I mean, I can see why it is a bad thing, but I saw even some really silly stuff, like a muslim friend that I know, being resolute that anyone having sex with a minor is evil and must be punished immediately.
Then I pointed that their prophet had a 9 year old wife (that by the way this girl also wrote good part of their holy book) and then she said that this does not count...
Why?
You know, my grandmother married when she was 14, and she is still married with the same guy, they make a great couple (last time I saw them, it looked like a typical teen couple, with my grandma JUMPING into my grandpa and hugging him like if it was a japanese anime or something, it kinda startled me to see old people do that, but then, why not?), and I have a hard time believing that a 14 year old girl is so dumb to the point of needing heavy-handed state protection in deciding her relationships.
Likewise I can say that I am a perverted evil man too... I started seeing porn when I was 14, and I found out girls of roughly the same age attractive, not some random aunt... Probably the hard-drives with that porn is still somewhere on my electronic quasi-junk stash... What happen if someone fiddle with my junk and find them? According to our current law I will go arrested for posession of child porn, even if I got it when I was a child myself...
Kinda child...
At least, Brazil only buckled to US pressure regarding the porn laws (That I think are absurd and silly, you should prosecute those caught in the tape abusing the kids, and maybe use the fact they filmed it as a aggravating factor, prosecuting random people for having any kind of porn or media is really stupid), the child sex laws make more sense... (here people above 14 can have sex, not 18 or 21... and if you think the law is wrong about that, then tell me how you will punish half of the 14 year old people in your area)
Tell a Christian that Jesus' mother, Mary, was probably 13 years old when she became pregnant, and they freak out as well.
Background:
* "In biblical times, people were married in early youth…" [1] * "Until late in the Middle Ages, marriage consisted of two ceremonies which were marked by celebrations at two separate times, with an interval between. First came the betrothal [erusin]; and later, the wedding [nissuin]. At the betrothal the woman was legally married, although she still remained in her father's house." [1] * "During the first century, however, it appears to have been the general rule that young people who were "of age" could arrange their own marriages. A girl was considered of age at twelve years and one day." [2] * "The betrothal period was fixed by law. For a maiden, it was from ten months to a year; for a widow, three months." [2]
Sources:
[1] http://www.myjewishlearning.com/life/Relationships/Spouses_a... [2] http://www.gospelgazette.com/gazette/2005/may/page20.htm
“In 1880, the age of consent was 10 in most states but ranged from 7 in Delaware to 12 across nine states and the District of Columbia.”[1]
[1] http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230?section=primary...
Most Christians that I know refuse to read the bible properly, then I take the bible and teach them the stuff in there, several freak out, to the point I do not do it anymore to stop freaking people out...
I am a Christian myself, and the bible asks you do not be a "stumbling block" (or something like that the english term), so I guessed that is good idea to stop freaking people out pointing those things.
Not that I won't talk about them, to those that come to me and ask I cheerfully explain everything I know about the Bible, even the taboo (for example, why the Bible regulamentates slavery)
Another fun fact: in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is somewhere between 15 and 16, and Juliet is 13.
That's what a Christian would say, anyway.
The age of Aisha when her marriage to Muhammad was consummated is unknown. Different reports of an age of 9 to 16.
> that by the way this girl also wrote good part of their holy book
No. She is a Hafez (one who recites the Quran by heart) and among those who helped in the efforts to collect the Quran, she did not _write_ it, or any parts of it. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Quran#The_Colle...
He married her at six and had sex with (raped?) her at nine. These are information from "respected" sources and are known by anyone with a bit of knowledge about islam.
https://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/%D8%B5%D8%AD%D9%8A%D8%AD_%D9%...
And wrote I mean the Hafez part or whatever, I don't know enough about the subject to use correct technical terms like that.
For example the Bible (I am christian) has parts of it that were inspired by God, but we still say that whoever put it on the paper is author to simplify some (non-theological) discussions.
