Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Collaborates On Child Porn Buster
pmike_bauer writes "Microsoft and Canadian authorities on Thursday launched a software program designed to help police worldwide hunt down child porn traffickers. Police departments can use it free of charge." From the article: "The program was developed by Microsoft Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Toronto police, with the help of the Department of Homeland Security, Scotland Yard and Interpol." Update: 04/08 18:09 GMT by Z : Modified to reflect the fact that it's not Open Source.
This is a somewhat strange choice by Microsoft, in my opinion.
They cry and whinge about how inherently evil OSS is, and then when its used for a purpose that they know nothing other than OSS would be accepted, they go ahead and release software in this way.
It would be interesting to see what license this has been released under.
This could serve good use in showing they FUD around open source as the sham that it is.
Whilst im glad that they are doing this, I wonder if it may come back and haunt their OSS fighting efforts later down the line. Lets hope so, im all for Win-Win situations.
-Shepy
I watch 24 and like it. It's always made me laugh at how easily the agents in the CTU offices were able to bring up any info about anyone anywhere in the world and have that info be up to date. I was amused because it was just so stupid to think that that kind of technology could be developed. You'd need massive amounts of hardware, some serious database capabilities, and motivation to build a monstrosity like that.
I'm not laughing so much after reading this article. It seems to describe exactly the type of universal "Big Eye" technology that Jack Bauer and his cronies at CTU have at their fingertips. And with a cattle prod like CHILD PORNOGRAPHY they've got motivation to build it and a shield to protect themselves from privacy complaints. After all, it is designed specifically to protect the children.
I guess one good thing is that it was built by Microsoft, so it won't work correctly until v3.0.
I hate child pornographers as much as anyone. I find their perversion sick and disgusting. (I am not adverse to them getting their rocks off by looking at adults who look like children. Nothing wrong with that.) But I fail to see why everyone's right to privacy should be invaded just because the Canadians can't track down their own criminals.
What we need is the anti-24. A show with a hero who is interested in building up our rights rather than finding ways of tearing it down. I guess that wouldn't go over too well in these days of ultra-Americanism, though.
About bloody time, too. Microsoft releasing an open-source tool-- good. Killing child porn-- even damn better!
Details of how the system works are being kept secret, Hemler (Microsoft Canada president) said. "We're intentionally coy about the technology that is used in this because we think it gives the good guys an advantage over the bad guys," he said. "Think of it as an assembly of commonly available Microsoft software, using techniques from Microsoft Research and best practices that the law enforcement community shared with us."
Open source? Microsoft? Wow, those Microsoft Canada people are really really unamerican, aren't they?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I googled for license agreement, but found nothing. I would be very surprised, if Microsoft released it under one of OSI approved licenses. So, what license is this "open-source"?
This Is Not a Sig
It is the last sign of the apocolypse.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping the Mounties will continue with their tradition of always getting their man. Now if only we could set them loose on the people filling our inboxes with spam as well. Or maybe the SAS :-)
But what does this story have to do with my rights?
Does this tool somehow affect my "right" to kiddy porn?
I don't get why it's sectioned in the politics section too. Nobody has a right to child porn.
This tool is a good thing. I hope they lock up all those offenders up.
Remember guys, the 1st Amendment isn't to protect controversial expression, only forms of artistic expression that middle class Americans approve of.
Yeah sure, mod me down if you're unable to argue a controversial hot topic.
The article from MSNBC mentioned in this story is very light on details. Thanks to Google News, here are some more useful articles about CETS, the Child Exploitation Tracking System:
These articles mention that CETS is based on MS SQL Server (for the database) and some bits of MS SharePoint (for the web portal). Also, the system uses .NET and web services (SOAP/XML) for exchanging data so it should be possible to integrate this with non-Microsoft systems (in theory).
What is not mentioned in any of the articles is whether the system is really open-source, as claimed in the headline of this Slashdot story and the related MSNBC article. The only statements that I found about this said that Microsoft Canada will "make [CETS] available free of charge to any law enforcement agency that wants to use it." But no mention of any Open Source license.
-Raphaël
I'm supposed to hate MS, but wow... kiddie porn and pedophiles. Tough one.
WTF does Homeland Security have to do with this?
Who would've thought we woulld see the day that the terms "open source" and "porn buster" describing the same thing. ;D
Look! Open Source, good! Protect the children against those bad child pornographers, good! Now, how about looking at what they're actually doing besides their cover story, bad.
This is the second time in about a week that we're seeing Microsoft doing something that puts it up against a greater evil. And to make it even more boggling, they're doing it open-source.
Did Microsoft hire someone new? Or did they take a look at their image and try to make amends? As much as I know my view of them is biased both by my history as a mac fan and the rants I've seen of others complaining and complaining about problems with microsoft (note I'm not trying to start an argument here, just pointing out that my view is biased); I know that Gates has funded new CompSci departments for universities like Cambridge (UK) - it's just a surprise to see what has seemed such a stereotypical corporation taking these steps against something in this way. Gates' view that open source is evil has been overtaken by the view that child porn is worse. I completely agree, and as strange as it is to say it - good work, Microsoft.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
The going after Child porn are a good thing no mather what, but as usuall Microsoft are rather late to the table. Advanced tools for this already exist, if someone remember something like 2 years back. There was a big internationally coordinated crack down, one of the main tools used up front of this was something like this new thingy from MS. I hope MS uses some real open source license for this, as there probably are some nice technology in this which can be used for other purposes too.
Entry Number 1, Mr Michael Jackson.
Gee... I guess that couldn't be since the number of internet users has grown since 1996? Nah...
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Microsoft writes open source child porn buster
Next weeks news item: Microsoft claims open source supports child porn
How open source can it be?
1. I can't find the license anywhere.
2. I can't find where to download the binaries.
3. I can't find where to download the source code.
4. It's available for free only to law enforcement.
Has anyone actually located 1, 2, or 3? Please post if you do...
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Maybe their idea is to associate OSS with child pornography? Perhaps they'll release a tool for tracking satan worshippers next?
Just being cynical.
Oh, that's what it is! One of the local headline writers made it sound a little different.
You probably shouldn't click this.
With all the hype there is over kiddy porn, I almost don't believe there is any. "Kiddy porn traffickers" are the new "international communist conspiracy"... not only will they snatch our children, but they'll sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.
While we've all HEARD about kiddy porn, has anybody ever actually SEEN any? Or is it, as I suspect, just another bogeyman being used to sell us on the idea of a police state?
Windows Windows?
I'm sure Bill would love for you to buy 2 licenses every time you needed just one.
TFA doesn't seem to have any clue what "open source" means. This isn't open source at all. It was liscences to several MS server technologies donated to the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre in Ottawa. It gives Canadian police a central database for notes, evidence collected, and existing tracking databases. It then uses standard data mining to tease out connections. It will do the same for other jurisdictions. It's "free as in beer" if your a national law enforcement agency, but certainly not "free as in speech"
Free MacMini
Free is not equal to Open Source. IT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE. A quick browser find of 'open' or 'source' yield no match.
RTFA.
include/asm-alpha/errno.h, include/asm-arm/errno.h, include/asm-cris/errno.h, include/asm-i386/errno.h, include/asm-ia64/errno.h, include/asm-m68k/errno.h, include/asm-mips/errno.h, include/asm-mips64/errno.h, include/asm-parisc/errno.h, include/asm-ppc/errno.h, include/asm-ppc64/errno.h, include/asm-s390/errno.h, include/asm-s390x/errno.h, include/asm-sh/errno.h, include/asm-sparc/errno.h, include/asm-sparc64/errno.h, include/asm-x86_64/errno.h, include/asm-alpha/signal.h, include/asm-arm/signal.h, include/asm-cris/signal.h, include/asm-i386/signal.h, include/asm-ia64/signal.h, include/asm-m68k/signal.h, include/asm-mips/signal.h, include/asm-mips64/signal.h, include/asm-parisc/signal.h, include/asm-ppc/signal.h, include/asm-ppc64/signal.h, include/asm-s390/signal.h, include/asm-s390x/signal.h, include/asm-sh/signal.h, include/asm-sparc/signal.h, include/asm-sparc64/signal.h, include/asm-x86_64/signal.h, include/linux/stat.h, include/linux/ctype.h, lib/ctype.c, include/asm-alpha/ioctl.h, include/asm-alpha/ioctls.h, include/asm-arm/ioctl.h, include/asm-cris/ioctl.h, include/asm-i386/ioctl.h, include/asm-ia64/ioctl.h, include/asm-m68k/ioctl.h, include/asm-mips/ioctl.h, include/asm-mips64/ioctl.h, include/asm-mips64/ioctls.h, include/asm-parisc/ioctl.h, include/asm-parisc/ioctls.h, include/asm-ppc/ioctl.h, include/asm-ppc/ioctls.h, include/asm-ppc64/ioctl.h, include/asm-ppc64/ioctls.h, include/asm-s390/ioctl.h, include/asm-s390x/ioctl.h, include/asm-sh/ioctl.h, include/asm-sh/ioctls.h, include/asm-sparc/ioctl.h, include/asm-sparc/ioctls.h, include/asm-sparc64/ioctl.h, include/asm-sparc64/ioctls.h, include/asm-x86_64/ioctl.h, include/linux/ipc.h, include/linux/acct.h, include/asm-sparc/a.out.h, include/linux/a.out.h, arch/mips/boot/ecoff.h, include/asm-sparc/bsderrno.h, include/asm-sparc/solerrno.h, include/asm-sparc64/bsderrno.h, and include/asm-sparc64/solerrno.h
Then it said that I could get a license for untainted versions of the files for something like $700 as a special limited-time offer...Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Think for a minute. If you walked up to someone on the street and shot them in the head, would you be able to say Hey! You can't get me! You violated my right to privacy because I have Universal, 24x7, everywhere continual anonymity, and therefore you couldn't possibly have legally seen me out in public doing anything, let alone shoot someone in the head! My rights! My rights! My rights are being violated! ????
