Slashdot Mirror
BT Blocks 10,000 Child-Porn Site Visits A Day
jb.hl.com writes "The BBC is reporting that British Telecom, the predominant telecommunications company in the UK, is blocking 10,000 attempts to access child pornography a day. In the first three weeks of the system being operational, BT allegedly blocked 250,000 attempts to view such pages. They apparently have no idea how many of these hits were accidental, or caused by malware. The block affects 2.5m of BT's customers. Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, said with regards to privacy concerns that "we don't know their motives or who does it and honestly we don't want to know"." onion2k reminds us that we first mentioned the block in June.
Reading stories like these always makes me wonder how British Telecom (and others) knows what is child porn and not?
Do they have staff consisting of "smut surfers", that surfs the web and makes note of URL with unwanted content?
Although I'm of the opinion that free spech doesn't nescessarily secure the rights of spreading child porn, I always get a little suspicious when I read about these things. I always think "what can or will they block next".
usenet, p2p, ftp, irc...
Why do the newspapers and others think of the internet as only www?
All the fools who think that 'disturbing' pictures are blocked now, amazing!
It's always possible to monitor and find out what people are doing, and certainly also to prevent them from doing something unsavory or illegal...but look at what it does for civil liberties and privacy. Sure, everyone can agree that child pornography is bad and is rightly illegal, but it a step toward deeming other more innocuous activities illegal.
It seems like it'd be no big deal to actually find out if these people are doing it intentionally, but looking beyond it, the implications of usage monitoring is just looming ahead.
250,000 attempts is one attempt for every ten subscribers. Does that sound realistic? Hell, if you're a BT broadband paedo are you going to continually hammer on the sites, or consider that a firewall is in place and either give up or go elsewhere?
Who thinks that the BT marketing arm is inflating those figures? After all, what sites are they counting? How are they counting? Are they looking for malware? I somehow doubt even 10% of those numbers are really from the sex offender types.
This type of reporting is dangerous. People think that these type of people are more prevalant than they are, they react by denying kids a normal childhood in the name of safety. Meanwhile 'child porn' becomes a convenient black brush to daub all over anything, or anyone, someone wants to attack.
If child porn really is this prevalant, why is no one asking why?
Any such trend analysis would be based upon guessing... and besides, BT doesn't want to do it anyway. If their technology could determine who was intentionally visiting such a site, they'd most likely be expected to tell the cops.
It's better to say "You can't prosecute the people who we're blocking because we don't know if they really wanted the page or just got tricked into loading it not knowing what it was." because then there's no need for them to bother with a log that they'd have to turn over.
The article is a lot of FUD, and doesn't even directly address the notion of malware, popups, etc. What it does say it seems to gloss over in an unpersuasive manner while giving quotes from seeming authorities on how bad this problem has suddenly be revealed to be. It seems to be aimed at convincing its audience that pedophiles are far more common than they really are and that the adoption of this new product is very badly needed.
No doubt this will lead to actions taken by people who don't even understand what the internet is or what's going on here.
From an earlier slashdot article, a comedian got a member of parliment to say, in all seriousness, "Using an area of the Internet the size of Ireland, pedophiles can make your keyboard release toxic vapors that can make you more suggestible."
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
It's an issue of control - control of somebody's sexuality is one of the basic ways to have power over them.
Parents have an extremely hard time coming to terms with the fact that their little boy/girl/hermaphrodite is growing up and becoming a sexual creature, and so there's all sorts of FUD about the subject.
16 is an arbitrary limit set by the Victorians when there was an outcry about the number of child prostitutes working in London at the time.
People mature at different rates - some people aren't ready for sexual experiences till they're 18-20. Some a lot longer before. Until society has a way of looking at the situation on a case-by-case basis we have to work with an arbitrary number which means that 90-95% of those over it are "ready".
And instead of villifying those labelled as paedophiles, we should be trying to work out what has gone so badly wrong in their sexuality that they are attracted to a person who hasn't developed sexual characteristics yet, and see if they could be cured.
"Kids messing about"...I know somebody who was told that was all that happened to her. She still wakes up crying sometimes, 10 years later. No simple rule will suffice to adjudicate all cases.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
I understand that its illegal and not moral to watch, but still it seems like sertain people have an urge for it.
Those sites are blocked because it's contents is illegal, duh.
In order to produce this crap children (who are by definition not able to consent) are abused and based on societal consensus this is not acceptable, period.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
It's been done, there was a book about it and there was, as always, a moral panic. "OMG, SHE ENDORSES PEDOPHILIA!!!!!!111". That was, quite literally, what the reaction was to any suggestion that child sexuality (note: not kids being fucked by adults, there is a difference) is a perfectly normal part of growing up, and that any restriction of it would lead to puritanical, morally warped adults.
Oh wait, that's what people want most of the time. Silly me.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Despite the russian proverb, the only concern I have about these kinds of initiatives is the line is only made in the sand (ie, it can be changed):
2004/ child pornogaphy is blocked
2005/ pornography is blocked
2006/ anti-bush websites are blocked
2007/ all weblogs are taken offline
1984/ freedom is slavery
this may be a little bit extreme, sure, but it's axiomatic that freedoms are lost in tiny increments.
