I always thought that the very notion that information can be illegal is like a contradictory premise that logically leads to crazy conclusions.
Although in the US we have stupid rules like if two teens who are dating share photos of themselves with each other they can wind up on a registry for life.
* Not saying I actually want that to happen, but just pointing out that "strict liability" logic breaks down real quick.
I can guarantee you, it isn't.
He also was not allowed to share the evidence with anyone in his office: no interns, paralegals, assistants .. only people who were directly involved in the prosecution.
I think this might also be why Microsoft seemed to only have one individual looking for so much of this content. He might have been given specific clearance with Microsoft/the justice department (the guy that was in an article a few weeks back for suffering from PTSD from that job).
While I can understand this at one level, at another it disturbs me that a lawyer hired (in some manner) for the defence would refuse to look at evidence to determine whether it met the definition of "illegality" in order to present an effective defense for the client.
Without doing so, the lawyer had no way of knowing what the images consisted of - were they merely going by what the prosecutor told them? Isn't that some kind of abdication of responsibility to a proper legal defence? Could the defendant get a new trial because of this?
If this was your trial, and you knew you were innocent, would you want to hear this from your defense lawyer? Or would you rather hope that the porn star in the images showed up at your trial to absolve you (which recently happened to some poor bastard)?
who in a Jury is going to check those images?
Anyway. Yeah, there is hell lot of information that should be illegal. It's not just the information itself, it doesn't exist in a context-free vacuum
There are roughly two kinds of
> "information wants to be free" proponents
The newer kind, who are of the "post-privacy" persuasion, who don't believe privacy is actually possible in this evermore connected world. Sometimes this includes a value statement of whether that's something good or not.
And then there is the traditional kind who's philosophy can be rougly summarized as "Public information should be free, Private information should be protected".
The slogan "information wants to be free" describes the tendency of information to proliferate and the value this brings to societey, and in any useful interpretation does not mean "Every single bit of information should be free .. whoops I forgot that my browser history is information".
Documentation of the exploitation of children clearly falls within the boundy of information that is private and should be protected, yet these things are shared all of the time, highlighting how information "wants" to be free.
I don't see how you are constructing a hypocricy here.
..and I'm sure somewhere, someone is jerking off to one.
When someone rapes a child, they put something into them; into their body, cause permanent mental and sometimes physical damage or death and leaves them with a high chance of developing PTSD.
When someone shoots a child, they put something into them; into their body, cause permanent mental and usually physical damage or death and leaves them with a high chance of developing PTSD.
I don't know what the correct solution is either. Both are terrible terrible things. But this disconnect shows where the priorities are in our current social structures.
It also creates a chilling effect on someone who winds up saving they don't want to save (browser caching!) and want to report it to the proper authorities.
It also makes framing someone easy. Just send them a link...
That certain collection of bits, can enable you to create smallpox, ricin, a gun, a nuclear bomb and all sorts of other things, can't it?
But information so powerful that merely having it should be worth automatic prison time? With no possibility to safely report the possibly much more harmful act of transmitting it or using it?
No such information exists.
That's why I used "enable", but point taken.
> But information so powerful that merely having it should be worth automatic prison time?
I don't think any prison time should be "automatic", but I do think that there's information that you should not be allowed to possess. In my view that doesn't include your examples, because that sort of scientific and technical knowledge, as you correctly point out, doesn't make a lot of sense to criminalize.
It does however include another human's private information that they did not consent to. What that entails exactly, is not clearly definable in all cases and I believe is open for argumentation, but I firmly believe depictions of sexual exploitation falls well within that area.
The general rationale that I have for this, is that someone else possessing my private information gives that other person power over me. That is bad, in my view, because it creates inequality. Now, one could argue that a society in where all information about everybody is available to everyone. But clearly, we don't live in such a society.
How do you figure? If someone has on their person a thumb drive containing your.. by way of example: PII, bank account info, and browsing history for the last week - but isn't giving it to anyone else, using it in any way, heck, they might not even know they have it:
How, exactly, do they have power over you? Be specific.
We can, and should criminalize those two things, but we're not talking about use or transmission, we're talking about existence.
For a sobering thought experiment, consider how many times someone may stumble across video or images of sexual exploitation, and then make the rational decision to scrub their history and cache rather than report it because doing the right thing opens them up to life-ruining liability.
A part of me wants to apologize, because I wasn't using that narrow of a definition, and under it, I think you are correct.
The other part of me likes arguing on the internet.
You're of course correct, that just by mere existance information is not power, nor is it anything else, nor is anything else. But to tune one parameter of an issue to an extreme that make the entire issue absurd, is not a useful way to have a conversation about a real life issue.
The point being, that of course existance implies the possibility of use and transmission.
Clearly, nothing is dangerous just by existing without the possibilitiy of interaction with it's environment, not guns, not anthrax, not information, and clearly not humans.
But the whole point about something "being illegal", whatever it is, is that there it the possibility for it to interact with the system it's a part of.
