Dilemma: Kiddie Porn Found on Computer

February 9, 2008 | self

[garyhope]

I think I’d call a lawyer first. Then secure the wireless network. Back up or move your important data files to a separate clean or new hard drive (they’re cheap these days), then remove the corrupted hard drive or wipe it clean with one of those programs that deletes everything from the HD and rewrites over it several times.

There are a few listed here: http://www1.umn.edu/oit/security/tools/OIT__12709_REGION1.html There are others too.

Or else just back up your vital data from the corrupted HD, remove it from the computer, remove the cover from the HD and take a sledge hammer to it and throw it in a dumpster far, far away from you house.

You don’t want to get caught with kiddie porn on your computer and have to try and explain it to the police or courts. Much of you life would be over and very expensive.

You can buy a new 250 Gig hard drive for $60 to $75. Much cheaper than jail and lawyers.

Then get a couple of your very LARGE friends and visit your kiddie porn surfing neighbor and politely tell him that if you ever catch him reading or writing on your network, you will have your friends and their baseball bats beat the living crap out of him.

That oughta do it.

[Brandybux]

Do NOT, do NOT destroy the BIL’s hard drive. It will do nothing but make him liable to a charge of obstruction of justice. It will NOT keep the law enforcement away from him, if they’re tracking the porn that went through his internet connection. THAT information is NOT on his computer — it is with the internet service provider(s) all along the path from the origin point of the porn down to your BIL’s computer.

[HawaiianGecko]

Someone using your router does not give them access to your computer necessarily.  I see no reason on Earth why they would actually place pics on your machine unless they were using you machine as a server to the outside world.  Typically they would set up series of innocuous folders on your machine and then give that address out. 

Now unless you have a block of specific IP addresses assigned to you by your ISP, even this won't work.  Most DSL, cable hookups use DHCP and all routers that I know of, along with any firewall built in the last 10 years won't allow this to happen by default.

My bet is that someone is downloading this directly from your computer, so you might want to check around on your own before calling the police. 

[Pikachu_Dad]

The files could have been downloaded by anybody since the network was wide open. You should be very careful about pointing the finger at the neighbors. It may not have been them.

The machine may be infected with a virus or malware. If they have been hacked, there may be software on the machine that is involved in the file transfers. You should have the
machine checked out using the latest security software.

Simple possession may be enough to get Sis and BIL charged with a crime.

http://incestabuse.about.com/cs/childabuse/a/PeteTownshend.htm

“Even so much as clicking on a Web site featuring child pornography could result in a jail sentence of up to five years in the United Kingdom.
And if you host a Web site or forward an e-mail containing images of children — who are or seem to be under the age of 16 — being abused, you could face imprisonment of up to 10 years.

If you receive and view an unsolicited e-mail — or spam — of offensive material and immediately delete it, then that counts as a reasonable explanation, according to Peter Robbins, chief executive of Web campaigners, Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).”

I would not report this problem to just any ‘police’... You need to report it to the appropriate group that specializes in this crime.

[Zeppo]

That could be a viable approach, however, insidiously, it may not be sufficient to erase all digital "tracks" pointing to your computer, especially if someone else entered through your wireless network and accessed a child porn site through your wired Internet connection, in which case there would be logs and records of that access that would be linked with your computer even though the guts of the computer itself were pulverized beyond recognition...

The big problem is that you may never know whether or not such access was ever made until the gendarmes knock on the door...

[Dogbert41]

I would not touch a thing, or disconect a thing. Keep it going as always, get an attorney to protect your interests, and together contact the police.

[monkeyshine]

Wow what a story. If it were me, I’d honestly be afraid to tell the police. Mere possession of that stuff is a crime... and claiming “someone planted it on me” is a tough defense.

Always secure your WiFi. The WiFi companies should take a story like this and use it to market an easier way to secure one’s network. I know it’s not always easy to do.

[Vicki]

My husband works as an information systems specialist and he says to call the FBI. They will be able to trace the IP address of the user that has been logged into your computer. They will also be able to detect whether you have copied these files or not.

It is likely someone in your household is using the file sharing software called Kazaa to share and obtain music files from other users. This leaves an opening to the internet that can by compromised. The FBI is very familiar with these tactics.

[Pikachu_Dad]

I did a search for ‘child porn reporting’. This site lists these contact points.

http://vachss.com/help_text/report_child_porn.html

Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section
Criminal Division
U.S. Department of Justice
1331 F Street NW, 6th Floor
Washington DC 20004
Phone: 202-514-5780
www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/
The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, has supervisory responsibility for Federal statutes covering obscenity, child exploitation, child sexual abuse, activities under the Mann Act, sex tourism, missing and abducted children, and child support recovery.

Innocent Images National Initiative
Federal Bureau of Investigation
www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/innocent.htm
The Innocent Images National Initiative (IINI), a component of the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Program, is an intelligence-driven, proactive, multi-agency investigative initiative to combat the proliferation of child pornography/child sexual exploitation facilitated by an online computer.

