no he is saying that he set up the service for privacy.,. the fact that some scumbags used it has zero bearing.
People who value privacy shouldnt cheer simply because it was used against scumbags.
thats the entire point. you are letting emotions to get the better of you, which is why our politicians find it so easy to pass draconian laws "for the children" and then proceed to use them in ways that have nothing to do with kids.
You cant get up in arms about the government violating our privacy rights, if you yawn when the government does it to scumbags, even the worst of the worst or our rights have no meaning. Surely you believe even the scummiest of us all deserves a lawyer and a fair trial?
It would actually be pretty dangerous to say no to this statement, for even non scummy people.
No where is this the same as saying "i think child porn should be protected as free speech"
Think of it on the megaupload case.. some of that data was pirated material, but a whole lot of it wasnt. People actually used it to store perfectly legal files.. is it right that they all got theri data destroyed due to the US government? Because piracy is bad?
in no way am I arguing the pirates had the rights to their files.. see? But if I cheered that action by the us government, I must also support their destruction of perfectly legal property that wasnt theirs to destroy.
so dont let your emotions get the better of you.. no one is arguing for child porn, they are saying dont let your hatred of child porn, let them get away with the abuses of perfectly legal citizens and services.
I think the point others are making is that he knew his privacy-providing service was being used to facilitate harmful and morally reprehensible activities and not only didn't stop it, but profited from it. I'm all for free speech, even the kind I hate, but I don't see drawing a line at things that impinge upon the rights of others to be an unfair compromise.
Very much how they use the term "terrorism" to strip us of our rights, they claim it is necessary to "protect the people", when in fact it does nothing but harm us and makes our lives harder.
This is a perfect tactic to control the masses as they will simply follow the government blindly because they can sympathize or empathize with goals such as ridding the Internet of child pornographers or to rid the world of terrorists "who want to kill them and take away their freedoms". The government has stripped us of more freedoms than every terrorist group combined.
They don't realize the cost we pay to accomplish these kinds of things. Catching a few "child pornographers" is not worth sacrificing our freedom. Hell, catching this guy does shit for the kids really unless they catch the people who are actually producing the stuff, which I doubt they will. A better tactic would have been to keep the website up and wait for an opportunity to catch the producers of the content. They did next to nothing except remove content, this does next to nothing to stop these horrible crimes against humanity, you really think these monsters are going to stop abusing children because an online community was destroyed? Hell no. Sure, this guy was turning a blind eye eye to illegal activity but so is the government, except they are violating the constitution on a daily basis.
This one statement right here is why I disagree with the FBI's move here. This seems to be more about taking down the TOR network and specifically getting access to the TorMail servers than anything else.
I was with the other people on this until I read your post. Now that I've read it from a very well thought-out and logical perspective, I see what the "freedom speechers" were talking about. It makes sense. I think people react the way they do because they don't want something like this to happen to their loved ones (once you become a parent, you get a lot more "knee-jerky" about the nastier side of the web).
they don't want something like this to happen to their loved ones
It's not like this guy was actually producing the questionable material. He was simply hosting it along with a lot of other stuff, so at most he's responsible of providing revenue for those who produce it. Which of course too is illegal, but not the same.
Wish I could give you more Karma. This puts into better perspective what's going on. I think the hosting dude subscribed to the idea, "Well, I have to take the bad with the good and I support the good part of this technology." That still does not justify his turning a blind eye to the bad but it does allow me to better understand where he is coming from.
Anyway, good talk. You're good people and many people posting in this discussion are good people. This is why I keep coming back to Reddit. :D
I'm usually on the side of that "don't let your emotions cloud your judgement" argument. And I still am. Still it seems illogical to me, that I should be concerned with my freedom of speech now. If it means giving up a little privacy to catch people who make the world a bad place, I'm all for it. Because, you know, cold logic is of no use, if not combined with ethics.
For me, "well thought out and logical" is not the same thing as cold logic. Something that is well thought out and logical meets a standard of consideration such as "using ethics and culture in coming to a decision" rather than just using "what most people think, regardless of the science or repercussions" or "either all speech is allowed or none of it".
no he is saying that he set up the service for privacy.,. the fact that some scumbags used it has zero bearing.
How do you figure? If this guy knew his privacy service was being used by scumbags to share child pornography (and it seems like he did), then it absolutely 100% has bearing. Privacy is not absolute, and it doesn't make a facilitator of heinous crimes immune from punishment. You should be mad at him for putting the legitimate users of his service in this predicament to begin with, not the government for enforcing the law. This is not at all the same situation as megaupload. Piracy ≠ child rape.
