How Federal Agencies and Congress are
Incarcerating our innocent family males and just passed a law in June 2017 to
be able to start incarcerating our innocent teens to a 10 to15-year minimum
sentence in federal prison for sexting?
These are shocking but true facts concerning the current laws in place on the inactive
distribution of child pornography by Limewire and its clones and sexting
by teens that both carry a 10 to 15-year minimum mandatory sentence for the
first offense.
Section I
Dangers of installing Limewire/Frostwire or any of
its clone Peer-to-peer sharing software or Apps.
I'm a retired Principle Systems Network Engineer government contractor with 28
years of service. I have been researching Limewire software for 7 years. I have
read all three congressional hearing on how dangerous it is and it's
peer-to-peer clones. I have read the lawsuits filed by the Federal Trade
Commission against Frostwire ( which uses the limewireWin4.16 application
on its desktop version see page 9 of the lawsuit), because of deceptive and
dangerous practices against its consumers. I have read every government
published document written by Thomas Sydnor II concerning the dangers of
Limewire to National Security and innocent users. I have read all of the 2012
USSC report sent to Congress about the unfair child pornography sentences.
The Cyber Defense Unit is the only organization that performed credible testing
of Limewire via network analyzers in a controlled lab setting. They discovered
that names and hash values of files would show up in the user's cache that was
not the current user's activity. The Cyber Defense Unit determined the
file names and hashes were LimeWire queries by other users on the Gnutella
network that got downloaded to their test computer via Limewire.
In the Oversight congressional hearing in 2007, Senator Darrell Issa attended,
the CEO of Limewire Mr. Gorton, testified that they didn't test Limewire they
just wrote the software and he didn't have any idea it was going to be a
security risk or so much child pornography would be on it, etc. Eventually, FTC
shut down the Limewire website in 2010, but immediately forks of the software
were available online and today you can still download it or one of its clones.
It will share a person total hard drive, what they have in their trash bin,
etc. This is how so many innocent people are getting hacked or charged with
contraband files and how security data leaks and hacks are happening.
Then the Federal courts ruled in one case that because Limewire always gave
positive hits for the FBI, that it didn't need to go through the standard
Daubert Evidence testing. In the Oversight congressional hearing in 2007,
Senator Darrell Issa attended, the CEO of Limewire Mr. Gorton, testified that
they didn't test Limewire they just wrote the software and he didn't have any
idea it was doing to be a security risk or so much child pornography would be
on it, etc. So you have a known unstable, unreliable, dangerous, unpredictable software
used by the FBI and States to snare the innocent users and this targets just a
certain group of our society the computer savvy men that are not pedophiles,
but are the victims of LimeWire or they have a teenage computer
savvy person using their computer at home. Thousands of men are being charged
every year and incarcerated in federal prison and have the longest average
sentencing times.
Congress needs to correct these injustices. The FBI/Congress has found a
way to put more innocent men in prison, the problem is they have been framed by
the FBI and P2P software. I read a transcript of a Federal hearing where
the United States District Attorney said, "Well Judge_____ if installing
Limewire is not enough evidence to convict someone of distribution, I have sent
a lot of innocent men to prison." In my opinion, a lot of innocent men
have gone to prison because of Limewire and Usenet.
I have written to my congressmen, to the department of defense and to the white
house, but I haven't gotten any answers. This peer-to-peer networking Gnutella
network stuff is too technical for most people to understand. The average
person can't understand how contraband can be on a person's computer and that
person not know it. All my findings have been verified by Ydecode
engineer, Microsoft Outlook Express documentation, www.Pacer.gov Case Transcripts,
Congressional sworn testimony, Published Government Documents, Limewire
developers, and Gnutella Forum, Administrator.
To make matters worse for the public, the FTC had not warned businesses or the
public of the risk of inadvertent file sharing through LimeWire as of February
2008. Whose job is it for the government to protect consumers by warning them
and educating them about dangers of loading certain applications on their
phones or computers? If it is part of FTC's mission, Why was this comment made
by FTC agency in 2005? (“Although it has required warnings with respect
to inherently dangerous products, the Commission concluded that it was not
aware of any basis under the FTC Act for requiring warnings for P2P file
sharing and other neutral consumer technologies.”) (emphasis added). In
the oversight hearing on Limewire peer-to-peer sharing software in 2007, it was
decided that Limewire and P2P file sharing was not a neutral consumer
technology, but a “Bombshell” for anyone installing it. Robert Boback, Chief
Exec. officer, Tiversa, Inc. also testified at the hearing about how
dangerous Limewire was in sharing personal data and national data. But because
FTC and Tiversa were partnered in a company called CID and were making money
off of an application to prevent your computer from sharing documents it was
not to their benefit to stop Limewire or P2P bad software. See case FTC filed
against LABMed for a breach in their clients' medical records. FTC needs to
demand that all search engines warn a user when they search for any
peer-to-peer software that it is dangerous and unpredictable and can download
child pornography which is a federal crime. Just like google now warns a person
who puts the words "child pornography" in the search window that it
is illegal to view or download child pornography.
