicity) for
investigating computer assisted child-abuse. There have been several other
charges, and in 1992 a Cambridge man pleaded guilty to raping two boys who he
met through a BBS.
[Also noted by Bob_Frankston@frankston.com. PGN] [dtarabar@hstbme.mit.edu (David Tarabar) via risks-digest Volume 15, Issue 62]
13:53 |
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Saturday, 27. March 1993
Akron BBS Sting Update 3 (See RISKS-14.43)
The following is an editorial published in the Akron Beacon Journal on
Wednesday, March 24, 1993. This editorial is copyrighted by the Akron Beacon
Journal, and commercial use or resale of this article is forbidden.
Permission to post this editorial in its entirety has been generously granted
by Mr. David B. Cooper, Associate Editor.
MUNROE FALLS CARRYOUT
Akron Beacon Journal (AK) - WEDNESDAY March 24, 1993, A14
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was written to safeguard ordinary
citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. Recently, however,
law-enforcement officials have taken to seizing possessions of convicted and
suspected criminals, particularly drug dealers.
In the case of 23-year-old Munroe Falls resident Mark Lehrer, police
confiscated a sophisticated, $3,000 computer setup, programs and disks on the
suspicion that he might be letting kids look at dirty pictures. That charge
was never proved. In fact, it appears that police received only one or two
complaints about his computer bulletin board, none from area parents. Lehrer
contends a clerical error put the pornography into files accessible to all the
bulletin board's users, not just adults. Police enlisted a 15-year-old,
falsified his identity for a membership and then helped the teen call up a
possibly offending program.
But, when the Summit County grand jury refused to indict the University of
Akron computer whiz on the original charges, Munroe Falls police filed other
charges based on the possibility that some of the programs in Lehrer's private
collection contained pictures of minors.
Lehrer did plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of 'attempted possession of
criminal tools' -- his computer -- based on those subsequent charges.
No one downplays the seriousness of crime in our society, whether it's in
the suburbs or inner cities. None argue that children should be able to view
pornography.
But in the absence of compelling evidence that Lehrer was trying to peddle
child porn to kids, either at the outset of this case nine months ago or now,
it could appear that the police acted hastily in confiscating the computer.
Such actions invite questions as to whether the police were protecting against
a child pornographer or using the intimidating powers of the police and
judicial system to help themselves to a nice hunk of expensive machinery. dl [David Lehrer <71756.2116@compuserve.com> via risks-digest Volume 14, Issue 44]
16:40 |
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Thursday, 23. July 1992
Re: BBS Pornography (Cohen, RISKS-13.67)
We have had at least two cases of BBS Porn here in Tulsa. The local news even
had a three part "expose" on the subject last summer. I attended a sysop
meeting at the time. "People in the know" said (i.e., rumored) that the
sysop's computer equipment is impounded for over six months and that it is
often "dropped" or otherwise damaged by the authorities.
Computers cannot sue for "Police brutality".
In one of the cases, a woman was reading a message and called police when "foul
language was uncontrollably displayed on her screen". (That is, she was
offended by the contents of the message.)
Art Corcoran, University of Tulsa, corcoran@tusun2.mcs.utulsa.edu [Art Corcoran via risks-digest Volume 13, Issue 68]
22:00 |
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Re: BBS Pornography (Cohen, RISKS-13.67)
This is in partial response to a posting by Mr David Cohen (bx953@cleveland.
freenet.edu) concerning the recent Akron-area BBS bust.
Put your money where your mouth is. Not just Mr. Cohen, but anyone who thinks
that arrests of this sort are anything less than savory. If you are an
attorney, donate some time to write an Amicus brief for the court, if such
things are allowed for criminal prosecutions. Even better, if the miscarriage
of justice is so great that it makes you want to scream, donate some time to
help defend the case. If you have some knowledge, share it with elected
officials who are making the laws without the benefit of technical expertise.
Remember that the government never willingly grants a right, or even a
privilege, to its citizens. And in these days of the "War on Crime", we must
protect what rights we have.
Chuck Stern chuck@novus.com [chuck@novus.com (Chuck Stern) via risks-digest Volume 13, Issue 68]
13:52 |
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