. . .everyone can agree that child pornography is bad and is rightly illegal. . .
Although almost no one can agree precisely on just what child pornography is, since even the concept of "child" is highly amorphous. ("Honey, I'd really like to just take your picture, but that might be a crime, so why don't we just fuck. That's black letter legal.")
A friend of mine has come up with the only working definition that seems to apply. Child pornography is whatever gives a particular judge in a particular case a hardon.
In practice that means that one is only convicted of child pornography by someone who could be legally classified as a paedophile.
KFG
However, I find it equally disturbing that a corporation has taken it upon themselves to act as a censor for this material because, as far as I am concerned, these mechanisms are only ever put in place by private companies with shareholders if there is money to be made from it. In this instance, it has been done by BT to portray themselves as a "family-friendly" ISP in order to get more subscribers - therefore, by logical deduction, BT are making money from child pr0n.
Like 99.999% of Internet users, I am a responsible adult and I have known what is "right" and "wrong" since about the age of 7. I do not need some money-making corporation censoring me, thanks very much, I'm capable of doing that myself.
Also, why do we never hear about litigation against credit card companies? I understand that the majority of these sites require credit card access and that the providers of that material have registered with those credit cards in the first place. So what are Amex, Visa, Mastercard, etc doing about allowing their services to be used to purchase this material? What self-regulation do the credit card companies apply to themselves?
I would finally add that the whole child pr0n issue is overblown anyway (to "Keep us living in fear" as Michael Moore would say). The stigma attached to being labelled as a user of this material is so great (in the UK we have a "Sex Offenders List" now) that anybody who is seriously into this material (therefore requiring psychological help) surely knows how to distribute it in far more secure ways than a public web site!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
What you said: Is that why: "one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of sixteen"
The reference you quote, lists the definition of abuse, as:
...and continues: (My highlights) "Of course, this list goes on. Sexual abuse involves forcing, tricking, threatening, or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse occurs when an older or more knowledgeable child or an adult uses a child for sexual pleasure.
The problems with statistics like this is definition of the sexual abuse. There is a huge difference in the listed items (rape vs. "peeping into bedrooms") - especially to the child. I personally don't consider peeping into the bedroom of my child a sexual offence, but rather that I care about my child.
In the "offender"-part, there is also a big difference if it is an adult, or an equally aged child that does it. Childen below 15 ARE interested in sexual affairs, and often explore these things with their friends - primarily verbally or through imagery. Stating that this is sexual abuse is IMO problematic.
So getting an overview over the amount of offences isn't easy, as it is very hard to get good information about it. I think the information provided in the article, as well as your reference is bad statistics, because the definitions are way too broad to be of any use.
as the article says, they don't keep a log of *who* they are blocking. take off your tinfoil hat. it's pretty straightforward that child abuse is a bad thing. and this is the issue at hand. why extrapolate it to a possible future with 1984 scenarios?
:P).
it's not that i agree with censoring any webpage, but let's not make BT look more "big brother like" than they really are.
now, my personal view is that *nothing* should be blocked, but people should be educated instead. type in "child porn" or "kiddie porn" in google, and you will find a plethora of sites saying it is a bad thing and how you can fight it (no i didn't use 'safe search'
information is freedom. but people need to know what to do with freedom... and there lies the challenge IMHO
In an ideal world this would be the case.
But ... People know child porn is wrong, and they look anyways. Educating them won't change their habits. Imposing very long term jail sentences won't change them. Pedophiles do not get rehabilitated, and surfing for child porn is something they can do in the safety of their own home (or so they think).
Is BT the only ISP in the UK? if not then you still have the choice to go with one that is not blocking.
BT isn't the only ISP here, but it controls the network used by nearly all ADSL providers, and they are talking about applying the filter to other ADSL sellers "on a non-commercial basis." There are a few ISPs around that don't use BT, including cable companies NTL and Telewest, and companies that take over the phone lines from BT such as Bulldog.
I don't like the fact that blocked pages are replaced with a "Website not found" message rather than a message explaining why the page was blocked.
A latent existence
1)Child pornography by Federal American law is depicting "children" under 18 in sexual acts or situations.
.that doesn't mean we cannot recognize those who are definitely children.
.
In my state the age of consent is 17. In the closest neighboring state it is 16. In a country just a 4 hour drive away from me it is 14. In the next closest country, one I have driven to, it is 12.
By black letter law.
You need to read up on the age of consent yourself.
. .
The age of universal agreement would seem to be under 12. Is that the age you had in mind for child pornography, or is there perhaps still some area of disagreement here? In any case the age of 18 is black letter law.
3)A pedophile is, legally, one who engages in acts with children which are prohibited.
You also need to read up on the current methods being used to test for paedophilia. They use a "dick polygraph" now, only unlike the regular kind it's even less accurate (assuming that's even possible) and have legally compelled people to be subjected to it, "for the children."
You're a troll, and you would appear revel in posting flame bait. Positively none of what you've said has any factual basis. .
4) And this is simply false, a troll and flamebait.
KFG