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.
The Malware one is harder, but I would have thought some fairly clever traffic analysis would throw up a good guide as to how much of the traffic is from Malware.
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!
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.
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?
" 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.
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.
...in Japan.
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?
Don't talk rubbish. It's kneejerk reactions like that from idiots that prompts this pointless filtering in the first place.
Big problem here is 'child pornography' is being used as a stepping stone to censorship on the Internet (as was 9/11 a stepping stone to the Big Brother approach to tagging/wathcing/montoring everybody in the name of terror we have now), and although BT is _not_ a Government owned Company, it is to a certain extent controlled by Billyliars Government.
This to me, although maybe done in good faith, is not the way to go.
What is needed is the sites/ISPs running this stuff shut down - and I cannot see how the FBI/CIA/Scotland cannot find them!
"They've been seen by the Internet Watch Foundation and classified."
Their definition of child pornography is...? And I trust this organization because...?
Unless 1/5 internet users on BT are attracted to children, I think Internet Watch Foundation is using overly broad definition of child pornography.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
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..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
OK, so what percentage of that 10,000 is actually kiddie pr0n?
;-)
I wonder about that. I'm all for banning child porn, but I wouldn't want to miss out on any 18 year old hotties
Oh no... it's the future.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Home Office minister Paul Goggins said the figures revealed by BT were "deeply shocking" and he said he hoped other service providers would take up the offer of using BT's blocking technology.
He told the Today programme: "Every image of a child that appears on the internet is an image of a child that's abused."
See? It's not just America that's governed by idiots.
Tracy Lords faked her age and performed in many movies and magazine before she was 18.
All of these have been forbidden and, should you get her Playboy issue (even now), you wouldn't get her naked pictures because she was below the legal age.
Now, how many access to Tracy's pictures (or pictures/movies banned for similar reasons despite the model's past and present willingness to be featured) were part of these 10000 pages ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
"...a very small minority of people actually into this stuff..."
Is that why: "one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of sixteen" here and here.
25% of all children had a sexual encounter with an adult, either PeeWee Herman has been really busy or there are *a lot* of people very sexually attracted to children, not a 'small minority'.
Where are the studies and discussions on this issue? Oh I forgot they are being condemned by the United States Congress and state leglislatures for NOT toeing the line. Does it have a chilling effect on study of this issue, I'd say so big time.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
All of it. RTFA.
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
... whatever yore means, there was one service provider based in Texas whose management were quite offended by dirty pictures on USENET. So they hired a consultant to see just how much money that would save on... disk space, yes disk space.
The contractor came back and said that they could save 60% of their disk space, but since he also analyzed their NNTP logs he told them that porn was also their major source of revenue.
They're still around. Guess which path they chose.
I don't understand this. If I was aware of a child pornography site, I think it's my responsibility to turn this information over to the police so they can investigate and get the people responsible?
Just filtering it is no good.
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.
I wonder if the aincent greeks felt 'abused' when they had sexual contact with their elders...It depends on the context of the society.
Let's just assume that the IWF are not evil miscreants then shall we?
Can you tell me what they have to gain from it?
...IWF is hiring: Kiddie porn surfer. Job description: Surf around the net and watch kiddie porn. We'll provide you with a long list of good sites from our tip line that you need to verify. And we're working with the police, no need to worry about that.
Is it just me, or should that be the job of an official police organization? Granted it is a light shade of gray, but it does end up in the same bunch as journalists doing "investigative" reporting, vigilanties and other anti-pedo organizations "infiltrating kp rings" and other more-or-less valid explainations.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"The contractor came back and said that they could save 60% of their disk space, but since he also analyzed their NNTP logs he told them that porn was also their major source of revenue."= Reply&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=nested &pid=9746889
.... What is needed is the sites/ISPs running this stuff shut down - and I cannot see how the FBI/CIA/Scotland cannot find them!"= Reply&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=nested &pid=9746795
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115078&op
In this particular case it is child porn that is in the question. Well, you have to pay for some sites and then there is credit card records? See the next post.
"Big problem here is 'child pornography' is being used as a stepping stone to censorship on the Internet
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115078&op
Should we have "child porn" site list to put into host file, so I could not access these. Voluntary action instead of "big brother" forcing us.
