No Dearth of Stupidity on Either Side

The problem of child pornography continues to be an overriding concern on the part of those in power these days, no matter the jurisdiction. Although no one of sound mind can be for child pornography, the method of removal should be effective and innocuous.

These two things are hard to achieve, yet the course taken should always point to those ends.

If the government is allowed to overreach in these things, we risk the beginning of the type of totalitarian state only known in science fiction novels.

In realizing that not all  things encountered in this life can be cured by legislation, the intelligent mind also looks for solutions which are least impinging upon the rights of all, and pursues only the ones that will obtain results, not the appearance of same.

Unfortunately, the stupid acts of the government in several states have caused suffering of individuals; only later, and at much time and expense, have these individuals been exonerated.

from ComputerWorld

Prosecutors have dropped child pornography charges against a Massachusetts state employee after an investigation determined that his government-issued laptop was poorly configured and riddled with malicious software.

If I was as kneejerk as the government, I’d say the person in IT responsible for this should be hung.

Michael Fiola, a former investigator at the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA), had been facing two-and-a-half years in prison after being charged last year with possession of child pornography.

But those charges were dropped on June 10 after an investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office found that the state couldn’t prove that Fiola had downloaded the images. “We could not meet our burden of reasonable doubt,” said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley.

The case shows how easy it is for someone to be charged with illegal computer activity that they may know nothing about, said Fiola’s attorney, Timothy Bradl. “This type of thing could have happened to anyone with a work-issued laptop,” he said.

Have these bozos never heard of Trojans, bot nets, and worms? Do they really believe it is beyond the capability of someone to target poorly setup equipment?

When the DIA issued Fiola his Dell Latitude laptop in November 2006, it was so badly configured that it may well have already been hacked, said Tami Loehrs, a forensics investigator hired by Fiola’s defense team. The Microsoft Systems Management Server software on the laptop was misconfigured and wasn’t receiving critical software updates, and the laptop’s Symantec antivirus software was either misconfigured or not working properly, she said.

“He was handed a ticking time bomb,” Loehrs added.

There’s enough of those problems on many of these machines, even without the pornography. Government computers are always a target of mischief.

State IT staffers examined Fiola’s laptop in March 2007 after they noticed that his Verizon broadband wireless usage was four times above normal. He was fired the same month, after the pornographic material was discovered on the system.

Fiola, a former firefighter with no criminal record, was ostracized by his community after being criminally charged in August 2007, Bradl said. “His life has been destroyed,” the attorney said. “His friends ran for the hills; his family mostly ran from him.”

Wow, the phrase ‘no criminal record’ certainly seems to carry no weight here. Is this what living in these United States has come to? (land of the free indeed)

DIA spokeswoman Linnea Walsh was quoted in the Boston Herald newspaper on Monday saying that agency officials “stand by our decision” to fire Fiola. When reached by IDG News Service, she declined to comment on the matter, saying only, “We don’t want to go there right now,” before abruptly hanging up the telephone.

‘Innocent until proven guilty’  yeah, that and $2  will get you a cup of coffee, both have been seriously devalued.

Since his wife, Robin, was at one point hospitalized for a stress-related illness, Fiola is now facing health insurance payments in excess of his monthly mortgage. But he is unlikely to take his old job back, even if the DIA were to offer it, Bradl said. “I would think that theoretically he’d be entitled to his job back with back-pay. However, he would never want to go back to work with such buffoons.”

And everyone said, ‘Amen’.

According to Wark, an initial investigation of Fiola’s laptop by the attorney general concluded that he likely was responsible for downloading the pornography. But a second examination, conducted after Loehrs reported her findings, reached the opposite conclusion.

Because of the heinous nature of child pornography, prosecutors and investigators often rush to conclusions while investigating alleged crimes of that type, Loehrs said. “Because the content is so disturbing, everybody just loses all sense of reality,” she noted.

Isn’t this what the term ‘blind justice’  supposed to convey?

Loehrs thinks the same thing happened to an Arizona resident named Matt Bandy, who was 16 when police raided his house in late 2004 and charged him with possession of child pornography — charges that could have resulted in a 90-year jail sentence.

Again, this shows how screwed up things are in this country. Murderers frequently get out in seven years on parole.

Bandy eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges. But Loehrs — who also was hired as a consultant by Bandy’s attorney — said that like Fiola, the teenager may have been the victim of a worm that turned his PC into a “zombie computer” that was used by others to store the child pornography.

This brings the point that judges should have some clue about the things that they judge – otherwise it is simply a matter of literal blind justice. The clueless should never be allowed to be in a position of authority. In this age, there are some judges who have expertise in this type of case, and no defendant should be without one.

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