Conclusion
on the Peer to Peer Software like Limewire/Frostiwire
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
sued FrostWire for deceptive practices in 2010. If you look at the case you
will see on page 9 of the case that FrostWire is using LimeWire 4.18
executable. At the same time FBI agents were using this same known deceptive
software to snare innocent computer users that download LimeWire and all its
clones ( FrostWire, bearshare, etc.)and charge them with distribution of child
pornography (10 year minimum mandatory sentence). Because they have limewire or
one of its clones installed and it shares without their consent or knowledge
and downloads unsolicited child pornography from benign searches by the user.
This is called inactive distribution and unknowingly possession of child
pornography. When the user discovers the unsolicited images in LimeWire, they
uninstall and delete immediately, but because LimeWire can download hundreds on
images in seconds and there is really no way to hide the signature of the files
- you are guilty of distribution and possession. Since you uninstalled LimeWire
there is no way to prove what search term you used or that you configure
Limewire not to share. You get 10 years and lifetime probation as a sex
offender. What makes it worse is congress stated that every crime under chapter
110 was child molestation and the courts are now labeling this poor innocent
victim of limewire as a violent crime of child molestation when that person has
never been accused of or touch a child inappropriately. The one size fits all
base offense level is so high that these users get more time than someone who
raped a child. I've researched and read the hearing in 2007 and 2009 that were
held on the dangers of Peer to Peer software that Senator Issa attended. I have
talked to and communicated with Thomas Sydnor II who also tested LimeWire,
spoke at these hearing and written Federal Publication on LimeWire. I have
communicated with the Gnutella Forum Administrator and he has performed testing
for me in 2017 on LimeWire and he discovered that LimeWire will even share
without consent or knowledge files that the user has deleted and are in the
trash bin. There is no way to get LimeWire and its clones off the internet now,
but the Public needs to be warned about its dangers and FBI needs to focus on
the real pedophiles on the dark web and stop putting innocent men in prison
(they can tell who are the real pedophiles by the way they save and file their
images - they know that they do not delete all of them). Also congress needs to
overhaul the child pornography guidelines like the USSG has suggested and they
need to take out inactive distribution and unknowingly possession when not in
the physical presence of a child or used to groom a child from the 10 year
mandatory sentence.
Section II
2017
House passes 15 Year Minimum for Teen Sexters
It gets worse, in June 2017 House Passes 15 Year Minimum for Teen Sexters - Anyone under 18 years old
is considered a minor, so any sexting of anyone under 18 years old is
considered a crime of distribution and or production of child pornography and
will get you a minimum sentence in Federal Prison of 10 to15years. Read more at
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2017/06/house-passes-15-year-minimum-sentence-for-teen-sexters.html#SMByqz8uJUW8buMO.99
The Government should be forced to educate the schools and public about these
new amendments to the LAW. The Child Pornography Laws were put in place to
protect our children and now they will be endangering those same children.
Congress is passing laws that are doing more harm to families than protecting
them, when they make these broad laws - one size fits all were passed under the
Protect Act in 2003 The PROTECT Act made several
changes with respect to the child
pornography guidelines and contained provisions by which Congress, for the
first and only time to date, directly amended the guidelines. PROTECT Act §
401(j) (requiring the Commission to distribute the amendments made by the
PROTECT Act and specifying that they take effect on the date of enactment).The United
States Sentencing Commission noted that these amendments were not subject to
the standard notice and public comment period because they were enacted by Congress
and effective on April 30, 2003, making “it impracticable to publish the
conforming amendments in the Federal
Register to
provide an opportunity for public comment before the congressional amendments
became effective. This resulted in a one-size fits
all unfair harsh punishments and highly criticized in the USSG 2012 report to Congress stating
these laws need to be overhauled, because the PROTECT Act also provided general
directives, created a five-year mandatory minimum for trafficking and receipt, raised
the statutory maximum for trafficking and receipt from 15 to 20 years and for
possession from five to ten years. These directives from Congress created harsh
punishment for all §2G2.2 child
pornography inactive and active distribution offenses and knowingly and
unknowingly possession of child pornography all would face a higher penalties than
a typical offender convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping or a
defendant traveled to engage in a sexual act with a minor, or child molestation
which are all arguably more serious
crime. These laws have filled our Federal Prisons with non-violent offenders
that have average longer sentences than most crimes. Oddly because of these
laws there are twice as many white males in Federal Prison than all other races
combined, because 99% of child pornography offenders are white males. Check the
BOP.gov race Stats.
