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.

Comments

How do they know what's child porn?

[joeykiller]

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".

Re:How do they know what's child porn?

[doofusclam]

Exactly. The blacklist is generated by a childrens charity, and if they're anything like the other censorware groups they'll block the whole of geocities soon because someone has put the word 'cock' on there.

The fact they're not sharing their blacklist with the public, and that blacklisted sites simply get 404d shows that even they're not convinced as to its quality. If a blacklisted site was marked as such inappropriately, it's be a lot easier to complain about it rather than just assuming the website is down.

And lets be honest: This is going to save no kids from child pervs. Cleanfeed gives the impression of a safe internet, when it does nothing about usenet or p2p (which i'd assume have far more kiddie porn than the web), and simply serves to put kids in more danger by letting parents think they don't need to supervise their kids use of the internet. It's simply a warm fuzzy feeling for lazy parents. Great.

Think of...

[laejoh]

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!

Re:Think of...

[1u3hr]

usenet, p2p, ftp, irc... Why do the newspapers and others think of the internet as only www?

Funnily enough, the article has a screenshot showing "...ictures.erotica.teen...", clearly a Usnet binaries group; but I doubt these are blocked -- no mention of NNTP.

Also was flabbergasted by the statement:
Home Office minister Paul Goggins ... told the Today programme: "Every image of a child that appears on the internet is an image of a child that's abused." -- WTF??? I really hope that he was misquoted, or is this the same mentality that bans parents taking photos at school pantomimes because it might excite paedophiles?

And it's rather disturbing that "anyone trying to access such a site would be presented with a message reading 'Website not found'." Why not be honest about it -- "this website blocked as illegal to view under blah blah blah. If you believe this is in error, please fill out this form anonymously if you wish it to be reviewed."

FUD

[PsiPsiStar]

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."

Re:FUD

[jb.hl.com]

First off, I submitted the article :)

Second, you're on the money about the "pedophiles are more common than they really are" thing. The UK media, BBC included, is locked in a perpetual state of moral panic, in which paedophiles lurk in every chat room, on every street corner and in every cereal box. A TV programme caused major (and I mean MAJOR-questions were asked in Parliament, tabloid newspapers went berserk-anybody who knows the Daily Mail knows what that means) outrage after it questioned the seemingly unfounded moral panic. I personally thought it was one of the funniest things ever made, but people were very offended, despite never having actually watched it.

So there you have it. We have a media which is currently in the middle of a massive deviancy amplification spiral, and this frankly fucking stupid move by BT is just an upshot of that.

I'm sure other Brits will back me up on this: it's all a load of crap.

Good beginnings != good endings?

[yuud]

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.

Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis

[kfg]

. . .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

Re:Stuff and nonsense (mostly nonsense)

[kfg]

1)Child pornography by Federal American law is depicting "children" under 18 in sexual acts or situations.

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.

. . .that doesn't mean we cannot recognize those who are definitely children.

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