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
Perhaps some of the sites blocked aren't child porn?
"Look what it did to the ancient greeks."
Ya, and so what, what did it do? Destroy them? Give us the beginning of western civilization? The toga party?
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
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.
...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
I wouldn't be at all suprised if it's blocked, some people have a very dim view of satire.
People at work ask me if I watch the traffic through the firewall, or read their emails. I tell them "No - there are things I just wouldn't want to know."
Get your own free personal location tracker
Very clever of them indeed... just blocking the site will do absolutely nothing for the children that are being harmed by the respective site owners, and this is not an issue of how easy it is to circumvent the block by using proxies. We are talking about people who distribute content illegal in hopefully almost every country in the world, and they should be punished, not just blocked by ISPs who do it only because they fear for their reputation. Heck, if you can block them you know their IPs, and therefore the owners. Is there no way to shut these sites down? Are governments just being lazy, or ist this an issue of desiderative cooperation between the countries where the servers are hosted and the countries where the site owners live?
i know in the states there's a big lobby of groups (think riaa) that would like to shut down some of the more popular p2p networks claiming they endanger children by spreading child porn... but what does inflating (or blocking in the first place) the number of sites blocked on the www? sites will get new ip addresses and domains and reappear elsewhere as long as there are degenerates demanding it... what bt hsould do is report the customers who access specific flagged sites and let the authorities investigate the customers intent (check their names against a known offenders list).
All the torrents you could want.
No, they're using a third party to come up with a blocklist. How can I trust that blocklist? And how does this differ from China censoring the internet? Once child porn is 'banned' from the internet, what else goes? How many sites are incorrectly sent to their blocklist by idiots with a grievance against the webmaster? Etc. You prove to me that this system is effective and fair, then i'll agree it's a good thing.
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!
hmm, well, http://thinkofthechildren.co.uk/ works for me (ETSU Johnson City, TN) can you British folk behind the firewall get to it?
Think of the Children
It doesn't matter to me even if this would make it difficult for me to finish my research on child abuse. Has this program started, say, only a few years ago, I wouldn't have become a registered pedophile. Dammit.
Pete Townsend
p.s. I've been using news groups lately. They are awesome!!
How many of those contacts log as starting out with "C:/windows/cmd.exe" by some script kiddy? They don't seem to have done any breakdown of what sort of hit the IP got. Therefore, their figures of actual pr0n cruisers is probably exaggerated 10/1.
Which would be typical of pop media sociological reporting. One of my old soc profs wrote a book called Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists. His favorite quote was "Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled". Which, of course, meant that if a kid did, in fact, get gunned down in 1950, we must have hit a billion child gun deaths by 1980.
I believe the legal age for this sort of stuff is 16 in the UK. Quite how this pans out over international borders I don't know.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
Ok I don't know about you but those definitions are fuzzy as hell.
"images of child abuse" so photographs of child slave labour would be banned?
"adult material that potentially breaches" not even material that breaches, but material that might breach the obscene publications act, which is a very fuzzy piece of legislation in itself
this looks to me like the thin end of the wedge indeed.
hysteria and emotive responses make for poor laws, and this group gives me the willies. I want safeguards and checks before some unelected, ungoverned body starts censoring my world..
"societal consensus"
;).
ANd if the consensus is changed then it would be ok then, just like the greeks used to
Of course.
But if that happens we're pretty fucked as society. Wouldn't you agree?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
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
...you might want to include the small lemma that all such sites are on IWF's list. I would imagine most such sites are hit-n-run operations, probably not making it to the list until they're dead anyway.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It depends on how you define children.
People don't understand what paedophillia is. Paedophillia is the specific and sole (or overwhelmingly primary) attraction to children who have _not_ entered puberty. Puberlescent physical features as much of a turn off to them as females having beards and bald spots are to the average teenage male.
Many are so misguided that they cry "paedophile" if a 20 year old so much as holds hands with a 15 year old. Paedophiles largely don't care for teenagers. People like that famous Belgian sociopath who raped those teenage girls aren't paedophiles, they just treat young people like this because they're easier to abuse.