Same difference.
Say you do shoot someone in the head in the privacy of your own home. Are you somehow magically safe from the law because nobody has the right to know or determine what you do in your God-Given-Constitutionally-Approved-Super-Duper-P
Are you afraid that someone is going to track down your Super-Private online goings-on and share your secret with others? For example... is Safeway (grocery chain) going to track down all your online purchases of ass ailment treatments, and then, in their store, announce over the loud speaker, John Doe, We're currently featuring 10 cents off Assinol Plus with the purchase of Roidwipes2000? No. Could they? Perhaps. Would they? No. Their legal department would forbid it, for fear of frivolous lawsuits such as the one you'd hit them with 10 minutes later.
So Anyway, my main points here are:
1. you don't have a universal deluxe right to privacy, it's a myth.
2. The Man is already reluctant to use your top-secret-Jedi info for fear of frivolous lawsuits.
Also, the cornerstone of paranoia is the mistaken belief that others actually care. They just don't. You're not that interesting (nor am I), nobody really cares, so relax.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Similar stats could probably be cited for any kind of image found on the Internet, including cars, sunsets, weddings, houses, and generic boob-n-beaver shots of consenting college students. News flash: the Internet (especially the Web) has grown a lot in the past decade!
I'm not saying that child sexual abuse isn't a problem (it is, and has been since long before ARPAnet, and the perps should be beaten with rubber hoses), but this statement in the article implies a kind of exponentially-exploding disaster that it doesn't actually demonstrate.
Common mistake - open source does not mean that 1, 2 or 3 have to be fulfilled to the general public, indeed I can opensource a project of mine and supply the binary and code to my one sole customer, it would still be open source. There is nothing in any of the GNU licenses or the OSI opproved licenses that says 'you must supply this to the general public for it to be an opensource project', you can keep an entire GPLed codebase within a tight group of people, so long as the binary isnt distributed outside that group.
Opensource does not mean you have immediate rights to 1, 2 or 3.
open source doesnt necessarily mean 'put the source on a website for all and sundry to download on a whim'
That's pretty much what it does mean. Otherwise it's just a source distribution, and proprietary code has been distributed in source form since, well, software's been around. Heck, big engineering projects and customised real-time control systems traditionally ship with full source, and it's only recently that a binary-only product wasn't a show-stopper in that market... but nobody would have described that as "open source".
> From the article
Which article? Not the one linked to in the writeup. I don't think Microsoft would write something like "Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth" or "Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe" unless they are employing illiterates.
Okay so I ad-libbed but you should get the point. The Dept of Homeland Security is being used for purposes other than what it was supposedly created for. The way it is used will continue to diverge over the decades until it is nothing more than an American KGB.
Common mistake - open source does not mean that 1, 2 or 3 have to be fulfilled to the general public, indeed I can opensource a project of mine and supply the binary and code to my one sole customer, it would still be open source.
That would make virtually every large scale engineering or realtime control system for the past three decades "open source". And that's just stupid... our product ships in source code form, but it's sure as heck not described as, thought of as, or considered "open source". It's a proprietary product that comes with a source distribution.
There is nothing in any of the GNU licenses or the OSI opproved licenses that says 'you must supply this to the general public for it to be an opensource project',
That's true, it's perfectly possible to violate the spirit of open source while complying with the letter of any license. That's not "open source", that's "gaming the system".
Philosophically speaking, the situation you've just described would imply that your work is Free Software (as in freedom) not Open Source. Free Software is based on the idea that you should be able to see how your programs work (a political movement); Open Source is based on the idea that the more eyes you get looking at something the better (a development model).
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Microsoft releasing a Open Source app ???
Look out! The four horsemen are approching!!!!
If nobody has seen the license how can anybody confirm that it is open source? All we have (so far) is one MSNBC article claiming that is open source. Grandparent's question is justified.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Nationwide fear, paranoia, and long-term apathy has made shows like 24 palatable. I started watching this show when the current season began and I was horrified at the laws and rights that those CTU twits would trample just to take shortcuts to get his man. The rule of law can make things inconvenient but it's there for a REASON.
Call me crazy, but I'd rather have my rights than some illusion of security. If Bauer's heroism was in his cleverness and creativity while following the rules, he truly would be a hero. To me, he's just a manifestation of the stampeding fear America has of "terrorists."
Why's that? Are you sure you're not hiding anything? *snicker*
Karnal
You're looking for a show about someone who travels from place to place helping people, but can never be tracked down because his identity keeps changing. We could have him be on the run from some kind of huge evil intelligence empire with "Centre" in their name, located in the general vicinity of DC.
...
Could this be an impassioned plea for *The Pretender* to return to the airwaves? Astonishing
Surely a bad idea - it'd be a bloodbath and I don't think it'd go the mounties way! Besides, in the UK we like the Canadians - they seems like americans without so many of the bad ideas :)
Oh, you meant set the SAS on the spammers.....
In Soviet Russia you own your cat
Could you possibly cite the source of that quotation?
It sounds like something out of an H.G. Wells story.
I recall reading the news about a guy who was arrested for statutory rape - that is, having sex with a minor. Funny thing is... aforementioned minor was his WIFE. (they got married in a state with less retardedly restrictive age-of-consent laws)
Circumcision is child abuse.
Fair enough. It's worth noting, though, that the phrase 'Open Source' does have these connotations for people. By limiting the size of the community, Microsoft is imposing restrictions on the code that do not apply to most people's conception of OSS.
It's not unexpected, of course, since by releasing the code to the general public, Microsoft would be acknowledging the idea that you can still have a secure system if the code is publicly available.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when the code leaks.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Criminals usually succeed by anonymity. This OSS code appears to remove that advantage, BUT if they (the crinimals) had access to this so called OSS code, eventually they will gain that advantage back--it's chess game/game theory situation. Becuase of the policies currently in place, OSS code for fighting crime is similar to OSS electronic voting--an oxymoron.
Open Source / Free Software (as in speech) doesn't necessarily mean freely available. Just means that the source is distributed with the program. And given one of the articles stated that the LEOs don't want the code in the open to keep their "advantage" over the bad guys, I doubt that we'll be seeing it anytime soon.
1. I can't find the license anywhere.
2. I can't find where to download the binaries.
3. I can't find where to download the source code.
4. It's available for free only to law enforcement.
The fact that you can't find it doesn't mean it isn't open source. The fact that it might only ever be available to law enforcement doesn't mean it isn't open source, either. Not even the GPL requires that a work be distributed to whoever wants it. (Not that I have any delusions about this MS project being GPL'd...)
From the GPL FAQ (next to last question):
"The GPL does not require anyone to use the Internet for distribution. It also does not require anyone in particular to redistribute the program. And (outside of one special case), even if someone does decide to redistribute the program sometimes, the GPL doesn't say he has to distribute a copy to you in particular, or any other person in particular.
What the GPL requires is that he must have the freedom to distribute a copy to you if he wishes to. Once the copyright holder does distribute a copy program to someone, that someone can then redistribute the program to you, or to anyone else, as he sees fit."
So, unless Microsoft Canada or certain law enforement agencies decided the give/sell you a copy of the (hypothetically GPL'd) application, you still wouldn't get a copy, yet it would still be freeware.
nothing more than an American KGB
Funny, because YOU are the one here who has demonstrated the skills required for such an entity. Fucking hypocrite. Another dumbass geek lost in the adult world, flailing about blindly.
