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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.
I wonder if this would affect medical sites that have displays of unclothed underage patients...assuming there are any such...which i guess would immediately lead to a public outcry about denial of necessary information yada yada yada
Statistics like this are basicly useless. Any major telecompany could throw up a filter, and blow out their numbers to promote themselves as the big saint in defeating child pornography.
Putting up filters are just a smokescreen. If people want child pornography they WILL be able to find it - through closed communities, IRC, doing tunneling, p2p, etc.
I don't believe for a second that even half of the blocked accesses were illegal material. Even though media is blowing the child pornography thing up , there is (thank god) a very small minority of people actually into this stuff. So my guess is that BT is probably just annoying a big amount of legitimate 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' "
What if 25% of people had a sexual urge for children (not an exclusive urge, that would then be pedophilia). Would that explain why 1/6 boys and 1/4 girls have some sort of sexual enounter with an adult by the time they reach 18?
Instead of pretending that people or children are not very sexual perhaps its time to actually discuss this issue and what it means to society.
Anyone trying to access such a site would be presented with a message reading "Website not found"
If BT has gone to the extend to block access, why can't they put in a message to warn of such illegal activities? Or is BT blocking access 'secretly' and hopes the 'problems' will go away?
If they want to find out how many of these are real hits then why not take a look at the reported child rape/abuse statistics, they're probably a little higher this month..
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well of course not, but it lets them quote nice statistics. also philosophicaly, is not being able to do something good, perfectly, a reason not to do it at all? i'm anti censorship but can't make my mind up in this case, because, well, i would like to do something nasty to some pedophiles.
sorry for the awful spelling in this post.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I didn't notice they were only 404ing. If that's all they do then the statistics are going to be heavily skewed in favour of continually retrying from the same few people anyway. "Oh, this site worked yesterday damnit! I'll try again... oh... well I'll have another go tomorrow, see if anything's changed"
In addition, the Secretary of State has statutory powers to require us to take certain actions in the interests of national security, international relations and the detection of crime.
The full 'cosy' relationship
I wonder if the aincent greeks felt 'abused' when they had sexual contact with their elders...It depends on the context of the society.
I can't accept these results as fact. Be interesting to see in what way the IWF blacklist works. I think the likely scenario here is that it is blocking a server if it has been found to contain dubious material. So if it is hosting 99% legal porn and 1% kiddie porn that's going to throw your figures out somewhat. When regular adults wanting to look at regular porn attempt to access a site stored on the server through one of many links sites BT are flagging them as paedophiles.
sig free since 1993
...e.g. here in Norway, everything goes as long as they are of "equal age and mental development", be it 5, 10 or 15. From 16 up anything goes, but to appear in a porn vid she'd have to be 18.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Can you tell me what they have to gain from it?"
Well if I was working at the IWF a list of my brother's business competitors websites would be on that list lickidy split.
You are nieve to think no one can gain from the use of unaccountable censorship power.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
You can hear it now.
"The internet is CRAWLING with pedophiles!!!!!"
"OUR CHILDREN!!!!!"
"Pedophiles fund terrorists!!"
"Please BT!! Censor MORE!!!"
"Ladies and gentlemen. I am assumming absolute power over...."
Some FUD dowsing is needed.
The article states.
BT said in its first three weeks its new system, which bars access to particular sites, registered nearly 250,000 attempts to view web pages containing images of child pornography
OK 250,000 hits in 3 weeks/21 days
That's about 11905 hits per day or 496 hits per hour. Let us assume, as most will, that every hit was from someone out looking for that paticular site.
Lets assume the average kiddie porn junkie will check 30 sites for one hour every two days. Sound unreasonable. I'll get back to this.
This means that there are about 17 seperate pedophiles checking porn every hour or 816 pedophiles every two days. Which rotated leaves only 816 pedophile on the BT network
Unrealistic? Maybe? But let's assume every KP junkie checks 30 sites every week
That means 90 sites in three weeks
And with 250,000 hits thats gives us approx 2778 pedophiles on the whole BT net.
Wow. 2778. That a little over 0.000046% of the population. I guess it's time for rallys, restrictions and roundups.