Thank you for reading my blog post. I pray you or your organization has
more weight and someone might listen to you. I have all the proof, URLs and
transcripts to back everything that is in this Blog. You can publish this or
share it where you think it will do good to help solve this injustice. I
think all will agree that the FBI needs to be focused on locating and rescuing
the poor children that are being abused sexually by child predators, rather
than spending tax payers money seeking out innocent users of convicted deceptive
file sharing software.
Section
III
More reading about a Federal case example of
Inactive Limewire Distribution and also Information
on the dangers of Usenet:
I have read numerous Federal LimeWire distribution cases and the opinions of
the appeal courts concerning a user using Limewire. I set in on a Federal
criminal Jury trial where a person was charged with distribution, just because
he used Limewire. He configured it not to share, searched for legal adult porn
using the word “nylons”, did a select all on the results of many pages of
truncated files names that could not be view, he came back 5 hours later and
found that Limewire had crashed and left 185 files with names indicative of
Child Porn in an “incomplete” folder that Limewire Created. Without
opening, sharing, printing, saving, or renaming these unsolicited files, he
deleted all and uninstalled Limewire. Bought wiping tools and reloaded his
operating system. 6 months later his house was raided by FBI and his computer
was seized, because that one time an FBI agent using Limewire got a hit on his IP
address, browsed his computer and saw the 185 files. The FBI Agent downloaded
20 files and 13 were child pornography. The FBI agent testified that he
couldn't verify if the files were in the user's trash bin or Limewire
incomplete folder or where they were located.
The user told the FBI, when they seized his computer, that they would not find
any Limewire images of child porn on his computer. The FBI didn’t find any but
did find the hash value and name of 4 of those that the FBI agent had downloaded
in the user's cache pagefile.sys. The FBI used FTK software that only FBI
or Forensic specialist can afford to purchase to find the file names, but the
images were not there at all and not viewable by anyone, just the name, and
hash value. The Cyber Defense Unit is the only organization that did a test
using Limewire. They discovered that names and hash values of files would show
up in the user's cache that was not the current user's activity. Even though
the images were not found on his computer, the court allowed the images that
equaled this hash value to be printed out and given to the jury for
deliberation and shown in the courtroom on monitors. The user saw the images
for the first time in court and thought they were just as disgusting and horrible
as the court and jury did.
Yet he was sentenced anyway and charged by a jury, even though they had no
proof he configured LimeWire to share, they had no proof he knew they were
child pornography files, they had no proof he knew the files were being shared
or even knowledge of the files in the incomplete folder, they had no proof he
didn’t search for “Nylons”. He did have a “nylons” folder with 1000s of legal
adult erotica images of models in nylons. He passed a polygraph test, showing
he had no sexual interest in children girls or boys and never touch or been
accused of touching a child inappropriately. His Presentencing report
states he is not a danger to children. There are lots of cases out there just
like this one. That is the reason so many innocent men plead guilty so they can
get a lesser sentence and the defenders know it is hard to convince the jury
that they are innocent, because all people think child pornography is terrible.
Federal Public Defenders in this user's state had never defended a child
pornography case in a federal jury trial before, so they hand these cases off
to court-appointed unqualified public defenders in the private sector, so the
federal public defender's office doesn't lose a trial case. This is unjust too because
the federal public defender's office has more help, expertise, and funding
available to them, then a one attorney shop that doesn't have an assistant to
help him in court. So you have one unqualified attorney, that hasn't ever taken
a child porn case to a federal jury trial, up against 2 U.S. Prosecuting
attorneys, 3 FBI agents, and staffers.
Another injustice with the child pornography law is the fact that Congress made
a mistake when they said that anything under USSG §2G2.2 chapter 110 is a child
molestation crime, a violent crime. Everyone knows that possession or
distribution of child pornography without being in the presence of a minor to
try to groom or entice them is not a violent crime in itself and is sure, not
physical child molestation. Yet in these cases where a defendant is charged
with possession or distribution – the law says it is child molestation. This
misinterpretation should be corrected to specifically say only the production
of child porn or the act of alluring or grooming with child porn under chapter
110 is “child molestation”.
