According to an admittedly unscientific online poll by Sophos, a UK computer security company, "the majority of people surveyed disagree that it is acceptable to infect and hack into a PC if it is believed it may belong to a child abuser." That was 64% of 233 respondents.
The poll was prompted by a real case:
66-year-old Ronald C Kline, a former senior judge from California, has been sentenced to 27 months in jail for possessing child pornography. Kline was initially brought to the attention of the authorities after his computer was infected by a Trojan horse planted by Canadian hacker Brad Willman.
Willman planted the Trojan horse, disguised as images of child abuse, on an internet newsgroup visited by pedophiles in 1999. The hacker (who used the handle Omni-Potent) broke into the PCs of those he infected, focusing on those he suspected of being involved in child abuse.
According to the story at Information Week:
Brad Willman, a Canadian known in hacker circles as Citizen Tipster, wrote the Trojan and embedded it in images of child pornography. He then planted the images on newsgroup sites frequented by pedophiles. Once users downloaded the images, their computers would be infected by the Trojan and Willman would have access to their machines so he could root around in them, looking for other child pornography or even molestation evidence.
Willman has not been charged for the computer break-ins or for writing and distributing the malware.
Kline pleaded guilty and was also found to be in possession of "24 videos of child pornography," so this is not a case of injustice done. But what if another hacker decided to plant a few extra images to help make the case?
"A case without a Trojan is going to be a heck of a lot easier to prove," says [Keith Jones, a senior partner with Maryland-based Jones, Rose, Dykstra & Associates], who has done forensic investigations on more than 100 cases, including the UBS PaineWebber case last year. "If there's a Trojan on there, you're no longer examining a computer that only the owner has been able to touch. Now you have the added job of figuring out if this picture was downloaded by the person physically controlling the keyboard or by the person controlling the Trojan. ... It lets the defense argue that someone else had the ability to do it."
So someone who is guilty could get away with it.....