How the hell did the Dept. of Homeland Security get involved with this? Are we really under attack by that many perverts? Isn't this really a job for our local police? And if crimes cross state lines (as in internet pornography), then bring in the FBI? (Canadian analogy with RCMP similar).
Homeland Security? SHEESH!
I think this could potentially be a subtle attempt by Microsoft to get people to associate the phrases "open source" and "child porn."
No, I mean it; don't hit that "+1 Funny" button yet. This is basic psychology, people. It's a variant of the Big Lie. All they have to do is present those two phrases together, over and over again, and people will eventually associate them to the point where if someone says "open source" the first thing that comes to mind is "child porn."
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
busted people creating this stuff = good
busting people who accidentally downloaded shit off kazaa/gnutella/etc = bad
why do I have a feeling this might end up doing more of the latter?
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
Will they ever port it to BSD?
Obviously, entities people dislike are suspected of having a hidden agenda when they suddently change behavior and do something they've historically opposed. When the spyware folks started making anti-spyware statements people were suspicious. Likewise when the anti-OSS folks start releasing OSS. This kind of suspicion is quite reasonable.
This doesn't mean that there isn't a "good" explanation -- just that people are skeptical.
In support of suspicion: Why is the US Dept. of Homeland Security involved in kiddy porn? Could there be some application beyond kiddy porn that might interest them?
It's a fairly common tactic to establish a precedent for a questionable tactic by using it against an unquestionable evil. I think that's what worries people about this.
Dewey
I wish /. had a "+1 bizarre reference" mod... :-)
(For those going "huh?", the answer's here.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So how is this any different than their shared source initiative?
-Turkey
Gee... I guess that couldn't be since the number of internet users has grown since 1996? Nah...
...but it doesn't stop the fact that child pornography, like everything else on the 'net is data. I got ISDN in '97, meaning in '96 I was on 33.6k modem. Trading a large image series would be a chore and take many hours. Not to mention most pictures back then were originally analog, and I don't many are stupid enough to go to the photoshop to have kp processed. Plus someone had to scan them.
It is manyfold.... more producers (simply by being more people), better technology (digicams) and faster speeds. And I wouldn't want to think about video in '96. DV -> XviD avi, and you got excellent video in "sharable" size. It is the same technology which lets you share your family photos and home video, just as them.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
no rabid religious right
Oh, yeah? Why do you think the Canadian police are so concerned about child pornography in the first place? It's because the Religious Right, spearheaded by the Conservative Party of Canada, which is kind of like the Republicans only less moderate, is operating a carefully engineered moral panic to keep the public worried about a virtually non-existant child rape epidemic. That way they can keep attention directed away from issues the Left would prefer to discuss, like environmental degradation, lack of funding for health care, and so on.
Dig a photo of a scary-looking convict out of the archives and put it on television, throw around the word "pedophilia" a lot, quote some statistics along the lines of "N Internet servers carry child pornography!" (because all servers that carry Usenet have one or two objectionable messages in their gigabytes of spool) and "M children are abducted every year!" (virtually all of them "abducted" by their own parents, after court custody battles, with no sex abuse involved, but we won't mention that)... and congratulations, you don't have to talk about social programs for another week.
I don't know about you but this one looks kinda fishy to me.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
If you are a law enforcement agency, 1 to 3 is also available to you...
If you want to work in CS for one of them, just regularly check jobs.gc.ca for jobs open to the public, and look for those CS opportunities at the RCMP, CSIS, CSE, etc.
Now I in no way condone child pornography, but producing statistics w/o context for comparison is ridiculous:
"The FBI has seen a 2,000 percent increase in the number of child pornography images on the Internet since 1996"
What's the percentage increase in non-child porn on the internet since 1996? The percentage increase in pictures period? 2,000 percent seems like it could be a lower bound, but who really knows?
That quote makes it sound like the world is under a deluge of child porn, when in fact one could argue that the internet is just getting bigger.
They've got the source code, right? What keeps them from altering it a little bit and using it to track people who might be buying bomb-making material? Or people who might be running prostitution rings? Or drugs? Or anarchists?
The software doesn't search for images. From the article, it's essentially a groupware law-enforcement collaboration tool. Why stop at child porn?
If we didn't have a "big eye" before, we will shortly.
The ______ Agenda
Entry Number 1, Mr Michael Jac...
Jefferson! Jefferson.
That's just ignorant.
Blaze a trail to the New World
But if the program was indeed under an open-source license, then any member of that group could make the binary and source available to the general public - and what's more, it wouldn't be a "leak" or anything, it would be something that's perfectly within their rights.
Considering M$ seems to have stated that they purposefully want to keep the technology secret in order to give the "good guys" an advantage, I doubt it's under any open-source or free license - in fact, considering this goal, it's probably pretty much safe to say that it will NOT be.
However, there is another question that I haven't seen anyone ask so far. What does M$ get out of this? They are a company, so ultimately, what they want to do is make money - even more so since they got shareholder value to worry about. So... do they plan on screwing police departments using this over in the future in some way? Or do they just want the free advertising value (hoping for a "ooh, look at those guys, they help track down child porn for free, what a noble cause, I will buy M$ Office now to support them" effect)? Do they just want to be on "good terms" with law enforcement people/governments for the future?
I don't know. The only thing I *do* know is that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and while I don't blame M$ for (ultimately) wanting to make money, if I was a decision maker in a law enforcement agency, I'd certainly wonder what exactly *they* hope to get out of this whole thing.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Or: Microsoft found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour in child porn industry
How did Microsoft Canada help? Unless things have changed drastically in the last little while, Micrsoft Canada does not have any developers.
Adventure City Tours
Looks like the only problem here is that the MSNBC article referred to the software as "open source." Since they're the only article I can find that calls it that, it seems like they're trying to confuse "no-cost" with open source (and OpenSource).
I find it interesting a company found guilty by the DOJ of the USA is involved in helping anyone but themselves. Its facinating that M$ is doing this 'good deed'. Yes, it is good to bust folks that commit crimes, much like the DOJ did to M$ regarding its anti-trust behaviour over much of the past 15 years. I just hope, that Canada isn't getting free governmental licenses from M$ for cooperating. Wonder when the DOJ is going to forget about the big fish, and start cooperating with what they called effectively the devil to bust pedophiles and child porn rings. I give the DOJ maybe 6 months to be in bed with M$ on this one. The cookies and milk await the 'kids' in PR at the DOJ.
--- Old Time NeXThead
could it be turned around to search for child porn or to hide from the trackers?
actually, it's from "Plan 9 from Outer Space"
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I must be the only person in the world who doesn't care about kiddie porn. The making yes, but a collection of bytes, no.
Note: posted anonymously. Think about that.
Having said that, where can I download the 0day, this thing could be useful!
It's not unexpected, of course, since by releasing the code to the general public, Microsoft would be acknowledging the idea that you can still have a secure system if the code is publicly available.
This isn't a security system, so there's no way that publishing the code could improve its security. I see a legitimate argument that keeping it secret improves its effectiveness, though. If child pornographers know exactly what types of information it can use to correlate different clues, then they can also take steps to avoid leaving those particular footprints. Eventually, they'll find out, because lots of details will come out in the process of prosecuting the ones that are caught. In the meantime, it makes sense to keep the details as quiet as possible.
I suspect it's open source in the sense that police organizations who use it have the source and can hire programmers to improve it. Maybe there's even some on-line forum accessible to all the users so that the patches can be submitted back and incorporated in true open source style. That would be an excellent way to ensure the code maintains is effectiveness as child pornographers get smarter and police find new ways of tracking them down.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Hey , I always laugh my pants of when I read anything from the Etats-Unians declaring us unamerican.
:
...
...
...
...
...
... and making it availaible to the world.
1) Your the Etats-Unians your contry is Called United states " OF America "
We are CANADA
C ourageous
A mericans
N obles
A mericans
D edfenders of
A mericas
Where not "of" Like you where it triple time
We did not cowardly stayed home when both world war started.
What you fail to see is that its Microsoft "Canada" who is offering the solution and not Microsoft World or US.
Last time I looked there whas even more child pornography in the US then everywhere else on the planet. Might be a good idea for it to be used in your country too
Yes Civil liberty whas invented in the US , thats why Black used to hide and run to Canada
The US won WW1 and WW2 when they where not even there from the start
The Etats-Unians stole there country to avoid paying taxes and they are supposed to be righteous and free people
Dont worry next week , or next month , or next year The white house , Your current leader and Homeland security are going to be shouting loud and clear how they invented a solution to catch pornchild maker
Whereas you are a regular moron.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Microsoft Works
...