One little fact is that males are attracted to females at much younger ages than society accepts. Back in 19th century England, it was socially recognised that no morallistic female could want sex. We now know this isn't true, but there were strong social taboos on the matter and females wouldn't speak up about it, and males dominated public debate. Today, any adult male is terrified to admit he may find an under 18 year old attractive. Yet most do. The social taboos on the issue are made very strong by hysterical media stories. Another factor is that females are so influential now, and as they are usually unable to find males younger than themselves attractive, they're far less understanding that males do, and become more ridged on the subject.
According to scientific studies performed by psychologists, the ages females are at their _peak_ of physically attractivenss to adult males is 14 to 24. This is a severe contradiction with social perceptions. It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that 12 is alot closer to 14 than 45 is to 24. Historically puberty happened later (and we still don't know why), while children were psychologically very grown up by age 13 because of the lack of modern society's failings. We have today the double negative of children entering puberty too early (and confusing males' attractions) on the one hand, while young people mentally grow up far too late on the other. We also seperate different age groups from social contact because of schools and workplaces. If these three factors didn't exist, then we'd think nothing of a 30 year old dating a 16 year old, which is exactly how it used to be since the dawn of time. Girls regularly got married in their mid teens. This was almost the case where I live only a generation ago.
Also, paedophillia is a rare thing. Mathematically, there aren't many of them. Statistically, most child abuse is committed by hetrosexual parents and other close family figures. Sexual abuse by paedophiles only makes up a very small percentage of sexual abuse. One recent survey of prisons where I live found that only a very small minority of prisoners convicted of sexual offenses against children were paedophiles, and most committed these crimes on impulse and because the children were accessable.
Some European countries have such a different attitude about children and sexuality from English speakers that 12 year old girls may literally take their clothes off in a public park on a hot day while playing, and nobody thinks anything of it.
Ultimately, sexual abuse happens because people don't care for others. You have to either lack empathy or be delusional to treat a child in this way. If you want to save the children from these horrible things, have a more caring and open society. Knee-jeck social taboos don't help, no matter how certain you are of the subject.
Didn't Sam Fox appear on page 3 when she was 16?
Or that a lot of people in the UK have been affected by malware that tries to access this site without their express consent? Or even that some people in the UK have clicked on links that they thought would take them to ABC only to be taken to XYZ instead via a redirect?
Britain isn't a paedophile-free society (Where is?) but assuming that all the access attempts are genuine, conscious attempts to access child pornography is very dangerous assumption to make.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
redirects all their searches to sitefinder....
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
They're not making it clear if they are talking about 10,000 seperate and definable accesses to sites or the usual logging of multiple log entries for one page as it calls each graphic on the page. So 10,000 unique sites or 1000 graphic intensive sites?. Looks like the old bean counters numbers game to me, give the figure without any qualifying parameters to enable establishment of a factual opinion. Easier to scaremonger and paint as bad a picture as possible to justify the "service"
I don't know how you can joke about this.I don't know how you can joke about this.
Because it's funny?
People have written very funny comedy series about WWI and WWII. But for some reason people don't complain about that. Maybe you think 100 million dead people is some how less bad. Or maybe you like knee jerk reactions.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It'a all the fault of the 1960's now.
Stick Men
****(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
How do they know the site is illegal to view without viewing it...
If they view it, they are in violation of the law...
Just a thought...
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
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
I'm a BT OpenWound-er-sorry, OpenWORLD customer. I run webcollage. Should I worry? :-)
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
This whole thing is a really bad precedent.
After the anti-hate groups start their lawsuits, people will scream that "Hey, people are using off-shore proxies to access child porn, block those!", then of course inevitably, there will be lawsuits, lots of lawsuits.
I suppose that you could get posession defenses coming up like "but B.T. didn't block it, I thought it was legal!"
All of this ignores the non-www methods to trade this stuff... which will probably take the public a little longer to figure out.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where people could say "hey, this is obviously illegal, immoral and easy to control... let's take initiative", but in taking initiative means they're taking responsability. B.T. is no longer acting as a network provider, they're a content provider.
But why is child porn illegal in the first place? Does a picture hurt the victim of child abuse? Isn't child porn simply evidence that child abuse took place? The same way a security camera can show a murder or robbery?
What if possession of child porn was legal? Wouldn't this mean that there would be more eyes to recognize people or locations? And that again might lead to the capture of a child molester. Right?
