ISPs to Create Database to Combat Child Porn

BlueCup writes to tell us that several media companies are banding together to create a database of child pornography images to help law enforcement officials combat distribution of questionable material. In addition to the database several tools and new technologies are also planned but most notable is what some perceive as a willingness to cooperate which critics say has been lacking in the past. From the article: "Each company will set its own procedures on how it uses the database, but executives say the partnership will let companies exchange their best ideas — ultimately developing tools for preventing child-porn distribution instead of simply catching violations."

Comments

Wanna bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wanna bet that some slimey police exec is helping himself with those images?

Anyway, it's just another case of "think of the children!!1"

Re:Wanna bet?

[jibjibjib]

We can't let the ISPs have a monopoly on child porn databases and filtering. We need an open-source child porn database, using open standards and free from DRM, and freely available to the public, so that everyone can access all the world's child porn and thereby protect themselves against it.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Ohreally_factor]

Yes! Exactly!

Think of the children!!

Er, wait, that's the problem to begin with . . .

(It's an oldie but a goodie, folks!)

Re:Wanna bet?

[Funkcikle]

Anyway, it's just another case of "think of the children!!1"

If anything, I think the point is to NOT think of the children. At all. STOP IT SCUMBAG.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the same thing while watching some news report about child porn on television recently. A cop was sitting at his computer doing some clicking as he viewed child porn (obviously the camera didn't show the screen), and he talked about his war against distributors. Something just wasn't right about the way he talked about child porn, almost as if it took effort to disparage it and I got the sneaking suspicion that he had been compromised by it in some way. It made me wonder how much of a risk there is of a police officer developing an addiction to the matter he's sworn to defend against, a la Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly One wonders why cops are allowed to work on this on their own, seems to me it would make much more sense to allow people access to the material only in teams, perhaps mixed-gender.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Maelwryth]

"We need an open-source child porn database, using open standards and free from DRM, and freely available to the public, so that everyone can access all the world's child porn and thereby protect themselves against it."

My god, you're right. We will create a new format called Pink N Giggling just for that purpose.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Cicero382]

"Something just wasn't right about the way he talked about child porn, almost as if it took effort to disparage it and I got the sneaking suspicion that he had been compromised by it in some way"

Compromised? Not in the way you mean.

Unfortunately, I have some experience of this from about 10 years ago. While I was working for a large corporation as a sysadmin I came across a stash of this stuff. To cut a long story short it went from that to helping the police gather evidence against three individuals and from there to helping them to crack a much larger ring of paedophiles.*

A normal adult wants to love and protect kids. I can tell you these people (I use the term advisedly) are *really* not normal and some of the images made me physically sick - literally. We are not talking about kids in the nude - you don't want to know. There is NO way a NORMAL adult will be compromised... really! What that police officer was probably feeling was... nothing. You have to be like that to be able to take it at all and even then it does damage. It's so bad that you *must* stop after a couple of years.

"One wonders why cops are allowed to work on this on their own, seems to me it would make much more sense to allow people access to the material only in teams, perhaps mixed-gender."

Well, you are in a team. Part of the reason of trawling through the material on your own is logistics (manpower, etc) and the other is; why expose people to more than necessary? And, as I mention above, the dangers aren't that you'll turn into a paedophile yourself.

* Yes we got them - it was on the front page of the papers - especially the bit about most of them getting 15 months. We spent two years taking them down. Go figure!

Re:Wanna bet?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Wanna bet that some slimey police exec is helping himself with those images?

I'd open a book on it, but only at 1/33.

Just like the Catholic Church is full of pedophiles and pederasts, no doubt "internet" law enforcement is filled with closet perverts who delight in ammassing volumes upon volumes of illicit data. It's probably also filled with those who get their thrills from snooping on other people's emails.

Let's put it this way. Where's the best place for a criminal to hide. A position of authority.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

There is NO way a NORMAL adult will be compromised... really!

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

... besides, who at /. believes in the validity of the term "NORMAL" being used as a moral beacon? Everybody can be corrupted. Thankfully not everybody has the same tastes in vices as pedophiles.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Cicero382]

Are you trying to say Nietzsche was a normal human being? I think not :-)

Anyway, I wasn't using the word "normal" in a moral sense. I meant normal as in the vast majority who have the instincts to nurture and protect children.

To illustrate my point: Theoretically, someone with malformed instincts might be able to supress the actions or even thoughts that accompany this flaw through their morals. Just because they have a moral stance against what their diseased instincts are telling them, doesn't mean that they are *not* normal.

Or, to put it another way: A NORMAL adolescent male (I use male 'cos it's much more pronounced in males) wants sex as often as possible - he's not interested in children because they don't trigger his instincts. He doesn't try to rape every female who comes his way because he has NORMAL morals (and/or a normal understanding of what will happen to him if he's caught). In this case the instinct is normal, but it doesn't *necessarily* result in moral behaviour.

Err... does that make sense?

Re:Wanna bet?

[Lord Kano]

I too encountered child porn once and there is no way that the stuff will magically transform a normal adult into a minching pedophile. Long story short, in the early 90s I used to use AOL. I used to trade pornographic pictures of adults with other adults. I was 18 and was sick of getting pictures of people's 40-50 something wives so I asked if they had anything of younger women.

POOF, kiddie porn out the wazoo.

It shocks you at first. You're not sure what to think. After about 2 seconds that seem more like 2 weeks you get angry. REALLY ANGRY! I can't speak for anyone else of course, but I'd like to strangle people who make that garbage. What kind of monster can do things like that to children? I'm not talking about statutory rape with a 16 year old girl who looks older. I'm talking about grade-school and younger children.

LK

Re:Wanna bet?

[PHPfanboy]

> The entire Catholic Church is founded on child abuse. Wasn't Jesus a consenting adult when they hammered nails through him?

Re:Wanna bet?

[Bloke down the pub]

PETE? IS THAT YOU?

Re:Wanna bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense. It's wrong, but it makes sense.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

> was 18 and was sick of getting pictures of people's 40-50 something wives so
> I asked if they had anything of younger women.

I was the exact opposite. I was hot for older women, and went to a "nudist" usenet newsgroup, hoping to find pictures of people's 40-50-something wives, and poof! Pictures of naked kids on beaches :(

And it wasn't even close, like a 100-1 ratio of kids to adults.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Chris whatever]

Yeah sure we need to have a database with child porn in the hands of opensource,,,yeah great idea.

They dont need to have a database, it's pretty damn stupid to have one,,,,,,it's just a matter of time until someone from the inside makes cd's a makes money out of it, they should only ban and arrest those responsible and then use the materials to find missing children or other pedophile but like drugs,,,dispose of it by burning everything.

Anything that gets on a hard disk somewhere is potentially reusable by a twisted human being.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Battletux]

"Five leading online service providers will jointly build a database of child-pornography images and develop other tools to help network operators and law enforcement better prevent distribution of the images." So to actually stop child pron, the ISPs have to first break the law themselves? How is this legal? For some reason i cant stop thinking of Fort Knox.....

Re:Wanna bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need to fucking SHOUT, asshat.

Re:Wanna bet?

[cayenne8]

"A NORMAL adolescent male...He doesn't try to rape every female who comes his way because he has NORMAL morals..."

I dunno...I think laws hinder this behaviour in young males more than anything else. Heck, I'd say this hold true in most all sexually active males if the dark truth be known.

Many a time have I heard men express during 'bar talk' like "damn...I wish we still had it good like the cavemen..where you could just grab any women you want and..."

I think normalcy is really hard to define. We have laws and social restrictions that keep most people 'normal' in behavior, but, I'd be willing that if the truth be known, most people do have much darker thoughts here and there, and almost wish they could act on their desires....I believe that most people, inside their own heads, are pretty perverted in some ways, but, they control their actions, and don't go further than fantasy.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

"Malformed instincts". That's an interesting phrase. Just as interesting as bringing instinct into this. Could it be stated that civilized society is to blame for this? After all, the main thing society has done, at least for the US culture (I'm still traveling elsewhere, honest), is teach us that all instinctually based urges are bad unless it involves acts that'd make good human interest stories on the news. Of course, I think it's important to clarify that "child pornography" includes young children and "jailbait". While I might argue about an instinct to protect and nurture young children, "jailbait" is notorious for setting of an adult's reproductive instincts.

Err, that's getting offtopic, sorta. So what's going to happen when somebody sends a private nude pic to a significant other and it's hard to determine their age? I know women in their 30s and older that still get carded going into bars. What about porn sites and their customers? Will every image have to have that "18 at time of modeling" disclaimer have to be imbedded into the photos? What about when high school sweethearts, one just starting college and the other just becoming a senior send naughty pics or cyber via webcam? These are things that need to be considered. Improbable? Maybe, but not impossible. And once the term "child pornography" gets involved, the emotion and assumptions that come with it will overwhelm the truth. More than that, even if the person is declared 100% innocent, that word will be stuck to them for a long time. The media and a town's gossips rarely put as much effort into undoing damage as they do trying to get ratings. The way the government is going, that person might be stuck on a watch list for the rest of their life. That's wasted resources and an assumption of guilt. Bad, bad, bad.

What I really want to know is how prevelent this problem is. It's greater than none and maybe less than the hype being used to pass all of the laws, but who knows?

Re:Wanna bet?

[Lemmy Caution]

I don't want to pretend that I remember the exact figure, but I remember a very disturbing study that indicated just how many men admitted they would rape if they thought they could do so with impunity. The number was below 50%, but not by very much.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

I too encountered child porn once and there is no way that the stuff will magically transform a normal adult into a minching pedophile. Heheh. It's been a while since I heard "minching".

Anyhow, I wasn't suggesting that it'd magically transform a "normal adult" into a pedophile. Well, not in the sense that a single exposure would do it, or that everybody would succumb to that particular vice. Repeated and prolonged exposure, though, may cause issues. A few of the other posters mentioned that the police in their area have certain checks set up for that sort of thing.

Re:Wanna bet?

[utlemming]

It wouldn't do them anygood. The database will just be an MD5 or SHA1 checksum. Copying it won't produce the actual material.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Sunny7L]

Does this also work with gay porn? I doubt it.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

Does this also work with gay porn? I doubt it.

I was careful to not include statements that effects will definately happen or that every person who spends a ton of time verifying the porn would be effected in a specific manner. So not every person that screens the child porn will develope a facination with it, just like not everybody that deals with gay (or straight, for that matter) porn will become interested with it. Still, I don't think it's reasonable to assume it won't happen at some point. I don't think it's a matter of being "above" such things. The mechanisms that work in the subconscious have no obligation to obey the waking mind.

Of course, if you want to expose yourself to tons of gay porn for several hours a day, 5 days a week for several months to prove that gay porn will have no affect on you, go right ahead. I can pretty much guarantee that by the end of that period you'd be able to answer a lot of gay porn trivia that you wouldn't have before. Not that you'd necessarily want to, but you would.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Sunny7L]

Regardless of how much gay porn I watched, over whatever period of time, I would not in the end be gay. I assure you.

Now, if there were currently some homosexual tendencies or inclinations within me, certainly such activity would bring me out of the closet. As it is, that is not the case. As it is not the case for most of any group to be a pedophile, particularly those individuals who have set themselves into a career of upholding the law. These officers are more likely to become crackheads simply because they have access to it.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

Regardless of how much gay porn I watched, over whatever period of time, I would not in the end be gay. I assure you. Now, if there were currently some homosexual tendencies or inclinations within me, certainly such activity would bring me out of the closet. As it is, that is not the case. As it is not the case for most of any group to be a pedophile, particularly those individuals who have set themselves into a career of upholding the law. These officers are more likely to become crackheads simply because they have access to it.

The point you bring up is a good one, but also requires a degree of self-examination that many people may not have had. To be honest, though, some things cannot be verified by proposing a hypothetical situation. It's actually going through an event that truely tests whether or not that self image is entirely accurate. To say that nobody that chose law enforcement as a career could be a pedophile is as flawed as saying that they couldn't be addicted to drugs (oh, and missing crack would be easier to identify than copies of computer files, not to mention the signs of addiction). Law enforcement officials are tested for illegal drug use, are subject to investigations for corruption and any other legal infraction a person can commit. To say that they're immune puts that person on the recieving end of unreasonable expectations, which can be bad for them individually and for society as a whole. Cops are people too.

A different example would be Jimmy Swaggert. He was a "man of God" that had a hard fall because of incidents with prostitutes. A lot of his supporters abandoned him because they weren't willing to accept that even a minister has temptations and failings (and possibly because they followed him more than God, but that's a different debate).

Re:Wanna bet?

[Sunny7L]

Do you actually know any cops? These are different kind of people. Typically law abiding, generally moral. Not that there aren't corrupt cops but if someone has to monitor this I think they are more equipped to do so than your average Joe.

But, back to the original issue: most people have no pedophilia tendencies thus few if any would be turned by viewing such images. It would be the equivalent of making people gay, as I mentioned.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

Do you actually know any cops? These are different kind of people. Typically law abiding, generally moral. Not that there aren't corrupt cops but if someone has to monitor this I think they are more equipped to do so than your average Joe.

I've known cops, religious types and served as a member of the US Armed Forces. Like you, I'm not trying to speak in absolutes. I would hope that there is probably some sort of training for law enforcement members before joining these types of task forces. But prior preparation only takes you so far, it's ultimately up to the individual's character (and their support) that determines what happens afterwards. Some of the cynics (realists?) have already suggested that pedophiles may try to insert themselves into a position to gain access to the child porn by becoming investigators on some level. Unrealistic? I don't think so. Unfortunate? Yes. I'm not trying to specifically doom anyone to failure, but only saying that there shouldn't be any suprise if a pedophile, be they one before or after starting that job, is found to have gotten into the chain of custody for child porn evidence.

But, back to the original issue: most people have no pedophilia tendencies thus few if any would be turned by viewing such images. It would be the equivalent of making people gay, as I mentioned.

I'd agree that most people don't have tendencies towards pedophila and never disputed that. And as before, I'm not saying that people will suddenly change their sexual tastes because of these images. My counter point to you before hand was that some people will never know they could possibly have an inclination to a particular activity without being exposed to it or trying it. Social expectations and preconcieved notions of oneself will usually dictate an how one answers questions regarding a topic. I've had more than a few friends that swore they'd never eat sushi because of the raw fish. After getting them to try it, it turned out they were wrong and they loved it. I'm only asking that you adit the possiblity that the some people will not be 100% aware of what lurks beneath the surface of their own waking minds.

Either way, I think we both agree that the chance of "new" pedophiliacs emerging from this is numerically insignificant, especially compared to those who probably won't. As long as the watchers have some oversight to ensure their mental state (even from just to watch for burnout from the smut), I think they'll be ok.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

Oh, and thank you for keeping the discussion civil. It'd be easy for this part of the thread to go down in non-constructive flames.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Sunny7L]

"I'm only asking that you adit the possiblity that the some people will not be 100% aware of what lurks beneath the surface of their own waking minds."

I cannot admit to that because I don't believe it. What adult does not know their sexual orientation, or even limitations? This is not the same as food taste or preconceived notions. Sexuality is a primary function--so, anyone totally oblivious to their sexuality, I agree, is likely susceptible to this, among other things.

Generally veteran officers man these teams, not newbies. So any pervert hell bent on moving up the ranks will wait some while but will most likely be weeded out before making it through. But, I admit that it's not an impossibility, just an extreme unlikelihood.

Re:Wanna bet?

[hobot]

I am pretty sure that there have been many instances of homosexuals getting married and figuring out years later that either
a: They are gay.
b: They were lying to themself and are gay.

With your moralistic stance, how do you know that your subconscious is not hiding a pedophile deep inside, because your waking mind could not stand the thought of doing something wrong.

Also about gay/pedo/beastiality/whatever, most of these things were accepted in different cultures at one time or another. Read about ancient Greeks who took squires and in essence fucked little boys. I am not condoning the practice, but it was accepted and in most cases normal in that time.

Look at cannibalism. Look at any practice you consider disgusting, and you will probably find that it is your upbringing that is the true factor in you "morals" and not some bullshit objective right or wrong.

Re:Wanna bet?

[tacarat]

With your moralistic stance, how do you know that your subconscious is not hiding a pedophile deep inside, because your waking mind could not stand the thought of doing something wrong.

I'm not asserting that there is a way to know every nook and cranny of your own mind. Nor am I asserting that everything you can or will be is within you at any given point. Science's arguement of nurture vs nature hasn't unraveled that mess yet, and I doubt it will ever be. For religion, destiny versus free will might be a good equivalent. For Christians (and only because I was raised that way and know a bit about the religion) I'd ask about the anti-christ. Will that person be a normal person and eventually grow into the prophosized role, or is that baby just plain evil from the moment of conception? If God is almighty and able to control everything, doesn't that mean he specifically cursed that child? Or is this where the all knowing aspect is at play and simply a matter of knowing what's going to happen and won't interfere? The reasoning for why God prevents some things and allows others is "unfathomable", so any debate on it would be academic and certainly not provable. God is nobody's bitch and doesn't perform on demand.

Look at cannibalism. Look at any practice you consider disgusting, and you will probably find that it is your upbringing that is the true factor in you "morals" and not some bullshit objective right or wrong.

That sounds about right to me. I wouldn't say that right and wrong are necessarily bullshit, but that maybe they're used in the place of more appropriate words. Morally judging the actions a culture from the outside can have definate problems, but doing it from within a culture is pretty much required for decision making and conflict resolutions. People are more likely to have enough commonality in learning or experiences to question somebody that did something "good" or "bad" without completely flipping out. Even then, many cultures do have common morals in place. Murder is wrong. Killing in war isn't murder unless a certain line is crossed (The US military goes by it's own laws and the Geneva Convention).

Am I correct in thinking that you were shifting this to a moralism vs religious values or absolutism vs relativism discussion? Or are we drifting? I think we beat the earlier CP discussion to death already.

Re:Wanna bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about those 3 or so DHS pedophiles that recently got outed? Were they not law men?

Yeah.

[Dibblah]

This is a great idea. With a couple of tiny issues.

ISPs have long said that they are just carriers and are not responsible for the content they provide access to. As soon as the technological solution for implementing a "content filter" is there, RIAA and friends will _require_ ISPs to use it for that purpose as well.

This is completely ignoring the technical stupidity of trying to "fingerprint" media that is _not_ going to be transferred in plaintext.

Re:Yeah.

[Threni]

> This is completely ignoring the technical stupidity of trying to "fingerprint" media that is
> _not_ going to be transferred in plaintext.

And even if it is, it's trivial to come up with a way of altering images so that they look identical but where every bit is different to the original.

I'm sure the Chinese government would literally kill to have a way of tracking the movement of files too.

But yeah..kids...photographs...the internet...

Re:Yeah.

[AGMW]

This is a great idea. With a couple of tiny issues.

I nearly spat my tea out all over my keyboard ... I read that as "tissues".

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what's happening in the UK. Now that BT has developed their cleanfeed system they have inadvertently gone and proven to the government it's possible to block URL's on a very high bandwidth network without massive outlay in hardware. Guess what is round the corner...

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trivial, but none of the P2P softwares out there does that, etc., so detecting images by checksum and whatnot is at least effective today.

Sure, people also said nobody would be able to block spam...

Re:Yeah.

[jellomizer]

I don't think so. It will be more like other content filters, and spam filtering. Used as a selling point for their ISPs but not mandatory. If this were the trend I would expect it would be mandatory for all ISP to scan for viruses on everything. (Being that viruses effect the economy more and politicians worry more about money then people)
Besides I rather have someone like a teacher arrested because they found Child Porn on his PC, vs. Having him just work there for years not knowing because the ISP has blocked the traffic.

Re:Yeah.

[Captain Jack Taylor]

They can't, dude...we all still get spam. Less spam, sure, but there's always still those messages that squeak by our junk mail filter every day. Or, in the case of MSN Live, the fact that all of our good e-mail ends up filtered with the spam. :p

Re:Yeah.

[muzzy]

Unfortunately, the only people to profit from filtering are people who sell filtering systems and the pedos who will setup more secure distribution channels out of necessity. Oh, and ISPs who will use this for PR purposes. And "child rights" groups who only want to police the children and will secure more funding through all the attention they get from these kind of pointless operations...

This kind of pointless action doesn't help anyone except those who hunger for power. The people who try to objectively evaluate the situation are flagged as pedophiles due to subject being such a taboo.

Re:Yeah.

[online-shopper]

This will act like any other evolutionary influence. The stupid ones will be weeded out, while the smart ones will avoid it. I know, lets install rootkits on people's computers and send 5 minute screen capture to a central database so we can catch those pesky pedophiles!

Re:Yeah.

[diamondmagic]

Spam filtering is peformed by your email service, not your ISP (Even if your ISP provides you with an email address).

Re:Yeah.

[Bloke down the pub]

it's trivial to come up with a way of altering images so that they look identical but where every bit is different to the original.

Shouldn't there be an "... er ... so I'm told" in there somehere?

Re:Yeah.

[voice_of_all_reason]

Besides I rather have someone like a teacher arrested because they found Child Porn on his PC, vs. Having him just work there for years not knowing because the ISP has blocked the traffic.

See, that's the problem -- "rather 100 innocent jailed than one guilty man go free." It's supposed to be the other way around.

Re:Yeah.

[IAmTheDave]

Imagine being the poor DBA of this project:

Cute chica at bar: "So, what do you do for a living?"
DBA: "I am the DBA for the largest single collection of child pornography on the planet. You?"

Re:Yeah.

[hyperizer]

ISPs have long said that they are just carriers...

This is a Slashdot myth. Even Wikipedia notes, "Internet Service Providers have argued against being classified as a "common carrier" and, so far, have managed to do so" to avoid being regulated "under Title II of the Communications Act."

Re:Yeah.

[ehrichweiss]

That's redundant since most ISP's ARE your "email service". Maybe it doesn't work that way where you're from but all the ISP's I've worked with manage their own mail servers.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

The next question might even be worse.

So, where can I find the torrent?

Re:Yeah.

[mattsucks]

Cute chica at bar: "So, what do you do for a living?"
DBA: "I am the DBA for the largest single collection of child pornography on the planet. You?"

He lost her at "DBA".

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

He lost her at "DBA".

You mean ordinary people don't know about XML and C++ and optimizing Linux kernels and all that cool stuff?

Re:Yeah.

[b0s0z0ku]

And even if it is, it's trivial to come up with a way of altering images so that they look identical but where every bit is different to the original.

True, but this assumes that they'll directly scan the files, rather than processing the image data and looking for stuff like edge contours. Of course, all bets are still off if strong crypto is used. It's not that strong crypto can't be broken - it's just that breaking *each and every* piece of data transmitted will take an impractical amount of time and processing power.

-b.

Re:Yeah.

[Penguin Programmer]

Clearly, you've never met a DBA.

Cute chica at bar: "So, what do you do for a living?"
DBA: "I think I need to get home and iron my socks now."

Re:Yeah.

[chad.koehler]

I hunger for power and I fail to see how this benefits me.

Re:Yeah.

[suwain_2]

Used as a selling point for their ISPs

I don't see it as a selling point at all. I'd prefer an ISP that didn't offer this filtering. (Don't get me wrong: pedophiles deserve to be arrested, and child porn is gross.)

There are two reasons I oppose it. The first is that I don't believe my ISP should be doing anything but giving me access to the 'whole' Internet. It already irks me when they start blocking ports. Now they're going to be doing content analysis on what I'm looking at? Is that really any different than if the USPS opened my mail to see if I'm mailing people child porn?