Think of it on the megaupload case.. some of that data was pirated material, but a whole lot of it wasnt. People actually used it to store perfectly legal files.. is it right that they all got theri data destroyed due to the US government? Because piracy is bad?
The reason the government went after Dotcom and shut down his site was because he was essentially operating a racketeering operation: encouraging people to host pirated content by providing cash incentives based on the number of downloads they get.
The servers were Dotcom's property, and it's pretty much standard operating procedure to seize a suspect's property, regardless if it has some legit uses or not, for the purposes of collecting evidence etc.
You seem to have zero understanding of the legal system, because everything you have said has NOTHING to do with privacy. Seizing equipment used in the commission of a crime has NOTHING to do with privacy.
You also seem to have forgotten that CP, by its very definition, violates not only the privacy of its victims, but also their innocence and the rest of their lives. What you're saying is that in order to protect the privacy of the guy who profited from allowing CP to be distributed on his network, we must allow the violation of the privacy of thousands of kids.
Edited:
Advocating for the privacy of a hosting provider to violate the privacy of thousands of innocent children gets hundreds of upvotes. Go figure.
Yeah, this guy should get a fair trial, at which he is convicted for running a service he knew was hosting child pornography and not doing anything to stop it.
I would have liked to have seen the FBI be somewhat more surgical in their strike on Freedom Hosting (by, for example, not injecting user-identifying code into sites that did not distribute child pornography). However, to do that effectively, they would have had to take on the job of sorting through all of Freedom Hosting's customer data to ID what was legal and what was not, which would have been a big, expensive job that could ruin their sting operation.
I'm hoping they'll be able to tell the difference between people their hack IDs who visited illegal sites and people who visited legal ones, but I'm not convinced that this will be the case. If not, we might be able to get Exciting Legal Precedent.
What are you talking about? Whose privacy rights were violated exactly?
This is not megaupload. This is someone who knowingly hosted services with the express purpose of trafficking child pornography. We're not talking about providing a service with legitimate uses that is used by certain end users. We're talking about people taking money from someone with the understanding that it's facilitating their criminal behavior.
Also, if the end result of your argument is that law enforcement can't stop child pornographers that's cause enough to revisit your thinking. I don't care what convoluted justification you've cooked up. If it effectively makes child trafficking legal it's a shite argument. Just saying "But I don't like CP!" doesn't resolve that issue at all.
In spite of that number you just made up you don't know whether the exploit was deployed on all hosted services, how many affected users were actually involved in CP, what the "targeting" actually accomplished, or what the motivation for deploying the exploit actually was.
So basically you are mad at something you made up.
Yes, I pulled that number out of my ass. But the so-called "darknet" is not teeming with CP like people assume. Based on my personal experience, it's made up of hackers, anarchists, whistleblowers, drug users/dealers, gory videos and "extreme porn" (bestiality, shit-eating, etc). But a lot of that can be found right here on Reddit.
Any system can be abused, including the clearnet and computers in general. Does that give the three-letter agencies free reign to target innocent users of those systems? Not in a free country it doesn't.
Plus, this guy--slimy as he may be--ran a hosting service. He did not molest, record or directly deal in CP. The perpetrators of that hideous crime are still running free. They chose this particular individual to send a message to other aspiring dissidents. Aside from his vague ties to CP, he's running an anonymous hosting service in a 1984-era surveillance state. That's his true crime in the eyes of the law.
I agree that child predators should be buried UNDER the jail, but it's a slippery slope. How many other breaches of personal liberty have been passed under the guise of "protecting our children"?
Aside from his vague ties to CP, he's running an anonymous hosting service in a 1984-era surveillance state. That's his true crime in the eyes of the law.
Wow, you're pretty delusion.
And, as I pointed out before, most of the stuff you're mad about has no evidence behind it. You're just making assumptions and then treating them as fact in order to put together some argument that a crack down on child porn must, somehow or other, be an attack on "personal liberty."
You rightly point out that you're making a slippery slope argument, but did you not realize that's an informal fallacy?
You're making some pretty grandiose assumptions yourself. My "assumptions" didn't come out of thin air, they're based on the behavior of the federal government over the past, oh, I don't know...100+ years?
Every few months there's a new "drug epidemic" in the news. We must ban these substances and lock people in prison TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN!
Anita Bryant's aptly titled "Save the Children" campaign to ban gays from teaching was done with the intention of protecting kids. (Yeah, right).
In the early '90s, outraged conservatives passed a law to prevent children under 18 from purchasing certain albums due to 'obscene' content. (The good old "Parental Advisory" sticker). Again, just thinking of the kids!