But I am guessing most people that downvoted you, did because you was pedant, not really defending a point.
I myself appreciate the correct info... Although I still think the manner done was pedant.
As for your last point about porn, prosecutors do try to track down the producers of child porn. However, finding the producers is often extremely difficult. That's why they also target those who traffic and distribute the material as a means of stopping children from being exploited. United States vs. Stevens (2010) is a good example.
Edit: grammar fix
That may have been the original goal, but in today's world I think we have observed a shift. Rather than protecting children, the purpose of the law seems to be punishing adults. What other explanation can there be for including cartoons in the definition of child pornography? What children were harmed in the making of a cartoon?
We have not entirely emerged from the insanity of the 1980s, when thousands of innocent men and women across America were imprisoned for crimes that never happened.
Keep them eight hours a day interacting only with people their same age, give them zero spending power in a world where money is the primary objective, give them no political clout, zero challenges and a pretty much zero chance of failure.
And of course what you get is individuals that can't make these decisions.
Nowadays, the vast majority of producers of ‘child porn’ are kids themselves. The combination of webcams, Internet access, and sexual curiosity guarantees that images of underage nudity will only be more prevalent as time goes on.
I think Falkinvinge wrote a article about that...
The stereotype of the evil drooling paedophile lurking behind the bushes by the school gate with a panel van and a sound-proofed cellar back home is vanishingly rare, but it makes a good target for psychological projection.
Often, (not at all a majority,) the child feels anything but damaged. In fact, they feel like the centre of the universe. Only afterwards, once the councillors, etc have gotten to them, do they understand that they are supposed to feel damaged. The damage and hurt they end up dealing with for decades is what happens when the state rushes in and destroys a relationship they themselves had little problem with, and they see their "partner" humiliated and hauled across the coals, while some nasty adult coaches them in to being a victim.
Oddly, in that sort of scenario, the parents can be the ones who have most to deal with. Guilt, failure, etc. Then blame the child for it, because the child doesn't seem damaged.
My only point here, is that society has us believe that these relationships are default abusive, nasty, even violent and coercive. There is a spectrum, from my example above to the traditional view.
And all this because of an arbitrary age of consent, which changes from country to country, culture to culture.
> [PDF] recidivism rates for pedophiles - Université d'Ottawa
> No differences were found between pedophiles and nonpedophiles with respect to recidivism rates
Are you perhaps spreading a very nasty myth?
Should people get "discount" for hurting terminally ill patients with no more than a few months to live?
Does the recidivism rate matter as much as the number of pedophiles? Even if every real pedophile committed the crime 3 times, that's the same as having 3x as many first time offenders. The rate and the number of pedophiles is far more important.
Unless we buy into the idea that pedophiles are lurking around every corner, the recidivsm rate should't scare us.
Have you ever been close to someone who suffered from the aftermath of sexual abuse, especially as a child? It is not pretty.
Pedophiles are are a sociopathic rot, and should be treated as the worthless dangerous filth that they are. I'd feel worse stepping on a spider than I would putting a bullet in a child pornographer.
But... teenagers having sex with each other is not pedophelia. It may be stupid, but it's not abusive.
Edit: by pedophile, I mean someone who has acted on their urges or intends to do so. Someone who can control themselves is worthy of compassion. Those who will not are worthy of nothing in my eyes.
I think the biggest issue is that people see such a black and white division between "good" and "bad". Firstly, there's the fact that general scientific consensus is that paedophilia is not something they can control, all they can control is their urges. And then, those who do act on their urges, there are still many levels.
Consider...