We are talking about the legal system, which can and does make that fine grained of a distinction. Creating, transmitting, or being in possession of certain kinds of data are all specific, individual crimes.
The absurdity of the issue under discussion is the entire point.
You seem to be of the opinion that just because things are digital means they can never be dangerous. Your opinion is very wrong. A collection of bits on a hard drive is very much able to kill people.
Criminalizing the use and transmission of some kinds of information makes sense. I've yet to hear a convincing argument why mere possession should be criminalized, especially given the incentive it induces in otherwise law-abiding people to hide, rather than report. Browse the wrong web page, and you are immediately guilty, the actions you take afterward to hide it or not the difference in how the rest of your life ends.
That is not an action that a normal person should ever have to take.
Nuclear bombs aren't actually dangerous, so everyone should be allowed to have them. It's only dangerous if you actually use it as a weapon.
Smallpox isn't dangerous unless you're infecting people, we should give everyone a vial of smallpox to wear on a chain around their neck.
Children should be given hand grenades in school, I mean they're not dangerous unless you pull the pin. We would just teach them not to do that.
I completely agree with you. Weapons are just atoms. We shouldn't criminalize the possession of WMDs, only the use and transmission of them. The fact that I'm stockpiling mustard gas in my apartment is of no concern to my neighbors and the police have no right to question me until I actually release the nerve gas into my city. I'm glad we've cleared that up.
Or you are you seriously making the equivalence that information on a hard drive is equivalent in danger, scope, or really anything else to a nuclear fucking bomb? Smallpox and nukes are not "inert" even when sitting unused.
At least try to continue this discussion in something resembling good faith?
You argued that bits on a hard drive could never hurt anyone. I provided examples showing the opposite. You responded by saying that those examples can only hurt someone if they're being used, to which I reminded you that any weapon can only hurt someone if it's being used.
It's not reduction to absurdity, it's the exact and obvious truth. Stuxnet is completely harmless until it blows up a centrifuge in an Iranian nuclear facility. Which is its only designed purpose it has. And there is no way to argue that you weren't planning to commit a crime with those bits and bytes. We used a cyber weapon to physically stop someone from developing a nuclear weapon and it worked. How's that for "bits on a hard drive"?
Now tell me: how many times have we used a nuclear weapon against another human in the past 50 years? Even though we have thousands of them scattered across the country, and thousands more across the world, they haven't hurt a single soul since WWII. Sounds pretty god-damn inert to me. Meanwhile people are using "just bits on a hard drive" as weapons constantly. Not just being used by the military like with nuclear weapons. Civilians attacking governments, civilians attacking civilians, governments attacking civilians, governments attacking governments. Every single day.
So no, I'm not arguing that information on a hard drive is equivalent to a nuclear fucking bomb. I'm saying it's worse.
Right. We're done here.
Yet - unbeknownst to you - that file contained something so illegal, it would cost you your life if you knew about it.
Is possession of that file still illegal? Or does it only become illegal when you have knowledge of its contents? Does having that knowledge then entail a potential for "thoughtcrime"? What if you (somehow) imagined the exact information that was contained in that file - before seeing the file? You now have the knowledge, but you never saw the information - is it now illegal? Or - what if you created a very large number that matched the unencrypted value of the file? Does possession of that number become illegal?
Illegal enough to forfeit your life?
That being said,
In Florida, it is treated much like drugs.
Most cases are constructive possession and in such cases The prosecution has to show:
1. You had knowledge of the presence of the contraband
2. You had knowledge of the contraband's illicit nature.
3. You had the ability to excercise dominion and control over the contraband.
I read a case in which a person had, on their person, a over-the-counter Tylenol bottle. Inside the bottle was Tylenol w/codeine, of which they did not have a prescription for. They were convicted of possession of a controlled substance. Their conviction was overturned on appeal because there was no evidence showing that they knew the substance in the bottle was actually Tylenol w/codeine as opposed to just Tylenol.
Proving those three is a giant rabbit hole. Researching this was extremely eye opening for me, and if you live in a similar state, I would suggest you research it as well.
In your example, if there was no evidence that you knew what the encrypted file contained, and no evidence that you knew the password/key to the file, then only the first bar would be met -- knowledge of its presence, and thus your case could never even go to trial -- even an okay lawyer would get it dismissed for lack of evidence.
Now that 'evidence' word is very squirrelly. If a detective says you told him you knew what was in the file, that counts and the case goes to trial and a jury gets to decide whether you actually knew what was there. With drug cases, they might listen, weigh the facts, and be sympathetic. With a child porn case, not so much. Yes, the detective would be perjuring himself if you did not actually say that, but how do you prove that? That's one of the reasons any lawyer will tell you NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE. If you excercise your fifth amendment and do not talk to them, they can't put words in your mouth.
A site with a ton of information on this is http://www.ejdirga.com/criminal_offenses/drugs/florida-drug-...
Edit: add IANAL disclaimer at the top
If you take a picture of somebody looking at child pornography on a monitor, you could be charged with creating it. If you see it on a website, and report it, you could be charged with receiving (and possibly possessing).
Why?