What hurts the child is the abuse in itself. Some weirdo getting off by looking at child porn doesn't hurt anyone does he? So why is child porn illegal?
It is not illegal to possess pictures of a murder or murder scene, is it? So how is child porn any different from that?
Isn't murder a worse crime than rape anyway?
Clever signature text goes here.
While it's hard to imagine a better way of getting a list, it's also easy to see that it won't work. It should be possible to DoS any site with that submission form. With enough zombie machines hitting that submission form, you could eliminate everything not on some kind of a white list.
I don't want to even think about what kind of software is sitting on the desks of people who run that organization. I'm 90% certain that it's the same OS that's generating all of those other malware and "accidental" hits. That would be unfortunate, as malware on one of those desks would have the same power as the member of the organization, the arbitrary power to block a website to all of BT's subscribers.
So, the number of hits is nothing but evidence of censorship to me. I have no proof that any of those 10,000 contains child porn, nor do I want any. I all I now is that there's a real chance that the majority of those hits is innocuous material and that real child exploitation will go on through other channels.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Under Bill C-12, it will soon be illegal in Canada to possess words describing teenage or child sexual activity that "would be" illegal - even if it's completely imaginary.
I'm very interested to see what happens to fantasy/SF authors who write about long-lived or short-lived species... what happens with an elf child who is 100 years old, but looks like a 12-year-old human? What about Kes from Star Trek: Voyager? She's damn well under 18, even if she looks like an adult - there's no exception for non-humans. What about time travel and relativity and suspended animation? The law requires us to be able to apply current Canadian law to all conceivable imaginary worlds. I just hope the first prosecutions aren't of anybody I know.
Pretty soon they'll be on milk-cartons too: "Have you seen this 404?"
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Good point, although I'm not sure if "topless modeling" is considered porn.
In which case the media would be better employed publicising the fact that these credit card companies support web sites that distribute this material - while it may be legal in certain countries, I cannot see many people wanting to use a credit card that made money from these sites where it is illegal.
Hit corporations in their profits, then they will listen.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I thought child porn was an underground type of activity consisting of chat room trades of files, file drops at certain temporary websites, etc. I didn't think that people actually posted these images to websites that were public enough that British Telecom would have a list of them.
If British Telecom has a list of these sites, then why aren't they cooperating with law enforcement agencies to have the owners arrested? (Though cooperating with foreign law enforcement agencies may be difficult.)
I would think the first step would be is to remove these sites from their DNS server. (Though the surfer could then use another DNS server.) The second would be to block packets from these sites. (Though I'm sure this raises all types of legal, technological, privacy etc. issues.)
Andrew
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Isn't this measure (an ISP blocking child porn) kind of like making drugs illegal? The bums who really want the stuff will probably go to great lengths to get what they need. On the street, it's finding a guy in an alley who can sell you a gun and on the Internet it's probably finding an open proxy or encrypted tunnel. People can still get child pornography :(
A problem I see is that you invariably create new access problems by censoring content. If the ISP blocks by IP, they will be blocking access to legitimate sites who might also have an unscrupulous user hosting the offending content on a virtual host. If the ISP is blocking by specific URLs, this is much better but then they must be running an http proxy (invisible caching) which IMHO creates new issues such as browsing privacy.
Since they know where the stuff is, why don't they take action to put a stop to the actual pornography itself?
In the UK they are the same thing.
Well, people working at this organization are probably not particularly porn friendly. So they see a site with (legal) teenage models, they don't like it, they block it. Why would they spend the time and investigate in detail about the exact age of the models? Furthermore, it's impossible to tell since their block list is not being made public.
Anyone else think that the BT in the title stood for BitTorrent before reading the summary blurb?
Excellent. Take all that stuff down.
Warez too. Cracks too. All of it. Who needs it anyway!
Now if some providers would start doing the same for pop-ups, advertisements and maybe even non-html content the net would be a better place altogether. I personally could go back to normal browsing instead of clicking the "in cache" copy of pages in google.
One of the previous articles suggests they provide a categorised list, and BT is only using the 'illegal child porn' category.
Still, I'd like to see some kind of independent arbitration. Preferably through the court service, as you say, which is the correct institution to make decisions as to what's legal and what isn't.
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?
... and you get the impression BT has this huge collection of illegal smut they are trying to keep people from seeing. Bunch of pervs!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Hmm... maybe you should RTFA yourself.
