Illegal material on laptop that may be found by a repairman? Help please

Nonoperational

Moral high ground aside, the only thing that could cause hassle here is under-age porn. If that is the case, then I don't envy the position you are in... It's probably not though.

mathepac

I have to say OP you and the sister have adopted a very high-handed approach in your dealings with adult family members. Neither of you seems to have had the cop-on to seek the permission of the two lads before passing their laptops through Mammy's hands, your hands and on to a 4th party. What were ye thinking? "Oh sure they're technically adults, but we'll run their lives for them anyway. Lucky them!"

Bepolite

This is going to a real anti-climax (no pun intended) if this just turns out to be two girls one cup. FBI viruses don't generally do damage to the PC, they're much happier sitting there in the background sending your IP and MAC addresses. If you've a proper virus thats damaged the machine it's more likely just some rather unsavory porn.

Repairman will definitely find it. First thing we used to do to every machine that came into the repair bay was search *.jpg, *.mpg (this was many years ago). My favourite one was a guy dropping his machine in to be 'repaired', when asked what was wrong with it he replied, "nothing" and when pressed said he was decorating and didn't want it to get damaged, despite he'd only brought in the tower and not the monitor etc. Techy opened it up to find a big bar of hash in the case, funnily enough I don't think that got reported!

Worse case scenario and there is underage porn; a proper investigation will be done into it. It's not difficult to establish what someone has been up to on the internet.

discus

Bepolite wrote: »

Repairman will definitely find it. First thing we used to do to every machine that came into the repair bay was search *.jpg, *.mpg (this was many years ago).

You're joking right? You would just delve into peoples personal folders, at first chance?

Bepolite

discus wrote: »

You're joking right? You would just delve into peoples personal folders, at first chance?

Nope, pretty much every machine that goes into a repair bay, that's what happens to it. I could make the excuse I was young or that the machines should have been wiped before coming in to is etc but frankly I'm not that bothered about it.

subrosa

GarIT: If you dont know that he doesn't have tax then its not your problem. Due to a recent law change you have to report a crime if you know it happened. I think it has to be of a certain seriousness for it to apply though, and child porn is obviously very serious. Remember preists were going mad about having to tell the gardai if anything is said to them in confession?

bezerk wrote: »

There's no law on that unless someones commits a murder or rape and likely to do it again as far as I am aware

The Criminal Justice (Withholding of Information on Offences against Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 provides that a person must contact the police if they believe that an offence has been committed against a child and have information which could assist the Garda Síochána. The penalty for not doing so my be as high as ten years.

This legislation was aimed at those with more direct knowledge of a particular child having been put in harms way. However, since section 4 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 (allowing child to be used for child pornography) is scheduled under the 2012 Act, it would be inadvisable for anyone who found child pornography on a laptop to take a chance in not reporting it. The existence of the material would obliviously disclose that an offence has been committed and the material could well be of use to the Gardai.

If any event there was the old common law offence of imprison of felony.

Pro Hoc Vice

subrosa wrote: »

The Criminal Justice (Withholding of Information on Offences against Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 provides that a person must contact the police if they believe that an offence has been committed against a child and have information which could assist the Garda Síochána. The penalty for not doing so my be as high as ten years.

This legislation was aimed at those with more direct knowledge of a particular child having been put in harms way. However, since section 4 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 (allowing child to be used for child pornography) is scheduled under the 2012 Act, it would be inadvisable for anyone who found child pornography on a laptop to take a chance in not reporting it. The existence of the material would obliviously disclose that an offence has been committed and the material could well be of use to the Gardai.

If any event there was the old common law offence of imprison of felony.

Misprision of felony, was abolished in 1997, by the Criminal Law Act. That same act, brought in penalties for assisting offenders and concealing offences, but it was required that the person either does a positive act to impede the investigation, or gets some reward to not tell.

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0014/sec0007.html#sec7

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0014/sec0008.html#sec8

subrosa

infosys wrote: »

Misprision of felony, was abolished in 1997, by the Criminal Law Act. That same act, brought in penalties for assisting offenders and concealing offences, but it was required that the person either does a positive act to impede the investigation, or gets some reward to not tell.

You're right. Apologies - I should have mentioned that.

It was the same act that did away with the distinction between felony and misdemeanour.