My second concern is that I'm uber-paranoid, and have always worried that a porn site is going to work in some people who are, say, 17, and I'm going to be unknowingly accessing child porn. Now if it happens once my ISP will send the police after me? And take it one step further--suppose it becomes like the Goatse guy. Some jackass saves a 'common' child porn image, and starts posting it in conspicuous places, trying to fool people into clicking it all the time. Except this time, you're not just disgusted, you're labeled a pedophile by your ISP and arrested for possession of child porn.

People should absolutely be going after child porn, but there's no need to move closer to 1984 to do so.

Re:Yeah.

[cayenne8]

"My second concern is that I'm uber-paranoid, and have always worried that a porn site is going to work in some people who are, say, 17, and I'm going to be unknowingly accessing child porn..."

Well, the age of consent varies from state to state..it is 16 and 17 in some states. So, I guess it depends on where you live as to whether the 17 yr old pic would get you prosecuted?

Re:Yeah.

[Monkelectric]

So its going to be someones job somewhere to download all the kiddy porn they can for a database to fight kiddy porn?

I don't even know where to start with that one.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue joke about it taking me less than five minutes.

Re:Yeah.

[Khaed]

Hm. I think I'd say "I'm the top guy in an elite anti-kiddie porn operation." (I should so be in marketing)

How many DBA's do you know that have cute chicks walk up and talk to them? What bars are these? And howcome he doesn't wet himself and pass out in response to her question?

Re:Yeah.

[Khaed]

False.

The age of consent is the age to which someone can consent to having sex.

Taking a picture of said sex prior to 18 is still illegal.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

er, you seem to have misunderstood that guy's post.

Are you saying a teacher with child porn on his pc is innocent?

Re:Yeah.

[4D6963]

As soon as the technological solution for implementing a "content filter" is there, RIAA and friends will _require_ ISPs to use it for that purpose as well.

Reminds me of an episode of South Park, Cartoon Wars.

In it, Cartman explains that if an episode of Family Guy can be pulled for displaying Muhammad by muslims, then other groups of people such as christians and the disabled will be able to get other episodes pulled, and in the end Family Guy will get difinitely off the air.

Using this as an analogy to our problem, if the ISP's start filtering content for child porn, then they could also filter content for pirated music, crack sites, porn passwords IRC channels, etc... until there's no interesting use left to internet.

Disclaimer : this is just a possible analogy, but by no means necessarily a valid analogy.

Re:Yeah.

[voice_of_all_reason]

Not at all. However, the way he is going about it is all wrong.

The hypothetical situation stated is "we suspect a teacher has done X, what do we do." The answer should not be "allow countrywide surveillance on internet traffic." In fact, we already have a convenient (albeit less sure) method of finding out if he/she's guilty:

1) Get warrant
2) Install tap on teacher's PC (not on the ISP so it can be abused)
3) Profit (or not, depending on if the crime was really commited). Be sure to ignore all other evidence of crime not specified on the warrant, if discovered.

Re:Yeah.

[cayenne8]

I've done no research on this...but, as diverse at state laws are...I'd have to imagine the photograph 'age of consent' would be as varied as the age to consent to actual sex?? Especially since the definition of 'porn' itself varies according to community standards.

Do you have any links to this provision you mention?

Re:Yeah.

[Kjella]

See, that's the problem -- "rather 100 innocent jailed than one guilty man go free." It's supposed to be the other way around.

Of course, if you express that as "rather 100 children be molested than one innocent man go to jail" most people get a little more touchy about that statement. It's a really rotten situation and someone's life will be destroyed - neither is acceotable but you know the system can never be perfect. Some people think that by massive surveilance you will create the perfect system where all the guilty are jailed and all the innocent are protected. The same people should take a history lesson about East Germany and the Soviet Union.

Re:Yeah.

[voice_of_all_reason]

Some people think that by massive surveilance you will create the perfect system where all the guilty are jailed and all the innocent are protected. The same people should take a history lesson about East Germany and the Soviet Union.

No need to go in depth, they just need to a graph of crime per capita over years. The number of 0%s this chart will contain will also be zero percent. Therefore, expecting such a value at any point in the future is, from a statistical standpoint, lunacy.

Re:Yeah.

[FreshMeat-BWG]

Isn't that what the good faith clause is for? Evidence found in "good faith" while investigating a different matter.

Re:Yeah.

[voice_of_all_reason]

I don't know what Good Faith Clause you're referring to, but we usually don't allow those types of exceptions in Law. A racist cop could start blasting into a crowd of black kids in "good faith" that he's preventing crime, but ignorance of the law cannot be used as a defense.

If you're referring to something the teacher has signed allowing the school to search his school-owned posessions, then you're on to something. Though if its his laptop, he can't sign away his constitutional protection against search and siezure via a contract.

Re:Yeah.

[Khaed]

There are some states where the age of consent is fourteen. I don't see a whole lot of legal sites with fourteen year olds having sex, at least not based in the United States.

I could be wrong. I'm not sure where to look for the laws. I Am Not A Lawyer Or A Pornographer (well not professionally ;), I'm just going on what I've observed.

Re:Yeah.

[Cryptnotic]

No, no. That's not the point. The OP was saying that the teacher IS a pedophile. With filtering, he just can't download CP. But without filtering, he CAN download it. Then he gets caught and (hopefully) loses his job and/or goes to jail. So it's better to have no filtering so that the pervs can be caught red-handed.

Re:Yeah.

[G-funk]

rather 100 children be molested than one innocent man go to jail

I would. Not because I want children molested, don't be an idiot. But you know what? Bad people molest kids. That's no reason to put some innocent bloke in prison, no matter what "can't people think of the children" BS spin you put on it. We need to protect children, but by punishing people who hurt them, not punishing a whole bunch of people and who cares if a few friendly old guys who work for candy stores get sent to FPMITA prison by the wayside.

Re:Yeah.

[voice_of_all_reason]

Um, I think that's an amazingly bad idea. It's one thing to support a decrease in policing/surveillance because of the nobility of freedom -- it's another thing entirely to hope crime happens so you can exert vengeance on the wicked.

Re:Yeah.

[makomk]

I don't think so. It will be more like other content filters, and spam filtering. Used as a selling point for their ISPs but not mandatory. If this were the trend I would expect it would be mandatory for all ISP to scan for viruses on everything. (Being that viruses effect the economy more and politicians worry more about money then people) Besides I rather have someone like a teacher arrested because they found Child Porn on his PC, vs. Having him just work there for years not knowing because the ISP has blocked the traffic.

In that case, I suppose you'd consider it fair if someone mailed you some child porn (through a suitably-equipped anonymous remailer, of course) and you got arrested for receiving it?

Re:Yeah.

[Sunny7L]

Considering the laws against child porn, do you really want to accidentally venture onto one of those sites?

Re:Yeah.

[Sunny7L]

The definition or standards for decency vary but porn is porn everywhere. Child porn involves minors, those under the age of 18--so children (and babies) 0 to 17 years old.

Re:Yeah.

[suwain_2]

That was my point. I'd rather not accidentally find one either way, but if I'm going to, I'd rather do so in an environment where I can close the browser and have that be the end of it, rather than having the police show up within the hour.

Re:Yeah.

[WWWWolf]

Shouldn't there be an "... er ... so I'm told" in there somehere?

No. =) Think of steganography.

Know how many simple steganography packages work? They just hide the data in the least significant bits of RGB data. Do you think you can see the difference between two red shades, (254,52,52) and (253,51,52)?

Re:Yeah.

[Hognoxious]

I wonder if it would be possible to use steganography to hide a joke in a slashdot post, such as the one you're replying to.

Re:Yeah.

[FreshMeat-BWG]

Good Faith Clause was wrong. I was acutally trying to refer to Good Faith Exception.

So this is like...

[Powercntrl]

...stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons by creating a massive stockpile?

Re:So this is like...

[BorgDrone]

So this is like stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons by creating a massive stockpile?

Yes, good idea btw.

If we make sure The Good Guys (read: us) have 99 times as much nukular weapons as The Bad Guys (read: them), then only 1% of all nukular weapons will be in the hands of the Bad Guys. Now if we continue to increase the nukular stockpile so we have 999 times as much as The Bad Guys then only 0.1% ...

So if 'we' have an infinite amount of nukular weapons, the Bad Guys virtually have none at all!

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the bad guys will still have nukes. Making statistics that say "they only have 0.1% the number of nukes we have" doesn't fix that.

.. and *WOOOSH* goes the sound of the joke.. :-)

Re:So this is like...

[Jugalator]

Stockpile of what? Not actual nuclear weapons anyway.

It's like stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons by creating a stockpile of blueprints telling what various nuclear weapon looks like so they can easier be detected.

Re:So this is like...

[KDR_11k]

Blueprints, yes. The kind with easy step-by-step assembly instructions and a nice contact address for getting enriched uranium and tritium, that is.

Re:So this is like...

[enrevanche]

This will probably only work against particular instances of an image. Change the resolution or compression rate even slightly will look like a whole new image. Zipping images with a password and/or various compression rates etc. will make this difficult also. This may catch the easy suspects though.

If you only store a small piece of information per image, the number of false positives will make the whole thing useless. Store too much and your storing the image.

Using SSL etc. will make it impossible.

The analogy with nuclear weapons would be similar, change the box, add a few decoy parts, paint the others a different color and the original "plans" or pictures are worthless, the machine won't detect squat. A human expert probably would.

I think this is probably all B.S., i.e. it's someone's idea of how they will make a lot of money in consulting and software developemnt. All the ISPs will buy into to say that they are doing something even though they know it is B.S.

This is really a socialogical problem which is hard to fix and this makes just it sound like everyone's doing something. They dont have the answer. If pcs of 100 people are confiscated and their personal lives invaded for every one person caught, this is a vast injustice.

Re:So this is like...

[Firethorn]

One would tend to think that a checksum/hash code would be sufficient. You need a fingerprint, not a copy of the act.

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know? It's the perpetual growth of organized coercion (aka government) that creates freedom. Everybody knows that voluntary association is derived from coercion!

Re:So this is like...

[jetmarc]

> One would tend to think that a checksum/hash code would be sufficient.
> You need a fingerprint, not a copy of the act.

That might be correct for examination of files. However, we're talking about ISPs here. It is not very far fetched that an ISP would try to match TCP/IP packets. That would require a fingerprint of a part of the image (impossible to produce without the original image).

My point is that an "ad hoc" database won't be useful without the original images. Sooner or later a user will come up with a new (incompatible) usage mode. Without the original images, the database can not support it.

The statement "Each company will set its own procedures on how it uses the database" just asks for it.

Re:So this is like...

[FireFury03]

If we make sure The Good Guys (read: us) have 99 times as much nukular weapons as The Bad Guys (read: them), then only 1% of all nukular weapons will be in the hands of the Bad Guys.

Are you sure you're the good guys? Maybe you only think your the good guys because you have enough nukes to prevent anyone suggesting you're the bad guys. I imagine that if China had vastly more nukes than anyone else then they would probably be considered "the good guys" since they'd squash anyone who disagreed.

Assuming you are talking about the US, I would argue that recent actions have put the US firmly in the "bad guys" camp to my mind. Assuming you are right is really arrogant. Hint: both democracy and capitalism are flawed, yet you are forcing them upon the rest of the world. Given these known flaws, who are you to decide that democracy and capitalism it the only "good" system for everyone?

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really a socialogical problem which is hard to fix

Rubbish. It's (fairly) easy to fix. The trouble is that it's been demonised so much that it's turned into a "thoughtcrime".

Here's an idea. Remove all laws against copying, selling and downloading child porn, but keep the laws against things that actually involve the children - like statutory rape, child abuse, etc. This makes it more likely that police will be able to find images of kids being abused, partially because the black market won't be so hidden and partially because it's more likely that the illegal stuff will be photographed. If the police have images of abuse, they can crop out everything but the kid's face and stick it on a milk carton with "do you know this kid"-style messages, thus actually tracking down the kids that are being abused and stopping the real crime, not the symptom.

Unfortunately, this tactic would involve scaling back the paranoia and hatred and making a distinction between people who actually abuse children and people who are attracted to underage people. That's not a distinction society is willing to make, in my opinion, we collectively seem to like having people that we can point unreserved hatred at.

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy and Capitalism are not inherently flawed. They only become flawed when they are no longer democratic or capitalistic - such as the US system which has had socialism forced upon it. Socialism and Capitalism are not compatible, and therefore the hybrid system is flawed.

Any society depends upon high-achievers to make the wheels continue to turn. Democracy is flawed in that it gives too much power to low-achievers to allow them to force socialistic or populistic systems upon a capitalistic democracy. This destroys the society over time by punishing the high-achievers for trying to make the system work. Any society that has unions, welfare, social security, and other schemes for punitive redistribution of wealth cannot succeed in the long term.

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, I just used my last mod point! Well said, whoever you are AC.

Re:So this is like...

[computational super]

If you only store a small piece of information per image, the number of false positives will make the whole thing useless.

That's what concerns me. I'd hate to get caught up in the dragnet of a KP sting because I donwloaded Firefox 1.1 which had the same checksum as "Debbie does Preschool 2". Presumedly you'd be able to defend yourself and prove your innocence - but I've heard lots and lots of horror stories about being "guily even after proven innocent" when it comes to accusations of crimes against children. I hope like hell they do some rock solid investigations and the detectives never have to worry about keeping a quota.

Re:So this is like...

[WilliamSChips]

Please, go to Somalia and see how pure capitalism turns out...if you can even get there, due to the lack of government-sponsered roads and such.

Re:So this is like...

[thetbone]

I think Somalia has a few problems beyond its economic system...lol

Countries in that general neighborhood seem to have a history of not being able to "get it together"....so blaming Somalia's problem on capitalism is a tad presumptuous.

Re:So this is like...

[voice_of_all_reason]

This destroys the society over time by punishing the high-achievers for trying to make the system work.

Yeah, those billionaires really got it awful, don't they?

Re:So this is like...

[voice_of_all_reason]

Presumedly you'd be able to defend yourself and prove your innocence

It'd be pretty hard to defend yourself without the evidence at hand -- they sieze the computer in about 101% of all cases. In addition, any password-protected or otherwise secured files will require you to unlock them (whatever they might be) or you will surely end up in PMITA prion. This also opens the door for:

1) incomptence -- "can't find the pics now, judge, but I swear they were here before" and
2) willful malice -- cops simply planting evidence because they couldn't find any and beleive you were a perv anyway so it balances out

Re:So this is like...

[The Mighty Buzzard]

I think you're vastly underestimating the porn viewing capacity of one man with an Internet connection.

Re:So this is like...

[System.exit(true)]

(1) They will need a copy in the first place to create the original checksum/hash and if you are going to use that method, which means they will actually need somebody to sit down and determine what they think is child pornography (sounds like a dream job for a pedofile).

(2) They will still need to keep the original copy of the image or whatever for possible use in court. Due to the images being subjectively deemed child pornography, there are possible "classifications" that the media could fall into. If they were to take a person to court over this, they would need to be able to show exactly what the person has supposably download and not just a signature (hash) of a file that was determined illegal by a non-government (court) system.

Re:So this is like...

[walt-sjc]

Nice troll. While the US has it's share of corrupt a-holes in government, the US is NOTHING like China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, or any of the other "bad" countries it's been involved in militarily. No country is perfect historically, but the US is a whole lot better than most. History has also proven that you can't sit around doing nothing while insane warlord dictators do bad things or the situation gets MUCH MUCH worse. (And no, while Bush IS an a-hole, he is not a warlord dictator.) The US really doesn't want to (and can't) be the world's police force, but nobody else is truely stepping up to the plate.

Some people point to Guantanimo, but I'd MUCH rather spend 10 years in Guantanimo than 5 years in a prison in China or North Korea, or Iran.

If you really want to point fingers, perhaps you should start looking at who is providing these "bad" countries with nuclear technology or other support. Lets look at the UN and see who is failing to support sanctions against Iran and North Korea and allowing things to get out of control (which we are all going to pay for eventually.)

There are other countries (governments) that I do believe have better morals than the US government, like Australia and the UK (both of which supported the US in Iraq BTW) but not an order of magnitude better.

Re:So this is like...

[osgeek]

I've got some mod points, but unfortunately there's no choice for "completely missed the sarcasm".

Re:So this is like...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> I imagine that if China had vastly more nukes than anyone else then they would
> probably be considered "the good guys" since they'd squash anyone who disagreed.

Crushing someone who calls you a "bad guy" is being the bad guy. If people call you "the good guy" of their own free will, in a society with a free press and dissent, you can be sure you are the good guy.

China would not be a "good guy", even if (or because they) point a gun at you and say, "Say I'm a good guy!"

And the US, in spite of recent developments, is still the good guy. People still look to it to do the right thing, and defend freedom, even if they disagree with the current policies. Indeed, knowing the US is as it is, they hope they can change things through free speech, since they know it is inherently good.

> Assuming you are talking about the US, I would argue that recent actions
> have put the US firmly in the "bad guys" camp to my mind.

Hyperbole on your part. I don't see you fleeing to the "opponents of the US-as-bad-guys". Of course, you are free to say such idiotic things -- something only "good guys" let you do, by the way.

> Hint: both democracy and capitalism are flawed, yet you are forcing them upon the rest of the world.

Democracy and capitalism are functions of freedom. I wish we were more about forcing freedom on the rest of the world, than democracy per se. Current "forced democracies" are developing crap like religious-based laws, which exposes the flaw of democracy when democracy is placed first, above freedom (which has only one meaning: freedom from coercion, which is to say, government coercion.)

Since you like hints, here's one. Hint: Politicians talk about democracy rather than freedom most of the time because they derive their power from laws -- i.e. limits on freedom. Hence it is in their interest to tout democracy rather than freedom per se because it boosts their power on the back of freedom itself. You expand your power by leading voters on cruscades to limit freedom.

Re:So this is like...

[macdaddy]

That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway? Sure some of it is obvious. Quite frankly some of it isn't. I've seen some images that most people would immediately assume were child porn when in fact it's a young 20-something-er dolled up to look young. If you didn't recognize the actress you would mistake her for a minor. I'd like to know just how exactly they plan on eliminating the false-positives. They must eliminate all FPs because a mistake could literally ruin a person's life.

Then again I wonder how this will affect other cultures. Does a culture where females marry at 14 perceive nude images of a person of the same age to be child porn? I'd never thought about that before. I recall an incident where some local photo developing shop called the cops on a foreign couple because they had images developed of the woman and her child nude in the tub and on a bed. Of course SRS freaked out. In reality no harm was done (except to the family). This was a common thing in their culture (and most others I would think). It makes you wonder.

Re:So this is like...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Capitalism thrives only where there's a rule of law, allowing hard workers to exchange the product of their labor freely without worrying about theft or said hard work. This includes theft via "legitimate" taxation, as well as kickbacks to corrupt officials and common street thugs.

Hence countries that allow government officials to "get in the way" of business, i.e. heavy handed socialism, suffer for it since you can't make a move without bribing people, which then also puts you at legal risk. Hence the economy chugs along slowly, if not falling into reverse.

Re:So this is like...

[An Onerous Coward]

Fingerprinting algorithms aren't necessarily the same thing as checksums. For example, you could store as a "fingerprint" the image, shrunk down to 75x75, and use some fuzzy matching to detect a potential match. It might also be possible to just fingerprint the most important bits of the image (the parts that are unlikely to get cropped), then look for some subset of an image that seems to match the overall image. Computationally expensive and error prone, but not beyond the realm of possibility.

Once a potential match is found, the two images might be run through a neural net, and if PervBot 9000 decides they're the same, it would then get passed on to a human being for confirmation.

Yes, there are lots of things a computer-savvy pedophile can do to protect himself. But when it comes to analyzing effective techniques for stopping child porn distribution, I think it's safe to assume that most of them are basically normal people, rather than evil supergeniuses.

Re:So this is like...

[operagost]

I think most reasonable adults would conclude that the state of anarchy (that is, the system of government) is the real problem, not the capitalism (that is, the economic system). Blaming Somalia's situation on capitalism is like blaming it on dark skin or guns.

Re:So this is like...

[ilsa]

That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway? Sure some of it is obvious. Quite frankly some of it isn't.

It's worse that that, really. The Law says that porn is at least partly determined by whether the "average person" considers it porn. Sure, there's a long list of things that are explicitly listed, but the gray area is little more than "huh, does this look like porn to you?"

A slight shift in community standards -- or an overzealous cop -- and pretty much every diaper ad becomes kiddy porn.

Re:So this is like...

[unitron]

"If the police have images of abuse, they can crop out everything but the kid's face and stick it on a milk carton..."

I'm pretty sure that the parts of the picture that make it pornographic (view of the child's genitals or view of child in contact with adult genitals, for example) will make it unsuitable for public view.

There was a case a while back where the entire child was grayed out of the picture, leaving the furniture, bedspread, etc. visible, which allowed wide dissemination of the picture and subsequent identification of the room as being in a particular motel, which led to a review of the motel's guest register and, if I recall correctly, an eventual arrest and recovery of the child.

As for de-criminalizing the dissemination (perhaps an unfortunate word choice under the circumstances) of the images, that would still be a violation of the child's privacy rights.

Re:So this is like...

[HTH NE1]

and a nice contact address for getting enriched uranium and tritium

You mean I can't just go to the corner drugstore and buy plutonium?

Re:So this is like...

[spun]

I thought to myself, hey, here's a chance to bash libertarians, and everyone who knows me knows how much I love me some libertarian bashing. Well, according to wikipedia, they economy is not doing too badly. The well known libertarian think tank Mises Institute even has an article entitled "Stateless in Somalia, and loving it." It is from Mises, so take it with a grain of salt.

Damn, I so wanted you to be right about this I went and looked up some facts to back you up, only the damn facts aren't cooperating!

Re:So this is like...

[suwain_2]

This may catch the easy suspects though.

I don't think those are the guys we want, though. We want the ones that are more difficult to catch, because they're the ones that are going to be distributing, or even creating, the stuff.

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove all laws against copying, selling and downloading child porn, but keep the laws against things that actually involve the children.

In my opinion, at least selling, and for that matter trading (like in the old mailbox days, give me n, then you can have m of mine), since they provide an incentive for producing more. One could argue that paying for child porn should be illegal for the same reason.

Re:So this is like...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Presumedly you'd be able to defend yourself and prove your innocence

Prove my innocence? Fuck you, prove I'm guilty. They'd need quite a bit more than a checksum that matches porn to do it, too.

Re:So this is like...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway? Sure some of it is obvious. Quite frankly some of it isn't.

I'd be satisfied with going after the obvious stuff. A 16 year old doing porn isn't as likely to be a victim as a 12 year old. Hell, one or two of the current porn stars got their start at 16.

Does a culture where females marry at 14 perceive nude images of a person of the same age to be child porn?

You mean, like Canada? Well, you can have sex with 14 year olds there (until next week or thereabouts). Most foreign cultures I've looked at where that happens are fairly conservative - it's a big deal for bollywood movies to show kissing. anyway, this looks to be a US sort of thing, so US laws apply.

Re:So this is like...

[computational super]

Ah, you must be outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. court sytem, then.

Re:So this is like...

[FireFury03]

And no, while Bush IS an a-hole, he is not a warlord dictator.

I think the jury is still out there I'm afraid.

The US really doesn't want to (and can't) be the world's police force

There is a big difference here: the police force upholds the laws, the US outright ignored the laws when they attacked Iraq in violation of the UN charter. If the police force broke the law in order to do what they personally perceive as "the right thing" then there would be hell to pay.