They are blocking "web pages". So even if the block individual pages (which i don't think), there are normally more than 1 picture on a single page. Thus, the probability of a lower than 100% ratio of child porn to normal porn is very high.
But maybe your comment was just an unqualified outburst from a guy which hasn't RTFA himself, or you just HAVE to post something with your oh so low slashdot ID. (ebay, anyone?)
Move Sig. For great justice.
Also note that I said that under 18s cannot give their own consent. In Sam Fox's case I suspect that her parents gave consent and because The Sun is "mainstream" it was not considered porn, and hence not defined as child pornography.
However, if she'd been fully nude in some top-shelf mag, parental consent or not it would have been child pornography. My assumption for what I've read is that anything classed as pornography performed by minors is child pornography.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Are these attempted connects with these sites motivated by attempting to access child porn or attempts to access other types of obscure and generally unaceptable types of porn. As some porn seems to be seen as acceptable and laddish other forms get you seen as some sick deviant.
seems to me if someone is going to supply kiddy porn they will be willing to supply any other type of porn as well as long as they get paid for it.
could it be that BT is blocking these sites on a purely commercial basis, if a significant part of your user base is attempting to access these sites and if by doing so your users get procecuted, start doing time and stop using your service it will affect your profits.
In fact as a bt broadband customer can you feel reassured now that there will be no nudge nudge " do you see how much time he spends on line, he can't just be reading slashdot stories..". So "sign up for BT where being online on a regular basis doesn't make you appear to be a sick pervert".
I think blocking is wrong, simply because your restricting the opportunity to arrest and charge these potentially very dangerous individuals. Which is preferable to society and parents and children, a known paedophile that is monitored, treated or if Bt's figures are to believed a huge number of unknown paedophiles.
Given the choice of catching paedophiles looking at child porn sites or catching paedophiles after they have carried out their sick fantasy on a child which is preferable.
For BT to block these sites it makes commercial sense, however I think society and the children who get abused are going to pay for BT's profits. It's not possible to procecute someone for thinking about doing something. Only by stepping over the line can you actually be procecuted for doing something.
Perhaps the reality is that men do not fancy fat saggy old women (in general) their ideal sexual partner will always have a great body and be aged around 20, but men's bodys go down hill to and these women just will not be interested in them and extremely wary if they get too close. maybe the paedophile acknowledging this gravitates to children who are blissfully unaware of the attraction of unspoilt flesh, unlike the typical woman in her 20's and probably younger who realises that men want to fuck em, whatever the age of the man.
While we have our sophisticated minds, we still have biological urges to reproduce and for men the age for reproduction doesn't have a biological finish date, for women there is an ideal age range and this is the age range most men are attracted to.
Fortunately for society, there is a counter balance in love and the social conditioning we are brought up with and a respect for the partners we choose to share our life with or things would be much worse, I think love and understanding is what we all really crave and providing we have that, then we are likely to stick with the person we decided to get old with even though on a hot summers day we will still be tempted.
we get old accept it.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I wonder about HOW they block the access and
the full list of blocked sites so I can check if
some ISP that I have access to is blocking something
(Im not in UK).
I wonder if its just DNS-based?
They block access to the entire IP?
To just to port 80?
Entire IP-range of company/person that hosts IT?
Does anyone know?
Any censorship is not acceptable, period.
That, my friend, is where I stopped reading.
I am not a revenge personality - definetely not.
...
But I would donate a little of my otherwise sucky bandwidth for the good purpose to DDOS any server/provider that hosts kiddie porn.
I am fine with porn, gambling, pharmacies, adult dating.... damn i even accept (pee-poo-sex sites if someone needs them), but KIDDIE Pr0n should be off the net!
would someone sue me for DDOS-ing a site like this? Governments/law enforcement should thank people who take sites off like them
Or hold cracking contests on these sites ! I am sure some governments would even donate a grand prize if you take off sites like that (especially if you manage to steal some data that leads to the owners/anyone related)
I'm also deeply disturbed by baseless statistics such as 10,000 hits/day. It means something very different if BT has only 10,000 ISP subscribers or has 1?5 million.