- Paedophile who never acts on attraction to children
- Paedophile who looks at non-nude legal photos of children
- Paedophile who looks at cartoon child pornography
- Paedophile who looks at nude / suggestive child pornography
- Paedophile who looks at hard core child pornography
- Paedophile who makes nude / suggestive CP
- Paedophile who makes hard core CP
- Paedophile who has a relationship with a 15yo who consents
- Paedophile who has a relationship with a 15yo who doesn't consent
- Paedophile who has a relationship with a 6yo who consents (** SEE DISCLAIMER)
- Paedophile who has a relationship with a 6yo who doesn't consent
So yes, I'm with you about child pornographers (well I wouldn't personally shoot them.. but no problem with strong laws against them), but I think there are many shades of paedophile, from "not their fault and they do nothing wrong" all the way down to "scum of the earth".
edit to respond to your edit: So you're happy drawing a straight line and place it between "done nothing" and "done something"? Does your moral code line up with the law? If so in which country? Are the following consensual relationships OK or not OK: 16+15, 16+14, 16+13, 18+15, 18+13, 21+15, 21+13, 40+15, 40+13....
No, pedophiles are regular humans suffering from a terrible mental disorder. They are no less deserving of compassion and respect.
A child molester or someone who has otherwise abused a child is more deserving of your vitriol. The two are not necessarily the same and we need to stop acting like they are. Last I checked, thoughtcrime was a bad idea.
Who's the sociopathic rot now...? Well at least statements like that clarify whether the witch hunters are taking their stance because they're fighting for human rights and the alleviating of people's suffering, or whether their stance if merely about feeling good about themselves.
Just from the _comedies_ we've inherited from the Renaissance, we can tell that young girls marrying old men was pretty common until pretty recently. We can also tell that they didn't much like it. Tbh, I think age of consent laws are as much about women's rights as public decency.
Arguably the age of consent laws in the U.S. are being perverted by the far right, but that's a whole different argument. The age of consent rules (both in theory and in terms of enforcement) in the U.K. are, I believe, on the whole moral and sensible.
Romeo and Juliet were probably fictional characters of undefined age whose actual age -- as distinct from their status within their families and the broader society -- are completely irrelevant.
> but if we didn't accept that we can hold ourselves to higher moral standard than our predecessors we'd still be crucifying rebellious slaves on the road side.
I'm not sure expanding the duration during which people are deprived of rights because they haven't acheived a particular, globally applied, chronological milestone is a "higher moral standard".
It's not a "minority" crime (an example of that would be prison sentences for crack being 20x that for possessing an equivalent amount of cocain).
Child pornography is a sex crime that targets and direclty injures children.
Sure, there can be problems with laws that have zero flexibilites (like a 17½yr old having sex with their 18 year old partner), but that doesn't mean everything should be thrown out.
It is certainly not my place to project my feelings onto someone else. Perhaps even projecting my desire for consent might be crossing the line. Definitely an interesting topic with no fully answered questions.
Because there's no punishment for being harder on pedophilia than your opponent is, and frequently there is a reward. The safest thing is to avoid the issue entirely, but when it comes up, being seen as stronger (that is, harsher) on the issue is always better than being seen as weaker (less harsh), so the spectrum of acceptable responses ratchets towards the hardest possible end.
The person is very dear to me, and I was only pointing how there is a clear dissonance between values, even in the same person...
The Bible is also full of things that most people dislike, and I am fine with them. Most people think I am evil because of THAT.
I got kinda tired of avoiding commenting about Islam, or Jews, because every time someone talk about Islam people think it is a anti-Islam thing (mostly, because many times it is, unfortunately... I still remember when I told a person that rode the commuting bus every day with me how sad I was about Libya civil war, and he replied that muslims were all stupid evil dirty people and deserved to die, I never talked with that guy again, who knows what other shocking shit he might say), and every time someone say something bad about Jews it turns into anti-semitism (even if the object of the criticism is true).
I guess maybe I should have invented some fictional names for the historical figures mentioned, to still give a example of my point of someone that favours throwing the baby with the bathwater but at the same time respects a historical figure that clashes with their own values.
How disappointing to see unsubstantiated claims. What is the part that is an anti-Islam polemic?
What a stupid, rude thing to do.
If you are ever arrested, don't say a word especially if you are innocent.