Some people point to Guantanimo, but I'd MUCH rather spend 10 years in Guantanimo than 5 years in a prison in China or North Korea, or Iran.

Not being as bad as some of the worst "bad guys" does *not* automatically make the US "good guys".

If you really want to point fingers, perhaps you should start looking at who is providing these "bad" countries with nuclear technology or other support.

Both the US and UK have supplied most of the "bad guys" with weapons for long periods of time. (and in many cases put them in power in the first place)

like Australia and the UK (both of which supported the US in Iraq BTW)

The UK *government* supported the US in Iraq despite massive public outcry from the electorate. Current popular opinion suggests that this will be a major factor in the current government's defeat at the next election.

Re:So this is like...

[vistic]

Ahhh...! I remember when that was in the news. Those pictures were so creepy! It was like a ghost child was molested. The kid wasn't grayed out, they tried to reconstruct the hotel room or bedspread or whatever it was that was behind the child... but you could still see the outline of where the child was. It was sort of like from the movie Predator.

*shivers*

Re:So this is like...

[FireFury03]

Crushing someone who calls you a "bad guy" is being the bad guy.

Iraq called the US a "bad guy" and was crused.
Iran is calling the US a "bad guy" and is receiving threats.
China is calling the US a "bad guy"...

If people call you "the good guy" of their own free will, in a society with a free press and dissent, you can be sure you are the good guy.

Patting yourselves on the back and telling yourselves you're a "good guy" doesn't count - you need to look outside the US for opinion on the US's actions and you will see there is a lot of negative opinion.

China would not be a "good guy", even if (or because they) point a gun at you and say, "Say I'm a good guy!"

Only by your standards. Who's to say your standards are right for everyone else in the world?
(Note: I'm not saying China *aren't* bad, I'm just saying that you are looking at it from a single perspective "communism bad, capitalism good". That is a US-centric attitude and most of the rest of the world doesn't see the communism/capitalism divide in such stark contrast.)

People still look to it to do the right thing, and defend freedom

You do realise that with recent laws, the US is probably now one of the least free nations in the west? Sadly Europe is going the same way.

Of course, you are free to say such idiotic things

Assuming that someone's opinions are "idiotic" just because they differ from your own is extremely arrogant.

I wish we were more about forcing freedom on the rest of the world

There is something very oxymoronic about "forcing freedom" upon people. True freedom is anarchy since everyone would be free to ignore the laws and is clearly unacceptable. I'm in favor of freedom - I think nations should be free to run their affairs without the US sticking it's nose in and telling them they're not doing it how the US would like.

If a large group of nations (the UN) decides that one nation has gone off the rails and needs some intervention then that's fair enough. However, this hasn't happened in the case of Iraq where the US just plain ignored the UN and did it's own thing - IMHO that makes the US no better than any other rogue nation. What would be the difference between Iraq bombing the US in order to remove a warmongering head of state compared to what the US has done to Iraq?

Re:So this is like...

[walt-sjc]

>And no, while Bush IS an a-hole, he is not a warlord dictator.

I think the jury is still out there I'm afraid.

No, it's not. He's the president in a democracy. He can be removed from office at any time and does not have absolute authority. In fact, due to term limits, he doesn't have much time left in office. Maybe you need to look up the term "dictator" in a dictionary.

Both the US and UK have supplied most of the "bad guys" with weapons for long periods of time. (and in many cases put them in power in the first place)

I see you left out Germany, Russia, and France who had HUGE vested interests in Iraq and were the primary supporters of Iraq in the modern incarnation (after Sadam went off the deep end.) In fact, these countries (with financial vested interest in supporting an evil dictator) abused their power in the UN in an attempt to keep an evil dictator in office. We are seeing thise exact same scenario played out with Iran. Follow the money.

The UK *government* supported the US in Iraq despite massive public outcry

And this is different than the US exactly HOW??? Oh that's right, different abbreviations.

Ahh, the anti-US propoganda is SOOO easy to believe.

Re:So this is like...

[crystalattice]

The view against child sex and related issues has only been a recent invention (roughly in the last 150 years). Prior to that, there was no real aversion to having sex with children or other "sexual assualt" ideas; the Chinese (circa 18th century) had children that "entertained" guests under the table during dinner. Many cultures encouraged child marriages as a way to lessen the burden on families and ensure the girls would get enough support. Just like prostitution was encouraged in Rome so men wouldn't "harm" families by sleeping w/ married women.

Now, I personally there is a biological reason for wanting to be w/ younger children, i.e. 16+ years, because of the biological "guarantee" that the child is able to bear offspring. Once a women hits ~30 years old, the chances of a successful birth (read: no birth defects, retardation, autism, etc.) start dropping.

Having said that, I also feel that child porn is wrong. Young children have limited knowledge of sexuality (especially in more prudish countries) so can be psychologically affected, leading to poor person skills and hurting relationships. However, I think there needs to be more studies looking at when the psychological damage occurs and possibly lowering the age of consent, especially since minors are engaging in sexual activity at younger ages.

It may not be PC, but it is looking at the changes in culture. If kids are having consensual sex at 11 (or whatever), then how is it worse when a 16 year old wants to date someone just a few years older?

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, pervert.

Re:So this is like...

[bigsmoke]

You might be interested in reading on the Naastenliefde, Vrijheid & Diversiteit, a Dutch political party which is currently generating lots of steam and death threats for the party members here in the Netherlands.

Personally, I find this a very difficult subject. I found another comment in this thread that quite accurately summarizes the problems involved.

Re:So this is like...

[soft_guy]

Some people point to Guantanimo, but I'd MUCH rather spend 10 years in Guantanimo than 5 years in a prison in China or North Korea, or Iran.

I'd rather spend the rest of my life in a prison in Sweden than 1 year at Guantanimo.

Re:So this is like...

[soft_guy]

Dude, you are trying to use "logic" in an argument involving children and sex. That is clearly not allowed in the US.

You are not thinking of the children. So, again, I must implore you to Think of the Children!
 

Re:So this is like...

[Firethorn]

That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway?

This would be a database of known cporn images. IE already caught on the HD or something of some pedophile. Like others have said, my standard would be to not worry about 'teen porn', and go after true cporn, IE 12 and under. Mistakes there are unlikely.

And yes, you do have the problem that some people consider plain nudes pornographic.

Re:So this is like...

[zardo]

This will probably only work against particular instances of an image. Change the resolution or compression rate even slightly will look like a whole new image.

Look up fourier transforms, FFT, anything along those lines. It's pretty easy to reduce an image into it's basic components. It's some truly ingenious math also.

JPEG compression is based on FFT, so theoretically, a program could come up with the least common factor.

Re:So this is like...

[G-funk]

Well it's no longer 1985 :)

Re:So this is like...

[zardo]

Here is a very good visual explanation:

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/fourier/fourier.h tml

Re:So this is like...

[Mr2001]

In my opinion, at least selling, and for that matter trading (like in the old mailbox days, give me n, then you can have m of mine), since they provide an incentive for producing more. One could argue that paying for child porn should be illegal for the same reason.

OTOH, if selling were legal, it'd be easy to find the people who create and sell new material, and arrest them for the crime of producing it.

Re:So this is like...

[Sunny7L]

Actually, using your example, it would mean taking all nuclear weapons and stockpiling them in one centralized location for monitoring. Of course people/nations could make new weapons, which would then be added to the pile. Ultimately resulting in zero nuclear weapons--excepting that huge cache.

Of course if Iran controlled that pile there'd be cause for alarm.

In this situation, with kiddie porn, if the ISPs compiled a list of known sites and blocked them, and blocked all new as discovered, it would eventually result in a near end to all kiddie porn distribution on the net.

Re:So this is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

"If the police have images of abuse, they can crop out everything but the kid's face and stick it on a milk carton..."

I'm pretty sure that the parts of the picture that make it pornographic (view of the child's genitals or view of child in contact with adult genitals, for example) will make it unsuitable for public view.

Last time I checked, children didn't have their genitalia on their faces.

Re:So this is like...

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

Not if the seller is operating from a country where production is legal.

Re:So this is like...

[HeroreV]

The age of consent is 14 in Canada and China, and it's 13 in Spain, so although views have changed across the entire world it's not like the USA everywhere. Still, the age of consent is 16 in some places in the USA, so why is child pornography with 16 year olds considered so bad when sex with 16 year olds is legal?

Hashing?

[PhrostyMcByte]

I hope they apply a strong hash - I certainly wouldn't want to be the victim of a collision. Which also makes me wonder - though some hashes havn't been broken yet they likely will be in the future - does this mean pedos will get off scott free because it might have just been a collision?

Re:Hashing?

[baadger]

presumeably if they suspect child porn, they'll go bust some doors and collect *actual evidence*...

Re:Hashing?

[Zx-man]

That's exactly what I thought after reading the summary. The system (if designed wrong) can be used to cause much harm.
And, even without the collisions, imagine that after (IF?) the system passes testing. It becomes widely accepted and major ISPs ban the sites blacklisted. Now, imagine such a thing: someone massively links to questionable images from an multiple anonymous Slashdot comments.
Another scenario: upload images to some file-sharing site. Voila, your competition banner.
I seriously hope that the blacklist will be moderated.

Re:Hashing?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing already happens.

For example, access to 4chan.org is blocked by several UK ISPs, despite deleting all CP posted to the site rather quickly and banning whoever posted it.

Just because the system isn't run by humans doesn't mean it'll be any more or less unfair.

Re:Hashing?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

For that matter, how are they verifying their copy? Obviously if its a 6 year old getting raped you'd flag it and add the hash, but what if its just a girl taking a picture for her boyfriend that leaks out? Especially if its a 16 year old that looks like shes 18? or a 18 year old that looks like shes 16? What about Art? Family photograph from a country where theyre open about nudity(okay, would still be illegal here, but you get what I'm getting at).

Theres a lot of gray area, and a huge list of hashes isn't going to be very descriptive. While we're at it, they're just flagging files transfered.. What if someone sets up a relayer in a country where its legal and uses it to send kiddieporn to you via email? Click a message, commit a crime and go to jail. Or if someone defaces a site and puts up CP, or if someone just ups random CP to a public site(4chan), or any number of other ways.

Going after real pedophiles hurting real people would be great, but this isn't going to help and passing this kind of tech off as "for the children" is downright offensive.

Re:Hashing?

[Anonymous Coward]

presumeably if they suspect child porn, they'll go bust some doors and collect *actual evidence*...

Doors? They're talking about stuff like e-mails. When the picture in an e-mail matches the hash, the mail is forwarded to the missing child people. Why would they need to bust doors to see if the e-mail is really kiddie-porn or not? They can just open the e-mail.

There is no need to bust an innocent persons door, just to see if it was a hash-collission or not.

Re:Hashing?

[Lord Kano]

What happens when pedophiles learn to tack on an extra kb onto the end of their images and every so often randomly permute that data? The hashes all become worthless.

LK

Re:Hashing?

[hackstraw]

I hope they apply a strong hash - I certainly wouldn't want to be the victim of a collision. Which also makes me wonder - though some hashes havn't been broken yet they likely will be in the future - does this mean pedos will get off scott free because it might have just been a collision?

I set up my own "porn" server one time by using MD5 hashes. I used a program called suck to, err, suck down all new pics from certain alt.binaries groups, stored the md5s in an MySQL database, and if the md5 existed, I just deleted the picture, then put the pics up on a website. Sorry, it wasn't kiddie porn though.

What I want to know, is how prevalent is kid porn or what the hell it is? To me, I'm only interested in girls once they get signs of being able to breed. You know those things like boobies and hips. To me kiddie porn happens all the time on diaper commercials. How common, and what exactly is the fascination with pre-pubescent kids? I just don't get it. I don't think they are "hot", I don't think most teenage girls are hot, but I certainly have been guilty of "premeditating" statutory rape, but I just don't get the obsession by the "criminals" or those trying to stop them of doing whatever they do with kiddie porn.

Simply makes animal sex seem normal to me.

Re:Hashing?

[betterunixthanunix]

Pedophiles don't send these things in plaintext anymore. Everything is encrypted, and good encryption schemes pad the data with random bytes to ensure that there won't be a duplicate, even if the same data is encrypted with the same key. Hashing won't catch the real bad guys, who are producing large volumes of this stuff, it will only catch the guy who look at this stuff, and maybe decides to send some to his friend. Putting these people in jail is not going to stop the problem, any more than suing P2P users stopped people from downloading music.

Re:Hashing?

[FireFury03]

While we're at it, they're just flagging files transfered.. What if someone sets up a relayer in a country where its legal and uses it to send kiddieporn to you via email? Click a message, commit a crime and go to jail. Or if someone defaces a site and puts up CP, or if someone just ups random CP to a public site(4chan), or any number of other ways.

This is what worries me about the "it's illegal to view $foo" laws - it's entirely possible that you don't know you're about to view $foo until it's too late and you've broken the law. Is there a need to go after people who have simply downloaded something dodgy since they may not have intentionally done so? Better to concentrate on people who are *paying* for content since by paying they are financially supporting the continuation of the crime (the people who haven't paid are not supporting the real criminals).

Re:Hashing?

[monsted]

This is why the child pornography filters employed by most Danish ISPs now will only redirect the user to an "Oops, you do know that this stuff is illegal, right?" page.

Then again, our filters are made mostly to protect the innocent from being subjected to CP by accident (and yes, it'll stop a few from ever getting into the stuff), not so much prevent someone who really wants it from getting it - they'll always find a way...

Re:Hashing?

[voice_of_all_reason]

Especially if its a 16 year old that looks like shes 18? or a 18 year old that looks like shes 16? What about Art? Family photograph from a country where theyre open about nudity(okay, would still be illegal here, but you get what I'm getting at).

Excellent point, since the database would by its nature be off-limits to public checks and balances. It'd just "be illegal because government organization X says so."

What about your right to confront your accuser (the database software). Can't imagine they'd be too keen on showing the stuff in court. Like breathalyzers, the magic box would always be right.

Re:Hashing?

[carpe_noctem]

I'm guessing that a relatively strong hash is already behind this idea. Lebanese, perhaps?

Re:Hashing?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

These are the same people who will scrub your walls to find marijuana residue, then claim you are in posession of marijuana because there's residue on your walls.

Re:Hashing?

[f1r3br4nd]

What I want to know, is how prevalent is kid porn or what the hell it is? To me, I'm only interested in girls once they get signs of being able to breed.

...which means you're interested in 16 year olds, and the occasional 15, 14, and maybe even 13 year old. Welcome to the club, you pervert, and thank you for confessing. The FBI will be at your house shortly to sieze your computer and take you to a re-education camp. If it turns out you don't have any incriminating evidence on your computer, some will be provided for you.

Re:Hashing?

[budgenator]

human sexauality is a continum, most of us find the opposite sex attractive, most prefer the same age and discriminate based on things like hair color, body shape ect, fewer are attracted to the same sex but same age; some are farther out on the fringe, it's the way we are born.

Re:Hashing?

[HTH NE1]

So a reasonable suspicion to get a warrant is reduced to a matching checksum or hash, or does it equate to an exigent circumstance?

Re:Hashing?

[suwain_2]

Family photograph from a country where theyre open about nudity(okay, would still be illegal here, but you get what I'm getting at).

I'm by no means an expert (or a lawyer), but I seem to recall that the definition of child pornography is that they're under 18, and in a sexual context. In theory, then, it might be legal to have a nude picture of someone under 18; for example, someone who was just born (they don't wear clothes in the womb), or a child on a nude beach. I'd certainly be suspicious of the latter, but you might be able to make a case for its legality.

Re:Hashing?

[Perseid]

I've heard anecdotal horror stories about people taking a picture of their baby taking a bath in the sink, bringing in the picture to be developed and getting arrested for it.

Also, I beleive the law(in the US) is something terrible like "intended to illicit a sexual response", so even a 12 year old posing seductively in a swimsuit would be deemed child porn. Probably a 'lesser' child porn, but still...

I'm not 100% sure about that, and if ISPs are going to start filtering things, I'd prefer to be wrong. You know some nutjob is turned on by the sight of a kid's feet. Are we then going to have to filter pictures of underage feet? Or of feet that look as if they may be a child's?

Re:Hashing?

[LunaticTippy]

16 year olds?!? Try five.

The big problem

[damburger]

Child porn is the darkest side of the internet. Its the thing all net users should be on guard for, and the argument invoked against the internet by countless alarmists.

However, I don't agree with this database. Keeping these images, even for law enforcement purposes, is a violation of the privacy of children who have already been subjected to a horrific violation. Leave them alone already.

Re:The big problem

[neomage86]

Fine, they won't keep the actual images in their databases, but instead keep a hash/signature of images.

Use a signature generation method like http://vision.unige.ch/publications/postscript/98/ MilaneseCherbuliezPun_icapr98.pdf or even more flexible (kind of like a visual version of musicbrainz) so the signature would be invariant to minor changes in the image. Not really my field, but it seems relatively trivial.

Re:The big problem

[damburger]

I can't find where it says they are going to do that (it is kind of technical, but I'd have thought even a laymans article would point it out if they weren't storing the actual images).

In any case, raw images are going to have to pass through the operators of this database, and CRB checks won't pick up pedophiles who haven't been caught. Still a privacy issue.

Re:The big problem

[Frogbert]

What exactly do we need to be on guard for? Are the images going to jump out of the screen and attack us?

If anyone at all needs to be on guard it is hosting companies but to say that every user should be keeping a constant eye out for child porn is just stupid.

Re:The big problem

[donscarletti]

What if nobody but a script sees the images?

Re:The big problem

[Eivind Eklund]

According to the article, it is based on one way hashes - in other words, the image is not kept. Also, no matter what, this is a tradeoff. If we assume that the database is an effective tool for stopping distribution, then keeping an image in the database would be less of a violation of privacy than letting the images float free.

Eivind.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find where it says they are going to do that (it is kind of technical, but I'd have thought even a laymans article would point it out if they weren't storing the actual images).

Plans call for the missing children's center to collect known child-porn images and create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula.

Sounds like a hash of some description to me.

Re:The big problem

[damburger]

OK, I missed the bit of the article about the hash. My point is still valid though - because at some point somebody is either going to be handling the images or using a program that does it for them. Still a privacy issue.

Re:The big problem

[neomage86]

It says so right here: "Plans call for the missing children's center to collect known child-porn images and create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula. Each participating company would scan its users' images for matches."

Re:The big problem

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

DUDE.. Fucking children is bad ok... What part of fucking children do you find acceptable cause we true Americans do not find it acceptable. Not 1 bit. Sir! Are you a pedophile?! What do you have to hide! You are supporting Pedophilia by not allowing the law to invade all of our privacy.

You sir, are Anti-American. I bet you dont love Jesus. Thats it... I'm calling the cops... this fucker does not love Jesus and he's obviously a kid fucker!

Fucking children is bad sir. very bad.

Is that a copy of grand theft auto in your playstation... JESUS CHRIST MAN! You are SATAN!

Re:The big problem

[JanneM]

If anyone at all needs to be on guard it is hosting companies but to say that every user should be keeping a constant eye out for child porn is just stupid.

Well, yes. The whole point is to have users _not_ keep a constant eye out for child porn after all.

Re:The big problem

[ultranova]

Child porn is the darkest side of the internet. Its the thing all net users should be on guard for, and the argument invoked against the internet by countless alarmists.

Bullshit. In the 10 years I've been using the Internet, I've come accross child porn one (1) time, and even that looked more like two kids playing doctor than any pedophilic photo setup. If that's the "darkest side of the Internet", then the Net's brighter than the surface of the Sun.

No, what's happening here is simply another censorship / surveillance system being built with the mantra "think of the children". And the makers do think of the children - they think of those children in the future, all grown up and in chains and get a hardon from that.

So no, all the Net's users should not be on guard for the infinitesimally small chance that they happen upon CP by accident, anymore than all the people in Real Life should be on guard for the infinitesimally small chance that the guy passing you on the street happens to be a terrorist. Yeah, it's possible, but even if it happened, what the heck are you going to do - you sick pervert looked at the picture, so by law you should go to prison, since such pictures incite people to such acts, so you can't now be trusted anymore, right ? And what were you doing on a netsite where pedophiles hang out at, anyway ? You must be one too !

Every time I hear "think of the children", I think of the future of those children and want to cry. Well, actually I want to protect those children by beating the living crap out of whoever it is trying to enslave them this time, but crying is more socially accepted.

However, I don't agree with this database. Keeping these images, even for law enforcement purposes, is a violation of the privacy of children who have already been subjected to a horrific violation. Leave them alone already.

Do you honestly think that those who are building this censorship & surveillance system are doing it for the childrens sake ? No, it is something that will be used to put those children into chains, once they grow up.

Don't be fooled by their lies; these people care nothing for the children, or anyone else for that matter; they only care about power.

Re:The big problem

[ultranova]

What if nobody but a script sees the images?

Imprison whoever wrote the script ? After all, he just broke the DMCA by circumventing an effective access control mecahnism (that prevented anyone else from seeing the images), and since he knew how to do it, he must have experience with circumventing the controls of pedophile websites - which means that he is not only a pedophile, but also a - oh, horror - COPYRIGHT INFRINGER !!!

Re:The big problem

[j35ter]

Imagine someone (Government, Yahoo, Micro$oft,...) crawling through data fingerprint archives -- lets see where this document originated... ah, there`s the author! Don`t think that images only will be affected, for, surely, these evil CP viewers will start to change filename extensions, so lets just check them all!!! Creepy!

Re:The big problem

[Firethorn]

Ah, sounds like antivirus retasked to looking for cporn. Shouldn't be too hard, millions of viruses, millions of images.

Still, I'm scared of how much 'for the children' there is today. It's become the clarion call of those who want to take our rights away.

I mean, think about what else this can be used for, and you know it will be used for other things. Looking for copyrighted media, anyone?

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I missed the bit of the article about the hash. My point is still valid though - because at some point somebody is either going to be handling the images or using a program that does it for them. Still a privacy issue.

Just like when arresting a guy for posessing child porn, the police will need to view the images to see if they are actually child porn or not[1]. What difference does it make that after viewing the pictures they run them through a program to create a hash, before destroying them?

[1] The part about checking if a crime was actually committed may not apply in the USA or certain other countries.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pity that I already used my mod points because I agree 100% with you.

I have been using the Internet for 20 years. Before the web was invented, I saw hardcore porn pictures floating around in the alt.* newsgroups and on some ftp servers, including on a server that I was administering (the unprotected incoming directory was used by some porn traders until I discovered it and deleted the whole stuff - no, I did not keep a copy). Some of it was rather nasty: zoophilia, BDSM, deep fisting, lots of fetish stuff and so on...

Later, when the web was invented and started to grow, I started seeing porn popping up on many web sites. Although the number of porn sites has been growing steadily, I would say that the amount of porn that you can be exposed to by accident is not larger than 10 or 20 years ago. The amount of porn that you can find if you are actively looking for it may be a bit bigger, but not much (taking into account all sources of porn that existed then and that exist now: magazines, tapes and now the web).

But during all that time, I did not see a single child porn picture (save for some censored pictures illustrating articles about how to fight against child porn). Of course I'm not actively searching for that because I find the idea disgusting. But I am convinced that those who make so much publicity around the fight against child porn are overstating the problem and (most likely) have a hidden agenda that I cannot agree with.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So when I'm looking for porn of the adult kind and start traversing the maze that is the adult realm and come across a child-porn image, will I be prosecuted? Do I need to immediately contact my ISP and try to convince them that it was purely accidental? What if I couldn't tell that a girl in an image was 16 because she looked 18?