Ain't maths great?
May the Maths Be with you!
Web doesn't have as much porn, kiddie or otherwise, as P2P.
It would be trivial for a kid to download eMule, install it. They then instantly have access to porn of every kind, ever.
Do parents care? No, since they're convinced their happy little filter is working. Do the (insanely small number of compared to column inches devoted to) paedophiles care? Yup, they have a new source of smut.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
"societal consensus"
;).
ANd if the consensus is changed then it would be ok then, just like the greeks used to
Not quite as I understand it (IANAL). The legal age of consent to have sex is 16 in the UK. However, the legal age to pretty much do anything else is 18 (own a credit card, vote, buy/view porn etc etc). I would have thought that anyone under the age of 18 would not be legally able to give their own consent to appear in pornography.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Didn't Sam Fox appear on page 3 when she was 16?
I suspect they're including in this sweap many websites that aren't 'child pornography' by legal definition, but many of the 'child model' websites out there.
There probably aren't many http child pornography websites in existance, but there are many thousands of 'child model' sites. They have children from 8 to 16 in sexual poses with access available by paid subscription. If these sites have many visitors, I wouldn't be surprised. Many a non paedophile and 15 year old boys would be pretty pleased to see a teenager in a bikini.
I think it shouldn't be legal to make finacial profit from a child's body. These sites go too far.
Sure, everyone can agree that child pornography is bad and is rightly illegal
While I can agree that child porn is bad, I'm coming around to the viewpoint that it shouldn't be illegal. Creating it, sure, or maybe distributing it, but I'm not convinced that criminalising mere possession is helpful in reducing child abuse. Knowing the meagre technological resources of the police, I'd prefer they concentrated on stopping the producers of these websites. It seems as if each week the coppers catch a few new people with a handful of dodgy photos on their disks but I don't remember the last time anyone got convicted for running one of these sites.
Also sad that I feel I should post this as AC...
****(cue usual anti outlook rants)****
if you're using the preview pane on outlook or OE, and someone sends you an HTML spam with dodgy content, you'll get hits to a dodgy site. This could explain a lot of it...
than simply quoting the story as though it were fact.....
g .bbc.co.uk/media/images/39893000/jpg /_39893508_operationore_203.jpg
1/ the BBC article in question uses a graphic which shows an NNTP client displaying the group alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.teen
http://newsim
2/ the article CLAIMS the filters are blocking 10,000 attempted accesses to kiddie porn per day, without some specifics on these filters there numbers are LESS than worthless
3/ There is an english seaside town names scunthorpe, because it contains the word CUNT in the name it is routinely blocked by world + dog using cheap filters, again we need to know what these filters consist of, if it is merely "teen" then it's bullshit, 19 years old porn queens abound...
4/ if it is usenet then it isn't a case of filters, just BT having totally shit NNTP service which all by itself blocks 99.9% of usenet just because they are too cheap to provide the bandwidth and server spools for a decent usenet feed.
5/ The BBC website HABITUALLY has many stories per day that permit and encourace user feedback.. ok, this feedback is just as corrupt as slashdot editors, and just as invisible, neverthless it is notable that THESE types of "headlines" NEVER ask for feedback / comments from readers....
6/ since this sort of article is increasingly forming the staple output of slashdot editors, QED slashdot editors are by far the greatest trolls on slashdot and therefore the greatest contributors to slashdots ever decreasing relevance as it dissapears up its own UART
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I know this is a lot of people are hysteric about this issue, but i think it is about time it was broken down a bit.
I think there are two groups lumped together in the peado label, that are entirely seperate psychologically. There are those that favour sexually imature children upto the age of say 12ish. And those that are interested in sexually mature 'children' age 14-16/18 (pending on country).
The former group i believe are sexually devient no doubt due to some psychological trauma (or potentially some genetic inability to distinguish appropriate age of female partners), and should be identified and recieve psychotherapy of some sort. The later group i believe to some degree encompasses most adult males. From evidence of taste in other pornography, more general media and through cultural experiance, it is plain that girls of this 'jail bait' age are found attractive. Approaching the issue from an evolutionary standpoint it would also seem quite natural for a sexually mature male of any age to be interested in sexually mature females, no matter what age the pertaining law says is legal.
