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.
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
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
Trying to tie this issue to 1st amendment rights shows how little you know about the issue and how little you know about the 1st amendment.
Children are bought and sold, gang-raped, and forced to have sex with each other. Acts which absolutely destroy a child. This isn't some victimless crime.
But, continue on with your ignorant anti-american ways. I'm sure it somehow makes you feel better about yourself.
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 != GPL.
You might be able to _see_ the source code but I'm betting the licence won't let you easily modify it.
No mate. These are Canadians so they would use JTF2, not the SAS.
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.
Thats not what it means at all, the accepted definition of open source is that you get the right to modify and redistribute - if you want to. There may be cases where you get the source code but no rights to modify or redistribute, that isnt open source, thats just source distribution. There is nothing at all in the open source world that says you must give the code to anyone that asks, only those that are entitled to it, and in most cases thats only those who have received the binaries.
But thats OK, yours is a common misconception brought on by the fact taht nearly every open source project does just put the code up on a website for public dissemination. As is their full right.
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.
The Canadian child pornography law covers purely fictional material. Draw a picture of a child being raped, from imagination, without any real child being harmed, and that is just as illegal in Canada as if it were a photo from life. One recent widely-reported case had a man in Edmonton arrested and prosecuted for possession of fictional Japanese comic books. They are also working hard on expanding the law to also cover text. That is, words, made up from imagination, without any pictures. The current effort is almost entirely directed at writing a law to convict one man - Robin Sharpe - who was acquitted of child pornography possession because the "child pornography" in question was fictional text and the Supreme Court said (correctly) that that was victimless and couldn't be prosecuted. The Religious Right is pressing to rewrite the law - damn the Constitution - in order to have a way to convict people like Sharpe. (The law actually already does cover text, but they want to make it a lot broader.)
This isn't about children "bought and sold, gang-raped, and forced to have sex with each other". It is sometimes, and in the most important and highest-profile actual Canadian case, a truly victimless crime.
Do you really believe that purely imaginary words should ever be illegal? I don't.
1. you don't have a universal deluxe right to privacy, it's a myth.
The idea that you don't have a right because it's not in the Constitution is the exact opposite of how the framers intended things to work. The point of the Bill of Rights was to say 'You have all the rights that are not explicitly taken away, and here are some that can never be taken away'. There was a big fight amongst the founders because some of them thought people might come to interpret the Bill of Rights as a list of all the rights you have, rather than the rights that can't be taken away. The rest of the founders thought nobody would be that stupid but that's the way everyone has come to look at things now. It's a complete inversion of the idea of the Bill. I have a right to privacy because it's not taken away in the Constitution, not the other way around.
No, they've already done much worse than that. Like turning those records over to federal law-enforcement.
That was true fifty years ago. Now everyone is a potential drug user or anti-globalization activist or copyright violator or terrorist or something the state doesn't like; and data surveillance is cheap and easy. The easier it gets, the more the question moves from "Why should we bother watching this guy?" to "Why not?"
Surveillance is moving to an opt-out model, rather than an opt-in.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The GPL only covers actualy *COPYING*.
It does not stop you from reading code, learning something new from it, then applying that knowledge in a creative way.
Even Stallman himself said that copyright doesn't protect ideas, it only protects an implementation of those ideas. If you create a new implementation of something that's derived from but dissimilar enough from a particular GPL'd work to not be considered infringing on it's copyright even *without* the GPL applied, then you aren't infringing on the GPL at all.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You are 100% correct. This is the key that most people miss. The Constitution does not explicitly give us right -- instead it limits the rights of government (usually Congress).
The Bill of Rights includes Amendment 4, which is usually where the "right to privacy" comes from:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Does this apply to electronic "effects"? Can your emails and other Internet traffic be seized or searched without probably cause or a warrant? These are the questions that need to be answered.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If I put a sign on my lemon tree that says "free lemons" it is not stealing to take some lemons, even if you strip the tree bare and set up a stand nearby to sell them for 5 cents each.
Microsoft can use BSD licensed code in their closed source products, and the author who released the code under the BSD license is/was/should be aware that this is the whole point of choosing to release code under the BSD license over the GPL.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I suggest you read some of RMS's writings.
There is nothing in the GPL or most other free software licences that requires you to make your software available for free on an ftp site.
It is perfectly OK to sell it and make money from selling it.
What you can't do is prevent the people you sell it to from making it available on an ftp site if they choose to do this.
CAPULET:
But saying o'er what I have said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
...
LADY CAPULET:
This is the matter: --Nurse, give leave awhile,
We must talk in secret: --nurse, come back again;
I have remember'd me, thou's hear our counsel.
Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.
NURSE:
Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
LADY CAPULET:
She's not fourteen.
NURSE:
I'll lay fourteen of my teeth,--
And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four--
She is not fourteen. How long is it now
To Lammas-tide?
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;