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what's happening here is simply another censorship / surveillance system being built with the mantra "think of the children". And the makers do think of the children - they think of those children in the future, all grown up and in chains and get a hardon from that.

WTF are you talking about? Just because you've only mistakenly stumbled upon child porn only once then it must not be a problem. Reread the article, did you think the gist was that it was designed to help people from "innocently stumbling across child porn?". No, it was to help to track people who are ACTIVELY accessing it. If you've been on the net as long as you claim to, you can't honestly tell me with all the stuff out there that you can't conceive that there is a significant amount of kiddie porn out there. It's illegal, unlike a lot of the "regular" porn you see, of course you're not going to "just stumble" upon it on some dudes website. You're statement shows a massive amount of ignorance and black helicopter paranoia.

Don't be fooled by their lies; these people care nothing for the children, or anyone else for that matter; they only care about power.

Therefore any attempt by any organization to attempt to curtail/stop/punish distributors/punish consumers of child porn should be ignored. I guess we should just let the "market work itself out"? Brilliant.

Re:The big problem

[plague3106]

It doesn't matter if it was accidental or not. You view it, you're guilty of possessing it.

No jury would buy the 'it was an accident' story either. This is one of those things were if you're accused, it doesn't matter what the truth really is.

All because the police are too lazy to find the people actually creating the stuff in the first place.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

But during all that time, I did not see a single child porn picture

Consider yourself lucky. I used newsrobot to download a ton of stuff from alt.binaries.erotica.* and then later used file sharing networks (such as Kazaa). I would usually mass-download a ton of files and sort it out later. Every once in a while I'd get some child porn which I really didn't want to see. Child pornography is really disturbing. I could describe what I saw, but you really don't want to hear about it.

What sucks even more is if I didn't go through those downloaded files and one of them remained on my computer. It's completely possible for someone to have a child porn file on their computer without even knowing it, because those sick fucks are putting it out there and labelling the files as something more innocent.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really doubt that it is the "but she looks 18" sort of porn that they're going after, unless advertised as 15 year old girls or whatever. It's the prepubescent stuff that's going to be targeted by this stuff. I don't know how much regular porn you'd need to consume to run across real kiddie porn anyways. On top of that, it's really not likely that you will be charged for having 1 picture. They're going after people with gigs and gigs of images. People who have to buy new hard drives to fit all the kiddie porn. That makes a case strong enough to put someone away for a long time.

Re:The big problem

[damienl451]

Your argument makes no sense whatsoever. If somebody weren't looking for MP3 files, he would not stumple upon any either. It does not mean that many people share music, movies,... on the Internet. The fact is, there is plenty of kiddy porn on the internet, and we should do something about it. I don't see how creating a database to help combat child porn limits your freedom, or that of your children. And even if they decided to create a database of music files to prevent the dissemination of copyrighted material, I'd be in favor of it (in the jurisdictions where downloading MP3 is illegal, so not in some countries in Europe for example). Are you trying to imply that doing your best to make sure the laws are enforced is a bad thing ? No matter how unpopular a law is, it's still law as long as it is on the books. You would not want to live in a world where people can pick and choose what laws they obey.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with child porn isn't that people might run across it. It's that people are raping little kids and taking pictures of it. Being part of a community of likeminded individuals can give a person the feeling that it isn't so wrong. Seeing pictures of the dozens (hundreds? More? I have no idea) of people in the act of molesting children (and yes, that stuff is out there) may break down the moral barriers for an already twisted individual and make him want to make his own pictures... dig?

If that sounds assinine, look at the growth of furry culture since the dawn of the internet. People dressing up like animals and having sex? Unheard of before the internet. Now it seems like people are yiffing all over the place. (not to equate furries with pedophiles, just showing how the internet can indeed spread information about sexual deviancies. And yes, I know that not all furries are the kinky type, but I am willing to bet that all kinky people who have a fursuit have thought about having sex wearing it.)

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

People dressing up like animals and having sex? Unheard of before the internet.

Are you sure? I could probably dig up a scan of an old black and white picture from the '30s with a man covered with a wolf's hide pretending to be raping a virgin. Or something like that. Of course this scan was circulated via the Internet, but it is very likely that the Internet did not exist when the photo was taken. Assuming that it's not a fake, which is another issue...

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's illegal, unlike a lot of the "regular" porn you see, of course you're not going to "just stumble" upon it on some dudes website.

Zoophilia is illegal in many states (and maybe for a reason - is the animal a consenting adult?). Yet it is very easy to find pictures or videos of people having sex with animals, if you are searching for that or even if you aren't. This is much easier than finding pictures of child abuse, even if you are actively trying to get that shit.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put child abuse and animal abuse in the same bag. I consider child porn absolutely disgusting and I'm just a bit more tolerant to animal porn even if I don't like it. While both of them are illegal (in some states), it is much easier to "just suble" upon zoophilia than on child porn. I think that the guy you were replying to has a point: child porn is not as common as some people claim.

I hope that the child molesters will be found and prosecuted. But I don't think that the advantages of the "solution" described here will compensate the risks associated with it (mainly abuse of power and censorship).

Re:The big problem

[jesuscyborg]

"Bullshit. In the 10 years I've been using the Internet, I've come accross child porn one (1) time, and even that looked more like two kids playing doctor than any pedophilic photo setup. If that's the "darkest side of the Internet", then the Net's brighter than the surface of the Sun."

I think you've been spending too much time on Slashdot.

I've been using the interweb since 1998 when I was 13, and I have been exposed to child pornography since day one. I remember logging in to Microsoft Chat (which was bundled with Windows) and all the rooms were devoted to kid porn... I also remember the channel listings on DALnet just being filled with stuff like, "!!!!!!!!!!!!11LolIta-_OMG-filesrvr" although these channels tended to be pure smoke.

On a more interesting point, a few years ago, I was paid to go through a list of about 10,000 randomly selected international websites and categorize them by hand for a search engine. For every thousand or so, I would see at least a couple child pornography sites.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's illegal, unlike a lot of the "regular" porn you see, of course you're not going to "just stumble" upon it on some dudes website.

Yeah, because nobody would EVER post child porn on a forum or send you some in an email. I can see the russian mafia now... "Pay us $50,000 or we start spamming you with 13 year old girls!"

$50 says that this won't do one thing to the publishers of child porn, and ends up arresting a lot of people who just got unlucky.

Re:The big problem

[hackstraw]

I've been using the interweb since 1998 when I was 13, and I have been exposed to child pornography since day one. I remember logging in to Microsoft Chat (which was bundled with Windows) and all the rooms were devoted to kid porn... I also remember the channel listings on DALnet just being filled with stuff like, "!!!!!!!!!!!!11LolIta-_OMG-filesrvr" although these channels tended to be pure smoke.

OK, to enlighten the ignorant here. What specifically and to what extent did you find child porn?

Were there pay sites with previews just like normal porn? Were these by invite only? Were these just pictures of young kids? Were these pictures of young kids trying to have sex with each other? Were these pictures of older people having sex with young kids?

Don't get me wrong, I like all kinds of sex, but this is one thing that I have no knowledge of. Actually, I've heard of a guy at where I work being raided by the FBI or somebody and getting busted for kiddie porn. But I'm curious about what content is out there (what is in demand) and what kind of supply there is? Also, with the extreme international taboo against the thing, how does it not stay all but pretty underground?

I'm very curious here, and I would guess that others are as well...

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it sounds like a good idea in theory, but what happens when the childporn distributors get wise and start infusing random text files into image files using steganographic programs? (an example I found within 15 seconds on google: http://www.hermetic.ch/hst/hst.htm) Wouldn't that change the hash? Perhaps not, as I don't pretend to understand the hashing process.

Re:The big problem

[QCompson]

I've been using the interweb since 1998 when I was 13, and I have been exposed to child pornography since day one.

The way these draconian laws are designed, you should be thrown into jail for a very long time. Every child you saw in those pictures, you have personally exploited (or so the theory seems to go). Busting the creeps who take the pictures makes sense to me; busting the saps that look at the pictures seems absurd.

Re:The big problem

[voice_of_all_reason]

Each participating company would scan its users' images for matches."

Now, I know nothing about hashing. But I'd assume that you'd need every bit of a the original file to determine if a file you have is exactly the same. So now they're going to share this database with every ISP on the planet? Gee, can't imagine anything ominous about that!

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to hear that your Internet is so bright... mine has videos of an adult (with face coveniently out of the field) raping a 6-year-old girl, of a 9-year-old doing a BJ, and so on. That's the kind of stuff I've occasionnally stumbled on since I started connecting back in 1994.

Re:The big problem

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

To prosecutors, though, someone who download a picture of an anonymouse 21 year old, who turns out to be 17 years and 9 months, should be treated as if they were someone who viciously raped a 4 year old.

And you know I do not exaggerate by much.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, once some Korean company got ahold of my credit card number, and before I knew it, they had run up $160 worth of charges. I went to their apparently legitimate web site and clicked on some FAQ link, and it basically said that if you disputed the charges, they'd send mail to your home and business asking why you weren't paying for your pornography, of type x, y, and z.

Nice world.

Re:The big problem

[dhasenan]

Another point--

Do you prefer having all your packets logged to combat child pornography, or do you prefer comparing hashed packets to combat child pornography?

Re:The big problem

[harmonica]

Keeping these images, even for law enforcement purposes, is a violation of the privacy of children who have already been subjected to a horrific violation.

A lot of evidence of gruesome crimes is kept, for various reasons. I don't quite see how the suffering of the victims is enlarged if the evidence is kept somewhere. New techniques may arise which demand the originals in order to gain additional knowledge. Think DNA testing.

With child porn images, I don't know. Maybe they can use them to train a system which recognizes them automatically. Unlikely, but still.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a large web site hosting company, and trust me - it is a legitimate problem.

The way I would envision this working would be just a large database of, say, MD5 sums, that is easily available to anyone who hosts images. You could have a process that checks every image against the database. If there is a match, it would simply be a way to let your abuse department know where to look.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then. You should be arrested and thrown in the slammer for a long, long time because you looked at those pictures and videos. Right? Even if you deleted them immediately after you saw them, maybe the Feds can recover some pics off unused sectors of your hard-drive. You're as bad as the molesters themselves, and worse than every other type of criminal. Makes sense, right? For the children and all. Zero tolerance is fun, isn't it?

Re:The big problem

[OMEGA Power]

Are you trying to imply that doing your best to make sure the laws are enforced is a bad thing ? No matter how unpopular a law is, it's still law as long as it is on the books. You would not want to live in a world where people can pick and choose what laws they obey.

Right, only certian people should be allowed to pick and choose what laws they obey

My concern is the almost inevitable expansion of this program to things other than cp. The past actions of this government (secret illegal wiretapping, datamining bank records, holding US citizens for years without charging them with a crime, touture, etc) show just how little the current administration cares about the privacy and constitutional rights of Americans and leads me to beleive that (if a system like this is built) iti s only a matter of time before it is used to monitor and archive internet traffic and look for many things other than cp (copyrighted files? normal/legal porn? political dissent?)

Re:The big problem

[thomasgulch]

what in the hell is the 'interweb'? Maybe you've been on AOL or webtv since '98?

Re:The big problem

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

There is only one way to accidentally sumble upon child porn and that's by link surfing. Following a link from one porn site to another porn site to another porn site until you stumble upon it.

That, or visiting usenet and/or some questionable p2p networks.

Re:The big problem

[Hentai]

Careful - "curiosity" is the same as pedophilia around these parts.

Re:The big problem

[adavies42]

And yet you shill for Social Security in your sig?

Re:The big problem

[elrous0]

Hanging out on IRC is the internet equivalent of wandering down dark alleys in Bangkok at night. Of course you're going to see the seedy side of the internet THERE.

-Eric

Re:The big problem

[Lehk228]

really? i had no idea the dark alleys of bankok were full of retards

Re:The big problem

[crystalattice]

I've been on the 'net since 1994, and it was quite easy to stumble upon child porn back then, especially on the newsgroups. Nowadays I don't run across it. I'm sure it happens but it's more difficult to accidentally find. Even the so-called "lolita" sites/groups don't have kiddie porn.

Sure, sometimes it pops up in newsgroups as spam, but so do viagra ads. And even then it's usually more "artistic" than vulgar. The people passing these around are smarter than they used to be. I'm sure there are still dedicated newsgroups, chat rooms, and web sites for it, but it's just not as visible as it used to be.

Even based on your anectdote, there are probably 1% of websites dedicated to child porn. I'm sure there's a problem, but I wonder just how bad it really is.

Re:The big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't disagree that the religious zealots ruining America will disgustingly exploit anything they can for their own power. But still, child porn is serious enough that I hope this works.

I like porn, a lot, including a wide variety of stuff (BDSM, 18-19 year olds, etc). But between consenting adults, ONLY. As a society we have drawn a line at 18, and that is a line we all should easily be able to live with.

I can't even imagine (a) hardcore child porn (e.g. child rape) much less (b) non-rape underage stuff. It must be horrifying. Because as I said, I view a lot of porn, and I am already unsettled when I see an advertised 18 or 19 year old who has a youngish look. When I run across that I always double-check and make sure the site notes its adherence to US 2257 or whatever that US law is requiring 18 yrs or older. And I hope to God they are telling the truth, and hope if any of those sites lie then they will be caught fast.

Porn between consenting adults is good clean healthy fun. With children, it is repugnant and should be punished at the highest levels. Anything which can cull out child porn is okay with me. It not only makes the world safer for kids to be kids, but also frees consenting adults to have their consenting fun without interference.

So I am not worried about, "If this works, next they'll come after Porn Variety X, Y, or Z." Frankly, if it works, they won't NEED to come after Porn Variety X, Y or Z" and will have much less of an argument for doing so.

Re:The big problem

[hawfizzle]

18 years is such an arbitrary indicator of maturity.

Devil's Advocate

[rkcallaghan]

What exactly is different between Company A (ISP) and Company B (Offshore Freakshow) amassing a huge database of child porn? Company B is probably even in a jurisdiction where having it is legal by local laws, but Company A is certainly not. We have zero tolerance laws so strict they ruin people's lives for a banner ad containing a legal model that simply wasn't documented properly. So how come it doesn't apply here?

~Rebecca

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Tux2000]

Even worse, assume someone is able to gain access to the child porn database. Child porn distributed by a big ISP is a real nightmare, not only for the ISP.

Let's hope that some detail has been lost: A database with some kind of hash sum of the images (and *not* the images themselves) would be a good idea. The big problem is to identify images (and videos) without (or with a very low rate of) false positives and false negatives. There are known ways to bypass simple file checksum algorithms: Append some junk bytes, recompress, rotate, mirror, and so on. The hash sum algorithm has to be able to detect this. The images could be packed into archives or iso files, and so on. There are nearly infinite possibilities to bypass blacklist filters. I won't go into details, for obvious reasons.

Tux2000

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no images stored, only the fingerprints of the images, normally in a 32-256 bit value. Some databases go a step further and store advanced hashes. All in all the data stored is really tiny. Where one would have a 1-3 meg file you now have a few kb of data. This data will mean nothing to us, just a string of numbers. However this data can be shared amongst ISPs and they can effectively track offenders and let the police nab them. If one has many of the same image traversing the net it can hopefully be traced.

The biggest problem with this system is that the images are sometimes seeded with random values in them, thus making the hash matches fail. That is the reason they are now using advanced hashing techniques that work on adaptive screening, this is however much slower that the traditional methods.

I hope that clears things up a little for you.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Decker-Mage]

The problem I see here is that you'll only catch the stupid pedophiles. Those that use encryption, VPN's, or even HTTPS in their transmissions aren't going to be caught by this method. For instance, I know of several newsgroups services that allow HTTPS or other forms of secure login and transmission. Still, even catching the stupid ones is a start.

One thing does worry me though and that is that the RIAA, MPAA, and other special interest groups will similarly request and obtain such fingerprint screening. While I don't hold with violating intellectual property rights, I similarly don't hold with using police powers to enforce such rights. The state has far better things to do with their enforcement dollars, like go after pedophiles and other felony offenders, than enforce IP. Civil suits/courts are the venue for that.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[leenks]

It is generally helpful to RTFA before commenting. For example, I saw the following things:

"create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula"

"If child porn is detected, AOL would refer the case to the missing-children's center for further investigation, as service providers are required to do under federal law."

Kinda covers most of your post, no?

Re:Devil's Advocate

[ultranova]

Let's hope that some detail has been lost: A database with some kind of hash sum of the images (and *not* the images themselves) would be a good idea.

No it wouldn't. Change a single pixel to a bit brighter or darker color, and the hash no longer matches - in fact, it won't be anywhere near the hash of the original image. No, you either keep the original images and do fuzzy matching, or this database won't be able to match anything.

There are nearly infinite possibilities to bypass blacklist filters. I won't go into details, for obvious reasons.

You just did :). But anyway, the habit many people and websites have of appending tags to images works well to do just that.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[oyenstikker]

What happens when I tranfer some random innocent file that matches one of these hashes?

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Xserv]

You go to Federal "Pound-Me-In-The-Ass" Prison for starters...

Xserv

Re:Devil's Advocate

[imroy]

The line "create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula" pretty much sounds like MD5 or SHA to me. In fact, the "based on a common formula" part sounds like they've done little or no work of their own and are lazily using a simple checksum. No?

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Don'tTreadOnMe]

We have zero tolerance laws so strict they ruin people's lives for a banner ad containing a legal model that simply wasn't documented properly.

Hey - I missed that one. Do you have a link, by any chance? I realize it sounds lazy to ask for a link, but in these days of pedophilic witch hunts, I'm afraid to Google for "False child porn banner ad"... Thanks!

Re:Devil's Advocate

[FireFury03]

you either keep the original images and do fuzzy matching, or this database won't be able to match anything.

I imagine some of the facial recognition techniques could be used. Don't store the image itself, just store the positions of certain features. You can then fuzzy-match to the stored feature shapes.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[FinalMidnight]

Regardless of the mathmatical wizardry involved, there is no way to do this without someone being paid to surf for and collect kiddie-porn. Yeah, they may delete it afterwards. So?

If I'm not mistaken, this breaks a whole lot of laws. Feel free to try and justify how this serves the greater good by throwing out the law book this one time. For the Children.

FinalMidnight

Re:Devil's Advocate

[kalirion]

An individual getting access to a company's private database? That will never happen!

Re:Devil's Advocate

[ultranova]

I imagine some of the facial recognition techniques could be used. Don't store the image itself, just store the positions of certain features. You can then fuzzy-match to the stored feature shapes.

Since we are talking about porn, you are going to get a lot of false positives - after all, there is only so many revealing poses.

Besides, do you really want the FBI to kick in your door because the fuzzy match happened to think that a picture of you walking, uploaded to your webpage, looks like a picture of a naked four-year old walking ?

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Danga]

No it wouldn't. Change a single pixel to a bit brighter or darker color, and the hash no longer matches - in fact, it won't be anywhere near the hash of the original image. No, you either keep the original images and do fuzzy matching, or this database won't be able to match anything.

While you are correct that editing the picture will make the hashes not match you are incorrect in assuming you must keep the original images to do fuzzy matching. The company I work for has a product that can do fuzzy matching without keeping the original picture and the product is immune to minor color changes and cropping. It also will match pictures that have been rotated/flipped.

We have also already set up the ability to use shared databases and the software does all of the tracking information automatically such as who added what images to the database and what their contact information is. I also want to say that the data that is shared about the image does not have the ability to recreate the original image. I think we need to get a hold of these people.

Click the following link to read more: http://www.infinadyne.com/iCatch.html

Re:Devil's Advocate

[FireFury03]

Since we are talking about porn, you are going to get a lot of false positives - after all, there is only so many revealing poses.

Given that these systems are able to pick an individual face from a crowd with good accuracy, they could identify the subjects pictured in the photo by facial features alone. Adding data about whole body positions would just help identifying the specific picture once you had identified the "actors". Also, I imagine that there's a whole lot more personally identifying geometric data that can be collected from an unclothed body than just the face.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[pikine]

If you want to play devil's advocate...

1. Be specific about what you're comparing. You said Company B is offshore, possibly in a jurisdiction where having child porn is legal. What about Company A? Do we assume that is inside the United States of America? You said Company A is an ISP, but what is the nature of Company B? Sorry, I don't understand the word "freakshow." I guess you imply that Company B is a content provider. If so, does Company B rely on Company A for its internet connection into the United States?
2. Be specific about why you're comparing them. Here you're (possibly) comparing a content provider with an ISP. That's like apples and oranges, so there is no reason why you're comparing apples and oranges. If you intend to compare two ISPs, one in the United States, and one offshore, then obviously these companies are subject to different laws. How does this relate to zero tolerance law? What point are you trying to refute here?
3. State your thesis. Are you saying it is morally wrong for Company B to amass a huge database of child porn, and morally correct for Company A?
4. Make sure what you're refuting is refutable. Here the newspaper article is reporting a fact, which is that ISP and content providers team up to maintain the database. Their motivation is to show cooperation with the government. A fact is irrefutable. Nobody is suggesting the moral correctness of these facts (though such suggestion could be refutable).

In addition, when you play devil's advocate, you should (1) completely agree to what you're trying to refute, (2) show the consequences, and (3) argue that the consequences are undesired and therefore a contradiction.

If you follow my instructions, then you will be a much better devil's advocate.

But why bother become a devil's advocate? I hear a lot of smart people say that, but is it a buzzword to imply that you are smarter than your opponent in an argument? If that's your only purpose, don't do it.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Actually, you'd want something that analyzed the picture as a whole, rather than just a binary transformation of it.

The Gracenote product, which analyzes .mp3's so it can retrieve the song information from a database, works like this. It generates an exacting number, which matches all known digital copies of that song, and if that fails, runs a more intense algorithm that supposedly generates a number based on it as if it were analog, so as to get a fuzzier match, for custom-generated .mp3's.

Presumably this would work similarly for best results. Actually, having a pattern matcher search through the database would probably give the best results.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Webcrawling robots and automated Usenet download-n-decoders could handle it in a very automated fashion. Stick up a flag to a human user who would then make a manual visual confirmation, and you're done.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[drspliff]

I don't think the parent was referring to a banner advert for child porno, but legal over 18 porno. In the states (not sure about the UK) you need to have some sort of copy of the models ID and a statement of some sort before filming/photo session can start.

This is because women & men were entering the porn industry at 16/17 if they lied about their age, then people were being arrested under child porn laws later on. Sure now they can provide fake ID and just say their 18 or over, but the people producers/distributers have a signed statement and copy of the ID which should indemnify them from legal action.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[computational super]

I know of several newsgroups services that allow HTTPS or other forms of secure login and transmission

Really? I've never even heard of that... NNTPS? I didn't think you could encrypt NNTP.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but then by law you'd have to arrest the human user, and that was the point of the grandparent.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Lehk228]

create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula"

this is the government, they will use CRC-16

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Decker-Mage]

No, they have a web front-end which you can access via HTTP or HTTPS. Weird, but I've seen it work. Personally, I'll use NNTP every time, but I have nothing to hide.

This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This can be problematic and annoying for users when the databases aren't correctly updated. A case in point: the Internet Watch Foundation maintains a database of child porn / other obscene URLs so that ISPs can take that list (hashed, so the URLs are not revealed) and block them.