BT's disclaiming malware is disingenuous they ought to do simple traffic analysis. Was that 10,000 hit/day on 10,000 different websites, or 10 different sites? Most likely, some interesting distribution.
This thread could go on forever about what is and isn't moral sexually, and even be quite progressive. But I think we're all missing the point.
Kiddie porn is perhaps the last great witch hunt. An excellent way to gain cheap political points. What economy? We'll get tough on child porn! A politicians wet dream, so to speak. All the benefits of a stand on a contriversial issue, none of the risks. The only opposing interest is perhaps free speech, but who wants to assert freedom at cost of perhaps looking like a pervert? The opposition becomes minimized.
We know this of course because, if it was a real problem, people would be asking why?. Take a de-sexualized example. Instead of being molested let's see these kids were, I dunno, being run down by the new Ford monolith or somthing. They wouldn't be out looking for blood and to destroy these vehicles. No, there'd be a recall and they'd find an engineering problem in the breaks or somthing and fix it.
This is how "Problem solving" works:
-Problem
-Cause
-Solution
But they don't want a solution really, not with all those easy votes out there.
At least here in Canada the voters didn't bite. I of course refer to Steven Harper's "Paul Martin likes Child Porn" press release. Such a blatent falacy of an accusation, it could have possibly cost Harper the election. People (Canadians anyways) do know when they're being treated like idtiots after all. Warmed the cockles of my heart.
P.S. BT may not be running for office, but they still have a political interest, just like a politician of "looking good".
At least someone cares enough to block or prevent it. More and more ISPs are becoming aware of their perverted customers and are putting a end to it at least via websites. Now if only they can block kazaa, irc, and newsgroups then it would be a good day for all.
When expecting to find intelligence in a person, do not look at their age but instead look at their IQ and maturity firs
Let's just assume that the IWF are not evil miscreants
NO. Anyone in the censorship business immediately goes on the list of potential or actual evil miscreants.
And the Holy Crusader is the worst sort of miscreant. An ordinary miscreant burns a book and stops. The Holy Crusader proceeds to burn the librarian who tried to stop them from burning the book. Obviously the librarian was evil and was trying to Hurt the Children. The Holy Crusader takes righteous pride in their misdeeds: I have Saved The Children from the Evil book and the Evil librarian!
If someone abuses a child then you throw them in prison. You don't set up a Ministry of Information and go on a book burning crusade.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
As reprehensible I might personally find such images: I have no argument here.
The big difference is that if you punish virtual kiddie porn you punish in essence a thought crime, this is inacceptable. However: 98% [disclaimer: this is a pulled-out-of-my-arse-figure] of the "product" out there has a real suffering and a real exploation of a real kid in order to cater to the kinks of the "customers".
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
1) That's not "black letter legal" or any other kind of legal for that matter. Read up on the "age of consent" -- what you appear to describe is statutory rape. It would pretty well have to be for the pictures to be illegal.
2) Fallacy of the beard--even if there's some doubt over whether, say, a 17 year old is a child in some people's minds, that doesn't mean we cannot recognize those who are definitely children.
3) Sigmund Freud may have gotten psychology rolling, but that ridiculous Freudian sort of transference you propose is ludicrous and without any basis whatsoever, whether the basis is alleged to be scientific or otherwise. A pedophile is, legally, one who engages in acts with children which are prohibited. Moreover, the jury, not the judge, renders the verdict. In any event, none of them can be legally considered pedophiles unless they engage in some illegal action wholly unrelated to their service in a hypothetical court case.
4) You're a troll, and you would appear revel in posting flame bait. Positively none of what you've said has any factual basis, but then again, this is Slashdot, where contrarians will moderate up any point of view they think might be being ignored, facts be damned.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
And they don't know how many were spyware, malware, or accidents?
If you listened to goofs like Orrin Hatch and their spewage about how there's nothing on the internet buy child porn and illegal software, that's kind of a low number.
I wonder how many "free mp3" sites they'd block if they tried.
So, while I abhor any type of child porn, I also abhor people who throw out sound bites that are unrepresentative of the data provided. Hands up anyone that can say what percentage of the traffic was child related? Thought so...
Ian W.