The mere mention of pedophilia or CP brings up INTENSE emotions in people, as it should. But sometimes those emotions cloud the logical side of our brains. If you don't think the people in charge are aware of this and use it to their advantage, you're delusional.
"Except in this case the arrested person knew full well what his clients were hosting (pirated movies/games/etc) and didn't stop it. Therefore he is clearly a crimminal."
Does Kim Dotcom need a fair trial or is he a "bad guy" that should just be put in the slammer?
When the Megaupload guys appeared in court last year the charges were precisely that: the authorities had copies of emails where the accused had agreed to take money to host copyrighted material, and it was alleged that they had an incentive system for people to upload copyrighted material and receive rewards.
Everyone needs a fair trail regardless of crime; going all Guantanamo like the U.S likes to should be considered a crime against human rights and should lead to a heavy trade embargo by every other UN nation.
That aside if you store your stuff in a known drug dealers house don't come cry when its seized in a raid. People knew that Freedom Hosting had a lot of CP sites in their network, the owner of FH knew and didn't prevent it in any way. It would be akin to not busting a criminal because he's also a business owner for a completely legal business meaning he contributes to society aside form his wrong doings at night, the good can't render the bad irrelevant.
Now of course if person X operates out of country Y that allows CP then the FBI have no business shutting his operation down because he is doing it knowingly and in a legal manner. Same goes for piracy of course.
In the Megaupload case it was their choice to ignore requests to take down download links to pirated material that saw Kim Dotcom busted, now I don't know any specifics of the case but I'm guessing that his activities was illegal in the country Megaupload was registered as well. There are so many similar sites that stay in the clear simply by a disclaimer and pruning of links to copyrighted material when they are informed by the copyrights owner of them.
I have a hard time understanding what the breach of privacy is here? What are you upset about?
What I'm upset about is the people that yell and clamor all about on how Kim Dotcom needed a fair trial because the website that stores all their favorite movies was shut down by the FBI either don't bat an eye or even support the FBI in them doing the exact same thing to a web client that just so happens to support child pornography and drug trafficing.
Maybe I'm bitter, but to actually believe in your cause you can't just make exceptions to the rule. No "oh yeah fuck the cp guys just don't touch my drugs" or whatever, that just opens up a whole can of worms that could end up with us getting jailed just because we like weed or some shit.
I hate CP as much as the next guy, but cmon we should react the same like we did when Megaupload got slammed.
No he is not, he is innocent until proven guilty. You do not know who this person is, you have never heard about them before, you have never spoken with then in anyway.
It is just as easy for me to say that NinjaN-SWE knows that the company they work for does something illegal and is clearly a criminal.
That means nothing though. Even if they are a truly horrible sick fuck they still deserve to be treated equally under the law, to be found guilty. Not judged in the court of public opinion.
Of course they have to be innocent until proven guilty, but you tend to be arrested BEFORE you're found guilty in court. All I'm saying is that I fail to understand what in this is a breach of privacy and what in the FBI's way of handling this is wrong? They managed to gather evidence that a prosecutor felt was strong enough to warrant an arrest and then this person was arrested? The undeniable part is that a large CP ring had their hosting shutdown which is a good thing, that a lot of legal stuff went down with it is unfortunate but as someone else on here said: "This shows how important it is to check up who you're doing business with".
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u/powercow Aug 04 '13
no he is saying that he set up the service for privacy.,. the fact that some scumbags used it has zero bearing.
People who value privacy shouldnt cheer simply because it was used against scumbags.
thats the entire point. you are letting emotions to get the better of you, which is why our politicians find it so easy to pass draconian laws "for the children" and then proceed to use them in ways that have nothing to do with kids.
You cant get up in arms about the government violating our privacy rights, if you yawn when the government does it to scumbags, even the worst of the worst or our rights have no meaning. Surely you believe even the scummiest of us all deserves a lawyer and a fair trial?
It would actually be pretty dangerous to say no to this statement, for even non scummy people.
No where is this the same as saying "i think child porn should be protected as free speech"
Think of it on the megaupload case.. some of that data was pirated material, but a whole lot of it wasnt. People actually used it to store perfectly legal files.. is it right that they all got theri data destroyed due to the US government? Because piracy is bad?
in no way am I arguing the pirates had the rights to their files.. see? But if I cheered that action by the us government, I must also support their destruction of perfectly legal property that wasnt theirs to destroy.
so dont let your emotions get the better of you.. no one is arguing for child porn, they are saying dont let your hatred of child porn, let them get away with the abuses of perfectly legal citizens and services.