Forces intelligence operative pleads guilty to, jailed on child porn charges

[vonGarvin]

From the Ottawa Citizen:

OTTAWA — A Canadian Forces sergeant serving with overseas intelligence operations is facing six charges related to possession, production and distribution of child pornography.

Gregory Kusec, 42, was arrested following a police search of his suburban Ottawa home on Wednesday. Police seized a computer and other electronic devices containing images of child sexual abuse were seized.

More at link here.

- mod edit to update status of case in subject line -

 

[the 48th regulator]

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/02/23/breaking-ottawa-military-man-nabbed-in-child-porn-sting/

KUSEC, the Canadian Forces Sgt., was arrested after an undercover online police sting.

Sadly, KUSEC is not the first Canadian military man to get arrested for child pornography. He might, however, be the first military man charged with making it.

There’s a huge difference between possessing it and making it.

I fully expect Sgt. KUSEC to lose a few facebook friends tonight. Mind you, he is innocent until proved guilty, and as you know, the police do get it wrong from time to time.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=517388906&sk=info

 

[jollyjacktar]

First a spy allegation, now a pedo allegation, that branch is not having a good winter.    :not-again:

(FIFY, just in case it was not clear enough that allegation covered both instances as originally posted)

 

[The Bread Guy]

Just a reminder:  as sickened and disgusted as I am (too) by the charges in question, let's remember The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada's constitution  guarantees the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Milnet.ca Staff

 

[George Wallace]

Just a reminder:  as sickened and disgusted as I am (too) by the acts in question, let's remember The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada's constitution  guarantees the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Milnet.ca Staff

fraserdw, jollyjacktar and others

Just a reminder to all who wish to post here, the person in question has not been convicted.  He will still have his "day in court".  Your emotions have no place in this topic, nor does your speculation as to what this person has done or not; nor what may be in police evidence.

Many of you who are parents will no doubt have photos of your children in their younger years that may to some who are fanatically Politically Correct look upon as being child porn.  Are you a pervert as well?  Think about it.  This type of speculation only feeds the media to derive what may be false conclusions and an innocent person's life may be ruined.  It is not our place, nor intent, on this site to feed this frenzy.

It is up to the court to wade through the evidence and decide, not us.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Many of you who are parents will no doubt have photos of your children in their younger years that may to some who are fanatically Politically Correct look upon as being child porn.  Are you a pervert as well?

"possession, production and distribution of child pornography" sounds considerably more sinister than taking a picture of your daughter taking her first bath in the sink or in a cooler while camping.

Innocent until proven otherwise of course but for the cops to lay those charges is pretty significant.

 

[Occam]

Many of you who are parents will no doubt have photos of your children in their younger years that may to some who are fanatically Politically Correct look upon as being child porn.  Are you a pervert as well?  Think about it.  This type of speculation only feeds the media to derive what may be false conclusions and an innocent person's life may be ruined.  It is not our place, nor intent, on this site to feed this frenzy.

It is up to the court to wade through the evidence and decide, not us.

This may be (and probably is) a topic best split off elsewhere, but it does beg the question:

Considering that a person's reputation is likely to suffer irreparable damage even in the event of a "not guilty" finding at trial, is there any merit in a publication ban on the accused's name/details until a finding of guilty is made? 

This is one of those crimes where there really is no putting the genie back in the bottle.  Our court system has no finding of "innocent", even in the case of serious blunders in the investigative and prosecution processes.  I've always been torn in my feelings about whether a person's name should be publicized for simply being accused of a crime.  There will always be those who will form an opinion based on what they've read in the newspaper, and will maintain those beliefs despite a finding of not guilty, perhaps based on the assumption that the accused "got lucky", "got off on a technicality", or the like.

 

[the 48th regulator]

Why would we censure his name and details here, when it is out in the open.  We never did that for Williams, Hall and Deganis, or Delisle, so why would we do it for this guy?

I say we police ourselves, and trust the Moderation staff.  Let us keep posts to information that has been released, and leave the speculation out of this thread.

dileas

tess

 

[Occam]

Why would we censure his name and details here, when it is out in the open.  We never did that for Williams, Hall and Deganis, or Delisle, so why would we do it for this guy?

