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.
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.
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
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.
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 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?
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
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?
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!
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!!
"Vetting IWF appointments
Section 46 of the Sex Offences Act 2003 provides a statutory defence for IWF work and an agreement has been drawn up between the police, CPS and IWF, which sets out our role and is supported by the government. In order to ensure best practice in carrying out that role IWF Board have approved a policy for vetting all Board and staff appointments"
ie they've agreed it with Plod so you don't get nicked for doing your job, and they're going to take a good stab at checking you're not a pervert before they let you do that for a living.
Bear in mind that IWF isn't just a random bunch of do-gooders. They were set up by agreement between the government, the police and the UK ISP community, in effect, they *are* an official organization, if not technically an "official police organization".
Regards,
Tim.
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.
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
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
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
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
So noone in Canada had better read Romeo and Juliet.
The major difference seems to be that in the case of child porn, the pictures are a large factor in the abuse happening in the first case. This is almost never a motivation in murder (snuff films being largely a myth).
So it is an attempt to stem demand. You won't stop it, but you may reduce it, and so reduce the abuse.
Then there is the victim's privacy. I really doubt they want people legally owning pitcures or film of them being abused, although you could certainly extend that argument to other crime victims (or their relatives).
While a murder scene photo may be legal, I'm not so sure about sex crimes. Is it ever legal to knowingly posses pictures (or film) of someone having sex who either hasn't or can't give constent (to both the act and recording it)?
I'm a work, so I'm not Googling for the answer to that one. Ultimately I guess its illegal because our society view sexual crimes and crimes against children as being particularly disturbing, and posessing pictures of them for the purpose of getting your jollies is considered unacceptable.
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?
Any censorship is not acceptable, period.
in fact if you were 17 and you had a gf who was 15, taking pictures is kiddie pr0n while hittin' it is perfectly legal. that's what he's trying to say - the age of consent and the age for pics is not the same. think twice, type once...
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
Actually, while you get my point correctly, you get the facts slightly wrong.
What I was saying is that if you were 60 and had a 15 year old girlfriend in Canada and a 16 year old girlfriend in Vermont it would be perfectly legal to hit it, but not to take its picture.
The case where both partners are under the age of consent is uninteresting. It is the case where one partner is over the age of majority at 18 and the other under the age of majority (and thus not legal for pics) but over the age of consent (and thus legal for sex) where the philosophical interest lies.
KFG
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.
Well, you learn something new every day. Most of the world, under American pressure, does not handle the issue with quite that degree of rationality.
I expect the/you Brits will be hearing from Ashcroft soon, if you haven't already (see the current brouhaha over copyright terms).
This doesn't mean that the issue is irrelevant to Americans, however, as the Justice Department under Ashcroft has now started prosecuting Americans for their legal behavior out of the country, thus it is concievable that Americans could be prosecuted for viewing images in Britain that are legal in Britain, but not in America.
KFG