The cops never arrest anyone unless they think they're guilty, so anything you say -- as the saying goes in America -- can and will be used against you. It'll be filtered through that cognitive bias.
Part two of his advice was: even if you are guilty of something, don't assume you're being busted for what you're guilty of. (So again keep your mouth shut.)
He related a case of someone busted for trafficking drugs. (Turns out he was.) He wound up being charged with murder. (He didn't do that!) Apparently someone had been killed in a way that made the police suspect it was drug-related, and there was circumstantial evidence linking the suspect to the scene, so...
It's one of the most profoundly revealing videos I've ever watched on the Internet, certainly the only (non-movie) video I've watched for 50 minutes. But I can't think of many other 50 minute periods in my adult life where my mind was so thoroughly changed from beginning to end on something related to politics and civics.
Does most of the advice still apply for, say, the UK?
In the UK (which is where the OA is set) we don't really have that option. The police will warn you when arrested:
"You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
So basically, you're required to mount your own ad-hoc defence when arrested, or "it may harm your defence" in court. This when you might be under extreme emotional stress from the arrest, or the incident which led to it. When your state of mind might be borderline rational or worse. Effectively, we do not have a right to silence.
Sadly a lot of people visiting HN live in places where the police think of the safety of body and limb of the suspect as a optional recommendation. So keep you mouth shut may not be that easy.
I am concerned. Should people here call their parents and ask them to destroy all pictures of them being bathed and oil massaged in the sun as an infant if they exist? Is it CP if I possess a picture of me as an infant? What is this absurdity?
I also believe there has been accusations based on photos where no nudity was evident as well. They were just "suggestive" somehow, which says more about the person making the accusation than the photographer to me.
It may be a fine point, but I think the distinction that clarifies the problem is "...where nudity is automatically pornography to somebody".
> It is a pretty weird world we live in where nudity is
> automatically pornography.
So if you enjoy images of death (not only games, movies too) you are normal, and everything is ok. But if you enjoy images of naked people and depiction of sex, something is very wrong with you. Despite that most people never kill, and most people have sex, and all people have bodies.
How is this not twisted?
[1] http://www.andywest.org/es/miscellany/thought_killing_cliche...
They have no idea if these are his grandchildren and they're happy, or if these are his grandchildren and he's abusing them, or if these are his grandchildren and he's on the sex offender's register and prohibited from being anywhere near them.
So, when they call police they're not saying "This guy is a paedophile, lock him up" they are saying "There might be a problem here, but we're not child protection experts and we don't have access to all the information, so please could you take a look?"
It's very annoying that police totally overplayed this case, and that CPS didn't look at the images before taking it to court.
But still, in general, you want people to report early and report often. The fight isn't against them, it's against overworked underfunded poorly trained social workers (many of whom are fucking idiots) and overly aggressive police forces.
What is totally baffling to me is to contrast this case (naked children on a drive; arrest and prosecution) and the child grooming gang cases (14 year old girls telling police that they were being gang raped, drugged, forced into prostitution, and police not doing anything and child protection social services telling the family that a child working as a prostitute was a "lifestyle choice". We must do something to stop abuses of the system like that, but we must also make sure innocent people don't end up in court needlessly. Especially because, as the blog says, access to legal aid is getting tricky and barristers are expensive.
But. In my time as a computer forensics investigator in the UK I never saw a case like this. That's not to say errors were made (don't get me started) but I am very cautious about this particular tale.
For example, there is no way that the computer would not have been subjected to a full analysis, by experts. The CPS simply will not prosecute without this, period.
Any competent analyst would have seen the obvious truth, and the report would have reflected that. The CPS actually is very very cautious in charging for CP cases when there is only a little or dubious evidence - without supporting evidence of the user searching for and downloading material stuff graded level 1 will not make it to court.
I guess some critical process failed (I'm assuming the story is entirely true as told), which I think is horrific, but I don't think it reflects what happens all the time. I guess "Exhibit A" at no point said "I only have images of my grandchildren on there, from holiday", or similar, and the police assumed (totally understandable!) denial mean't the images were dodgy - that's a horrible failing.