I say we police ourselves, and trust the Moderation staff.  Let us keep posts to information that has been released, and leave the speculation out of this thread.

dileas

tess

Tess, I made no suggestion that his name be censored here; it was more a global "should the Canadian legal system be changed so that the accused in crimes such as this not be named until they are found guilty" scenario.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

This may be (and probably is) a topic best split off elsewhere, but it does beg the question:

Considering that a person's reputation is likely to suffer irreparable damage even in the event of a "not guilty" finding at trial, is there any merit in a publication ban on the accused's name/details until a finding of guilty is made? 

This is one of those crimes where there really is no putting the genie back in the bottle.  Our court system has no finding of "innocent", even in the case of serious blunders in the investigative and prosecution processes.  I've always been torn in my feelings about whether a person's name should be publicized for simply being accused of a crime.  There will always be those who will form an opinion based on what they've read in the newspaper, and will maintain those beliefs despite a finding of not guilty, perhaps based on the assumption that the accused "got lucky", "got off on a technicality", or the like.

Tess, I think he meant in general, not just on this site.

It has merit but, just from what I have to read and talk about at work, I'm making a guess that more charges about " sex stuff" come after the media comes out with it.  Isolation is a key weapon predators use against victims and when they read that they are not the only one..............

Compare it to going back to where we discouraged those folks suffering to talk about PTSD.

EDIT: because I should proof read everything I do.

 

[Occam]

It has merit but, just from what I have to read and talk about at work, I'm making a guess that more charges about " sex stuff" come after the media comes out woth it.  Isolation is a key weopon predators use against victims and when they read that they are not the only one..............

Compare it to going back to where we discouraged those folks suffering to talk about PTSD.

I agree to an extent, however once one offence has resulted in a conviction, the name/details would be published and other victims would then be able to come forward.  Would it not make more sense that cases be determined on their own individual merits, rather than have people make the assumption "well, he's got 5 accusers, so he must be guilty"?

I know from a technological standpoint, once you've got malicious software (such as a trojan horse) on your PC, you're at the mercy of the person remotely operating your computer.  There would be very few ways of making a distinction between material you downloaded, and material downloaded by the person remotely operating your PC.  That's why I'm obsessive about scanning my PC for malware on a regular basis, as well as ensuring that my wireless router has every level of security enabled with frequent WPA2 key changes.  I don't think the average computer user realizes how easy it is to break into a wireless network with WEP or WPA (not WPA2) security, even if you're not broadcasting your SSID and using MAC address filtering.

It's a very tough situation...and I would hate to be the wrongfully accused in a situation like this.  You're damned no matter what the outcome. 

 

[the 48th regulator]

Ack,

Roger that, and very good points in fact.

Thanks Bruce and Occam.

 

[Remius]

Would it not have something to do with the fact that we have an open judicial system with nothing to hide?

We have the court of justice and the court of public opinion.  I don't think it is a problem with the judicial system as it is with people's minds and the media that court to them.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I know from a technological standpoint, once you've got malicious software (such as a trojan horse) on your PC, you're at the mercy of the person remotely operating your computer.  There would be very few ways of making a distinction between material you downloaded, and material downloaded by the person remotely operating your PC. 

So, if I understand what you are saying correctly.  It would be tough for a forensic examination of your computer equipment to establish the key strokes that took you to site XXX did or did not come from your computer.  Or further, there is no electronic trace of your or the malware's passage in the ether?

I'm asking as I am rather Neanderthalish when it comes to computers and tech.  It just seems strange that you would not be able, forensically, to ascertain how and where the commands originated from.  I know the black hats have their geeks, but so do the white hats.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

I agree to an extent, however once one offence has resulted in a conviction, the name/details would be published and other victims would then be able to come forward.  Would it not make more sense that cases be determined on their own individual merits, rather than have people make the assumption "well, he's got 5 accusers, so he must be guilty"?

So they can wait as long as Theo Fluery has had to wait??.......or have your pain pretty much ignored like Martin Kruze?
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1011399/index.htm

 

[Occam]

So, if I understand what you are saying correctly.  It would be tough for a forensic examination of your computer equipment to establish the key strokes that took you to site XXX did or did not come from your computer.  Or further, there is no electronic trace of your or the malware's passage in the ether?