Recently, a popular imageboard at http://img.4chan.org/b/imgboard.html has been added to that list for reasons unknown. Several UK ISPs, including BT Internet and NTL, have blocked that URL. Complaints to either the ISPs or the IWF from both the users and the site admin have gone unanswered. I am personally quite annoyed by this as I'm a regular user of that board.

It's this sort of unaccountable censorship of the Internet that makes me suspicious of such 'helpful' databases.

Re:This can be a problem

[satoshi1]

I tend to frequent said image board, and, while the posting of child pornography is rare, it happens.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be legal child porn because it's a cartoon, but it is what it is.

So you basically don't care about whether a child was abused? Instead, you convict people who might be helping themselves with this fake child porn, who would otherwise turn to real child porn?

So actually, you are not for the children, but against child porn (even fake) consumers. Interesting..

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

As a "regular user" of 4chan, you'd know how incredibly common it is to find kiddie porn there. It may tend to stay on the Random board and is usually only posted as a shock image, but it still appears on a daily basis.

Re:This can be a problem

[notaspunkymonkey]

"As a "regular user" of 4chan, you'd know how incredibly common it is to find kiddie porn there. It may tend to stay on the Random board and is usually only posted as a shock image, but it still appears on a daily basis." writing as a father of 2 kids.. I must ask why you would continue to be a regular user of this site? if it is only poasted as a shock image does this make it ok? disgusting

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I know some uptight hillbillies will disagree, but I don't care.

I don't care about people with fantasies about children. I don't care if they help themselves with fake child porn, as long as they don't abuse children or create demand for real child porn.

People like the grandparent of course would "collect" those people and stuff them away in some nice concentration camps, eh?

Re:This can be a problem

[paedobear]

I've been told that /s/ is also banned - though I have no idea why. CP tends to get pulled from 4chan pretty damned fast, and the most shocking thing you'll typically see there is pictures of DJ_Izumi...

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, pedos are terrible oppressed, every hates them, wahwahwah.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

. It may tend to stay on the Random board and is usually only posted as a shock image, but it still appears on a daily basis."

So because some asshole posts offensive images, he gets the whole site banned? Once that policy becomes established, think how easy it would be for any determined person to get just about any site blacklisted. Just post some kiddie porn every day for a week, reporting the site immediately after before it can be removed.

Re:This can be a problem

[Jugalator]

4chan you say? I guess the ORLY owl was a bit too much for their tastes? ;-)

Re:This can be a problem

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Tell me, why are you, as a father of 2 kids, still on the internet? Someone could display kiddy pr0n on your computer screen *AT ANY TIME*. OMG, plug out that cable!!!

4chan has a stricter policy than some other sites, like 2chan, etc.

Re:This can be a problem

[Tim C]

Tell me, what would you do if trolls started posting links to kiddy porn here on slashdot? Would you stop reading it? Or would you continue, justifying it to yourself that it's only a few arseholes trying to shock people and that that's not even a secondary purpose of the site, let alone the primary purpose?

Note that I'd never even heard of the site until now; I'm just curious as you are clearly so worked up about it.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

> think how easy it would be for any determined person to get just about any site blacklisted

This isn't really just "any site", it's a pedo hangout.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

4chan has a stricter policy than some other sites, like 2chan, etc.

Which is quite impressive, given that 2chan is a text-only board. Mmm, get a load of that naked underage Mona!

Re:This can be a problem

[Jugalator]

So you basically don't care about whether a child was abused? Instead, you convict people who might be helping themselves with this fake child porn, who would otherwise turn to real child porn?

So actually, you are not for the children, but against child porn (even fake) consumers. Interesting..

Why do you assume he shares these views just because of commenting on the legal status of that stuff?

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

> think how easy it would be for any determined person to get just about any site blacklisted
This isn't really just "any site", it's a pedo hangout.

And this would make it so easy to paint any site someone had a grudge against as a "pedo hangout". and have it blocked.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So is AOL, or MSN.

Re:This can be a problem

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Yup, pedos are terrible oppressed, every hates them, wahwahwah.

Many pedophiles were themselves sexually abused as children, and it has affected them for life. Many are filled with self loathing. Some have never once abused as child. Yet unlike violent murders, drug abusers, "adult" rapists, thieves, psychotics, necrophiliacs and even zoophiles, these people will never be able to get help, even if they wanted to. They are the modern untermensch, who are either expected to commit a crime so they can be summarily incarcerated or quietly commit suicide.

In either event, their flaws will sell newspapers.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP

Re:This can be a problem

[Turn-X Alphonse]

/b/is full of child porn by the UK defininition. The UK version is "Any image showing children in a sexual way".

Once in a while /b/ will have some child porn posted. It's lame and sick but gets deleted pretty fast. But more recently they have had "Jailbait" threads, these threads are full of young girls (sub 18) in their underwear. Which would by UK laws be child pornography.

Re:This can be a problem

[instantiator]

Much better that ISPs do it for themselves and the DB is only for child porn, rather than the government does it and it turns into a DB of subversive material...

Re:This can be a problem

[Rakshasa Taisab]

When making a witty reply, having the facts straight usually helps. 2chan != 2ch.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's VERY interesting that the above post got modded REDUNDANT when nothing in the post itself WAS reduntant.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

JB THREAD GO!

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

1u3hr -- are you an idiot, or just pretending to be one for some reason?

Re:This can be a problem

[Tezkah]

Really? What about the various tabloids which show girls in their bathing suits? Oh thats right, they're hypocrites. Does your definition make that link child pornography? That girl is 15, and they're drawing attention to her breasts in a sexual way... ironically printed right next to an article decrying a satire of the media's two-face sensationalism with the subject.

If that's how you describe child pornography, then you have a lot more things to ban besides a random imageboard.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a bigger reason why that website would be banned in the UK is because of the anime porn you find on there. "Simulated child porn" is illegal in the UK even if no real kids are involved, and some of the anime images on 4chan fall well within that category.

Re:This can be a problem

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

which we erased from tssupport... ;)

(whoever you are)

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that 4chan is an 'image board', where user-posted images show up directly. If someone started posting links to child porn on Slashdot only a tiny minority of users would notice them, whereas everyone who visits 4chan risks getting a face full of kiddie porn.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm well aware of how a small group of trolls (possibly GNAA?) persist in posting CP to the board. But you and I both know that it is against the site rules and is usually noticed by a moderator and promptly deleted.

The purpose of 4chan /b/ isn't to be a pedo site.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, via BT Internet all non-worksafe imageboards are now banned (basically, anything on img.4chan.org rather than zip., cgi., etc). I'll be changing my ISP by the end of the week as this is just stupid.

Curiously, if you go through their proxy at webcache.bt.net:8080 nothing at all is banned. I guess that haven't noticed that loophole yet.

Re:This can be a problem

[Bega]

Don't know, might just be me, the moments I've seen some troll post kiddie porn on /b/ is not really that regular - the thing is, probably 90% of those somewhat rare occasions have occurred within the past 3 months or so. Now, it's all different, by what you mean with kiddie porn, whether you count drawn images that belong somewhere in /l/ as kiddie porn or not.

But like some other people here, I agree, you don't want your kids to learn to browse /b/. One board doesn't make the whole place shit, unless you let your head convince you to do so. Here, let me post you an excerpt of the 4chan rules regarding /b/;

/b/ - Random

1. ZOMG NONE!!!1*

*Illegal content will not be tolerated. Borderline content will result in banishment--don't attempt to push the envelope. "ZOMG NONE!!!1" applies to moderators as well.

Now, by all the logic that I possess, if you have a place with such borderline rules, and the moderators are functioning that way, too, then you can't really expect everybody to conform to yourself, now can you? News flash, there are trolls on the internet!

I do tend to have quite a lot of nice conversations in some of the text-only message boards, as well as boards like /a/ and /p/.

But that's okay - why do you browse the internet? Somebody posts pictures of somebody ripping his ass wide open as a shock image and it's okay because it's a shock image? Disgusting, I tell you!

Re:This can be a problem

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Anime child porn as you're claiming (lolikon) is legal. Because it doesn't look like children, pencil sketchs of underage girls with real detail/life like isn't allowed.

Re:This can be a problem

[Goaway]

And 2chan.net != "2chan", it's "Futaba Channel".

The vast majority of people who recognize the name "2chan" would assume you are talking about 2ch.net.

Re:This can be a problem

[Don'tTreadOnMe]

Just out of curiosity, how do you know so much about child pornography posted on whatever board you are talking about? From your comment, it sounds as though you would want to stay away from that message board, and so your recent knowledge of it would thus be rather limited.

That said, it would seem reasonable to me that rather than choosing to (a) stop using the Board, or (b) have the board shut down, a better response would be (c) use the laws of the country in which $BOARD is hosted to gather as much information as possible about the posters of the child pronography, and have them prosecuted. (Or, if you are of the mind that they are sick rather than evil, have them brought in for rehabilitation.)

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

people who might be helping themselves with this fake child porn, who would otherwise turn to real child porn?

If you believe this I'm frightened. People who look at child porn, or quasi child porn aren't helping themselves or anyone else, and should be arrested and severely punished.

Child porn laws aren't just there to protect the children who are being abused, but also to set clear boundaries as to what is not acceptable. If quasi-child porn were legal it sends the message that there is nothing wrong with fantasizing about children. This isn't calling the thought police - looking at quasi-child porn is a real offence and puts real children in danger. It whets the appetite of the perv.

Consider this thought exercise: Clearly photographs of actual children being abused is illegal. What about a photo-realistic painting that used actual models (for lack of a better term.) How is a photo-realistic painting different from a photograph? Now what if there isn't a real life model? Now what if it isn't photo-realistic? Is realism going to be the litmus test? I say no otherwise you will have child pornographers simply adding effects to their pictures - it isn't "realistic" so it isn't illegal.

I think you must call anything that depicts children in a sexually explicit manner as child porn. This means that photos, paintings, cartoons, and drawings clearly portraying child abuse are illegal. Photographs of actual girls who are 18+ designed to look like children are also illegal. This all is to send the clear message that if you sexualize children you will be punished. Add the boilerplate, the work does not contain significant scientific, literary, or artistic redeeming value caveat, and I am very comfortable in saying that those in possession of such an image have committed an actual crime. (IANAL - but I believe that this is the way the law is written in the US)

This isn't a think of the children argument, nor is it trading liberty for security, or any such nonsense. It is protecting real people from real predators as well as society defining its bounds of acceptability.

On a completely unrelated note apperently Florida has established its own currency, FTFA (Northwest Florida Daily News)

The companies pledged $1 million (?0.8 million)

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

afaik not4chan.org is not banned. meaning that it ain't loli they're blocking it for.

Re:This can be a problem

[Thing 1]

You know, I was thinking something similar a few days ago. We describe unsavory locations as "crack-houses", but don't use similar terminology when talking about "bars" -- they're not "alcohol-houses".

The act of communication has similar terms that can color the listener's perception, sometimes imperceptibly. Calling someone's speech "rhetoric" makes it sound evil; whereas the term "talking points" means exactly the same thing, but is more polite.

It's weird that this article was posted so soon after I posted my analysis of the (at least) two stages of the female reproductive cycle, and how that affects male behavior in seeking mates.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

Child porn laws aren't just there to protect the children who are being abused, but also to set clear boundaries as to what is not acceptable. If quasi-child porn were legal it sends the message that there is nothing wrong with fantasizing about children. This isn't calling the thought police - looking at quasi-child porn is a real offence and puts real children in danger. It whets the appetite of the perv.

This is a commonly held belief. wonmder though why it only applies to sexual fantasy (again, FANTASY, not real ) about children? Look for instance at the NY Times list of best-selling books. Currently the top 5 are:

1. THE HUSBAND, by Dean Koontz
2. BEACH ROAD, by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge
3. AT RISK, by Patricia Cornwell
4. THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
5. TERRORIST, by John Updike

I think at least 4 of the top 5 are about murder, some presenting killing and rape in great, loving detail. Why then do not the millions of readers of these books find their appetites for murder and rape whetted? Why is it perfectly acceptable for maiden aunts to read Hannibal on a bus? Do any of them go home and crack open someone's skull to eat fresh brains?

Here this "whetting" argument is often riduculed when Jack Thomson comes out with another vilification of video games.

Children know that cartoons are not real. They don't think they can fall off cliffs and survive like Wile E Coyote. People can indulge themselves in all kinds of horrible fantasies, and then close the book and live in the real world.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Or 420chan, with it's own "Child Model" Section, specifically named /pedo/.

Re:This can be a problem

[vi9er]

So exactly HOW do you determine what the age of a non-existant model is? If the model doesn't exist, then it is NOT child porn! Do you leave it up to the Judge to decide if the drawing is underage? Perhaps the local police? Maybe the community as a whole? It is impossible to have child porn without a child!

Photographs of actual girls who are 18+ designed to look like children are also illegal.

If I take nude pictures of my wife, and she looks like she could be 16, although she is 26, how much time will I serve? Do I need to have her put on a suit and tie so she appears 18+? Can i have sex with her, even though she looks 17? Is the standard no longer actual age, but appearance? If so there are a lot of 15 year old girls running around that are OK to have sex with, after all, they appear over 18.

Re:This can be a problem

[paedobear]

Probably noone you know, but someone who's seen too much of, and experience too much of DJ_Izumi. It's amazing to see how far back one person can set a cause through sheer being-an-irritating-and-curiously-bigoted character.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe this I'm frightened. People who USE HEROINE, or METHODONE aren't helping themselves or anyone else, and should be arrested and severely punished.

HEROINE laws aren't just there to protect the PEOPLE who are being abused, but also to set clear boundaries as to what is not acceptable. If METHODONE were legal it sends the message that there is nothing wrong with fantasizing about HEROINE. This isn't calling the thought police - USING METHODONE is a real offence and puts real people in danger. It whets the appetite of the ADDICT.

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

I'll take the bait.

It is socially less acceptable to fantasize about child molestation than murder. To tell you the truth I don't really have a problem with that.

The difference between watching Kill Bill, or playing GTA and child porn is that child porn creates a real threat to someone. What I was saying isn't that child porn causes someone to molest children, but rather that quasi-child porn breaches the barrier to real child porn. I won't argue that someone who looks at kiddie porn is a molester (although if I had kids I wouldn't want them around) but I will argue that quasi child porn is similar enough to real child porn that there is no substantial difference between a child porn consumer and a quasi child porn consumer.

The offence that kiddie porn consumers commits isn't the molestation itself it is the creation of a market that hinges on abused children. If you get your rocks off looking at quasi porn you are creating the exact same market as if you were looking at real porn.

I'll again pose the challenge, what is the difference between real child porn, photo-realistic child porn with a model, and photo realistic child porn without a model? Now what is the difference between photo-realistic porn and more stylized child porn?

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

I believe the standard test is to ask the jury if the subject of the photo, or drawing appears to be under 18. The prosecution can put up photos of very mature looking 18yr olds, and the defense can put up photos of very immature looking 18yr olds.

It is possible to have child porn without a child - look at thought exercise I posed again, and tell me where the line is.

My interpretation (again IANAL) of Miller v. California and the state laws where I live is that you would not be guilty of child porn laws for taking pictures of your own wife even if she is under 18 since it is not contrary to sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law. (You might get in trouble if your wife were 18+, looked under 18, and you distributed the photos however.) The standard with porn is the appearance, the standard with sex is the actual age. The reason should be obvious. First you have to draw the line somewhere. Second if you are actually having the sex you are in control of the situation, if you are merely looking at the sex you can't be expected to know the age of the parties involved - if they look under 18 they essentially are under 18.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

child porn is that child porn creates a real threat to someone.

Yes, REAL child porn does necessarily in its manufacture.

I will argue that quasi child porn is similar enough to real child porn that there is no substantial difference between a child porn consumer and a quasi child porn consumer.

That's not an "argument", it's just expressing distaste.

I'll again pose the challenge, what is the difference between real child porn, photo-realistic child porn with a model, and photo realistic child porn without a model? Now what is the difference between photo-realistic porn and more stylized child porn?

Challenge? The first is criminal and involves abuse, the second maybe or maybe not, depending on the age of the model and the jurisdiction; the last is just art (or just porn), but not hurting anyone.

Re:This can be a problem

[Paul Carver]

You are an inhuman monster. It's not bad enough that a child has been mistreated, you think they should kill themself to spare you the inconvenience of being aware of their pain. If someone has been abused as a child they will have a hard time ever living a normal life, but they are just as deserving of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as anyone else even if it's more difficult for them than others. As long as they don't allow their pain to lead them to cause harm to others they are just as deserving of equal rights as anyone else, no matter what psychological harm they've suffered.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck? Did you even read the post you're replying to? The original poster was saying exactly the same thing as you are shouting.

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

methadone is not to quasi child porn as heroine is to child porn

Heroine use creates a high/withdrawal that is anti-social and in many cases causes the user to hurt himself and/or other people. For that reason it is illegal and users are prosecuted.

Use of methadone without a prescription is illegal and prosecuted. Methadone does not cause the user to hurt people, provided a steady supply is available. The steady supply portion ought to be guaranteed or the user will not use methadone, as it doe not produce the high. Use of methadone is government sponsored to assure quality, quantity, and compliance. Your argument still wouldn't be cogent if there was a quasi child porn prescribing agent because the physical addiction associated with heroine is in no way similar to the mental addiction associated with porn.

On an interesting, but not relevant note heroine received its name because it was supposed to save people from dangerous and anti-social morphine addictions.

Re:This can be a problem

[dragonsomnolent]

Child porn, definately sick, quasi child porn also sick, not why I'm responding. What is the difference, in your mind between Kill Bill (quasi-murder) and a snuff flick? I don't know that a snuff flick is legal, but the illegality of a snuff flick should have no bearing whatsoever on whether Kill Bill is legal or not. If quasi child porn is illegal, it should be based on it's own failings, not because it is based on real child porn. Not trying to flame you, or even to disagree, but where is the line to be drawn? And how do you know that the anime cartoon isn't meant to depict an 18 year old teenage girl anyway?

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

There is no way by looking at the product to determine if the manufacture involved abuse. Again the abuse isn't the crime, possession of the product is. Since there is no way to tell whether or not the manufacture was criminal, anything that is designed to look like it required abuse to make is illegal. That doesn't mean that porn is illegal by default unless verified to be kosher, it does mean that if a reasonable person would consider the subject depicted to be a person under 18 it is the same as if the person is under 18.

It matters not at all that the manufacture was completely legal if the consumer believes, or should believe that the manufacture consisted of abuse of a child. This is why the photo-realistic artist rendering of an underage model is illegal, or a lifelike computer model is (and should be) illegal if a reasonable person should believe that the creation endangered a child.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

20 Minutes!

Re:This can be a problem

[carlzum]

you think they should kill themself to spare you the inconvenience of being aware of their pain

No, i think pedophiles should kill themselves (half-jokingly, i hope they would seek help). But if they are faced with the choice of abusing a child as a plea for help or commit suicide, I hope they pick the later. Sorry if I sound insensitive to the circumstances which led them to pedophilia, but I have more sympathy for the children they're abusing or watching be abused in kiddie-porn. To your point, pedophiles are people that have let their pain cause others harm.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

Again the abuse isn't the crime, possession of the product is....Since there is no way to tell whether or not the manufacture was criminal, anything that is designed to look like it required abuse to make is illegal.

What laws are you citing here? I really hope thought crimes aren't actually on the books.

This is why the photo-realistic artist rendering of an underage model is illegal,

Actually, I doubt that is the case, in the US at least. I think such laws have been proposed, but struck down when shown to conflict with the First Amendment.

The whole tenor of your post shows how easy it is to have all considerations of free speech and due process thrown away when you introduce an accusation that presses a hot button. And the slippery slope is very steep and short from there down.

Re:This can be a problem

[Hentai]

... until those children become adults with problems of their own, at which point they should quietly commit suicide.

Re:This can be a problem

[dragonsomnolent]

So what of a picture of someone who looks over 18 but is actually 17 yrs 364 days old? By your statement, it would be legal, because it is appearance, right? Under the law, nope, not yet 18 still child porn. The problem is that is isn't appearance, but action that determines illegality. If I use an 18 year old model that looks (thanks to make-up) to be 16, I didn't violate the law, nor the viewer of the material. The person involved was a consenting adult. And don't get me started on "simply viewing the material" is a crime. What if I got blasted by a pop-up? I didn't go out looking for it, but I saw it, am I guilty of child pornography?

Re:This can be a problem

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

And with that... You would illegalize almost all hentai every created.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you must call anything that depicts children in a sexually explicit manner as child porn. This means that photos, paintings, cartoons, and drawings clearly portraying child abuse are illegal.

Hey AndersOSU, I just drew a picture of two naked kids having sex on a napkin. Call the FBI!

It is protecting real people from real predators as well as society defining its bounds of acceptability.

No, it's an overzealous puritan freak advocating laws that will ruin people's lives based on their thoughts. Their thoughts for christ's sake!

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why the photo-realistic artist rendering of an underage model is illegal, or a lifelike computer model is (and should be) illegal if a reasonable person should believe that the creation endangered a child.

Since we're not sure whether the defendant is guilty, we'll just assume he's guilty. Makes sense to me.

You make me feel ill.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from all this pedo bitching, a sad side-effect of modern british obsession with assaulting anythnig that is rightly or wrongly accused of endangering the poor dears who grow up in their teens to beat up old grandpa's and younger kids, happy there is no real consiquence to their crimes, while people rightly or wrongly are destroyed for pedophilia they might not have committed, i normally view /s/, the SEXY AND BEAUTIFUL WOMEN FORUM, so is it a crime now to look at attractive completely legal and un-taboo women on a website?.

I mean ffs most of the time their wearing clothes, are we getting to the state folk are being told what they can and cannot look at thats within the confines of the law and human male normal sexuality?.

I can understand nuking /b/ and such boards, but denying me access to /s/?, britain blows, America has its issues but at least they have a written goddam constitution to smack agencies like the IWC or whatsitcalled.

Interesting logic from ISP's, stop pedophilia by denying blokes gradually the ability to look at legal women, mmmm yeah, that makes sense, sounds more like their trying to push folks to pedophilia.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read your great-grandparent post? Specifically, the one that read "Many pedophiles were themselves sexually abused as children, and it has affected them for life"?

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

From the US criminal code Title 18 Part 1 Chapter 71
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/us c_sec_18_00001466---A000-.html

(a) In General.-- Any person who, in a circumstance described in subsection (d), knowingly produces, distributes, receives, or possesses with intent to distribute, a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that--
(1)
(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(B) is obscene; or
(2)
(A) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; and
(B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value;
or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be subject to the penalties provided in section 2252A (b)(1), including the penalties provided for cases involving a prior conviction.

...

(c) Nonrequired Element of Offense.-- It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.

I'm all for free speech, but it IS NOT an absolute freedom. IMO this is not a slippery slope, your to speak on any other subject is not infringed by societies right not to have to deal with child pornographers.

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

First of all I'm assuming that by snuff flick you mean a film that captures someone's actual murder.

I think and again IANAL, that a non-sexual snuff flick is not illegal. If it were illegal the nightly news would frequently run into trouble.

Kill Bill is and should be legal because no one was (intentionally) harmed by its making, and because it does not purport depict actual violence.

It becomes sticky if it is a sexual snuff flick, i.e. depicting or appearing to depict a rape/murder in a sexually explicit manner. It is my opinion that the Miller Test is a good way to draw the line. It draws on an average person applying community standards. It IS NOT a line in the sand, and IMO that is a good thing.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all societies reject cartoon pornography, and not all societies reject sex stories with children as actors.