So now the innocent person is charged with distribution, he is a violent
criminal a child molester and he has never touched a child or wanted to touch a
child sexually. All he is guilty of his loading an unbeknownst to him a bad
piece of software.
Now let's imagine that same user above, gets only 3 years in prison because he
pleads guilty after the government won his case in appeal. So years later he is
freed from prison and eventually allowed on the internet. He has been beaten
severely in prison requiring surgery and also suffer a stroke because all men
convicted of child molestation are considered scum of the earth by following
inmates and guards. This user does not want to go back to prison.
He is careful not to install any sharing software, search on google, or access
any legal porn sites. But he makes a grave mistake by believing the news that
the FBI has raided an ISP because of child porn on Usenet and that all ISPs are
blocking contraband on their routers coming from Usenet. So thinking USENET is
monitored by FBI and ISPs and have blocked all contraband, so it will be
safe for him to use. He already has Microsoft Outlook Express that has a
newsgroup option, so he installs Ydecode a decoder interface between Outlook
and Usenet necessary to view a message. In order to be able to
subscribe to a Usenet group from Microsoft outlook, all 15,000 newsgroups
names are instantly downloaded to your computer. This enables the user to
search within Outlook for the newsgroup that the user wants to subscribe to and
get automatic mail messages of posting on that newsgroup. The user searches for
the word “nylons” finds a group call nylons and subscribes. Checks Outlook and
he has messages and attachments in this folder. He opens one up and it is child
pornography and he deletes the rest. But the Ydecoder interface between
Microsoft Outlook express and Usenet shows all the newsgroup names in the list
of its software and the FBI agent guesses that this user was a member of a lot
of newsgroups that appeared to be child pornography groups. The user deleted
all, but he got caught again. Arrested and because his previous distribution of
child pornography by congress law was considered child molestation and F.R.E.
404b had been passed that said any similar child molestation crime can be
entered as evidence. Federal rule of evidence 404b was meant to only apply to a
victim of actual sexual molestation so their word against the child molester
would have more creditability. It was not intended to be used in non-contact
possession or distribution of child pornography. Prosecutors love to prove that
a defendant has a prior criminal record because it effectively negates the
presumption of innocence. Empirical studies show that jurors are willing to
give an accused the benefit of the presumption of innocence only if this is the
accused's first offense. Once he has proved himself to be "a
criminal," the jury assumes he is guilty. So the Jury finds the user
guilty, because it didn’t matter, if he deleted the email or not – the Jury was
given a copy of the defendants last child pornography indictment to take back
to deliberation and they notice that he only got 3 years for “trafficking
in material involving sexual exploitation of minors” – they have no idea he
could get 15 to 60 years for the possession of child pornography since this is
his second conviction, which would be a life sentence for this person. Again
all he did was load, Microsoft outlook express, Ydecode, and pick several
Newgroups, and received emails with unsolicited attachments that were
contraband and he deleted them when he opened them and saw the images. This
user is found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. The rules and
laws in place in 2017 in America regarding distribution or possession of child
pornography when technologies like Limewire and Usenet are the predictors and
non-pedophiles men are the victims and these laws need to be changed
immediately by Congress.
Appendix
Sources:
(FTC Staff Report,
Peer-to-Peer File- Sharing Technology: Consumer Protection and Competition
Issues, at 20 (June 2005), available www.ftc.gov/reports/p2p05/050623p2prpt.pdf
http://www.dfrws.org/2008/proceedings/p96-lewthwaite_pres.pdf
(cyber Defense testing on Limewire)
During the 107th
Congress, the Committee first sounded the alarm on some of the dangers of
peer-to-peer file sharing software in a Minority Staff, Special Investigations
Division report entitled Children's Access to Pornography Through Internet
File-Sharing Programs (July 27, 2001). During the 108th Congress, the
Committee followed up with a hearing on the issue entitled Stumbling onto
Smut: The Alarming Ease of Access to Pornography on Peer-to-Peer Networks
(March 13, 2003) where they released another staff report entitled Children's
Exposure to Pornography on Peer-to-Peer Networks (March 13, 2003).
My son was victimized. Special Agent Paul J. Vitchock was contracting out to the Infragard, a cyber group targeting innocent citizens. Deborah Lynne Connor 801-654-3140
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