What does need to be exposed is how any reasonable claim of CP possession (e.g. by a relative or whatever) will mean an automatic investigation, suspicion, and often seizure of your computers. The number of cases I worked through which were total negatives is depressing (although not a massive percentage, maybe 3-5%, it still feels we could do better).
A bunch of kids running around in the backyard naked happens all the freakin time. Used to be more often. The technicians could have exercised common sense. The police could have exercised common sense. The police could have refrained from writing up a description of the photos that appears to have no correlation with the actual photos.
Ultimately, the problem is with metrics, police want easy cases to bump the stats, and that's what they're incentivized for. That's the problem at the root of most excesses in the drug war as well.
I find this (extremely common) attitude rather distressing. People are all too eager to believe that the authorities are always right, and when presented with a case showing the contrary, they assume "we're missing some key piece of [the] story."
It works for the FBI after all.
That actually is a concern. It would be exceedingly simple for someone to plant images on another person's hard drive. Much easier than planting other physical contraband.
Taking it one step further entirely possible that the person who was the object of the plant had other borderline images as well which in some way enhanced the guilt of the truly law breaking images. (For example let's say the grandfather had the hose pictures and some really bad stuff. The existence of both would seem to make a stronger case for the law breaking images than just the clearly law breaking images alone.)
Child porn pretty much tops the list of scumbag behavior, but the fact that the judicial, legislative and enforcement arms are such technological noobs is not helping the world be a better place.
In brief, the UK government is planning to stop the current legal aid system - where solicitors (lawyers) are paid based upon how much work they've actually done on the case - and replace it with a flat rate. The flat rate is the same regardless of a guilty or not guilty plea. It should be immediately obvious that this means it's in a solicitor's best interests for a client to plead guilty, as they'll the same amount of money but for considerably less work.
Additionally, the government plans to remove the right to choose your own lawyer when on legal aid, and allow law firms (or, indeed, any company) to 'bid' to provide legal aid services exclusively across a geographic area.
What's particularly bad is that these proposals are being brought in as secondary legislation, which means they don't require a debate in parliament. That's very much unlike the 'snoopers' charter', which has a very strong chance of either being killed outright or considerably watered down as it works through parliament.
The end of the blog post linked to here discusses this a little - there's also a petition that UK residents can (and should) sign: https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/48628
Which is it: a flat rate or an amount based on the amount of work done?
I think it's them who propagate such efforts because they'll never miss a chance to claim people sinners over sex, especially if it's women or minors.
Pretty sure there are a lot of atheists / agnostics here.
And I do think organized religions do more harm than good, although there are several societal roles that they fulfill.
I want to believe that the blame is on the image thumbnails on the Desktop or some folder that is difficult to circumvent. But still, such privacy violation and lack of professionalism from the technicians is not ever mentioned again in the OP.
Meaning, write so many laws that everyone eventually breaks a law or two on a regular basis.
Of course there's the poor grandfather here within our institution of justice. But his arraignment was the result of a chain of bumbling actions. At some point, someone in authority made a terrible decision. But the decision involved something that generally, almost no one wants to be on the defending side of ("Oh, but are you sure it's child pornography?")...and soon, you have the momentum of one bull-headed decision just propagating to other agencies and departments until anyone with the decency to stand up in the bureaucracy and say "Wait a minute" will already have been deterred by the mountain of echo chamber-derived evidence.
The incident as described here is abhorrent. But I can see why most of the actors here did what they did...certainly, no one at CPS wants to be the one who says, "Let me see those pornographic pictures just to double check"...And no one in law enforcement wants to be on the hook when a real child pornographer is caught, and it's learned that police had investigated him months/years before and did nothing about it.
Ask the average person what a paedophile is and they'll say someone that rapes children. Ask the average person what should happen to paedophiles and they'll say they should be given the death penalty. People are not rational in normal circumstances, add children and abuse to the mix and any semblance of rationality is lost. A justice system built on the values of a society that acts like this can never be good and will always have problems like this.