• Anime fans (in general) love Hentai. The hentai frequently depicts underage girls having sex.
• asstr.org has tons of stories with "f" (underage female.)

These are large societies. And, further, they are basically harmless.

What you're talking about is basically: "I don't like this thing, and I want it completely abolished. I want it to be illegal, if someone even draws a picture of a minor having sex with an adult."

I wonder what's to stop you from preventing the imagination, or even the thought of the crime. ...

I do not know why adults like to fantasize about having sex with children. I do not know why the qualities cherished in women are naietic: youthfulness, pink, cheerfulness, "chick," "babe," "cutie," and so on. I do not know why, when you make a sum of all the things men like in women, you end up with a 15 year old girl.

I only know that I find the idea of criminalizing masculine sexual desire vastly deplorable, and horribly sinful.

Desire is very hard to argue for, in itself. If someone desires something that can be proven to be harmful, then it is difficult to conceive of how that person can justify that desire. "But I like rape fantasy." "But I like submission fantasy." "But I like fantasies about children." "But I like the idea of X," where X is something not necessary to the survival of the species.

I only know that the world is a very shallow place, once we start doing that.

Re:This can be a problem

[Mad_Rain]

I think at least 4 of the top 5 are about murder, some presenting killing and rape in great, loving detail. Why then do not the millions of readers of these books find their appetites for murder and rape whetted? Why is it perfectly acceptable for maiden aunts to read Hannibal on a bus? Do any of them go home and crack open someone's skull to eat fresh brains?

How about simply because the murder isn't "glorified" or condoned? The interest that many people have in those books could be that the "good guys" win and the "bad guys" go punished.

In child porn on the other hand, someone is violated and disrespected in a terrible way. There is no known resolution where the bad guy gets caught. In fact, as the images are perpetuated throughout the Internet, the criminal is continuing to "brag" about the successful commission of their crime, and encourages others to do the same.

Re:This can be a problem

[glowworm]

Yet unlike violent murders, drug abusers, "adult" rapists, thieves, psychotics, necrophiliacs and even zoophiles

As a schizophrenic who has suffered from many a psychotic episode I really dislike your bundling of this word within a group of objectionable terms.

You really should research the disorder and it's treatment and in turn become a little more compassionate towards those not in your "normal" frame of mind.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

our to speak on any other subject is not infringed by societies right not to have to deal with child pornographers.

"Societies right not to have to deal with...". Which right is that? And you're not advocating "not dealing with them", but locking them up.

I think that there is no justification for criminalising fantasy art -- and labelling it child porn when no real children were involved in its production is begging the question. I'm also sure that should any such law be tested in court (I don't think any prosecutions have been made solely on this point) that a judge must rapidly rule that it was unconstitutional. The problem is that the mere accusation is enough to destroy a person's life.

Anyway, I personally find CGI porn weird and distasteful, but don't feel the horror of knowing it depicts a real situation. And once I tried to read American Psycho and couldn't get through it as it just made me feel ill. But I don't feel any need to criminalise authors and artists for making art that I don't like.

Re:This can be a problem

[Bob of Dole]

Actually, the mods have said the problem is IWF, the Internet Watch Foundation. They maintain a blocklist, and those ISPs just blindly block whatever is on the list. /b/ (and other NSFW boards) got added incorrectly, and 4chan's admins haven't gotten around to filling a complaint yet.

So it's not that the ISPs are not listening, it's that:
1. They didn't decide to block /b/ on their own
2. And the people who did haven't been contacted yet.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

How about simply because the murder isn't "glorified" or condoned? The interest that many people have in those books could be that the "good guys" win and the "bad guys" go punished.

There's lost that don't follow that script -- Hannibal for one, which is why I mentioned that actually. [SPOILER] Hannibal Lecter kills lots of people, dissects and eats some, and lives happily ever after with Clarice. Bestseller. Also see books by Clive Barker, etc.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Which, for the most part is a true statement. I just don't see where the great-great-great-grandparent say they should then kill themselves because of it.

Re:This can be a problem

[Mad_Rain]

There's lost that don't follow that script -- Hannibal for one, which is why I mentioned that actually. [SPOILER] Hannibal Lecter kills lots of people, dissects and eats some, and lives happily ever after with Clarice. Bestseller. Also see books by Clive Barker, etc.

That's why I put "good guys" and "bad guys" in quotes... While cannabalism is not good, Lecter is the "good guy" character we end up cheering for. We develop a kind of sympathy for him. SOme might even call him an anti-hero. However, there are no heros in child porn.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

However, there are no heros in child porn.

Humbert Humbert? Anyway, you don't have to champion things you don't like. "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry -- most people don't know what psychosis is. He was most likely confusing it with the word psychopath.

But yeah, a bit of education about mental illness wouldn't hurt.

Re:This can be a problem

[tbird81]

There are groups that can help pedos. There is specific psychotherapy, but this is available mostly to people in prison as a treatment.

But there are community groups, similar to the non-violence groups, that can give some help. But i'd agree that it would be very difficult for a pedo to turn up at one.

Re:This can be a problem

[dragonsomnolent]

For the most part I think we are on the same page, however your argument that an animated sexual filck depicting "underage" sex should be illegal is not held up by the your response. Kill Bill is legal because nobody was actually decapitated, so then should animated porn (because technically a cartoon doesn't have age) should not be illegal because nobody actually had sex, nor were there any people on screen. That was my only point. Fail quasi kiddie porn on it's own lack of merits, if you have a problem with it, argue that.

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed, moot and stuff havnt got round to it yet (im the guy that complained about not seeing /s/).

Its just so goddam surreal, I'm defending my right to look at birds with big racks, while trying to say "hey, I'm not a pedo, and pedophilia isnt supported on this website" i mean jesus, im just a man in his early 20's has a normal life and stuff and I'm now (granted only a little) involved in some CP scandal junk, i mean its just...crazy you know?..

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

Laws are passed to ensure a healthy society, laws that prohibit one party from doing something that does not directly cause harm to another. This in itself is a good thing. Some of the laws are good, like obscenity (of which child porn is a subset) and prostitution laws, and some are wrong, like sodomy, and Jim Crow laws. I think it is important that society has the right to set social boundaries - that is the right not to deal with, and punish, certain anti-social behaviors. While prostitution and obscenity doesn't (necessarily) hurt any one individual it does deleterious effect on peace and order with offering no real benefit to society or the person committing the offense (unlike free speech.) Obscenity is not similar to sodomy laws in that it is possible for two consenting adults to "commit" sodomy, whereas it is not possible for a child to consent to be sexualized.

Obscenity is different from violent or otherwise distasteful displays (Nazi demonstrations for example) because of the sexual element. It is a fact of human existence that sex complicates things; sex can be either good (as in a healthy expression of love) or bad (as in objectification, degradation, and rape) and sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference (as in a couple acting out a rape fantasy, or S&M, or swinging, or voyeurism etc.) That is why sex has earned itself its own niche in the free speech issue. While a loving couple may know that it is a rape fantasy, it might appeal to an entirely different and prurient interest to someone else who gets his hands on, copies and distributes the video tape. In addition to this, the creation of obscene material is market driven, that is to say that it is made because there is a demand. This is where hate material is different. A video of a lynching may be equally or more distasteful, but the video is legal because it was produced not because someone wanted to watch it but because someone wanted to create it (same story with beheadings etc.) If no one wanted to watch - and pay for - child porn for whatever reason production would plummet. That is what obscenity laws try to do.

Now, as for quasi child porn...
Since pornography production in general is market driven it makes sense to attack the market that is essentially paying to watch children be abused. This market's borders are not limited to actual cases of abuse, but sprawls to slightly less evil, but still wholly unacceptable portrayals of child abuse that do not involve an actual child. Going after someone who possess quasi child porn is attacking the root of the child porn problem because in the final product (not in the manufacture) there is no substantial difference between a photo, a photo realistic artists rendering with a model, a photo realistic artist rendering without a model, a CGI rendering, and a stylized artist rendering. Again this is the crux of my point - the market is the problem, possession of the material is the crime, quasi child porn and real child porn are indistinguishable if you don't consider the manufacture.

The problem that an accusation = evidence is a problem is not unique to this niche. We are not enforcing thought crime because the accused must actually posses something illegal - that he didn't think it was illegal is no more a defense here than it is in drug paraphernalia cases.

Miller v. California is erring on the side of caution to the extreme. I also think this is a good thing, it is better to let somewhat distasteful material through than to risk banning something meaningful. Also note that all these laws incorporate the SLAPS caveat - material with significant literary, artistic, political, or scientific value is not illegal. American Psycho etc. pass this test (note: this is a question for the jury.)

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

there is no substantial difference between a photo, a photo realistic artists rendering with a model, a photo realistic artist rendering without a model, a CGI rendering, and a stylized artist rendering.

Here I must strenuously disagree. There is a huge difference. For the same reason I disagree with "possession of the material is the crime". The crime, if there was any, was in the creation. I can agree that products of that crime, "real" child porn, should thus also be illegal. But in no way can I agree that someone's CGI rendering of something that never took place is; and that people should be branded sex offenders and be jailed for what really are nothing more than thought crimes.

the market is the problem,

Well, yes. But you would attack the market for FAKE porn, and assume that this is the same as the one for REAL porn. Surely there is some overlap, but it's guilt by association. It would be like PETA bombing a shop that sells faux fur. Or like invading random Muslim countries because.... maybe I see a pattern.

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

I didn't talk about quasi child porn here because it is several layers away from either Kill Bill or a snuff flick - and you didn't raise the question. That and well it takes longer for me to explain my position on that issue. If your interested in why I think it is right that quasi child porn is illegal see my post here

Re:This can be a problem

[AndersOSU]

Well, yes. But you would attack the market for FAKE porn, and assume that this is the same as the one for REAL porn. Surely there is some overlap, but it's guilt by association. It would be like PETA bombing a shop that sells faux fur. Or like invading random Muslim countries because.... maybe I see a pattern.

It is my opinion (no, I don't have the data, but it seems reasonable) that the only reason someone would look at quasi child porn is that sexualized images of children excite them. I think that those excited by sexualized images of children is the defining characteristic of the child porn market. Therefore, it is my belief that the market for real child porn and quasi child porn is one and the same. Further, it is my opinion that the only reason people look and quasi child porn instead of real child porn is that they believe (falsely) that it is legal and that they won't get into trouble for looking at the quasi porn.

It seems to me (I could be wrong) that a major component of cartoon porn depicts minors. I doubt it is a coincidence that there is less interest in more mature looking (20ish) cartoons. I also think it is unlikely that were child porn more available a major portion of the quasi child porn market would avoid the real stuff at all costs due to qualms about the ability of the models to consent.

Possession of quasi child porn is no more thoughtcrime than possession of homegrown drugs (no one hurt in its manufacture.) I'd rather see someone locked up for child porn thoughtcrime than marijuana thoughtcrime.

I don't think that people should be locked up for possessing verboten information e.g. weapons plans. I might call that thoughtcrime. Quasi child porn is not information - it is obscene material.

Not necessarily relevant, but calling Iraq a Muslim country is much more accurate now than it would have been pre-invasion.

Re:This can be a problem

[1u3hr]

t is my opinion (no, I don't have the data, but it seems reasonable) that the only reason someone would look at quasi child porn is that sexualized images of children excite them. I think that those excited by sexualized images of children is the defining characteristic of the child porn market. Therefore, it is my belief that the market for real child porn and quasi child porn is one and the same. Further, it is my opinion that the only reason people look and quasi child porn instead of real child porn is that they believe (falsely) that it is legal and that they won't get into trouble for looking at the quasi porn.

Your claims that the markets for real and fake porn are the same are no more than your suppositions.

Why is it fine to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre but not a real snuff movie? Because one is fantasy, no one was hurt making it, the other is real and someone real was killed to make it. By your logic, the audience for both are indistinguishable, both should be condemned and anyone who purchased either should be imprisoned.

Again, I must say, people distinguish between reality and fantasy, except for a few extremely disturbed individuals.

Possession of quasi child porn is no more thoughtcrime than possession of homegrown drugs (no one hurt in its manufacture.) I'd rather see someone locked up for child porn thoughtcrime than marijuana thoughtcrime.

Drugs aren't criminalised because of how they're made, but their (supposed) effects on the users.

It seems to me (I could be wrong) that a major component of cartoon porn depicts minors.

I don't think so, most cartoon porn seems to depict women with unfeasibly large breasts (and men with unfeasibly large penises). Other does sexualise popular child heroes. It all comes down to caricature and exaggeration and unlikely juxtapositions. Humour is a large part of it; and that is one thing you won't find in real porn.

Re:This can be a problem

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

oh yes. annoying slug-creature. known her for three years, maybe more now. much to my chagrin. been avoiding for years, though. tssupport.org :)

Re:This can be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

In much of the USA bottled water is classified as "Drug Paraphernalia". So should we be locking up everyone?

Re:This can be a problem

[mink]

Kill Bill... I seem to remember an animated bit in the film with a guy fucking a kid before she kills him.

So how in your above thread of ideas is it a legal film. Every viewer is now party to a thoughtcrime (as you maintain) and should be locked up.

wont work

[mtxf]

how many ways can these pictures be hidden?

zip, rar, and other compression formats
encrpyted
hidden inside other files (stenography)
the list goes on...

these people should learn, you cant fight the internet

Re:wont work

[mboverload]

People who view child pornography are NOT IDIOTS. Stop treating them like it.

I'm sick of this mentality that criminals (esp terrorists) are not as smart as you or I. They know just as well as we do they can throw it in a zip or rar file (It's probably a better way for them to transfer the files, anyway!). In fact, IF THEY AREN'T SMART THEY GO TO JAIL. I think that's a pretty strong motivation for covering their ass.

Re:wont work

[Eideewt]

I think you mean steganography.

Re:wont work

[SargeantLobes]

how many ways can these pictures be hidden? zip, rar, and other compression formats encrpyted hidden inside other files (stenography) the list goes on... these people should learn, you cant fight the internet

Plus, aren't these people all using Freenet? Or won't they all just start using it when this happens?

The Dutch police has allready admitted that they can't do anything about what happens on freenet. Which is really what free-speech is all about I guess.

Re:wont work

[mboverload]

Just to add on some freak factor:

How to be a great child porn trafficker - in 10 easy steps!

1. Purchase hard drive from some surplus computers place
   
2. Turn the hard drive into an encrypted partition with a "hidden" one using Truecrypt
   
3. Load the non-hidden partition with regular porn, at least 10 gigs of it
   
4. Of course with the hidden partition you need a different password - but even more. A keyfile, something like the google logo, which acts as its own sort of password on top of the regular one. Make the password at least 20 characters with things like !@#$%^&*)( and other things in it.
   
5. Encrypt it with Serpent-AES-Twofish encryption
   
6. Make sure you handle the drive with gloves - clean it with an air duster
   
7. Write "BROKEN - dispose" on the top with a sharpie (make sure to use "block lettering" so they can't match your handwriting)
   
8. Put into an ammo case and put it into a location where you wouldn't leave shoe/boot prints. The ammo case is completely air tight. Write the keyfile onto a floppy disk and extract it from its plastic case. If not handled correctly it will be destroyed.
   
9. Wait 3 days and tell the person (both of you use Tor) on IRC using PGP key exchange with 2048 bit encryption where the hard drive is and to put the floppy disk into another plastic case in order to load the keyfile. Tell him the password at this point.
   
10. Done
    

Re:wont work

[mtxf]

"I think you mean steganography."
thats the one!
knew my version didnt look quite right ;\
stenography is something rather different

Re:wont work

[Eideewt]

Yep. :)

Re:wont work

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that be

1. Purchase hard drive from some surplus computers place
2. Turn the hard drive into an encrypted partition with a "hidden" one using Truecrypt
3. ...
4. Profit!!

?

Re:wont work

[Eivind Eklund]

People who view child pornography are not all idiots - like the rest of the population, they're a mix of idiots and non-idiots. However, I suspect there's somewhat more idiots among them than the rest of the population.

I've randomly seen ("mild") child porn a couple of times, and I'll admit it turn me on. However, I'm smart enough that I still don't intentionally look it up, nor do I collect it, both for ethical and pragmatic reasons. Those that do look it up aren't smart enough to see and follow those pragmatic reasons.

Eivind.

Re:wont work

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I think this is how tinfoil-hatters send email.

Re:wont work

[Flyboy Connor]

hidden inside other files (stenography)

You mean "steganography". Stenography is shorthand.

And yeah, steganography is the solution to all picture hiding. Without the original source of the container file, and with a large enough container file, no tool will be able to discover the hidden pornography.

Re:wont work

[Solkre]

Except the person you just sold it to is a undercover agent OH SNAP!

Re:wont work

[Kjella]

That post is just non-sensical. I can send anything anonymously today as well, with the postal service or whatever. The difficulty is if you're a) on the recieving end or b) want something in return. Who'd like to go dig up that hard disk? Might be a sting, might be a vigilante with a gun or maybe someone who wants a blackmail victim. And are you going to give away free hard disks? If not, well then follow the money. Even Al Capone got busted that way.

Most likely you'll get a reply back "Great stuff, here's something in return:" followed by a quick arrest when you come to his pick-up point. The big scary monster in the closet is a working Freenet(-alike?) where both the sender and reciever are anonymous. Yours is just the current situation with some paranoia on top.

Re:wont work

[westlake]

People who view child pornography are NOT IDIOTS. Stop treating them like it. I'm sick of this mentality that criminals (esp terrorists) are not as smart as you or I.

What we have seen is recklessness and obsession. No sense of danger, no self-control.

A local middle school teacher will be caught downloading child pornography through his school's network and forwarding it home. Thousands or more likely tens of thousands of photographs will be found on his hard drive.

No encryption, no disguise of any sort.

Re:wont work

[flosofl]

[blockquote]And yeah, steganography is the solution to all picture hiding. Without the original source of the container file, and with a large enough container file, no tool will be able to discover the hidden pornography.[/blockquote] I hope you were being sarcastic. There are plenty of tools that can detect embedded information. Now, getting it out is another story :)

Re:wont work

[f1r3br4nd]

1. Perhaps the purpose of CP hysteria is to give law enforcement broader powers that can be used to bust idiots they don't like in general, be they CP idiots or some other type of idiot which can be made to look like a CP idiot.

2. Like any male adult with a sex drive who isn't a lying sack of shit, you admitted that sometimes individuals that haven't quite reached the age of consent turn you on. I applaud you for your integrity, but think about what you said right afterward: these pragmatic reasons you talk about amount to the laws being so screwed up that you're afraid to do what you want with your own computer in the privacy of your own home. And unless you believe law = ethics, the ethical argument falls apart when you realize there are perfectly civilized, modern, and inhabitable countries where the age of consent falls anywhere between 15 and 18. The US is an anomaly in treating every individual under 18 as a child (except for purposes of administering the death penalty, of course).

Re:wont work

[utlemming]

All this method will do is to catch the casual pedophile. On face value, I could see it acting as a deterent, as it would keep people from getting into it; this scheme would essential create a barrier to entry that some might not want to get into. It won't stop the hard core junkie or the ones exploiting them. They could use a method that would check out zips and rar's and other compression formats, but it will be the encryption that will break the system.

So while I do applaud the efforts of ISP's to stop them, there are far too many ways to use even low-level encryption to bypass this schema. And the other problem is that if some perverts actually uses encryption they have to know a key. I seriously doubt that Google or some other agency with enough computing power to figure out keys to decrypt files is going to spend the time and the money to get into the files.

What I could see happening is a darknet being created that uses 256-bit SSL connections, or something like it. The only way to get in is by referral, and if the site floated from IP to IP address, it would be hard to stop. Another consquence would be that pedophiles would move from those ISP's.

Re:wont work

[2pzvd7EYr]

People who view child pornography are NOT IDIOTS. Stop treating them like it.

We've certainly seen a large number of those people who are idiots. And borrowing from the wisdom of George Carlin, "they are like any other group of people: a few winners, a whole lot of losers." We just hear about the losers. Why? Because the winners don't get caught. There is clearly a Darwinian process going on here. Every time I read about some guy getting 20 years for possession of child pornography in the clear on his disk, having paid for with his credit card, I am thrilled to see him taken off the streets by virtue of being a moron.

(Forgive my use of the word "winners" in a way that will displease most of you.)

I have a collection of child pornography that measures in tens of gigabytes (mostly videos by the way, photos are boring, and I doubt my opinion is unique, so this database doesn't really solve much of the problem). Aside from this little factoid, I am otherwise one of you: a fellow geek. I've read Applied Cryptography (and understood it). I read bugtraq. I've submitted patches to software you either use or have heard of. I understand computer security and forensics. I have been paid for my abilities in this field.

I also understand the psychological and sociological issues of what I'm doing. I understand my paraphilia. My sexual fantasies may involve children -- and I truly wish it weren't so that I was sexually interested in that which I can never have -- but such thoughts stay in my head. I understand the realities of abuse and won't be responsible for hurting a kid. I will not acquire child pornography in a manner that fuels a demand for it. (Which means there are no monetary transactions, nor anything which may inflate the ego of those who make it available. My acquisition is completely passive.) I realize it may sound absurd to many of you that someone who has a huge collection of child porn also has a moral stance on it. And as an incidental, it's also good for security.

I go through incredible effort to ensure my safety. If the cops busted down my door right now, they would find nothing. I have plausible deniability. And I'm certainly not the only one.

Re:wont work

[Flyboy Connor]

There are plenty of tools that can detect embedded information.

No, they cannot. I gave two conditions. One is that the person who is trying to detect hidden information has no access to the original container file. Two is that the container file should be quite large compared to the hidden file. Suppose, for instance, that I record myself reading the first chapter of the Bible. I get an MP3-file which is pretty big, and contains lots of noise. Now I take a small picture, and hide it in the noise, for instance by replacing bytes which are selected using a random number generator which I feed with a specific seed. There is absolutely no way that any tool can detect the existence of a picture in the noise, because the nature of noise is that any byte can occur at any place. Of course, if the ratio between the picture bytes and the original noise-bytes is small, then a tool might detect a fishy pattern, but if this ratio is, for instance, 1000:1, it is completely indetectable. If I am in doubt whether the ratio is OK, as an extra precaution I can also turn my original file into a mess before hiding it, for instance by zipping it or encrypting it. That'll certainly do the trick.

Re:wont work

[Eivind Eklund]

Actually, most of the US has an age of consent of 16. However, most of everywhere, including the US, has a different age of consent for sex and age for consent for participating in porn. The latter is 18 or more everywhere I know of. It used to be 16 in The Netherlands, but I believe that was increased to 18 some years back.

As for ethics, I have two points: I don't trust the mental development of teens below 18[1]. I don't trust that they will be able to mentally project what effects participating in porn will have on them, nor that they'll be able to see that they aren't able to project it. As a such, it would be unethical for me to support creation of porn with younger teens.

Anyway, when I wrote that I got turned on by pictures with younger kids, I meant pre-teens, which I've seen a couple of times randomly and once systematically (while busting a child porn ring). The second argument is semi-pragmatic and semi-ethical: If I spent my time looking at that kind of pictures, it would likely steer my sexuality more towards kids, both desensitizing me from "These are kids - they're not supposed to be sexual objects!" and in general boost my sexual reaction to kids. This is both unethical and pragmatically inconvenient - I like my sexuality tuned towards adult women that I can have a "symmetric" emotional connection to.