...)
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Access
Funny, all I associate Microsoft with is "Obscure Error" and "Impossible to Uninstall"
(that said, it hasn't really worked for GNU/Linux either
I saw some of the code and noticed this line in it: ...if (c_email_addr != 'wgates@microsoft.com') then
{ f_snitch_to_cops(c_email_addr); }...
Not trying to troll, but say I wrote some software {which I have} and licenced it for distribution in source code form only {which it is} -- does that mean it is not properly Open Source?
Would it make a difference if the software was written in an interpreted language {which it is} and thus did not have a compiled binary form?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Behold the latest m$ ad!
:(
Many people will "remember" M$ being "good" for fighting child porn, after reading this article, the "open source" note is extremely briljant of those M$ maketing guy's...
I guess I will always question their motive (which I think is $ )
If it is what I think it is then M$ is even more evil than I ever imagened, promoting their company name over these childrens back
Microsoft is a very competitive and aggressive commercial entity. They don't do anything just because it's the right thing to do. They are always looking for the angle that makes them money. In this case, they hope good karma cancels bad. It's a lot like saying robbing banks is OK if you do good with the money.
Another example is Bill Gates' charity work. While nobody can argue against the good it's done, did you know that Bill Gates' father runs the charity? How much do you think his salary is?
Thats why I called Open source bullshit , history is full of Open Source license having there source closed ...
...
BSD
Solaris
Unix
etc
GPL is what I like , its real Open Source , it come with all the detail you asked and it come with its own big and loud army of defenders.
Bill Gates one saving grace may be his philanthropic efforts.
Are their any great examples of philanthropy in the open source community?
With OSS everyone whom you give the code is allowed (but not required) to distribute it further. So keeping an OSS program inside a small group cannot be enforced, it will only work if all members of the group have actually the desire not to distribute further.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The Conservatives of Canada are MORE moderate than the Republicans. Well, assuming that you have a normal view of moderate. They support universal health care, which is not on the Republican platform. Not to defend Steven Harper, "Doris" Day and their crowd or anything, personally I vote Green, but I would like to say Peter McKay (MP from Nova Scotia) would be a black sheep at the Republican convention.
Since it links three databases, would I have to read the rest of the article to assume that the good PR is paid for with SQLServer sales?
By "adults", I'm guessing you don't mean you or your precious bodily fluids.
Only on /. can you find people saying Microsoft shouldn't write kiddie-porn-busting software because a) it's not really open source and b) it's an invasion of privacy.
There's a difference between a right to privacy and a right not to incriminate yourself... honest people have the first, scum who should be shot on sight have the second... guess which group this software is supposed to target?
In my firefox RSS bookmarks, this story has the title "Microsoft Writes Open Source Porn Child..." Was it intended?
The whole reason they're doing this is VERY simple.
Release a tool that does some huge good - i.e. Busting child porn purveyors.
Make it open source, so the criminals can read the code.
The criminals can see how they're getting caught, and adapt.
Microsoft then proves that Open Source is evil, because it lets criminals get away.
All they did was find a limited-case example where releasing the code might be harmful, and implement it. This will be thoroughly epic FUD a year from now.
Get ready for it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I doubt an opposition party will be spearheading too many distractions right now, especially with juicy Liberal corruption news from Quebec.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Microsfot was asked to. "The effort began when an exasperated Toronto police detective made a shot-in-the-dark e-mail plea to Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Last year, the Toronto Police Department seized more than two million child pornography images, according to Paula Knight, a spokeswoman for Microsoft Canada." full article : http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0028602.cf m
Are you afraid that someone is going to track down your Super-Private online goings-on and share your secret with others? For example... is Safeway (grocery chain) going to track down all your online purchases of ass ailment treatments, and then, in their store, announce over the loud speaker, John Doe, We're currently featuring 10 cents off Assinol Plus with the purchase of Roidwipes2000? No. Could they? Perhaps. Would they? No. Their legal department would forbid it, for fear of frivolous lawsuits such as the one you'd hit them with 10 minutes later.
Nit #1. I wouldn't call that lawsuit frivilous. I think people have a pretty good expectation of not being made a spectacle of in the middle of a store due to medical conditions.
Nit #2. The Constitution does not define the rights we have. Just because it's not explicitly stated in the Constitution means absolutely nothing at all.
There are, however, reasonble limits to invasion and protection of privacy. I fear that unreasonable people are taking control of what those limits are, though.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
You know, the reason I love this site is because someone can post up an article about the fight against child porn, and all of the horriffic parts of it, and how morally good a program is, and in one news article just barely mention open source and the first wave of replies is about Microsoft making open source, and not even mentioning the main focus of the news article. Nowhere else would have done that, and I think that's awesome.
lus3r:= whois(userdoman)
case lus3r
microsoft.com: execute goodguys
apple.com: execute sick-em
redhat.com: execute sick-em
*torvald*: execute kill-em
end case
sub sick-em
execute upload michael_jackson_home_movies
execute call_Homeland_security
end sub
sub kill-em
execute upload gates_kids_home_movies
execute call_interpol
end sub
sub goodguys
execute grant_more_stock_options
execute ballmer_happy_dance
end sub
Refer to the article on slashdot the other day about MSFT..
/. writes it up with some smarmy "I guess Bill is too busy helping those brown people" quip. I read that as a paraphrase of "Bill Gates is a dirty nigger lover".
Bill Gates has pledged 90+% of his net worth, and has stated it is his personal mission to stop AIDS.
They're too fucking retarded to mentally seperate a man from a corporation, and too immature to discuss any sort of issue without lame ass ad-hominem attacks.
I mean, I think the linux community is full of dipshits and arrogant assholes. Yet, I don't run around posting "Linus Trovalds is a nigger lover"
What, exactly, have you done to help your fellow man, Taco? Not a fucking thing.
Then of course, there's the blatant racism against Indians. I guess they have to blame someone for being unemployed, rather than looking in a mirror and realizing they have no jobs because we have no tangible computer skills.
I've pretty much abandoned the "geek community". Nobody discusses technology here anymore. Slashdot is nothing but lame ass "We hate Bush, we hate Gates, we hate Blah blah blah" rants.
Frankly, I'd love to see a discussion of how this software works, what it's shortcomings are, what it's strengths are. I won't get that here. Once upon a time I did. I keep coming back hoping it'll once again be a "news for nerds" site.
The community here can't discuss anything computer-related on a technical level. The average slashdotter is not a programmer, the average slashdotter is an "IT guy" who reboots your computer, or crawls under your desk to plug in the Cat 5, or he's on the other end of the phone reading through some scripted troubleshooting measures, and that's where his skills end.
Anyhow, waste some more mod points on me.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Anyone who suddenly applauds Microsoft because of their RANDOM stance on battling Kiddie Porn is a sheep.
Why is it that the second anyone brings CHILDREN into the fray, they are painted as a saint? Oh, so Microsoft is okay now because they "care about the children"? Right.
You're just as bad for falling for it...
It's pretty sad when someone has to resort to "think about the children!" in order to garner attention. As if kiddie porn is this epidemic that's WAY out of control.
Hey, how about releasing an OSS application to stop the spread of worms and viruses that plague windows users? Oh wait, that's anti-virus software and you can make a profit on that... so nevermind.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Think COST REDUCTION! Microsoft probably ran a business case on this and determined that selling it would not win points or make money. So they whip up something and then release it into the wild where a million OSS zealots will maintain it... for FREE! Microsoft can walk away from any further responsibilities to bugfix, update, yet still claim that they're helping the cause. In my business the cost of development is nothing compared to the costs of ongoing maintenance and support.
"What does MS need to do to earn a thank you from all the nay-sayers"
Make it open source and give us a downloadable link.
That way, we can port it to Linux where it can do some real good. You see, Windows is such a poor platform, that I'm afraid that unless we run it on a secure platform (such as Linux), it will let a lot of evil child pornographers escape.
So I suppose you are for letting child pornographers escape. Open source people just want to catch all the child porno people.
You must be sick to not want the same thing.
Microsoft has no problem open sourcing software that isn't going to make them money it seems.
So I would be willing to guess that they feel open sourcing software makes it profitless.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Do you pay any attention at all to Canadian politics? The Conservative party of Canada may not like gay marriage, but they're not anywhere close to being as right-wing as the Republicans.
The Conservatives are still hurting after the merger with the Alliance party because Stockwell Day and his followers were a bit wacked... much closer to the Republicans with his 6500 year-old Earth and "dinosaurs walked with humans" comments. But as you might notice, the Conservatives are almost never elected to office.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
maybe this was why
Child pornography is not a technological problem. It is a social problem and can only be dealt with on a social front.
