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Underground > Laboratory >

Computer surrveilance...and stuff

solid~liquid onwards

15:44 / 26.04.02

a guy whos friends with most of my friends (ive talked to him on the internet, but never actually met him, cos he gets taught at school) was arrested yesterday for possesing paedophilic material, or something like that.

supposidly he was caught when he went onto a paedophile irc newsgroup which logs your ip address and the exact date which can be used to find a user, and the one he went to was problably set up as a trap...hes on bail just now, but theyve taken away his computer to see if they can find anything incriminatiing on it (but he formated his hard drive a few days ago so chances are theyd find nothing

ive gone all paranoid now, and wondering about your opinions on this, it it ok to have big brother style security on the internet to find and punish people like my friends friend who may use paedophilic material (although he might be innocent) if they can do that, then theres chances that if any of you have taken drugs and discussed it on this forum, or do anything that may be illegal in your state, you could be tracked down and arrested.

solid~liquid onwards

15:51 / 26.04.02

No-one's talked to him yet, the irc thing was just conjecture, any ideas on how he could get caught?

15:58 / 26.04.02

This was all over the news yesterday - your pretty secure on the net really - but this was a specific police operation using "new software" to find the addresses of people who were sharing pictures...

Sorry I'm guessing your in the UK sttab?

I don't think that their going to come after you for taking drugs or talking about it on the net...

There is a conspiracy that all e-mails are checked for key words though - same as phone calls....

Your never totally secure though on the net people can always find you - anyone remember the guy that hacked into Visa I know him and he thought he'd covered all his bases....

15:59 / 26.04.02

of course if you go into a paedophile irc newsgroup your asking for trouble (not that I'm saying this guy did that) ...

16:08 / 26.04.02

he formated his hard drive a few days ago so chances are theyd find nothing

Software exists that can retrieve data after 2 or 3 formats. Depends on how bad they want him though, since the cost is expensive as hell.

Personally, I don't say anything in public forums that I wouldn't want the cops to know. If I mention past drug use, it always in the past. And I don't discuss things I'm currently doing that'll get me in trouble. Just comes down to common sense really.

My favorite story though was the kid back in the early 90's, who used an anonymous mail server (you send a message through it, it strips off the headers, etc. And then forwards it to the intended receipent) to send a threatening email to then preseident Bush. Secret Service took all of about three days to track him down.

16:56 / 26.04.02

When I was working at this one place doing some tech work a few years back, I answered the phone to the FBI looking for someone who passed through our system. He masqueraded over an account we had and went through a few other places to get to his source. Was kind of cool but there was a great deal of net surveillance even back then. Makes me wonder. I think getting away with this nowadays requires some hefty knowledge...some public computer systems, and a few places to pass through that can filter the content, etc.

solid~liquid onwards

17:29 / 26.04.02

i dont think anyone really cares about the minor things ive done, or would waste time finding out. its just general paranoia that they could if they wanted to../what if (highly unlikely) i become a prominent politition, ppl could be keeping logs on us all (big *could*) i could be black mailed or something...*evil plots forming involving blackmail*

stuff could end up in psychiatric reports " the subject beleives he has the ability to leave his body and fly about, after a great deal of mental preparation, diagnosis-insane"

yup, im in the uk, on the black isle (its actually a peninsula)...two ppl were arrested here, and its a pretty small place, one 17 year old and one 21 year old.