I see the privacy problems of trying to protect against the use of child porn; I also see the benefits from doing some things about it. These different priorities need to be balanced.

Eivind.

Re:wont work

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I buy the theory that looking at a particular type of porn makes you more likely to engage in the corresponding type of sexual behavior. Why do we assume that happens instead of sublimating the viewer's urges *away* from doing it?

If your theory was correct, I'd be trying to convince my GF to engage in an interracial gang-bang because that's what I look at on the web. But in fact, I'm *damn* sure I don't want that to ever happen in real life, even if she was okay with it. The whole point of fantasy is that it's fantasy, not reality.

Re:wont work

[querist]

Exactly. I would mod you up but you are already at 5.

In Chess (also Xiangqi and Weiqi/Go), and I suspect even in warfare, there is an old bit of advice "always assume that your opponent is _at_least_as_ good as you are."

This should apply here, as well.

This discussion will come to nothing, so...

[jpardey]

...cue the jokes about the Catholic Church!

Re:This discussion will come to nothing, so...

[arivanov]

Que jokes about British Government instead. 1. The database is already out there under the name "CleanFeed" invented by BT a while back. 2. The government has badgered a large proportion of UK ISPs to use it by now regardless of their relationship with BT. That includes ones with their own DSL networks based on unbundling and most of the ones which buy BT DSL wholesale. 3. The implementation as mandated amidst other things allows transparent redirect to other URLs which whoever "controls" clean feed can supply if need be. Now the obvious 2 million pound question question is what exactly prevents Antonio Bliar and his liar cronies from feeding URLs into the database which redirect people from sites that go against their liking. The database is already there, operational and defective as well: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/. Move along people, nothing to see. Business as usual.

Re:This discussion will come to nothing, so...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

"...cue the jokes about the Catholic Church!"

Well where do you think all of the kiddy porn comes from sir? It doesnt grow on trees ya know.

Re:This discussion will come to nothing, so...

[Anonymous Coward]

...cue the jokes about the Catholic Church!

Ok, here it goes.

A priest, a rapist and a pedophile walked into a bar. And it was just one man.

To combat child porn...

[Karem Lore]

To combat child porn, ISPs will create a child porn database? Am I missing something here? Or do we just have to hope that a) child molestors don't work at ISPs and b) the database is VERY VERY VERY secure...

Re:To combat child porn...

[jpardey]

Phone employees are often paid to retrieve numbers for spammers to use... If this system was put into place, it would crumble right away.

Re:To combat child porn...

[Lectrik]

b) the database is VERY VERY VERY secure...

of course it will be very secure, didn't you see it was being made open source?

Re:To combat child porn...

[Eideewt]

It doesn't much matter if someone working at an ISP gets access to it. Honestly, I don't give a damn if people are getting off to pictures of little kids. That's not the problem; the problem is the people exploiting and photographing children in the first place. Once the pictures are out there, there's no more harm to be done. Why not create a database to make it easier to detect it and catch its creators? Although I have doubts about whether ISPs are the ones to do it.

Re:To combat child porn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I missing something here?

Yes, the whole freaking article. It's not a database of child porn, but a database of hashes (aka. checksums) of child porn images. Meaning that even if you have all the hashes, you will NOT be able to recreate the original image, because the hash does not contain enough information to do so.

Uhh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

CEO rapist: "We need to combat child pornography now!"
member-on-the-board-guy rapist: "Yes! Let's make a massive database of it so we can easily track these wicked people"
CEO rapist: "....excellent!"

Everything about this seems...

[bluemeep]

..."Yucky" I guess would be the best word. Not just the fact that they're planning a corporate sponsored mecca of kiddie porn, but things like this too.

AOL, for instance, plans to check e-mail attachments that are already being scanned for viruses. If child porn is detected, AOL would refer the case to the missing-children's center for further investigation, as service providers are required to do under federal law.

Sounds like one of those 'good on paper' ideas that later spins itself into a slavering monster that eats half the internet. What's to say they don't start scanning for other things? Is the RIAA going to be knocking on my door because I sent an AOL member a Metallica MP3?

Re:Everything about this seems...

[damburger]

I propose an innovative solution to this problem. It's called 'dont use AOL'.

This can also solve a number of other issues users may be having.

If it becomes widely known that AOL are screening your emails, they will hopefully lose customers. Even people who don't transfer illegal files like their privacy.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[mboverload]

> If child porn is detected, AOL would refer the case to the missing-children's center for further investigation, as service providers are required to do under federal law.

YAY! Now all the guy who wants my job has to do is send some kiddie porn pic to my email address and I get arrested. I call bullshit.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[bluemeep]

Believe me, I left AOL in the dust years ago. I still know a lot of people that just won't switch away, unfortunately... Some folks just stay attached to that eight-year-old, spam-riddled email address, I guess.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[lord sibn]

So does he. Since the message was from him to you, he is legally in possession of the porn.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[lord sibn]

Somehow (even with the preview) I forgot to add that I am not in support of this system. It just doesn't mean half of what the doomsayers are claiming.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[mboverload]

No, he uses Tor and a wireless connection to register a hotmail address to send it to me.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[pubjames]

The thing I really hate about this stuff, the people who say "If you're not doing anything wrong you don't have to worry". But consistently, when law enforcement starts treating everyone as potential criminals, innocent people are affected, sometimes very adversely.

How many people have been seriously inconvenienced when trying to take a flight because the system has flagged them as a potential terrorist? A lot more innocent people have been inconvenienced than terrorists have been caught. Now, imagine the same situation but applied to this...

We can just laugh off being tagged as a potential terrorist and tell it as a funny story to our friends and work collegues. Would you do the same thing if you'd been investigated by the police as a potential paedophile? I could see it happening quite easily - send a photo of your kids in the bath to their grandma, AOL system tags it, police come knocking at your door and take your computer and all your archives away. You get the computer back a week later with an apology from the police. But the damage is done, your neighbours and work collegues have found out why the police visited... It's a nightmare scenario but I'm afraid it's going to happen. And perhaps, more innocent people are going to be investigated than real paedophiles caught, as is the cause with "the war on terror".

Re:Everything about this seems...

[Anonymous Coward]

We can just laugh off being tagged as a potential terrorist and tell it as a funny story to our friends and work collegues. Would you do the same thing if you'd been investigated by the police as a potential paedophile? I could see it happening quite easily - send a photo of your kids in the bath to their grandma, AOL system tags it, police come knocking at your door and take your computer and all your archives away. You get the computer back a week later with an apology from the police. But the damage is done, your neighbours and work collegues have found out why the police visited... It's a nightmare scenario but I'm afraid it's going to happen. And perhaps, more innocent people are going to be investigated than real paedophiles caught, as is the cause with "the war on terror".

With this specific system, this is impossible to happen - they're basing it on hashes of known images, whereas your picture to grandma would be a unique image that isn't in their database (barring collisions, but that's a totally different issue)

That would only happen if isps were to begin doing image-recognition/manual looking at all images sent through email... the first is probably technically possible but doubtfully legal, and the second is physically impossible

Re:Everything about this seems...

[pubjames]

With this specific system, this is impossible to happen

That was just one example of how an innocent person might be flagged, there are many others I can think of. For instance, we all know that people who have very insecure Windows machines. Say they get infected by a worm that then emails kiddie porn. The same scenario applies... Visit from police, computers taken away, the shy funny looking guy in the office who everyone thinks is a bit weird commits suicide because everyone thinks he must be a paedophile since he was investigated by the police...

Re:Everything about this seems...

[Jedi Alec]

Some folks just stay attached to that eight-year-old,

You know, in the context of this story that was a very akward place for that sentence to be cut in two by my browser.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[Jugalator]

That would only happen if isps were to begin doing image-recognition/manual looking at all images sent through email... the first is probably technically possible but doubtfully legal, and the second is physically impossible

If they try to be "smart" about it, they'll try to check image similarities, in order to e.g find the same images with various amounts of JPEG compression applied to them. (when common images spread throughout a community, they always seem to somehow get various JPEG (re)compressions, become resized, etc :-p)

And then they could cause an innocent user to fall into this trap, at least if they don't manually verify that it's not child porn.

I think the grandparent comment is quite valid when discussing these things, and easily things that can ruin your career pretty good. No one wants to hire a former paedophile suspect. That person would just be too fishy.

It's not an easy problem to solve though. Even if it was a picture of your own kid in a bathtub, the police could go "omgwtf" and come knock on your door when seeing fully naked genitals in an "amateur" and home environment. I'm really not sure how to protect people from the horrors of being suspected for these things when innocent. The punishment could be as bad as for a real paedophile, minus the jailtime.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I could see it happening quite easily - send a photo of your kids in the bath to their grandma, AOL system tags it, police come knocking at your door and take your computer and all your archives away. .....

Why imagine? People already have been condenmed for taking pictures of their kids at bathtime.

Bathtime has become a taboo activity, best undergone alone, one child at a time, and if a supervisor must be present, only the child's mother is allowed. Possibly an aunt, but that's pushing it. No fathers allowed. Eyes only. IR goggles preferred.

God Bless The News Of The World.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[Nocterro]

Image is a minor concern, chances are if you get flagged once then you're marked 'suspicious' somewhere. Doesn't matter to the police if it's true or not, because they can then go to the media saying "We have 500 more suspicious people! Give us more money so we can make sure your children are safe!". And then you're permanently watched.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[Tim C]

The only bit you missed out is the part where his name and photo are splashed all over the papers as he's "an evil paedophile who was caught emailing THOUSANDS of DISGUSTINGLY EXPLICIT images of children".

Even if he's later acquitted, the news most likely won't make it to the front page. Even if it does, there will always be people who believe that "there's no smoke without fire", or that he was guilty but "got away with it", etc.

I also like the way the GP says that it's impossible, barring hash collisions. So, it's impossible except when it happens..?

Re:Everything about this seems...

[Anonymous Coward]

(barring collisions, but that's a totally different issue)

Until someone manages to make some not-allowed image match the hash of a competitor's software download...

Re:Everything about this seems...

[The Phantom Mensch]

If the police can get probable cause for a search on the basis of one incoming e-mail containing kiddie porn then our right to privacy is gone. The police/political dirty tricks team/your angry co-workers will send you kiddie porn through an anonymizer and trigger an investigation. The police will find that one Tracy Lords mpeg in your stash and you're busted, or just make it embarrassingly public that you keep "megabytes" of porn on your computer and return it to you 3 years and $30000 in legal fees later with the disk wiped clean.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[Grrr]

So, it's impossible except when it happens

Thank you. Right on the money.

("Welcome to Westworld, where nothing can go wrong... go wrong... go wrong...")

<grrr />

Re:Everything about this seems...

[nasch]

Did you even read those links? She didn't get condemned for taking pictures of kids at bathtime, or even sharing them with others. The problem came when she tried to SELL them. Can you not see the problem with someone selling pictures of naked children? Now the age is another consideration. Naked infant pictures on the internet? Fine with me, though still creepy at best to sell them. It wasn't clear to me if the photos were just of a baby or older kids too.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Can you not see the problem with someone selling pictures of naked children?

Having seen numerous advertisements for childrens skincare products on primetime television, no, I'm afraid I don't see the inherant problem. Or have unclothed infants become somehow taboo? Then again I don't read tabloids, so I imagine I'm rather behind on the latest child hysteria trends.

Re:Everything about this seems...

[I*Love*Green*Olives]

Isn't this your own fault for being accused a witch?

Maybe if people would stop feeding the hysteria then the situation wouldn't be as much a kiss of death as it now stands. Don't expect much sympathy if you're ever accused of being a paedophile-- the current practice is to pretend thoughtcrime is more important than any actions on your part --it is the seriousness of the acusation that matters. Once accused of being a witch you will forever be under suspion of practicing witchcraft no matter the truth one way or another.

--I*Love*Green*Olives

Re:Everything about this seems...

[nasch]

Maybe you could actually read my entire comment before replying. Naked infants OK. Naked older children not.

privacy issues...

[mtxf]

from tfa: "the goal is to ultimately develop techniques for checking other distribution techniques as well, such as instant messaging or Web uploads"

so they will be scanning our web traffic in real-time to determin if we are sharing child porn?

anyone else see this and think something along the lines of "this is just a 'think of the children' excuse to implement advanced monitoring systems, which in due time the govt. will take over 'in the public interest'"?

Re:privacy issues...

[Stanneh]

"anyone else see this and think something along the lines of "this is just a 'think of the children' excuse to implement advanced monitoring systems, which in due time the govt. will take over 'in the public interest'"?" Yes i personaly believe that is exactly what they are up to. giving the RIAA carte blanche to everyones web traffic incase everyone might be doing something illegal is unfair.

Re:privacy issues...

[Jugalator]

Over time, people caring about their privacy will maybe just move to socialize on anonymous and encrypted networks.

But then I can already see the news headlines...

Local Network of 34 Terrorist Suspects Arrested

The suspected terrorists were allegedly using an anonymous network to actively avoid law enforcement agencies, blah, blah, blah.

- "We cannot comment on the situation that has developed and ongoing investigations, but we are looking very seriously at the situation", police officer John Doe said.

These networks have been known to be used by terrrorists and paedophiles alike, and are frequently used to cover digital tracks left on the Internet.

Nevermind that cleaning your tracks can be preferred by some simply because law enforcements have no rights to mess with your life with no suspicions of crime. And if you get into that deep shit, I wonder how easy it is to get out. Since they may not have *seen* the traffic that passed, it's pretty hard for you to also prove that nothing bad did pass and wasn't just deleted or transferred further away since.

sets a bad precedent

[SethJohnson]

These online companies were previously protecting themselves from liability for their customers' transmissions by claiming that filtering this data would be an expensive and prohibitive task. By volunteering this service, they've crossed that line. It should be possible for the music companies, MPAA, etc. to demand filtering as well.

It's a pretty stupid plan nonetheless. These digital fingerprints will only catch casual or newbie child porn traffickers. Encryption will easily render these fingerprints useless. The worrisome side effect is the false positives that will be triggered by this fingerprinting technique. As an example, try using one of those packages that tries to tag your mp3s by fingerprinting... Pretty unreliable stuff.

Seth

I'm The Party Pooper

[The_Incubator]

"Plans call for the missing children's center to collect known child-porn images and create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula. Each participating company would scan its users' images for matches....Representatives will begin meeting next month to evaluate their technologies, determining, for instance, whether cropping an image would change its signature and hinder comparisons..."

I realize that this is mostly being done for Think of The Children(TM) political points, but if they need to have a conference to figure that out, they have a long, disappointing struggle ahead of them. I mean that is just embarrasing to admit publicly- again I realize this is 99% for PR, but to just come out and admit to planning something so completely worthlessly fallible? Do they really think people are that tech illiterate after 15 years of the web? I'd love to see the looks on their faces when someone tells them about XOR.

What is child porn?

[OzPeter]

No a troll but a serious question.

How do they categorise what is collected in their database as child porn? I have yet to see an automated system that can look at a photo and describe what it is (although several have been promoted over the years) I imagine that the decision as to what category the pics falls under must be made by a human. So my question is whose standard do they apply for the process?

I can see that this process could be very arbitrary. So while I am not advocating child porn, I can also see that the data collection process could get very messy and have lots of false positives and negatives. and like the TSAs no fly list, could be very hard to get off it once you are on.

Oh shit .. I knew I should have read TFA .. they are advocating an automated process that is trained to recognise signatures of pics that are deemed to be bad. If they can do that for $1,000,000 I will be really surprised, as I don;t think it has ever been sucessfully done before for any type of image. I wonder who sold them this snake oil (again)

Re:What is child porn?

[pubjames]

I make a similar point in this post.

Re:What is child porn?

[FTL]

> How do they categorise what is collected in their database as child porn? I have yet to see an automated system that can look at a photo and describe what it is (although several have been promoted over the years) I imagine that the decision as to what category the pics falls under must be made by a human. So my question is whose standard do they apply for the process?

Indeed. And it gets even murkier when one considers famous images such as this (SFW).

The article indicates that hashes of the images will be kept, not the images themselves. This is dangerous since there's no accountability for what image "TSxnWMoHpb9QY" is. Without reversability there's no way to clean the database if it gets subverted.

soo....um...

[pembo13]

... to stop (slow down) childporn multiple companies are going to collect it? Just seems odd I suppose.

And of course...

[TCM]

...those who speak up against this incredibly stupid idea are just latent child porn users. Voila, more people you can potentially detain if you see fit.

Tag censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to tag this "r@ygold" but it wouldn't let me :(

Re:Tag censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It don't like special chars silly billy.

Corporate and Government Censorship

[brate_sanders]

Should an ISP be able to check for a pattern "Over throw government" in an email and if found block the email and report the sender to the government. How is it different from checking my email for the existence of a child porn image ? Where is innocent till proven guilty philiosophy gone? Yes I believe child porn is wrong and if possible it should be eradicated and all child pornographers exterminated. But is treating all people like possible child pornographers and monitoring all their communications the right way and the only way to prevent child pornography? Please Governments and Corporations of the world (Especially US) realise the fact that not all people in the world are criminals and bad.

Re:Corporate and Government Censorship

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

"Where is innocent till proven guilty philiosophy gone?" ... right up the baby's ass.

There is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty. Never was. It was something we were to aspire to, because as humans we do not honestly beleive this.

You disagree with me, you're guilty! You dont like my politician, you're the enemy... You dont support the war, you're a commie!

You dont join the party because you're anti American.

Its US for them. I'm right, you're wrong. You can't possibly be right, because I am right. You are guilty because i say so.

Re:Corporate and Government Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Please Governments and Corporations of the world (Especially US) realise the fact that not all people in the world are criminals and bad.

But Governments and Corporations stand to benefit when EVERYONE is a criminal. It gives them just another way to control the slaves.

Brace yourself. . .

[oneandoneis2]

...for a sudden rush of paedophiles attempting to gain employment with ISPs so they can access this database :)

Re:Brace yourself. . .

[paedobear]

Nope, we're already way ahead of you there.

the low hanging fruits

[SethJohnson]

I don't think this scheme is intended to catch all child porn traffickers. Just the easy-to-catch idiots. And there are plenty of them out there. Think of all the dudes you read about who get busted because they brought their laptop to CompUSA for repair and the techs found a folder titled 'young' on the hard drive.

Don't get me wrong.. I'm 100% opposed to this system.

Seth

Re:the low hanging fruits

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong.. I'm 100% opposed to this system.

I don't know, it sounds to me from the first half of your post like you're more like 95% opposed to this system.

Re:the low hanging fruits

[puhuri]

There are plenty of those. Recently one well-known data security expert was arrested for both abusing child and also having child porn on his computer. For me that was the most surprising aspect of whole thing: how a well-respected security expert would leave that kind of material unsecured.

It is probably that rational thinking fails after certain point and one does not count to be catch.

Finland is implementing similar DNS-based blocking for child porn as Sweden has. One expert from police complained that it makes them more difficult for them to pick that low hanging fruits before they actually abuse some child.

Re:the low hanging fruits

[SethJohnson]

My post was saying it would be somewhat effective at identifying child porn traffickers. For other reasons, I believe this is a stupid scheme.

For instance, if the local police said they were going to conduct house-to-house searches for drug labs, they would probably catch a few meth chemists. I wouldn't endorse the technique, though.

Seth

Watch your ass, AOL...

[Atario]

...or you'll be sued twelve ways from Sunday the first time something you're "supposed to" be filtering for gets through to someone who feels they have a right not to be offended.

"Common carrier"? What does that mean...?

i wish the same were done wrt spam

[BACbKA]

Tired of paying for the spammer traffic expenses, which are shifted shamelessly by the providers to the users' shoulders, I wish enough laws were passed to persuade the providers into jointly tracking/isolating spam traffic rather than propagating it...

And with all the porn, they'll need ..

[OzPeter]

Petaphiles of disk space.

*rim short*

Thank-you, thank-you, I'll be here all week

Come on ScuttleMonkey

[Maelwryth]

Do you really expect me to click on a link entitled "database of child pornography"?

As a side note, who else did a double think on that one? Can we have a short show of posts for those that did with gender included? The fact that I did is really a testament to our social programming in New Zealand. The fact that I almost didn't catch myself ignoring it is even more of a testament.

RTFA?

[HaydnH]

RTFA - no way! Not when the link is on the words "database of child pornography"... I can imagine the headlines now... 3,000,000 /.ers arrested for paedophilia!

Re:RTFA?

[neomage86]

please. 3,000,000?

We'd be lucky for 3 slashdotters to rtfa on any given topic

It's a really delicate subject

[KarMax]

Where i work the Child Porn is an important Subject its not my area, but i still know what happens. You can't imagine the pics and videos that the specialist must see.(i never watch any)

The subject is really complicated, here you have a conjunction action from the top ISP companies, but there are some things we must know.

AOL, for instance, plans to check e-mail attachments that are already being scanned for viruses. If child porn is detected, AOL would refer the case to the missing-children's center for further investigation, as service providers are required to do under federal law.

This means that if "somebody" sends to me an image that triggers the filter I'm gonna be a "suspect" (at least for a while) so AOL refer the case and 1 minute later i have an investigation running on my private emails.

BTW... i don't want to sound paranoid, but this is a "way to start", then the database can include another kind of images (who knows?). Or just filter anything they want. The comparison with the Antivirus system (intentionally and not so technical related) put me more alert.

I don't want to sound liberal, I'm against child pornography, but i think that this is not the way to fight against it. If some sick-man (A) have a picture of some-more-sick-asshole(B) doing nasty things with a child, he(A) is a sick person but not a criminal, the asshole(B) must go to jail because he abuse (mental and physical) the boy (the other guy(A) must go to a doctor).

Another idea could be the "infection" of some images/files/videos and leave in the wild (this pedophiles bastards are not technical specialist, the majority of them are teachers, fathers or military related). So we keep track of the files all over, and figured out "sources" where they upload this files not a "single email address" i mean where a lot of files converge from different places. Then, security experts with some legal support, 0wn the server and monitors everything... and the investigation continues.

Ryan said that although AOL will initially focus on scanning e-mail attachments, the goal is to ultimately develop techniques for checking other distribution techniques as well, such as instant messaging or Web uploads.

Also the P2P networks has a LOT of "pedophilic" shares, but you can't run after every sick people, you must go to the source and condemn the one who abuse the child.
I don't like the idea of "monitors everything -> searching for something". I think it must be like i said before... its a HUGE difference.

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[kicken18]

I fully agree, people who LOOK at this stuff, need counselling to get off it, they need help. What does prison do...nothing. When I started counselling when I found out I had Asperger syndrome, the first thing she said is "its all confidential unless I think you will cause harm to anyone, anyone will cause harm to you, or anything involving children" so at the end of the day, if people who look at this want help, they cant get it. They speak to someone about it, police get called, if they person doesn't tell the police and does help them, but the police find out, that councillor gets done for an accessory or something. So its a lose lose situation, look at probably get caught, or try and get help and get caught. Either way, the ideology of "Catch and punish" doesn't work, which is why I am fully opposed to Sarah's Law here in England, many ex-pedo's who try and get help after prison (which they do) and integrate them selves back into society will face isolation and possible beatings/tortures/damaged property I am not saying these people should face punishment, but at the minute, thats the only route and that needs to chaneg befor numbers come down I belive. It is a hard one to call, as your basically saying, people who look at this stuff can talk to someone and get away with the crime, but to eventually get lower numbers and try to irradicate this as much as we can in the future...is it the only way to allow people to get help without facing prison, or at least a future of isolation from the public for getting help for their "illness"

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[1u3hr]

I don't want to sound liberal, I'm against child pornography,...