Having said that, I'm not nearly as anonymous as I'd like to be. In fact, its pretty easy to find out who I am and lots about me.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/How-Invisible-Revised-Protecting-ebook...
His ex got pregnant and he did not want the child but she did not want to abort. You talking about state where abortion was legal for many years (side issue to many including me its immoral). So he was at the party with bunch of friends drunk. One of his friend asked him about her and they start talking. My friend was drunk and angry and said to him: "damn I wish someone would just punch her in the stomach that would solve my problem". I know him long enough to know he wasnt serious but he was drunk and upset and let's be honest -- who has never wished another person bad in their mind or outspoken while drunk? Next morning he got cops knocking at his door. Long story short -- because of his friend testimony and his ex testimony that she "is afraid of him", he is sentenced for more than 10 years for a solicitation of 1st degree murder. A decent good guy with nothing on his record. Its been 20 years ago and he was released after couple years for well behave and never broke the law again, but honestly shake someone's hand and tell them: hey, I am ex-con convicted of 1st degree murder, nice to meet you.
My wife however said that I should not publish this story as it was based on my life and I was a minor at that time and people might conclude that I had sex with another minor girl (which I did not).
The story is still in my drawer.
Off topic:
One thing about US that competently baffles me is that you pay a woman for sex and it is crime. You pay a woman for sex and film it and publish it as a movie and you are in porn industry.
It's also easy to accidentally download or access a site with it, or have a suggestive picture or drawing, etc. Not to mention teens "sexting" and stuff like that.
Years ago many people were falsely convicted of child molestation by unreliable child witnesses who were basically told what to say.
Many of the people who did get falsely convicted were heavily abused in prison by guards and other inmates because of the stigma associated with pedophiles. If you ever get out, being a registered sex offender can destroy your life. Even if you aren't convicted, just the accusation can destroy families and reputations.
And yet on the other hand child abuse is absolutely terrible and I want to do everything possible to stop it. But way too many innocents are sacrificed for it.
I wrote a lengthy blogpost supporting the move.
I was also applying for US immigration during that time and my attorney advised me that I better take it off my blog before applying because if the US authorities search for my name on Google and find it they might think I am a pedo.
For now you'll have to take my comment at face value, but you would be shocked at the number of major offenders in each community - and I'm not talking about the Sex Offender Registry. Too few sheriff's offices take advantage of funding for internet crimes against children, and just as few prosecutors pursue these cases. If your local law enforcement doesn't make it a priority, you won't hear about CP arrests in the paper. That doesn't make it any less of a problem.
I encourage tech companies on HN to send someone to http://www.cacconference.org in Dallas to join the likes of FB, Google, and Yahoo! for education on the topic, or contact me. In the future there will be more I can share.
The cutting of legal aid will mean that only the rich or lucky will be able to afford justice. The crucial point is this: you are assigned a lawyer who will get a fixed sum regardless of the outcome. As a defendant, you will not be able to fire your lawyer if he/she is shit.
In the new system there is no need to specialise. All you need to be able to do is persuade your client to plead guilty as quickly as possible. Failing that finding a way to get the case dismissed as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of work.
It is a cruel and deliberately unjust system. Potentially it will be brought in without so much as a vote in parliament.
On the plus side, it will drag britian kicking and screaming into the 19th century, which is where most torys want to be.
> The geeks there went to work. In the course of their work they found a number of images of naked children.
In what way is looking at the customers files and images in line with the work of repairing a laptop? As a sysadmin, that looks to be both a breach of ethics, but also borderline illegal. If a car repairman would go and rumble in the glove box for letters/pictures/money, he could very likely be sued. If a handyman would do the same thing while fixing up something at someones house, he would without doubt be thrown in jail. Why do the police allow laptop repairmen to rumble in peoples private information without consequences?