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How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

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Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#131

Post by dalke »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #111
mindslight wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your constructive result (as opposed to reactive/condemning) of that characterization? To me, propaganda is just a result of mass media, which itself is a result of the longer trend of advancing of communication technology. It's impossible to oppress someone who is not in your "light cone", or to control actions which are below your limit of resolving. In the past things weren't as developed, so it was easier…

Not just mass media. In Bernays' Propaganda , he describes a new process to sell pianos based on psychoanalysis rather than traditional big-print advertisements. Essentially, get leading architects to incorporate "music rooms" into their residential designs. Most architects will follow the greats and add music rooms as well. The average homeowner will then walk into the hardware store someday and notice a piano for s…

How does the average homeowner know what's going on with the leading architects, without mass media?

I think you have mistakenly limited "mass media" to radio, telegraphy, TV, etc., and omitted print.

As a reminder, "big-print advertisements" have been around for a long time. The penny press predates useful electric telegraphy, though just barely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper#Industrial_Revolutio... says "In France, Émile de Girardin started "La Presse" in 1836, introducing cheap, advertising-supported dailies to France." 60 years previous, Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlet was distributed by the 100,000s during the US revolution, and I would put that as part of mass media and political propaganda.

Aspect of mass media in Europe of course go all the way back to Gutenberg. I'm not trying to establish a certain date, but rather demonstrate that mass media and its effects on propaganda have been part of the US for its entire history.

Even your 1917 is a semi-arbitrary date. Why not the yellow journalism of the 1890s, or more specifically the propaganda of the Spanish–American War ?

Going back further, the 1840 campaign song "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", coupled with printed sheet music, helped bring Harrison to power. I'm a bit iffy of if that counts as mass media, but if not, it's close. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippecanoe_and_Tyler_Too , that song "firmly established the power of singing as a campaign device", and surely was not ignored by future candidates.

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#132

Post by hobs »

patcheudor wrote: post #117
pgpd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard would it be to do a demo for jurors in a courtroom? Simple proof-of-concept getting all of them to connect to a "wifi" network which is a tethered device owned by the lawyer, have them navigate to a regular website, and then inject images for the 2nd go-around to introduce reasonable doubt?

Trivial. The way to do this in a courtroom is to demonstrate it to the judge and jury by having a reputable forensics expert certify a computer is free from kitty pictures. Then have the judge connect that computer to a "Free WiFi" network to be used for the demo and have them go anywhere. Just start randomly browsing the Internet. Meanwhile, use an intercepting proxy like The Burp Suite, Fiddler 2, or Charles operat…

If you wanted to do evil, the NSA has already showed the ability to use the "quantum intercept" (return a response before the initial server does).

No need to even have the power of proxy if they are using bare http.

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#133

Post by mindslight »

dalke wrote: post #131
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just mass media. In Bernays' Propaganda , he describes a new process to sell pianos based on psychoanalysis rather than traditional big-print advertisements. Essentially, get leading architects to incorporate "music rooms" into their residential designs. Most architects will follow the greats and add music rooms as well. The average homeowner will then walk into the hardware store someday and notice a piano for s…

How does the average homeowner know what's going on with the leading architects, without mass media? I think you have mistakenly limited "mass media" to radio, telegraphy, TV, etc., and omitted print. As a reminder, "big-print advertisements" have been around for a long time. The penny press predates useful electric telegraphy, though just barely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper#Industrial_Revolutio... says "…

Let's not let different characterizations get in the way of our common understandings...

The local architects would follow the leading architects from their industry, but lumping it into "mass media" was probably a bad characterization. I'd describe it as as a kind of communication-based centralization, regardless of whether specifically enabled by periodicals, telegraph, train, etc.

You could accomplish the same thing with a more-local architect at the town or city level, but would the smaller gains pay off?

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#134

Post by patcheudor »

maqr wrote: post #130
agripa2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utterly terrifying. What are some common steps to prevent this kind of "invisible" injection of images. If you're on private WiFi are you good to go? Any common tips to stay secure?

You can tell your browser to not download images: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/981640 This would disable all images, but that's what you want, because you can never tell if a site you're going to has been compromised and what content they're going to serve up until you've already downloaded it. This doesn't completely solve the problem though, you'd also need to make sure you don't have Flash or Java,…

This advice tends to be akin to the advise to disable JavaScript. Basically at this point why are you even on the Internet? Also, as you mentioned Flash, Java, and especially SVG. The only real mitigation here is full drive encryption with a long passphrase which you'll never give up. Of course in the eyes of the courts and public that's a serious double-edged sword because you are assumed guilty at that point.

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#135

Post by dalke »

lettergram wrote: post #70
enlightenedfool wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will get worse when electorate instead of choosing the right candidates, chooses the more electable ones. The constitution cannot provide safeguard against ill-informed electorate. Not just the US, applies to any democracy. Most democracies have similar awesome constitution texts.