I have a theory that repression of early childhood sexuality (playing doctor, etc.) leads to this sort of thing. People get screwed up during childhood as natural impulses are squelched, leading them to hold on to the impulses into adulthood, where they act them out in unhealthy ways. Sadly, much of human sexual activity, not just child porn, is probably driven by this sort of thing. If healthy sexuality were the norm, there would be far fewer virgins reading this right now.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Not the same in the UK any more - recent amendment changed definition of "child" wrt. child porn law, upping the age from 16 to 18.
Age of consent remains 16 though - so you can f**k but not take photos.
See http://www.iwf.org.uk/hotline/uk_law.html.
The article is talking about banning child pornography sites (those showing compromising pictures of children under 16), in Britain, where the age of consent is 16.
so, what's you're feeling about using computer graphics to produce porn with no humans involved, humans that resemble 5 year olds? is a child abused because of it directly?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
Obviously, when it comes to issues like child pornography and child consent, we come to issues that are very much subjective.
However, we have to examine these issues, not from some idealistic "the world should be like X" standpoint, but -- as responsible citizens -- from the standpoint of how a democratic republic can responsibly enact laws to protect those with little to no sexual experience from being outright exploited, bullied, cajoled or otherwise manipulated into sex, *without* trampling on the beliefs of cultures, religions and the individual.
You mention 'maturity'. What is 'maturity'? You say that you would have no problem having sex with a minor if you found one you were interested in and figured she was too.
There is a reason that we have laws of the nature that we do. Granted, a lot of those reasons are based on superstition, hearsay, 'folk wisdom', and the like, but the one thing they do an excellent job of is protecting the rights of children until they reach an age where they are probably much more capable of deciding whether or not to sleep with *you*.
Look -- I'm no mysogynist, but the fact of the matter is that due to societal pressures and the sex/self-worth culture that we have bred today, there are a LOT of girls in the 15-to-17-year-old age range that have daddy issues, serious self-worth issues, and are otherwise way more likely to be vulnerable to a predator such as yourself.
If you find a minor and you figure that she's "interested" in you -- and you're older than, say, 20 -- then that's probably a sign that
a) she is fucked in the head, and you would be taking advantage of her. On average, what is more likely -- that a girl somehow manages to overcome all of the pressures of being a teenaged girl, escape from the worldview being pressed on her, and happens to INDEPENDENTLY arrive at a state of emotional, mental and sexual maturity where she honestly feels that she could enter into a sexual relationship with an older man without harm to herself, or that she's just another girl who is fucked in the head during her teenaged years and needs a few more years to cool off?
or, the other thing that this would indicate:
b) *you* are fucked in the head. You'd be projecting your latent desires (since as you said you never screwed a minor when you were a minor) on some girl who does little more than act like a girl, and you rationalize away serious sexual abuse.
For all you paranoid slashdotters let me ask you this. Why shouldn`t the same laws of decency that apply to other medias magazines, television etc apply to the internet? Following the logic of most of you we would already be living in 1984 if banning child porn in magazines and television, led to banning of porn, banning of anti bush rants etc etc BT`s action may be stopping just one avenue to this sort of material but it`s a step in the right direction IMHO. BTW i`m no right wing extremist I love a bit of consential adult porn as much as the next red blodded male.
May I kindly refer you to this post in order to answer your question?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If your goal is to be "modded down into flamebait hell", I'd say that you are doing a pretty shoddy job
.since I often forget that the score is influenced by "friend" status, the chance of me modding you up is low...
:)
It certainly isn't my goal, but I understand that certain of my views are highly controversial and thus liable to be regarded as flamebait. I don't particularly let it affect my posting though.
That said, the difference between insightful and flamebait is smaller than you'd think.
Sometimes the difference is so small that they share identity.
Your "enemies" are less likely to see your comments and subsequently mod you down.
I have at least one that periodically likes to use all of his/her mod points to "Overate" days old posts in one swell foop. I can live with that.
On the other hand, I believe that the moderation system is about visibility.
Absolutely.
. .
I can live with that too.
KFG
you cannot win that argument, and argue that adult porn does not also demean, abuse, or cause the same issues for adult pornography..
how can you split the hair? if depictions of children having sex, is illicit, because it leads to aberrant behavior or abuse, so does regular old uleaded porn.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
First, most of the kids in child porn are able to consent because they don't see anything particularly special in sex. Living on the street and working as a child prostitute to earn money to buy drugs and feed your family helps them mature rather early. Second, the abuse of being filmed for porn is much less than the abuse they usually endure. And obviously less than starving to death would be.