ICE Cyber Crimes Center
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Toll-free: 1-866-DHS-2ICE
/www.ice.gov/graphics/investigations/services/cyberbranch.htm

U.S. Postal Inspection Service
Inspection Service Operations Support Group
222 S. Riverside Plaza, Suite 1250
Chicago, IL 60606-6100
www.usps.com/postalinspectors/kid-porn.htm

[ConservativeMind]

Don’t make a CD ROM of their material. You will then be in possession of illegal material and won’t be able to prove you didn’t put it on their computer, too.

When you then hand it to the police, you are screwed.

In some states, it is illegal to use a wireless connection for which you do not have permission (Illinois has this law). If you have to hijack their Linksys router to see their data, you are also screwed.

I would try to pass this on to the police anonymously.

[Cindy]

Resource links:

http://www.cybercrime.gov/reporting.htm

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2936

[Pikachu_Dad]

“I would not touch a thing, or disconect a thing. Keep it going as always, get an attorney to protect your interests, and together contact the police.”

They already have ‘touched a thing’.

Attorneys are very, very expensive.

[HawaiianGecko]

"Yeah, you can’t put stuff on someone else’s computer. But, I believe it would show the brother-in-law’s IP address visiting the site if the photos were downloaded from the net." 

 

If someone outside their home accessed their network, they needed more than a simple connection to the router.  If ChocChip has a domain set up they would need to know what it is, have an account & password.  At the least they have a 'workgroup' setup that has a quasi-domain name that the offending computer would have to know. Of course if they left it as WORKGROUP the default and have their computer set up not requiring an account/password it would be easier for someone to gain access.

Regardless, their router has a log of every single connection, the time, the Mac-Address etc.

 

 

[TNdandelion]

I’d call an attorney.

[struggle]

My suggestion:

1. Download Killdisk and 0 your hard drive. If your neighbor has already done this and is sharing off your hard drive, you are screwed until your harddrive is null.
2. Make sure your drive is 0’ed. This means all sectors are a 0. This does not mean windows has repartitioned it.
3. Reinstall Windows and start your computer over with a SECURE wifi with a password and limited access.
4. Now you can decide whether to report neighbors or not.

[papasmurf]

First of all, get yourself 2 new hard drives and place on one of them only what is yours, and nothing else. Then, clone your old hard drive to the other new hard drive.

Keep those two hidden, and don’t divulge their existence without first consulting an attorney.

But, do get the police involved. As a former tech, I was required to inform the police of child porn. The first thing they do is either take your pc or your hard drive. That’s why you need to transfer your data to the new one and hide it, without telling anyone you have it.

The reason you would want to make a clone of the old drive, is to protect yourself. You need to have exactly what the police have, in case your or your family members are charged, not far fetched at all.

If you can afford it, You should seek the advice of an attorney before you contact the police. And, btw, visiting them in person is, by far, better than calling them.

Child porn is a very serious problem, it’s more than the exploitation of children, it’s a huge, worldwide business and it’s connected to much worse.

Good luck, and cover your 6.

[airedale]

Talk to a lawyer who practices criminal law. Even if you erase the files they are still there if you have Windows unless you take lots of steps to remove them. If law enforcement thinks you have them then forensic tools they have in a lot of cases can bring them right back up. It’s a crime to even have them and or share them. Bernie Ward a liberal talk show host is having a major problem because of child porn. He claims he was doing research when he got the material and offered to share it, but that’s a different story. A guy in Nevada had some child porn that he claimed he found on his computer that actually led to the arrest of a child molester and murderer and he was just convicted (he pled guilty to lesser charges) because he’d held on to them for a long time and looked at them apparently many times. The law wanted originally to charge him with felonies even though his giving the material to the police led to the capture and conviction of the other slime.

About the only way to really get rid of them is to reformat your hard disk but the real problem is you don’t know if the material has been sent from your ip address to others. If it has and the police find them they can trace it back to your ip address if you aren’t lucky.

Secure your network ASAP and get serious with a lawyer to protect yourself.

[I see my hands]

"Could be a spouse’s sister and brother"

Or a spouse's sibling and that sibling's spouse. (It's true!)

[texas booster]

Be careful in assuming that your BIL is the guilty party.

We once had a (minimally) secured server compromised and used as a relay server by a guy in Brazil. Mostly copyrighted movies, little that was porno.

We only noticed it when our backup tapes took longer than usual to complete.

We had static IP addresses, but I have heard of cases where dynamic IP addresses, which are recycled every week or so, could also be used as relay servers.

One such case I personally worked on was the mom of an NFL player. After a week or so the pirates just moved on, until they found her new IP address. Its just a block of numbers that are shared by systems on the high speed network.

Its a dangerous world out there.

[Vicki]

If you 0 your hard drive you must do it at least 3 times and that doesn’t mean the FBI still can’t figure out what has actually happened. They have a computer forensics department that can figure out what went on.