That's actually why historically only land owners could vote. They had the most to lose and we're the most educated. Regardless of "right or wrong" that did provide a safeguard against the likes of people like Trump, probably Hillery and Bernie as well.

But no safeguard against Andrew Jackson.

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#136

Post by patcheudor »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #127
agripa2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utterly terrifying. What are some common steps to prevent this kind of "invisible" injection of images. If you're on private WiFi are you good to go? Any common tips to stay secure?

Don't use insecure WiFi networks, or if you do, use a VPN. That prevents you from getting these images injected by people sitting near you on the same network. And don't visit web sites controlled by people who would do this, or linking to ad networks controlled by people who would do this. That's a little more out of your hands...

One, I don't know anyone who doesn't use non-secure WiFi networks & even if they don't, they typically still do without knowing, ergo., the 'attwifi' situation. Two, I've reviewed a number of VPN solutions over the years and they are far from perfect. Amongst some of my more notable findings:

1) Banner / update text delivered via HTTP to the client in a fully renderable state within the VPN client. Yeah, that was a fairly common issue many years ago and could be used to hijack the application UX to ask the user for things like their password.

2) Split tunneling. Some VPN providers will send HTTP traffic through the VPN while sending HTTPS traffic out the hostile leg of the VPN. This is cool and all until you use an application which doesn't properly validate the server public and then boom, a bad guy can get in the middle. Over the last half decade I've reported said flaw (failure to properly validate the server public) to over three dozen financial institutions, a couple anti-virus companies, and a major automotive manufacturer. It's real, it happens. Not to mention the Superfish and related situations.

Three, femtocells. Even if a bad actor can't get to someone's mobile computer (phone) via WiFi, they sure can by forcing it to negotiate a vulnerable cellular protocol and simply inject from there.

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#137

Post by dalke »

mindslight wrote: post #133
dalke wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the average homeowner know what's going on with the leading architects, without mass media? I think you have mistakenly limited "mass media" to radio, telegraphy, TV, etc., and omitted print. As a reminder, "big-print advertisements" have been around for a long time. The penny press predates useful electric telegraphy, though just barely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper#Industrial_Revolutio... says "…

Let's not let different characterizations get in the way of our common understandings... The local architects would follow the leading architects from their industry, but lumping it into "mass media" was probably a bad characterization. I'd describe it as as a kind of communication-based centralization, regardless of whether specifically enabled by periodicals, telegraph, train, etc. You could accomplish the same thi…

When it is slow enough, that's called a culture shift. Your piano seller wants change fast enough to call it personal profit. Mass-produced pianos require mass media as local changes won't pay off the cost of the production machinery. Might as well stay with local craftsmen.

"Communication-based centralization" includes Louis XIV of France's centralization at Versailles, yes?

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#138

Post by upofadown »

> ... the prosecutors indicated a willingness to reduce or drop the child pornography charges if he would tell them about the C-17, ...

Doesn't the justice system have some sort of obligation to prosecute people who they feel have committed serious crimes? How can a prosecutor just ignore their clear duty in an attempt to extort cooperation from someone?

How is this sort of thing any more acceptable than just straight up torturing the guy?

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#139

Post by maqr »

patcheudor wrote: post #136
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use insecure WiFi networks, or if you do, use a VPN. That prevents you from getting these images injected by people sitting near you on the same network. And don't visit web sites controlled by people who would do this, or linking to ad networks controlled by people who would do this. That's a little more out of your hands...

One, I don't know anyone who doesn't use non-secure WiFi networks & even if they don't, they typically still do without knowing, ergo., the 'attwifi' situation. Two, I've reviewed a number of VPN solutions over the years and they are far from perfect. Amongst some of my more notable findings: 1) Banner / update text delivered via HTTP to the client in a fully renderable state within the VPN client. Yeah, that was a f…

Can you elaborate on the femtocell vector and mitigation strategies?

Re: How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography prosecution

#140

Post by upofadown »

boosting7669 wrote: post #75
SeanDav wrote: post #55

If, during the entire history of the USA, some FBI agents had never been proven to be corrupt, if judges had never been proven to be corrupt, if evidence had never been proved to be planted by authorities, then maybe, just maybe this would be justified. In the real world, however, this is very, very scary and I consider myself lucky I am not subject to this travesty. Since there does not appear to be any proof that h…

And yet a jury convicted him. This kind of thing is far beyond the comprehension of the common juror. Knowing what I know about computer security and how EASY it is to plant digital evidence without leaving a trace, even from thousands of miles away, I'd have to see video evidence of the defendant downloading the material as it happens before rendering such a verdict, especially if it's going to mean decades in priso…

Isn't mere possession illegal in the US? If so then the jury returned the correct verdict. If we don't like it then we have to fix the law.
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