
If Your Vibrator Is Hacked, Is It a Sex Crime? - cratermoon
https://gizmodo.com/if-your-vibrator-is-hacked-is-it-a-sex-crime-1820007951
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mikehines
The headline sounds like a Philip K Dick title.

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ellius
Hahaha nicely done

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ashildr
Being a relatively kinky person myself I’d still. consider shoving quite a
sizable Li-Ion battery into my body a way bigger potential problem than some
foreign person activating my buttplug.

But yes, the question is interesting.

I can imagine situations where unknown people taking control is part of the
play.

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anigbrowl
An interesting question. I'm inclined to say yes, insofar as the device is
identifiable as a sex toy rather than just 'adjustable thing #73'. As to which
sex crime, that depends on both the circumstances and the degree of
information about them available to the remote abuser.

Those inclined to offer defenses of the form that 'it was just a prank, 1337
h4x0r5 couldn't have known how it would impact the victim' should brush up on
the 'eggshell skull' rule in tort law, which basically says the person who
commits a tort is liable for all consequences, not just easily foreseeable
ones, and the concept of strict liability, which can mean you're fully
responsible for the outcomes of some criminal acts even without proof of
intent. Judges often pieces of existing conceptual frameworks when presented
with a novel situation on which they have to issue a ruling.

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vanattab
If sell a laptop bundled with pornography/livecam software and market it as a
"sexual entertainment system" would any hack of that system also be elevated
to the level of sex crime? Even if all the attacker saw before launching the
attack was the ip address?

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anigbrowl
I don't think so, but I'm not an attorney. You'd have to some prior awareness,
I bring up the strict liability idea just because if you did know that you
were hacking some stranger's sex toy, your lack of complete knowledge about
what they doing with it at the time probably wouldn't be enough to avoid
liability.

I mean, otherwise you could grope strangers on the subway while keeping your
eyes closed and claim that you weren't looking at them so you didn't know that
your groping was causing them distress. Then again pretty offer some pretty
wacky defenses, especially where sex is concerned.

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rm_-rf_slash
I think the CFAA statute is appropriate, but as to whether it would be a sex
crime, I think it would have to depend on the context.

If a vibrator was hacked and messed with but nobody was using it, then it's
just hacking.

But if someone was using it, then I think a sex crime charge is fair,
especially if the hacker knows its being used intimately, which would be akin
to being a peeping Tom, but creepily closer.

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angersock
CFAA is hilariously overly broad.

Charging it as a sex crime seems a bit off, least of all because of all of the
treatment of sex offenders in the US. There seems to be a qualitative
difference between turning on a publicly-exposed vibrating buttplug and
forcibly inserting something into the rectum of an unwilling participant.

Like, is it really reasonable to say that somebody should lose the right to
vote and bear arms because they issued a POST request to an unsecured web
server in their neighborhood that happened to be a sex toy?

EDIT: I don't want to sound like I'm blaming victims here, but using toys that
are properly locked down is the responsibility of the participants--much like
making sure they're sterile.

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kelnos
> I don't want to sound like I'm blaming victims here, but using toys that are
> properly locked down is the responsibility of the participants--much like
> making sure they're sterile.

Despite your "I don't want to sound..." prefix, that is literally the
definition of victim-blaming.

Just because I leave the door to my house unlocked, it doesn't mean people
have the right to enter it without my permission, and it's not my "fault" if
they do.

Engaging in sexual contact requires consent. I expect it's legally debatable
if remotely turning on a vibrator that's already inserted into someone counts
as "sexual contact" (I would say it is, or if not, should be), but if it is,
it requires consent.

I think intent and foreknowledge does matter here: if someone just found a
random web server and sent some requests to it without knowing what it is or
what it does, I'd say that's unwise, but not criminal. But if it's obvious
from the name advertised by the device and/or the names of the endpoints
accessed, or requires knowledge of a protocol specific to a connected sex toy,
I'd say that should be enough to establish nefarious sexual intent.

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dogma1138
There is nothing wrong with blaming the victim as long as one does not absolve
the perpetrators from any guilt.

People need to take back some shred of personal responsibility if I get piss
drunk and pass out on a bench and wake up without any of my stuff sure the
assholes who stole my phone and wallet are still criminals but i also was a
moron for getting piss drunk and passing out in public.

If you get robbed because you didn’t locked the door then it’s just as much
your fault.

We don’t live in a vacuum we know exactly how to avoid various situations
which is why we don’t leave a laptop visible in the backseat of a car when we
park it in public, why we secure our bikes, lock our doors and don’t use
123456 as a password.

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kelnos
I agree with you, but I don't think to the degree you'd like. Yes, people need
to take responsibility for taking risks (intentionally or otherwise) when
those risks result in bad consequences.

I think the concept of "fault" is really just not useful here. Sure, if I
forget to lock my door, and I get robbed, I share some of the fault ("just as
much", though -- hell no), but... so what? The result is the same as if I did
lock the door and they broke in anyway. I certainly screwed up, but that
doesn't somehow make it more moral/legal/ethical for the thief to come in and
steal.

> We don’t live in a vacuum we know exactly how to avoid various situations
> which is why we don’t leave a laptop visible in the backseat of a car when
> we park it in public, why we secure our bikes, lock our doors and don’t use
> 123456 as a password.

The problem is that this is a super cynical view of society. We are actively
making society worse by thinking this. I've been in countries where people
park their scooters on the sidewalk and leave their helmets unsecured on the
seat for hours. No one steals, because that _just isn 't done_.

And what's so magically different? If I go and park my car in a safe suburb in
the US, I can leave my laptop visible in the backseat without consequence. If
I do that in certain parts of a city, well, there goes my window and my
laptop. Do we really want to teach people that they have to be paranoid about
everything? Do we really want it to be accepted and ok that your belongings
aren't safe inside a locked car? That's a pretty shitty society, if so.

I hesitate to use this example since it's a sensitive topic, but you can
easily extend this to the tired "well if she had been dressed mode modestly,
maybe she wouldn't have gotten raped". Obviously getting a bike stolen because
you didn't lock it is nowhere near as bad. But you're muddling cause and
effect here. "The bike got stolen because it was unsecured." No, the bike got
stolen because there are assholes who steal bikes. "That woman got raped
because she wore suggestive clothing." No, she got raped because there are
piece of shit assholes who rape women.

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jondubois
Well I think it depends on the degree of control which the attacker is
exerting on the device and the type and quantity of information which they
extracted from the device during its use.

As an actuator, a vibrator has a very limiting set of features for an attacker
to exploit and act upon. As a sensor, I don't think they're very advanced.

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robbrit
This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "penetration testing".