..... now, if people actually are abusing children, that should be punished. {Bathtime and holiday snaps, which do not involve abuse, shouldn't.} As should attempting to emulate in real life certain things seen in pictures. But those things already are illegal. And most child abuse is perpetrated by a family member or friend, not by random strangers.
And, frankly, I don't give a flying toss about people looking at pictures. If some sicko wants to get his filthy little rocks off, I'd far, far rather he did so into a box of Kleenex than with any kid of mine. {Plus, he would then be safely out of commission for a few hours.} It's just a picture, for crying out loud -- the damage {if there was any damage -- many fairly innocuous pictures of kids in the bath, or on the beach, nowadays would be considered "child porn"} is long since done. The suffering does not increase every time someone looks at a picture.
Taking the pictures is a different matter
But in these times, the New Dark Ages, child pornography has become the new witchcraft. And there isn't going to be any kind of rational debate anytime soon.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Microsoft employee arrested for writing very sophisticated childporn media search engine.
It is believed that Mr Steve.B planned to release the kiddyporn search application "Jack_son" as opensource in an attempt to discredit the FOSS community.
It is still uncertain what MS will do with the application.
I think this is one big misunderstanding. In the police & news world "Open Source" has a different meaning. It is used for information from publicly available sources like newspapers or the internet.
This is a programm to search Open Sources (websites) for information regarding kiddyporn, and links it together.
Deep inside my brain keeps yelling that this is just a Microsoft trick to create an association between "Open Source" and "Child Pornograpy".
Well, if the tool could be used to track a KP peddler I'm sure it would be just as useful in certain ways for tracking "terrorists." How about if a picture with a 'target' is being passed around online, intercept picture and analyse senders, recipients, etc...
David Hemler, president of Microsoft Canada, said Internet pornographers were computer savvy, so the program would put law enforcement officials "on the same level as the bad guys."
Yeah, And MS above us all...
...like this is going to work. Think about it... Microsoft AND Canadians?! Riiiiiiiight. Now where'd I save new file I just downloaded?
Laziness, check. Impatience, check. Hubris, double check!
Actually, the RCMP tried to use it but it kept blue screening and downloading updates to the offender's computers.
Seriously though, can you think of anything scarier than evidence gathered using a MS product being used in court as evidence against you? *shiver*
Microsoft obviously has significant experience in finding kiddie-porn. I'm sure their developers were eager to submit to this project. Not sure how they managed to get it released as OSS, though - isn't that more evil than child abuse?
... and then they built the supercollider.
There is no "show". In my opine, the problem is exactly the fact that so many are content to sit on their arse, and watch frigging television.
Want a superhero? Someone to fight for your rights? I actually know where to find one!
Go to your nearest mirror, and take a close look. (Cape is optional.) Hmmm, now who would expect that ugly mug to be the face of a freedom fighter?
The way it works is, you, and every other mothers son has to stand up, put down the budweiser or moosehead, turn off the damn glowing boxen, and march your self down to the local city hall, or other local government office and make a damn pest of yourself, by actually being involved with what goes on.
I will lay odds that 99.5% of slashdot readers, for all their bullshit political raving, don't actually _do_ anything. (A simple test, do your city councilmen know your face and name?)
My city council sure as hell does not like to see my face in any council meeting, and they all certainly know my name, because they know that I am ever ready to challenge any bullshit they routinely try to pull. I have caused overly restrictive ordinance changes to be sent back to committee, for extreme modification, because they knew that I would take it to the voters for referendum. To quote the city manager... "That's the last thing we want."
So, If the will of the voters is the last thing they want, and ONE PERSON can cause this to go back for a more resonable approach to the problem, then how many freedoms have been lost in this country because people would rather sit home watching the damn glowing box than watching their local government in action, and standing up to them to keep the freedom destroyers in check.... Same in the state and federal level.
Look, these guys are mostly cowards... Most of them will fold under public scrutiny and political pressure...
But, if it appears that there is little or no resistance, then many will do whatever is expediant, and the hell with your freedoms.
Freedoms are usually not won in small increments, but they are lost or kept that way.
So, to all the readers. Don't bitch about it on slash-dot only. Get your butt involved in local, state and federal politics.
I will yeild the soap box to the next person now...
NOW, what did I do with that beer?
...giving you a free needle to go with your heroin?
Unless I misunderstood, they give you the tool for free, but the required OS, the required SQL server and other stuff is not included.
It's certainly more useful than minesweeper, but I'm sure the ROI is still positive. If it weren't one of those "think of the chiiiiiildren" topics, it wouldn't even be news.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The article was a little light on the exact details of what this software actually does but even so I'm wondering how the developers and QA people tested this software. I'm sure it had to run against live chat rooms and real people. Can you imagine being a QA tester and getting sent to vefiry that an online chat actually contained child porn discussions? Talk about creepy work.
" they just have to choose not to redistribute"
This is "open source", we just choose not to distribute the source.
Ummmm..
That's their right. But just saying "open source" doesn't make it open source.
If Microsoft Said "Office 2003 is FREE". And they said "Its free, you just have to pay $500 to use it", then its not free.
Just saying something doesn't make it so. MS Windows is open source because if you sign agreements you can get the source. Right?
OK let's look through it. Microsoft make a tool to find child porn and you want to make it available to everyone?!
Honeypots I hear you say? But it's open source...
Basically the tool could be seriously misused, and is best in only the hands of law enforcements agencies.
"I can opensource a project of mine and supply the binary and code to my one sole customer, it would still be open source."
No it wouldn't. You would simply have signed a license to supply source.
Our company just paid $1M for a software system and we negotiated the right to the source code.
IT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE.
It is proprietary. Its not "open" just because you sell give the source code to one person. By that definition, every piece of software sold today is "open source".
You're the only person making such a broad claim.
Did anyone ever think about this...? I think that almost all the child-porn that is commonly seen on the internet today is a product of the U.S. government, on some level or another. The real child-porn people are probably so deeply hidden, that it is not right to think that they are just brodcasting it all over the net the way it is. Perhaps Microsoft and the Canadian government are going to try to prove this? I would like to see the results, but surely the only result we'll see is that of Microsoft suddenly gaining power.
We all dance, we all sing.
-The Streets
Now that microsoft has discovered how to decode leet speak ahref=http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/chi ldren/kidtalk.mspx/http://www.microsoft.com/athome /security/children/kidtalk.mspx/> it can be used to search for all the child pr0n also
GAH STUPID URL's DO NOT WORK!
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
"Children are bought and sold, gang-raped, and forced to have sex with each other."
I don't think this happens.
Do you have any picture to prove it?
Twenty years ago perl guy Larry Wall wrote an open-source program called rn which is primarily used to collect evidence in child pornography cases.
Wait a minute...WHAT?!
That was last week.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
My thoughts exactly, and I'm hardly a conspiracy nut. Mark our words well: this is designed to disparage FOSS.
.nosig
Ok, is this just a database, or does it do more? Such as identify images? Or how about tracking what pc they came from or what camera they were taken with?
Details were pretty slim.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Images that I can never forget."
Sounds like it made an impression, but in the wrong kind of way.
You're very impressionable aren't you.
Are you filled with self-loathing when you look at those pictures? What do you think you're repressing.
If I were in charge, you'd already be locked up, because I think the reason you saw those pictures had nothing to do with this "fictional computer" y ou worked on.
Sicko.
Then again, maybe its apache.
I mean, what are the stats on these things? Then again, maybe I'd rather not know.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"I missed the part of the 1st Amendment that gave people the right to violate and abuse children."
I missed the part where it prohibits people from talking rationally about a subject.
I also missed the part where as soon as you say "its for the children", you automatically get the moral high ground.
There's a lot of parts missing here.
Yes, everything you're saying is probably true and correct.
But its NOT FUCKING OPEN SOURCE.
Why can't people just say "Its useful, but not open source".
My statement is dead-on correct. Why is it hard for toffee brained people to just say it?
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
A company with very deep pockets taking a philanthropic approach to helping police departments who are ill equipped to deal with this. Yea Microsoft.
That was one of the best posts I have read on Slashdot, ever. Nail on the head, man.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
CBC's The Current (a daily show on CBC Radio) had a segment on this on March 31st.
. html
.ram file for segment 1 is here:1 thecurrent_sec1.ram
The show is in their archive available here:
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2005/200503/20050331
A link to the
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/media/200503/2005033
The segments in the archive are in Real Audio format. Segment 1 is the part that has the story on CETS and starts about 2:50 into the file.