I'm asking as I am rather Neanderthalish when it comes to computers and tech.  It just seems strange that you would not be able, forensically, to ascertain how and where the commands originated from.  I know the black hats have their geeks, but so do the white hats.

Once someone got the malware onto your computer (and that's the difficult part), it would not be difficult for a remote user to use your computer for nefarious purposes, and when the mood strikes them, delete the program residing on your hard drive that is loaded whenever your computer starts.  That just leaves the memory-resident component of the trojan horse, which gets zapped from RAM on the next reboot with no traces remaining.  Sure, there would be a trace of the erased program on the hard disk, but you would be at the mercy of the competency of the law enforcement official doing the forensic investigation to retrieve the "ghost" deleted files without destroying them in the process.  It can be done, if you're being extremely careful.  Would I trust my freedom on someone else's ability to be able to do it successfully?  It wouldn't be my first choice.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Once someone got the malware onto your computer (and that's the difficult part), it would not be difficult for a remote user to use your computer for nefarious purposes, and when the mood strikes them, delete the program residing on your hard drive that is loaded whenever your computer starts.  That just leaves the memory-resident component of the trojan horse, which gets zapped from RAM on the next reboot with no traces remaining.  Sure, there would be a trace of the erased program on the hard disk, but you would be at the mercy of the competency of the law enforcement official doing the forensic investigation to retrieve the "ghost" deleted files without destroying them in the process.  It can be done, if you're being extremely careful.  Would I trust my freedom on someone else's ability to be able to do it successfully?  It wouldn't be my first choice.

I follow you there.  The put it on, did their thing and FO'd.

But my question is more that is the not a signature of each and every key strike you make on your computer, which tells what time you made it, where you were (site wise) when you made it, and what you were doing (commands etc) when you made it.  When I think if forensic examination I tend to think of what I was taught which of course dealt with physical properties etc.  Everything leave a trace of some sort, it's not necessarily able to be understood or found all the time, but there is a record of your passage through life so to speak.  Even you speak of the "ghost" of deletion of the files.

I use a laptop at work and one for person use when away from home.  Which is why I ask the question is there not some sort of record of each key stroke I make on the machine somehow, and could that not be found and examined?

 

[Robert0288]

There are key loggers that you can install on your own computer, but those logs are just text files and can easily be spoofed or deleted.

 

[GAP]

keyloggers

 

[Occam]

Keyloggers are relatively innocuous in the grand scheme of things in that all they'll do is report what you're doing, divulging passwords, sites visited, etc. 

The real problem comes from Trojan Horses such as Subseven or BackOrifice which not only have keyloggers built in, but offer the bad guys an entire suite of tools to remotely install software on your PC, run command line instructions, set up proxies...basically do anything on your PC as though they were actually sitting at it, including reboot it.  And you would be none the wiser, unless the bad guy were stupid enough to bog down the system with tasks so badly that you actually noticed the PC's performance go down the tubes, even though it appears to you that you're not doing very much with the PC.  When the bad guys set up a hidden torrent client on your PC, and then start downloading questionable content using it - it'll be your door that the police knock on, because it will actually be your computer visible to the internet - while the bad guy uses a FTP server built into the Trojan Horse to transfer the content from your PC to his own - with no record left of the transfer.  If the bad guy gets a chance to use your computer for a while, and then dump the malware from your PC to cover his tracks, it'll be you left holding the bag.  Even if you don't get malware on your PC, but leave your wireless network at anything lower than the highest security level you can manage, you can end up with scenarios like this happening.

When I said "ghost" of the software installed on the hard drive, I was referring to the fact that even if you overwrite the hard disk space used by a program after it's deleted, a forensic examiner could have a reasonably good chance at retrieving what was there previously.  The more it's overwritten, the less likely the chance that evidence can be recovered.

In answer to your question, no, unless there's a keylogger installed, individual keystrokes aren't recorded anywhere - unless you're talking about things like internet search history, form entries, etc. - as the Shafia father, mother and son found out during the recent trial in Kingston.

In summation, you're a lot better off spending an hour of your week ensuring your computer/network are as secure as can be (by running virus/malware scans, changing WAP passwords, etc.), than to have to rely on a herculean effort to prove that someone else gained access to your PC/network for nefarious purposes.