I believe at present that these two groups (and of course the grey area inbetween) are all lumped in to the same group. If society acknowledge openly the fact that sexually mature girls are attractive, then i believe less confusion would ensue and a large number of men who feal criminalised for finding girls under 18 (but over say 14) attractive would be a great deal releaved.And back to the point in hand how many of the 10k child porn blocks a day are for site containing images of sexual mature,underage,'children'
Caveat: I know i haven't mentioned the issue of child abuse to obtain the images and the rights and wrongs of such. This is deliberate in an attempt to try and cut through the hysteria.
My spelling isn't bad, I'm evolving the language
No, I noticed its sheer stupidity too. The BBC article had that statement in a floated box, which I though was a bit dumb, but further down it also repeats the same comment, again out of context.
I appreciate that it probably is out of context, but its either very very bad article writting and/or polical spin. The UK gov. do have rather a habit of the latter though.
Thank you. That was very well said.
Last year, when I was 25, I had a relationship with a 17 year old. In Canada, where this is legal, no one thought much of it (apart from the fact that it likely wouldn't work because of maturity differences, and they were right). However, I recently moved to the US, and as I'm not ashamed of this fact, I've confessed it openly only to have people raise an eyebrow at me and judge me as some kind of pedophile. Ridiculous, given that I'm now in a long term relationship with a 22 year old and the thought of prepubescent children as sexual objects is utterly repulsive to me.
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.
That depends on what criteria are used to determine what is and isn't child porn. In many parts of the world, possession of synthetic child porn is illegal.
Toronto Artist Eli Langer was charged with possession of child pornography for owning paintings of people who appeared to be under the age of 18 engaged in sex. John Robin Sharpe was arrested for possession of a text entitled Sam Paloc's Flogging, Fun and Fortitude, A Collection of Kiddie Kink Classics. The only crime that is evidenced in these cases, is possession of unpopular fantasy material.
But even if we ignore the laws against synthetic porn, I still don't get why the sexual abuse of children is the only crime for which possession of photographic evidence is classified as contraband? Why don't we outlaw video footage and photographic documentation of other crimes?
Some subversive conclusion chain:
/.er after all), but I would have no problem with that, if I'd find some minor I'm really interested in and figure she is too.
1. What is the base of any culture? Socialisation and education.
2. What is the root of our western culture? Ancient Greece.
3. What was the base of socialisation and education in ancient Greece? A pedophile tutoring system.
4. So isn't anyone condemning pedophilia attacking the very base of our society?
But seriously now. There are only two general rules to sex in my opinion:
1. All involved have to be sexually mature.
2. All involved have to be consent.
The problem is with the interpretation of those two rules. Sexually mature is to me, who is biologically mature, e.g. a girl with a period and a boy that can ejaculate. Extending this to mental maturity is simply not possible. Then noone should actually have sex.
Consent is complicated too. What if you are consent at first, but your partner turns out to be a sadistic pig, or just an "insensitive clod", and you don't like it that way? Is every sex you regret afterwards sex without consent, e.g. a rape? Or you are not consent, are somewhat pressed into it and it turns out you like it. Unlikely, but I bet that happens once in a while. Is that still unconsenting sex?
So, to me the problem with child porn is not primarily the young age. Only to the extent the young age implies not being biologically ready for sex (which is sadly quite often the case, hence the name child porn). The problem is, plainly, that there is no consent, that the children are exploited and used for commercial means. Speak, the problem is the market, and humans are a ressource to exploit and throw away.
For the major part of history in the vast majority of the world it was the rule that very young girls got married to older men. And I don't want to put myself into the position, to judge the vast majority of mankind that ever existed as mental cripples due to sexual abuse.
That being said, I think child porn is terrible, but probably not for the reasons most people think. And I'd also like to add, I never had sex with a minor, not even when I was a minor myself (I'm a
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
I have never, ever heard a discussion of what's supposed to go on with "children" who want porn. Consider the case of a 14-year old with a girlfriend. They're sexually active. In most districts, early teens of equal age can have sex. Fine and dandy.