From the archive page:
Microsoft Talk Tape
It's a subject most of us find too repulsive to even contemplate--child pornography. The images are horrific and disturbing. And for law enforcement officials working to track down child pornographers and the pedophiles who keep them in business, trying to eliminate every one of these images from the internet is like bailing out a flooding ocean liner with a teaspoon.
But next week a tireless group of people will unveil a new weapon in the fight against this scourge. And it's the product of an unlikely alliance between frustrated cops and some tireless computer geeks from Microsoft.
We're talking about a program called the "Child Exploitation Tracking System" and it was developed right here in Canada by a special team of police officers working with programmers to build a better child pornographer trap.
Julian Sher is an investigative journalist and author, who is working on a new book about child pornography. He's had exclusive access to this remarkable technology and to the story of how it all came about.
*** We should warn you that some of the descriptions in this item are graphic.
If parents or other listeners want to learn more about the dangers of the Internet and what you can do to protect and educate your children, Microsoft and other partners have developed a web site called Bewebaware.ca.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Can the fact that Microsoft is involved with a project totally negate the fact that it's fighting crime and Open Source.
Let's exchange Microsoft with say... The BSD Project.
Headline: "The BSD Team releases Open Source tool to help fight Child Porn"
Slashdot: "Oh this is the greatest thing in the world! Hugz and kisses!", then then many lengthy 'me too' posts on how Open Source really, really rules and this is the kind of stuff that will put OS on the map.
Some Slashdot users: "In Soviet Russia, child porn fights you!"
That's the theory, then there's the reality. Police and prosecutors have agendas, the average person can't afford a decent defense and public defenders are grossly overworked, there's immense social stigma associated with the mere whiff of involvement, etc.
Then there's the current craze for overcharging. Hit them with dozens of charges so they'll plea bargain down to what you _might_ have been able to get if the case went to trial. The innocent will agree to it because the alternative could be life in prison without parole, the prosecutor loves it because it bumps up their kill rate while freeing them to pursue other cases. Even better, part of a plea bargain is a surrender of all rights to appeal the conviction!
If you want to see a horrid example of this run amuck, look at the Weenachee, Washington child abuse cases. According to the police (a single officer, Lt. Perez, iirc), and the prosecutor a 30+ child abuse ring was uncovered and convicted.
If you listen to the critics, you'll learn that almost everyone charged was poor, hispanic, and accepted a plea bargain because they couldn't afford a defense. They all continue to maintain their innocence. The only couple to get off where rich and white and they took the case to trial. (The critics also point out that Perez appeared to have used improper interrogation techniques for young children and was far more likely to have implanted false memories than to have uncovered true ones. E.g., iirc he had many of his victims live with him while the child's parents were under investigation! He would (subconsciously?) reward them with ice cream and other treats when they were cooperative.)
If you listen to the other courts the city really screwed up and owes millions in dollars in damages. The city is appealing because the judgement will bankrupt the town.
Unfortunately the real victims are the 30+ people convicted of these crimes. The subsequent court rulings introduce massive doubts about the prior convictions and most people could get a new trial. (Then the DA would probably decline to prosecute, freeing them without an admission of wrongdoing on either side.) But they're stuck in prison for 5, 10 or even 20 years because they accepted plea bargains and lost their right of appeal. Their only hope may be a pardon from the governor - and mass pardons for convicted child molesters (regardless of circumstances) is political suicide.
So tell me again how the system bends over backwards to protect the innocence and the falsely accused have nothing to fear.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
So what about the p2p child porn? how does this stop that? goto ANY P2p network and you will find every porn file named.
14 yr old girl (pussy cunt wank creampie lolita underage illegal incest tits ass fuck fucked screwed)
over and over. I doubt all of these will be child porn (seems highly unlikely, but it only takes a missed click and lets face it we've all done it before and you've requested the file from someone else which means you may or may not have wanted it, but are grouns for investigation), but their file names alone are enough to get you watched and lets face it, in this modern day and age even a slight check up is enough fo fuck you over for life.
Can't fly, jobs become MUCH harder, every chance someone gets they will stop you "just incase". If you goto an innocent porn website which redirects you to one for underage girls (and yes I've seen this several times, it's distrubing but true) then you're pretty much fucked.
This software cannot tell if you wanted or got tricked to goto a place like this, or miss clicked something and in this age of "STFU you're comming with me like it or not you terrorist", this isn't a good thing to have..
I like muppets.
Bush? Jesus? Obvious trolling. But you raise an interesting point.
If someone is raped, and the rapist takes pictures for his own gratification, is there a 1st amendment right to view and distribute those pictures? I would say not. It's not even legal for legitimate journalists to name rape victims, much less should it be legal for sick people, sorry (being illogical again), for people to further humiliate the victims by distributing images of the crime.
Having pictures of rape (of adults or children) distributed is clearly harmful to the victim. How can this harm be justified on the grounds of free speech? By definition, there's no freedom in rape.
Microsoft often confuses free Binaries with open source. It is not like the press would now the diff and know what questions to ask.
int main()
{
if (strcmp(getosname,"linux") == 0)
smtp_send(localcop@police.com,
"User into kiddie porn:Alert",
getemailaddress());
sendtopress("Linux users are kiddy fiddlers");
return (0);
}
I hadn't had my coffee yet and first read this as "Microsoft Writes Open Source Child Porn Cluster" and thought they must really be going out of their way to discredit OSS now. Heh heh "Join the Microsoft Open Source Kiddie Porn Ring!" Yow! Well I guess I'd best go make my coffee now...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What does MS need to do to earn a thank you from all the nay-sayers?
You're not even trying. A nuke in Redmond?
Personally though, since I object to loss of life, I'd suggest it could just apologize for being evil rather than cleanly competitive, and reform itself.
For that matter, couldn't the author of Lolita be held up in prison for this type of law, since his work is a fictional account of a man's romance with a child... This is indeed quite complex...
They just want to associate "open source" with "child porn".
There's the file traders. They'd just downloading, and I agree it doesn't really matter if it's real child porn or fake child porn. Locating people who download real child porn isn't as important as locating where they got it from.
That said, I'd leave it illegal, with the 'out' that if you 'accidently' downloaded real child porn, and you cooperate with the police in tracing it, you don't go to jail or publically outed. You have to delete it all, and pay a large fine, which goes to the child.
Then you get to the two types of people who produce it:
Amateurs who do it to kids they know. These can, and should be tracked down. They're easier to tracking down than normal child abuse, because, duh, they took pictures of it.
In fact, that's how I'd approach that. I'd make a database of the images (Well, the faces.) and whenever child abuse is reported, run the kid's face! And any other kids nearby! (Obviously, no record should be kept of the kids that are misses.) Let's use those facial recognization programs for something that isn't morally questionable, for once.
And there's the professionals, who probably started out amateurs or traders, and discovered there was money it. These are much harder to track down. They kidnap and buy children, and while it might be useful to run missing children through the face database above, it doesn't really help locate them.
However, the professionals, unlike the amateurs, sell the stuff, and thus can't be posting it anonymously on Usenet. They have to have a contact channel. Which is where the first set of people come in.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I wonder what they're going to do when virtual child porn becomes indistinguishable from real child porn? Arrest people for thought-crimes? Lord knows this software isn't going to help them distinguish between the two.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
.li7h j
Where IS this software? WHAT exacvtly does it do? I want to take it and adapt it so Brazilian police can use it too. Well? Where is the download link? Tha article is nothing but meaningless PR blahblah.
OSS my ass.
This is really shifty press association by M$ with kiddie porn. Sort like Edison did to Tesla with the electric chair.
But the system only knows what the investigating agencies put into it, and there's no indication of any kind of massive effort to connect it to other databases, or to put information about everyone in it. Such efforts would likely be counterproductive, since the volume of information would overwhelm the system's ability to cross-check everything.
The problem with information(data), is that it can be very easily re-purposed, disseminated, aggregated, and combined with other sources. It happens all the time...this is why the ChoicePoint fiasco was such a mess. An an even bigger problem faces the people who are supposedly represented by this information - if the data are in error, or if incorrect inferences are made, dealing with the fallout can easily become a major life event, where it requires proving that you DIDN'T do something, or that you WEREN'T intending to do something. It gets even worse- You have no idea where it will end up, who will be looking at it, and for what purpose.
I'm not a fan of criminal activity, but I do like the notion of freedom - including the freedom to be left alone. They might catch a few offenders with this technology, but people aren't stupid- they'll find ways around it. This, of course, will render the technology obsolete for this intended purpose, but it could easily remain in place for other purposes.
You can say:
"Yes, they released _ONE_ OSS app. But remember: They have an agenda."