People need to get some perspective. Things are not as simple as some make them appear.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Now, thanks to a subsequent poster, I am better educated on British law and the parent post to which I am here responding makes more sense, since under British law the 15-17 year old spread would, indeed, be a case of at one partner being over the age of consent and one under, and the age of consent for sex matching the age of consent for pictures.
KFG
Smoke Cracking mods.
Quite simple...any pornography where the participant are, or look to be, under the age of 16.
First of all, I can't believe that I actually read all 451 posts on this page (at least I think I read all of them all the way through).
/dev/null. I don't think that's right on several levels...
The two things that trouble me the most about this is that there is a (mostly) unwatched group doing this blocking based on the recommendations of another (mostly) unwatched group. Not redirecting, not offering explanations, just sending the page request to
Next, in all 451 posts, I think I only saw 2 posts that essentially said "don't block them, shut them down." I whole-heartedly agree with that!! Why is it, that if this topic is getting so much attention, and is apparently so important, that the most anyone can be troubled to do is to block an IP? With the combined forces of several government agencies (UK, US, etc), why is it that the computers serving these pages that are hiding behind those pesky "IP" addresses can't be found and shut off? To go a step further: with a lot of digging, maybe they could find out some names associated with the domain names - that could lead to a chat with the registered owners! I realize that those items would take entirely too many resources, considerable technical expertise, but I think they could find someone that could help...
Is it just me, or does it seem like lately everyone wants to just cover up problems and pretend they don't exist instead of trying to FIX the issue and make it go away???
--- "To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist!" -- Jesse Jackson
Well it seems you guys didnt know this yet ^^ They also are blocking pages such as giganews, easynews suckynews and god know how many more usernet server provider. Becose they "CULD" be used for childporn. But how many innocent peoples dont get affected by that? And how many peoples aint trying to acess theos pages? hell even me use one of thoes new's provider to access usernet.
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?
Woah. I apologise for signing up at the wrong time.
This doesn't mean you have a point however.
I imagine that a child porn website that is classified as illegal to view under UK law would be pretty much bad news all round. Maybe you think it's bad that they blocked legitimate images on there, I disagree myself. I don't think people need to see those that badly (unless maybe they confirm the existence of aliens or can create world peace) that the site can't be blocked for being against UK law to view...
Problem is, imagine a site with all legal pr0n. Now what is if there is ONE picture buried within which looks like child-pr0n (maybe because of an 18-y-old which looks like 14, yes that IS possible.)
Now they get on the list because of a person working for that blacklist-company with too much time on his hand (pun intended) and standard horny Joe User is now officially a "pervert" for trying to get to this site.
Move Sig. For great justice.
Uhh no.
After having worked for an isp I can tell you the prefered childporn is in the less than 5 years old category. Theres is no way in hell they are consenting.
Arguing that the fringe elements are somehow acceptable doesn't change the fact that most of it is just evil.
And eliminate the possibility of loading objectionable images....
See:
SpamByte: Game Over, Spammers/Computer Crackers
Er, that's yet another take on the "can we trust the IWF?" argument.
Well that's another matter.
*wry grin* Aye, and there lies the rub. I know women in their 30s who look like they could be barely in middle school. And that's when they're dressed to look older. Admittedly, the law should not be applied unless the intent is to make the person look under 16 (dressing them up in schoolgirl costumes, showing them in "after-school tutoring", etc) but I'd suspect that even getting fingered for such an offense without a conviction is bound to hurt your record.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Personally, I feel that sex should be possible for anyone who is physically mature (which is about 12 and up these days AFAIK) and mentally mature (which seems to not happen before age 30 for msot people, if it ever does) enough for it.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
You forgot 3) All involved have to be emotionally mature.
Great, there goes the world population... most people never reach that point. Personally, I feel that people shouldn't have sex unless they're prepared to be a parent. Because honestly, that's what sex does and every form of contraception short of removal of ovaries and testes is just gambling that nature won't find a way. At that, not only wanting to be a parent, but to actually be capable of it. *sigh* Weird though, our children are becoming sexually mature earlier and yet actual maturity seems to come later and later...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.