But if that 14-year old and his girlfriend play with a camera they've created childporn. It just sits there on his hard-drive, most likely. Maybe a CD to keep it from the parents.
What happens four years later when he's an adult and he has these pictures of 14-year old girls? Is he legally required to throw out his own photos of his own life? Probably. Certainly if he had his computer repaired and the shop found the photos, he'd be investigated, with the usual rumoured "rubber-hose" treatment.
These sorts of questions are doubly relevant when you consider that using a webcam "creates" child-porn in the usual backwards "a cached copy is still a copy" legal mindset. There are many, many districts in which sex with a girl may be legal but then chatting with her over her cam when you get home is not.
Weird stuff.
In related news, the ISP I work for has blocked access to websites that offer snuff films. Although no details about which sites are included in the blacklist, why we don't report them to the police, what kind of materials are there and basically any other kind of detail, will be ever disclosed, I am free to inform you that on average day we block 24,719 (or any other arbitrary figure) attempts to access snuff films. The public reaction so far has been extremely supportive. The press is pretty happy to reprint our press releases without questioning our claims, various retarded watch groups declared unconditional support for the idea of blocking snuff films, police, parliament, presidents, Roman Pope and the general public are all very supportive too. Fortunately, all kids were blocked from the Internet by BT and so noone is here to make us feel awkward by noting that the Emperor has no clothes (hope that doesn't constitute pornography), there are no snuff films and there are no child porn websites either (unless you are an insane christian fanatic pedophile in denial, such as Paul Goggins, who thinks that every photo of a child is kiddie porn).
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
KFG, if I ever used my fwapdash account anymore, you'd be the first person ever on my Friends list.
Thank you for promoting rational thought in the midst of a topic that gets covered in irrational cries of "won't someone think of the children!!"
The idea of sexuality + anyone under the age of 18 seems to scare people on a fundamental level. If you don't want kids having a lot of unsafe sex, don't tell them not to fuck. Instead, pull a South Park. Scare the shit out of them with stories of AIDS, syphilis(sp), chylmidia(sp), herpes and teenage pregnancy.
After all, we can't possibly hope that young people won't fuck. The best we can hope for is that many will choose to abstain and the ones that don't will be safe about it.
Of course, now I'm off topic. Oh well, that needed to get off my chest. I agree with your logic. How can it be legal for a 30 year old to bone a 14 year old in Canada, but be illegal to take a picture? Even if the age of consent was raised to 18, you couldn't possibly make it illegal for 16 year olds to fuck other 16 year olds. Involve a camera and suddenly everyone's a sex offender.
Is a twelve year old ready for sex with anyone? How about another twelve year old?
I understand your protectiveness, but wouldn't you be almost as upset at someone older who emotionally screwed with your daughter in a non-sexual context?
And, just to play devil's advocate, who says a nine-year old isn't ready for sex? Do you give her a backrub? Does she ever give you one? That's physical pleasure with someone much older, and a family member... Sounds pretty kinky if you think about it, but few people would say it was a problem. But as soon as it crosses the line to genitals it's suddenly morally wrong?
To me it's an issue of exploitation and coercion, not the body part involved. Our society places a lot of weight on sex, and this means that because a taboo was broken (and the child will know this from the hush-hush way things are discussed) they're more likely, imho, to be damaged by the feeling that they did something wrong, or are somehow unclean, than by the physical act.
I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just saying I've never, ever, ever, seen any real scientific evidence that what you've stated is true.
People always say "rape is about violence, not about sex" too; and I always believed it. Then I actually had a couple of personal experiences (that I do not wish to share with you) and discovered that demonizing rapists might be politically or socially worthwhile, but it oversimplifies a psychologically complex act. Rape can be about thwarted love, for example, and have no violent intent whatsover, and the violence is incidental.
I think your statements about paedophilia reflect what you wish to believe, or what you've been propagandized to believe. I don't think you have every done any rigorous research in this area. Care to prove me wrong?