You all are missing the point. There are *LOTS* of companies in this space, and now their sales pitch - altruistic or no - is completely devalued thanks to the good old "Does Microsoft have a solution for this?" question. You all know how it works when the answer is anywhere close to "Well yes, but..."
The criminals can see how they're getting caught, and adapt.
Just as a hacker can crack into OpenSSL public key encryption just because it's open source.
Yeah, right...
How is child porn a matter of national security?
if its open source, where is the source?
is this a program only availible as "open" if you qualify, and is that really open?
You negotiated the right to view/modify the source perhaps. But you have no right to redistribute it. That's the difference.
Take this example. A company hires a software team to develop an inventory tracking system for their specific needs. The team charges them less if it's open source b/c they can use all the GPL libraries, so they say that's fine. They buy the product and the code, and then they never distribute it. Why would they want to distribute it? Now maybe the team would want to distribute it, but who would want it? It's entirely customized to the customer's particular needs, and they realize it's not a good general purpose solution to inventory tracking, so they never distribute it either. It is still open source though, because of the license. That's what makes it open source, not the re-distributing itself.
IMHO, use of a tool like this should require probable cause and a warrant from a judge. Would you want the police digging through your personal file cabinet, just to see if there's any information on anything you did that you shouldn't have?
Aren't the harmless activities people partake in in the privacy of their own home just awful? Theese sickos should be burned at the steak!
A TON. From giant Sloan Sky Survey Databases, to goofey little plugins for Paint Shop Pro written in haskell.
1. This is a semi-interesting non-trival serious social problem, which software and cheap computing power can help tackle.
2. How big is the market for automated child porn detection? Maybe a million dollars?
"is there a 1st amendment right to view and distribute those pictures? "
Only if the photographer gets a model release.
That's the law.
Fight abuse, not abusable tools.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
....is thinking about how Microsoft had to test this software...
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
What you're saying is absolutely correct.
But this isn't what's being claimed here. The trolling is taking place simply because someone is wrongly claiming this piece of software from MS is "open source".
And its open source because AP got "open standards" confused with "open source".
The bottom line is that Open Source isn't open just because the source code is shared, its open because one or all parties can freely distribute the source without consulting the other.
So if the Ottowa constable wants to release the source of this product, they can do it without asking for MS's permission. I'm not saying that's good or bad or desirable. But that's *not* the case here.
Its not open source just because MS gave a copy of the source to the police.
This, of course, will render the technology obsolete for this intended purpose
Just as fingerprints have been rendered obsolete now that criminals know about them?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
When you say that "silence" is not true, what do you mean? That they were against it or for it?
A simple web search tells me that many people think that Pius XII was an anti-semite.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
I don't understand your point. Fingerprints are what they are. They don't require or entail constant monitoring, surveilance, or profiling. You can't watch someone with a fingerprint, nor can you use it to infer the potential of certain behavior. There are many circumvention devices - gloves being the most obvious. With my own fingerprints, I am in complete control - if I don't leave any, there are none for you to look at. Even if I did happen to leave fingerprints behind, if I haven't done anything that gives you (a government agent) probable cause to look at them, you have no business looking at them.
You could make the same argument: don't do anything that would leave a trail, since all this information being tracked by the government are but mere digital fingerprints. But if that's the case, I'd argue that I'm not living in a free society. The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution exists for a reason, you know.
many of the posts on this thread seem to stating this, in a nutshell: "yes this is a good thing but hey they are just trying to make more money through positive PR". really? if you choose to live in any degree of capitalist society you accept this. this is the best you can hope for.
/. crowd can't stand it, bill gates is extremelely philanthropic ...
0 04gates.html)
.. but that does not dimish the good things that happen as a result of the cash.
as much as the
"Forbes calculates that Gates has given 37% of his wealth--more than $28 billion--to charitable causes, largely via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (By contrast, add up the donations made by billionaires Warren Buffett, Paul Allen, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison and Steve Ballmer and you get about $2.55 billion--not even the equivalent of a decent tip on a $28-billion tab.)
(source: http://forbes.com/philanthropy/2004/10/04/cz_ec_1
sure, he gets tax breaks, he gets PR
I don't understand your point.
The point is that just because criminals understand that police use a tool, the tool doesn't suddenly become worthless to catch criminals.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First amendment, bah! Just apply the second amendment to child molesters. It's amazing how there's no real repeat offenders after skilled application of second amendment rights. :)
Wish I was trusted with mod points for ya.
The problem with information (data), is that it can be very easily re-purposed, disseminated, aggregated, and combined with other sources. It happens all the time...
Having worked for law enforcement, I'm nervous about any aggregation of data in an era where politically hot issues so easily distort the quaint ol' concept of "innocent until proven guilty". Highly visible lists and uberdatabases making the news in recent years may serve to illustrate the difficulty of clearing one's name.
Certainly the intended purpose of many of these projects is laudable. But the unintended consequences of attempting to connect diverse "dots" can pose a threat that, well, doesn't seem to be acknowledged by many here... not to mention those in positions of power who are trusted to mitigate such risks.
<grrr>
That's correct. But you're overlooking the real problem here. The tool is being used to "catch criminals" - in other words there is a preponderance that people are doing something illegal. "We'll assume that anyone has the potential to commit a crime, so we'll watch everyone, and catch those that do." This is entirely backward.
The point is that just because criminals understand that police use a tool, the tool doesn't suddenly become worthless to catch criminals.
No, but since they're now tracking porn to the camera that produced it, I'm never buying a used digital camera, and feel sorry for those who buy one from the wrong guy.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Like all sane people in Europe, the Pope and other Church leaders opposed the Nazis and the Holocaust, but were afraid to speak publicly since they would be killed. Quite understandable, I think, even if it was the wrong thing to do. However, during the German occupation of Rome, the pope was credited with saving several thousand Jews by hiding them inside the Vatican. People tend to ignore that, since it's so much easier and more popular to criticize the Church.
M$ seem to mean well; they're also working against phishing. Almost certainly this could be misused, but so can many useful things. I don't think they're as evil as they're protrayed to be.
:-)
But I still think Linux is better, and it's still fun to laugh at them
Did we read a different article? I read an article about a tool which tracks and manages information related to child pornography investigations, but you seem to be talking about something that monitors everyone.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If the customer is not free to redistribute it is not open source.
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
No, but since they're now tracking porn to the camera that produced it, I'm never buying a used digital camera.
Or you can just keep a record of when you bought it. In practice, you're not likely to need to do that, even. They need a lot more than just the camera to prosecutre you for a crime, especially if you can truthfully say "but someone else owned that camera".
And think: if they did come to you, and if you could help point them to the person you bought the camera from, you just might be instrumental in helping to prevent other kids from being abused. Sure, it would be an inconvenience to you, but wouldn't that be worth a little effort and discomfort on your part?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If our local government ever actually did much of significance to me. I live in a town of about 5000 permanent residents; the Town Council mostly just keeps things going, and do a good job of it, too. The roads aren't perfect, but we have a nice town. There are community events, even a street dance on Main Street every year. We don't have crime problems; there hasn't been a murder in years, and a car theft can make the front page. From my perspective, they've done a good job.
- What is an acceptable distance that the subjects hands must be from any sexually annotated area of the body?
- What about facial expressions, body language?
- At what point is clothing too tight/ too loose?
A whole industry has grown up around finding ways to circumvent such laws, as may be witnessed by a search for "no-nude" sites on the Internet. Some of the children involved in this niche are undoubtedly abused, others may not be, but that surely will depend on whom you ask. Rape and other obvious physical abuse of children or adults is obviously a crime and no one needs to be told how to define it. That is not the case for crimes of morality. Laws that attempt to prevent them are bound to fail, and lead to incidents like a mother being arrested for spanking her child in a grocery store. Whose morality would be used as the basis for such laws in the first place? The only answer is for parents to continue to take responsibility for their children, and for guardians to be appointed for those children who don't have parents. I'm sorry, but I don't think that there's a better solution.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Wasn't Twain, was Huck Finn, in the book by Mark Twain. There is a difference.
...link information such as credit card purchases, Internet chat room messages and arrest records.
This leaves may more questions than it does answers. Under what circumstances will they acquire the credit card information? Will they have it before they suspect someone, or will they acquire it because they suspect someone- because someone is actually under investigation? How are the chat messages acquired and under what circumstances? Is it an active process (requiring the involvement of an agent), or a passive one? Does it target a specific person, or is it a fishing expedition?
And how many pedos will tell the cops they bought it from someone else? With ebay, its not like you get a receipt or something beyond ebay's record of having bought something (and the auction itself disappears after a few months) beyond a few emails.
I'm sure you'll get a "Thats what they all say" as they toss you in the cop car. Maybe you'll be able to prove you didn't have the camera at the time, so it won't go to a nasty and public trial with your car being scratched up and people throwing rocks at your house while you're gone. You might even get your computers back, though general experience with seized equipment is that if anything is returned, its returned well broken.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The well meaning police stupidly have never heard of OSS, never thought that about expanding the system, gets no source code to modify the system (oh, it's expandable, you can modify config files), and essentially only provides very very basic database search tools. There isn't anything 'high-tech' involved here. It's standard database search technology circa. 1965. Their "Gee Whiz" fawning shows 1. their appreciation (as they had nothing before) and 2. their naivety in anything technical. Other people won't adopt this technology, as bare bones kids stuff is bare bones kids stuff. The software isn't adaptable to other compute platforms. It isn't able to do actual internet traces, it's just cheap-ass craptacular database search technology. Sure it's better than what they had (something is better than nothing), but kiddie-porn pushers have nothing to fear from this. That a police force uses the least reputable, most insecure compute platform for storing crimminal information, makes me question the entire organization. Do they use pop-guns? Do most of the officers have at least 3rd grade education? Were they drunk when they lept to Microsoft for a solution??? Do they realise they could have gotten better technology for less money? Some dumb-ass will say 'well they gave it to us for free' and I will reply "well they didn't give you all of it, and you could have gotten better for free (in more than one sense of the word).
This article is a shining example of FUD inspired by moral panic and PR managers willing to score by fighting "teh evul".
:)
pornographers who prey on children and sell their images via the Internet.
These are completely different folks. Those who prey on children are not pornographers, they want to make love, not pix. Real pornographers don't "prey", they simply run child model studios (in poor countries) and have kids come there voluntary and voluntary agree to earn some extra cash (by modelling nude, doing porn or prostituting, whatever they choose).
The FBI has seen a 2,000 percent increase in the number of child pornography images on the Internet since 1996
As opposed to what? Images of puppies that increased 10,000 percent since 1996. Or adult pornography images that probably increased 50,000 percent. The most misleading statistic. Evar!
Canadian police estimate that more than 100,000 Web sites contain images of child sexual abuse.
This is a lie, plain and simple (but the average person/reporter is too scared to check). There are NO websites with child porn, they are too easy to close. There used to be many 5-10 years ago, but today online distribution of child porn happens via FTP, email and P2P.
Experts say at least 95 percent of victims are abused by someone they know, either a relative or neighbor.
Some correct statement for a change. However, this casts some doubt on the usefulness of the program designed "to link information such as credit card purchases, Internet chat room messages and arrest records". It's not like the uncle Bob will be chatting with his niece in a public Internet chatroom and then pay her via a credit card for the sexual services.
Hemler said Microsoft committed $4 million toward the program and that the software would be available to any police force at no cost.
And was used to write off some profit to avoid taxes.
several suspected pornographers had already been arrested during testing of the new system. One man was arrested in Toronto last week, after a tip plugged into CETS linked with two previous reports on the suspect.
That's amazing! In other news, anti-terrorist software designed by Microsoft helped arrest several suspected terrorists, including a 90-year old quadriplegic, a 7-year old girl and a nun. That's exactly what we need - data-mining software to produce as many positives as possible, even though many of the results are likely to be randomly caused false positives.
investigating child pornography chat rooms and credit card purchases of the images
BTW, since when you could buy child pornography using your credit card? May be you can also use the same card to buy heroin and weaponised anthrax? The last time I checked, criminals tended to use more anonymous payment methods (such as Western Union, Paypal, various e-cash systems, etc.).
It doesn't add up. I am 90% sure that the whole article is a fabrication. The departments created to combat child porn need to create an illusion of working. The truth is that commercial distribution of child pornography is almost non-existent "The government had shellacked the competition; now law enforcement agencies were the sole reproducers and distributors of child pornography." (R. P. "Toby" Tyler, LAPD, 1990). And the non-commercial exchange doesn't involve "preying" on children, doesn't involve credit cards and arrest record. Just fire up KaZaA and type "preteen lolita porn" or something like that.
It needs to be said again and again - child porn scare is a new moral panic. The danger of child porn is miniscule. Child sexual abuse is rarely related to child pornography. Children have much bigger problems. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about an image of a child in sexual activity. Government needs a scarecrow. The bugaboo of chilf porn can be and is routinely used to limit your rights. If child porn didn't exist, it should have been invented.
There is a mostly informative article on child porn at Wikipedia.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Those were difficult times. Italy was an ally of Nazi Germany. The Vatican could have done more. There were some things that weren't right. John Paul II (RIP) actually apologized to all Jews for the ill deeds done against them in the past by the Vatican.
Clever signature text goes here.
The answers to your questions are really obvious. A subpeaona or a search warrant is required to obtain credit card records, unless someone (merchant or bank) opts to simply hand them over, which they won't normally (and shouldn't ever) do. Chat messages are easily recordable by anyone in the chat session. Getting them from the chat room operator later again requires court approval, or a cooperative ISP. How could it possibly not require an agent's involvement? Someone has to ask for the data and someone has to put it into the system. As for the targeting, well, that depends on how the data is acquired. Courts don't generally allow fishing expeditions. If one does, it's a problem to be fixed.
None of this requires any knowledge about this system, just a basic understanding of how police work is done. Which, fundamentally, is my point: this is simply a tool. It doesn't enable police to get any information they couldn't get before, it just helps them connect it more efficiently. Very similar to the AFIS automatic fingerprint matching system.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
What we really have here is a generalized tool to pry into people's lives. To keep the privacy advocates from screaming, we say, "It's for stopping child porn." Who can argue with that?
So, privacy advocates, I say, start screaming.
The Vatican actually hid 5000 of the Jewish faith within its walls during WWII. That's not to say that they shouldn't have done more. But it sure does make the issue less black and white.
...and Microsoft too!
David Hemler, president of Microsoft Canada, said Internet pornographers were computer savvy, so the program would put law enforcement officials "on the same level as the bad guys."
This is deranged. You can't just spend some money, build a program, and expect it to enhance your knowledge in a certain field.
Computers are just tools, nothing more. If you don't use the tool properly, it'll be just as much use to you as trying to find child pornographers by asking a spade.
...these aren't my real teeth.
Generally what happens and "i've been there" is that the authorities turn up - sieze everything digital. take it away ask u to attend court a few weeks later and charge one for "creating an indicent" image under the "child protection act". It is not funny the legal process and all involved. It does destroy a life and there is a general witchhunt out for "peados". Nowadays you dont have to be an "active physical" peado - all u need to do is have a trojan on your machine - popups in IE and walla .. u are a peado too.. Lock him up !!!!! Even though it was your collegue/wife/mate etc
CLIK HEER FOR TEH BUTTESXC
So, if I was browsing a p2p network and I chose to download some file named "wife giving head.avi" with a description of "amature video" and it turns out to be re-names child porn. The cops knowing this file is child porn bust in my door, and because of someone elses lie, I should have to pay a large fine?
I'm all for helping the victims of the crime but why should I have to pay a largee fine because someone (possibly the cops) tricked me?
I think you should re-think the potential abuses of that.
Also you left out one group of "child pornographers" (according to what some say) who exist in a much more grey area (one that I think is open to legitimate debate) people who produce images or text that are fictional in source and content.
Where do these people fit in?
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
As for accidental downloading...either the cops know about it, and failed to stop this person, or they don't know about it and you need a multi-pass file wiper, quickly. (1)
I don't think the first is acceptable at all, and I think it happens a lot more than people suspect. Someone estimated that a large amount of child porn out there is for police stings, and I think that's idiotic. However, they don't misname it, that would never stand in court.
But this already happens. At least under my system, you just pay a fine, instead of being labeled a child molester for something you didn't do.
Anyway, police they shouldn't be distributing child porn at all. They should be trying to download and purchase it. The receipients are not important, it's the distributers who are assaulting children, or can lead them back to the people who are.
By removing some penalties for the receipients, I was actually trying to reduce incentive to frame people, or find people who have a usenet grabber that continually dumps a porn newsgroup in a directory for them to sort later. That's also why I specified that any fine should go to the specific children, or a general fund until the children are found. The cops then have no incentive to track down end users unless they can lead to bigger fish.
1) And let me just be frank here and mention that I once downloaded what I guess is 'little people' porn, which were deliberately dressed like children, as I was trying to find where Norton put my file wiper, I noticed they were not, in fact, children, which was quite a relief, although I wiped them anyway, as it was rather sickening.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Therefore it isn't free at all, because you have to cough up for Windows.
Just like that free lunch ... plus a $300 eating fee.