That's an amazing equation. Liberals support child porn now, as well as terrorism.

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[KarMax]

I don't want to sound liberal, I'm against child pornography,...

That's an amazing equation. Liberals support child porn now, as well as terrorism.

You don't read the whole post or you simply don't understand it. In your out-of-context and unfair quote you forget the "but" part... (you tried to discredit my opinion with an unfair quote)
The "I'm against child porn" is just a remark, because there are some people who doesn't think like me.
Some people think that the pics or vids are in there (Internet, or elsewhere) and you must not prohibit neither track or filter this content. For them a pic or a vid is information, and no matter what it show must be freely and publicly available.
And maybe it sounds crazy but another people see all of this in a different way.
Someones think that if a 40 year old men have sex with a 15 child, there's nothing wrong. Other put the limit under 18...
Sometimes there is no physical abuse, the 14 years old girl maybe LOVE the old man, but... IMO it's wrong, the old men are abusing physiologically, but no everybody thinks the same way. (And i want to remark that I'm not talking about pedophiles, I'm talking about more "liberal" people.)

So YES some people could sound more liberal, and not everybody have the same "parameters". Not everybody are against pedophilia.

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[1u3hr]

You don't read the whole post or you simply don't understand it. In your out-of-context and unfair quote you forget the "but" part... (you tried to discredit my opinion with an unfair quote)

I read your entire post. I can't see any other reason for you to follow "I don't want to sound liberal" with "I'm against child pornography," other than you think they're usually related ideas and you want to disassocate yourself from both.

Someones think that if a 40 year old men have sex with a 15 child, there's nothing wrong

The problem is that you imply that these "someones" are "liberals". It seems you use it as shorthand for anything repugnant to you.

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[An Onerous Coward]

I think we get tarred with the "soft on kiddie porn" label because, frankly, we *are* soft on kiddie porn. Liberals tend to believe that people with self-destructive addictions (child porn, drugs, etc.) require treatment, and that legally ostracizing such people just leaves them alone with their self-destruction, unable to seek help.

Conservatives? Well, last I heard, Georgia had passed a law making child molestation eligible for the death penalty. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the law, and hearing about such crimes is like a fist to the stomach for me. But it seems like, due to a thirst for vengeance, Georgia conservatives have written a law that makes it harder than ever to talk about, makes it dangerous for people to report what they know, and will therefore probably cause even more incidents of abuse.

This technique of eliminating social problems by demonizing the people who have it, and ratcheting up the punishments until the problem goes away, seems ineffective.

I'm a liberal. I'm in favor of people getting treatment, and feeling safe in seeking it out. I understand why some people think that means I'm "soft on kiddie porn," but I can accept that they see the world through totally different eyes.

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[ultranova]

Where i work the Child Porn is an important Subject its not my area, but i still know what happens. You can't imagine the pics and videos that the specialist must see.(i never watch any)

Then how do you know that's what in them is beyond my imagination ?

Also the P2P networks has a LOT of "pedophilic" shares,

No they don't, some people just have the habit of tagging the words "13-year old lolita" into every file, whether it's a porn vid featuring 40-year olds or a guide for grooming dogs.

At least Gnutella also has some kind of virus (or possibly an intentionally malfunctioning node) going around that causes every search to return results that have as their name the exact search terms, possibly with "0-day", "keygen" or something like that appended.

So if you search for CP in P2P, you're going to get lots of hits. But the files found aren't actually CP, they've just been named as such.

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[Mad_Rain]

When I started counselling when I found out I had Asperger syndrome, the first thing she said is "its all confidential unless I think you will cause harm to anyone, anyone will cause harm to you, or anything involving children" so at the end of the day, if people who look at this want help, they cant get it.

Then you or your therapist did not do a thorough job in covering the details of confidentiality. If you (or someone who has a concern about getting treatment for pedophilia) ask, the therapist should tell you that there must be 1. an identifiable victim and 2. clear and imminent danger, in order to break confidentiality. There are people who specialize in the treatment of those with pedophillic interests, and help is available. And an honest, no-denial, no-BS, dialogue is necessary, and can be accomplished, without breaking those rules of confidentiality. When the confidentiality is broken, it is with good reason.

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[wilec]

"I don't want to sound liberal, I'm against child pornography"

How the hell does something that contains the quote above get modded insightful, are you people on crack? As an unabashed liberal I take offense to the posters implication that being of a liberal mindset equates to being supportive of child pornography. Just because I support my AND YOUR right to enjoy the freedoms many of our ancestors died for it does NOT make me a fan, apologist, or enabler of immoral criminal activity. The existence of this nation, in fact the observation of many of the human rights we accept as basic were founded in the time of the Western Enlightenment on LIBERAL principles by courageous people of a liberal mindset. If this is not what the poster meant I will accept a retraction and apology. Otherwise they can bite my LIBERAL ass.

"Another idea could be the "infection" of some images/files/videos and leave in the wild"

Yea thats what we need a bunch of infected files floating around out there so some asshole can compromise some else's system and mass mail to pretty much anyone. Once again I ask, are you people on crack? This is an insane idea, there is already enough risk of this with viruses, trojans and malware, XXS and the like. There are already laws to deal with pedophilia related crimes, the answer is simple, use existing constitutionally sanction legal methods and enforce the laws.

Before the Internet most of this material was exchanged via the postal service, and that was dealt with without the need to open everyones mail. It seems to me that those who trade this material over the Internet by its base nature leave themselves more exposed than the ones using the postal service, without resorting to methods that cause wholesale loss of everyone else's privacy. This pedophilia stuff is like all immoral, unethical and criminal activity, it has always been with us and will always be, all we can do is resist it and minimize it.

As for P2P, freenet and other darknets and the like I don't have a answer here and now. But I can't see where there is any serious difference between them and a closed envelope with a fake return address using the postal service. I suspect these platforms and other forms of private electronic communication will eventually be outlawed by politicians using these issues as the reason.

Yes I am a LIBERAL in that I am concerned about the loss of liberty and I am aggressive in the defense of the freedoms that are intrinsic to our liberty. Many western nations, especially the USA are well on the way to becoming neo-fascist police states, empowered by some that like to call themselves liberal who really want a nanny state, and a few others that like to call themselves conservatives who really want a paternal theological state. If people like these continue to support such ideas and policies without any serious and courageous resistance our descendants will curse us all as a few generations of mindless cowards that selfishly pissed away their liberty, hopes and dreams.

Matthew

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[KarMax]

Calm down man.. really.

As i stated on another post, maybe you and i, doesn't see the "liberal" concept in the same way. When i said that i was talking about the people who are (in excess) liberals. They think that people restriction of ANY kind, are wrong. (and when i say any i meant ANY)
In fact i know people who call themselves liberals and think that child porn will never be eradicated, any kind of filter/search is wrong we must don't do nothing against this.(They don't see this as a problem)

Yea that's what we need a bunch of infected files floating around out there so some asshole can compromise someonelses system and mass mail to pretty much anyone. [...]

But i'm not talking about compromising EVERY system, we infect some child porn files and leave in the wild (i.e. upload it to a porn servers), then we keep track of this file (i.e. it send us a heart-beat) and look were the majority converge and there... we have a file server. I'm not talking on run after everybody who has that file... it's insane.

Before the Internet most of this material was exchanged via the postal service, and that was dealt with without the need to open everybody mail. [...]

Yes and 20th Centuries ago, was fine if you has 10 "fagots" slaves... that's not the point. TODAY is a problem much bigger than when this material was exchanged via the postal service, and i agree with you the solution is not involved with open everybody mail.
And... if the people exchange the current material, they are sick sure, but they aren't criminals. I mean, its not a crime have this pictures (and IMO that's right) the crime is the abuse of a little child, so invade privacy has nothing to do here.
If you compromise servers (is like you assist to a pedophiles reunion) and in there you can investigate who are criminals.

[...] If people like these continue to support such ideas and policies without any serious and courageous resistance our descendants will curse us all as a few generations of mindless cowards that selfishly pissed away their liberty, hopes and dreams. [...]

Yes, totally agree. But BTW you doesn't sound too LIBERAL. :P

Bye

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[wilec]

"When i said that i was talking about the people who are (in excess) liberals. They think that people restriction of ANY kind, are wrong"

These people are not liberals, they are anarchists. There is a strong element of this in the USA Libertarian Party which is one reason why I can no longer can support them without reservation.

"I'm not talking on run after everybody who has that file... it's insane"

I do not have the faith in the current political climate, at least in the USA that those currently in power, that is Republicans, would not abuse this to punish dissent as they seem determined to create a corporate theological fascist state. I do not have much more faith in the Democrats in their efforts to create a socialist nanny state. Yes I realize I have just expressed dissatisfaction with three of the largest political parties in the USA, I have similar reservations about most others as well. Yet I do vote always, for it seems always the "lesser evil" at the time. I do not expect perfection from any, and if any one would reform itself reasonably I would most tone down my aggression. However I will always be a voice for what I perceive as legitimate dissent especially when our civil liberties are threatened, that is what is really means to be a liberal. Besides I still have a problem with any files that are designed to carry hidden payloads. We have too much a problem with this already. In the right political climate and with proper oversight from say an internationally selected FOSS community I might consider this as a reasonable method to sniff out the true criminals. However I suspect that the most productive methods will always involve active undercover infiltration of these networks.

"And... if the people exchange the current material, they are sick sure, but they aren't criminals. I mean, its not a crime have this pictures (and IMO that's right) the crime is the abuse of a little child"

I believe we are on the same page when it comes to the actual issue of child pornography. The issues of what deems such a crime and the necessary punishment needs to be very fine grained. I do not think that serious criminal charges that involve prison time need to be applied to the crime of simple possession of such images. I do think that in the case of images that depict, not virtual, but actual hardcore sexual acts between a preteen child and an adult or staged hardcore sexual acts between preteens should be a criminal act and require mandatory psychological intervention with the threat of low security incarceration and or life disruptive monitoring for those who do not submit to counseling or are multiple repeat offenders. This is with a allowance that those involved in the science and treatment of such human behavior and law enforcement investigators be granted exceptions for simple possession and profession required distribution of such. As for the persons that commit or stage such acts on these children, there needs to be a opportunity for them to seek confidential consulting. However if caught regardless whether they are in a treatment program or not they should be dealt with most harshly when convicted. Not the death sentence like some idiot legislators in Georgia propose but serious hard prison time. Hell that might be a death sentence in itself, which disturbs me. Mainly because so many non violent petty criminals and some that should not even be labeled and treated as criminals are exposed to it due to the insanely stupid drug war.

For issues involving young adults, that is teenagers below the age of consent some mediation of these laws should be applied. Often the teenager is complicit in that they misrepresent themselves. Physical, emotional and sexual maturity varies in its onset and stages of progression. I would suggest that the discerning of what is criminal be decided by the age difference between the individuals. Several US states at one time used the approach of age differential, Tennessee was one that I had personal experience with in this regard. I am not sure wher

Re:It's a really delicate subject

[KarMax]

Sorry for the late, but i want to read your full comment before answer.

Thanks for your time, i mean you was very detailed with your answer, i only have some "details" to add.

In general it seems that you are (or was) related to the Liberal party, well... I vote, of course, also study the options and like you, i vote the "lesser evil". But for real, i hate politics.

About the specifics kinds of images/abuses, i agree... I'm not a journalist but i prefer die trying to stop him that live all my life with that inside.

Yes as you said, i think that you are "being too politically correct" :) but yes, you are right is important when you choose the channel/medium to transmit something that you use it right.
BTW the word liberal IMO is a big and subjective concept, so it's almost impossible to transmit with only one word what is the meaning of that word for me. In fact the words are symbols, so when i say to you liberal you think on your concept of liberal, for me is different... just that.

Now i know how you (and more people for sure) think (at least in part) AND you know that i (and more people) think in a different way.


It was good to read all your opinions (with all the detailed information), really.
Cheers

You Be Quiet Now, , , ,

[Slugster]

Finally! I can stop wasting my time applying to be the Vatican's porn archivist....

Apostrophe Please

[daBass]

The headline suggest only one ISP is doing this. If it was meant as plural I suggest the apostrophe is taken out to make it "ISPs".

Read this for more information...

Re:Apostrophe Please

[beavis88]

Give it up and save your sanity. The retards and their "CD's" fucked us on this usage a long time ago.

Apostrophe's are everywhere now!!@!111

*sigh*

Re:Apostrophe Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Pluralization of an acronym is usually done with an apostrophe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym

There is a solution for preventing child porno....

[Anonymous Coward]

...graphy. Mandatory castration at birth for all!

How would it work??

[saurabhdutta]

I am wondering how would the system differentiate between me uploading my lil bro in his swimwear and some other almost naked pic of a kid meant for some sick bastard in some dingy corner. Wait till u see the feds knocking on your door for no apparant reason. I bet false positives will be enormous.. Far too much to outweigh the advantages of the system. Also as another dude pointed out earlier obfuscation of this type of contect isnt really difficult. The entire system is flawed and makes me think .. could google/yahoo be of any help in combating child porn??

Re:How would it work??

[D-Cypell]

I bet false positives will be enormous..

Easily solved, just prosecute everyone to the full extent of the law. If the judge throws out the case, you can blame the lenient judge rather than the flaws in the system.

Re:How would it work??

[Kasar]

What standard will they use? Federal obscenity or "Can we create a sexual fantasy that includes it"? I'm sorry, I remember the investigation of Calvin Klein's ads as kiddie porn and just don't see how they can judge this well enough to make a reasonable system. There're lots of stories about photo labs notifying the police because someone turned in bath pictures of their kid.

Some of it's obvious and should be filtered or flagged, if the ISP's are willing to take on that role, but I really don't see a lot of this being practical. Will they also take the time to determine if all the porn spam involves models over 18?

Copyrighted material detection would seem much simpler to implement.

Stop trying to be funny....

[saurabhdutta]

mark me as troll/flaimbait. Please stop trying to be funny abt kiddie porn. This isnt M$ that we are discussing here. At least have some respect for those poor souls subjected to such horrific stuff.

Re:Stop trying to be funny....

[geminidomino]

No

Re:Stop trying to be funny....

[SillyNickName4me]

At least have some respect for those poor souls subjected to such horrific stuff.

I agree with your sentiment, but I'd first of all direct such a request at the people trying to use child pornography as a "can't refuse" argument to implement some pretty broad and abusable monitoring and filtering.

Re:Stop trying to be funny....

[kbox]

Is this the obligitory "wont someone please think of the children" post?

Re:Stop trying to be funny....

[SillyNickName4me]

Is this the obligitory "wont someone please think of the children" post?

Read again... or maybe I should word it a bit differently to make it easier..

Asking to respect the victims of child pornography and what they went through, and meanwhile ignoring the fact that hijacking those in order to install broad filtering and monitoring technology is thoughtless at the very least, and imho extremely stupid

wont be that affective

[kicken18]

This reminds me of ISP's and police depatments saying they are going to catch all child-porn viewers on the internet and in TV interviews saying "our advice is stop it or yo will be caught". And again, I think its more just public spin more then anything so it looks like they are doing something about this. Most people dont know about Freenet, hey they maybe geeks here who didnt, I didnt know till I saw a story on 'TheRegister' a few months back. This is what they use, ok some use the internet, and this would catch those, but as many of you will be familur with: "Freenet is for childporn, as the internet is for porn" I dont think it will do anything to be honest...other then some peado's at ISP's have an easier to access store

Duplication of effort

[Clovert Agent]

This'll be different in what way from the massive database and set of image search tools that Interpol already maintains? It's not like every signatory agency (including those in the US) doesn't already have access to it, and it's been running for years.

http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/PressReleases/ PR2005/PR200536.asp

I've met some of the guys running it, and while I really admire their dedication and achievements, I can honestly say there's no job on earth I'd less like to have.

Re:Duplication of effort

[RPoet]

I've met some of the guys running it, and while I really admire their dedication and achievements, I can honestly say there's no job on earth I'd less like to have.

I think not liking the job is one of the requirements for getting it.

Re:Duplication of effort

[Anonymous Coward]

People who run the database are very likely pedofiles themselves (in disguise). A very clever way to own and view a collection of child porn legally.

Awesome! my ISP will store Kiddy Porn!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Fuck'n A! I hope we'll see a Kiddy Porn on demand channel!

ok seriously...

How do they plan to make a database? A database of what? byte values and image names? are they going to MD5 the files?

Hotchick.jpg could be anything...

usually a guy bent over pulling apart his own gaping asshole...

I shouldnt post so late.

Computer-generated images will win out

[Nice2Cats]

In, oh, ten, twenty years at the most, everybody will have a computer powerful enough and software good enough to generate any sort of pornography on the fly. And when that happens, they will not have to trade pictures anymore (and the clever ones won't do it), and the rest of us are left with the question if that sort of software should be banned. It is better to have these people sitting in front of a computer generating their fantasies in the seclusion of their houses, or do we want to (try to) take that away from them and risk that they take their cameras out to playgrounds again?

So, yeah, go ahead and build your database. By the time it is up and running, it will be obsolete, and we'll be discussing other problems.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting point. If all child porn is artificial, should it still be forbidden? I'd say no.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't the US Supreme Court already determined that "Child Porn" can include artificially generated images, and even text without images (such as a story of abusing a child)?
Doesn't Canada confiscate certain titles of Anime being shipped from the US as "containing shild porn"?
Seriously, has anyone in the US been able to get an uncut copy of Kite? Wouldn't that consititute child porn?

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[Anonymous Coward]

Computer generated images are fine. There is no victim so it's protected speech, in the US at least.

Underage fiction or hentai is no big deal. There is some in a well known porno webcomic called Sexy Losers.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see some of your "Shield Porn". I've seen many strange fetishes, but not yet this one.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[Anonymous Coward]

It is better to have these people sitting in front of a computer generating their fantasies in the seclusion of their houses, or do we want to (try to) take that away from them and risk that they take their cameras out to playgrounds again?

Computer generated images of children will be illegal. Let's not kid ourselves, this "war" against kiddie pr0n isn't really about protecting the children in the images, it's about eliminating pedophillia. U.S. law enforcement agencies spend an incredible amount of money and manpower investigating and busting people that have never done anything but look at pictures (20 year-olds who dl'ed pics on Kazaa and such). People are being thrown in prison for 10 years for looking at pictures. 1st Amendment be damned, computer generated kiddie pr0n will be against the law.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[squoozer]

In the UK computer generated porn is classified in law exactly the same way as regular digital / wet photography. AFAIK the same is true of drawings and paints as well.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that one day, as they come to understand the peril, biological males will all climb atop one another to get themselves chipped. These chips will identify whether the would-be perpetrator is looking at a "youthful female" or not. The chips will time the duration that the eyes glance, and issue warnings, (if relocating the eye forcibly is not possible,) should gaze exceed 150 milliseconds. Should the sick pedophile persist, promote to psychological counseling, and then promote to lawsuits, and then immediately sentence the pervert to jail time, and then to deep jail time.

Some unfortunate women may have difficulty getting a date, cursed with looking too youthful. But there is a way for these innocents; They'll simply strive to make themselves look older than they are.

We (and by "we," I mean all of us, with are solid determination to remove pedophilia,) will relieve slang jargon and song lyrics of the words "babe," "chick," "cutie," "girl," etc. Barbie Girl (and the other, almost universally immature, "dance" songs) will receive no more air time, as will a simple majority of songs just like it. What we presently consider feminine qualities-- "soft," "unblemished," "short," "pretty," "cute," "cheerful," "youthful," "good," "innocent," "pink," "colorful," "high voice," etc., (which, taken together, describe women under the age of 18,) will cease to be feminine qualities. These traits will be a curse that only the young will hold, for, (of course,) their own protection. Make-up, we can be sure, will not go out of style; Rather, it's fundamental, most common purpose will change: to make the good lady's pedophilia score go down.

True, some debaucherous women will engage in a freekish "contest" of sorts, trying to "skirt" as high a pedo score as they can, without crossing the border that causes responsible men's gaze to avert within miliseconds. But properly conniving women, (and young aspiring women,) will do the right thing, and make themselves as ladylike as possible. They will suit themselves in grays, blemish or discolor themselves, toughen their skin, put some gray in their hair, and carry themselves with appropriately serious orderliness. No longer shall pedophiles utter, "Oh, I dated this hot chick;" Instead, the rapists shall bark, "I dated this most serious lady, the other day."

With more time, the system may be capable of glancing into the imagination; So for example, if a cartoon image, or a semantic fantasy should arise, we can zap the sick bastard there as well.

Finally, we can put the deviants completely out of their misery. I don't mean to suggest anything as cruel or harsh as execution. There will be no struggle about the thing, and it will likely be the males themselves that beg for the opportunity- We will simply, programmatically, with our advanced nanotechnology, erase inappropriate sexual desire out of their minds.

That extraordinarily small percentage of men afflicted with abnormal sexual desire for the youthful, will curse society no longer, their abuse-derived (poor people) pedophilia removed from the Earth, and beyond.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[AeroIllini]

In the UK computer generated porn is classified in law exactly the same way as regular digital / wet photography. AFAIK the same is true of drawings and paints as well.

Yes, but classified the same for what purpose?

Clearly, computer generated porn should not be sold to minors, and the FCC would have a problem with it, and companies could fire people for looking at it. But what's really at stake here is the creation of the computer generated porn. Child pornography is illegal to create because it is abusive to the children involved. Regular porn is legal to create because everything that happens in it is consentual (well, most of it...but that's a discussion for another day).

But along comes the computer generated stuff. If nobody was abused, exploited, harmed, or degraded during the creation of the image, is it still illegal to produce? There's no question that the people who would view it are sick, but if no one is being harmed in the process, are they really criminals?

It's a touchy subject, and I'm sure it will never be resolved. I'm sure someday people will be jailed for merely viewing images created entirely in a computer because someone has labeled those images "child porn." I shudder to think.

Won't someone please think of the pixels?!

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

It's a win-win scenario for politicians. Banning non-realistic drawings/animations of minors has two advantages:
1: It is nearly impossible to argue in defense of the material without looking like a pedophile supporter
2: It makes something harmless into another crime for which you can arrest people randomly.

Thomas Bodström (the swedish minister of justice who was behind the Piratebay raid fiasco) recently proposed a law here in Sweden that would allow the police to spy on people's surfing habits and install trojans on their computers. If anything criminal was found it would be valid evidence against the target in question. Combine this with the above law and you could essentially jail anyone with a reasonably sized hentai collection at will. If they don't have hentai, then they have mp3s, or something else. Bestiality, necrophilia. Perhaps some snuff. Then again, cartoon child porn is worse than snuff, yeah right.

Re:Computer-generated images will win out

[squoozer]

I agree. There is certainly something wrong with someone who is viewing images of this nature regardless of whether they are of real people or 100% computer generated. I struggle, however, to see why the viewing of computer generated images is a crime - it really is a victimless crime*. I suppose you could argue that viewing these images causes people to be more likely to commit offences in the future but then we would be criminalizing people for what they might do.

It's an interesting problem and one that I don't think has a solution that the majority of people will support. The real problem, in my view, is that we can't talk openly about the problem. That results in the extremists taking over and passing dangerous legislation.

* I also struggle with the concept of viewing images of real people being a crime. Yes, the person who took the photographs commited a crime. The person who distributed the images commited a crime as well (although that is fraught with problems as many unsuspecting parties might be involved in the distribution). The person who viewed the photographs though... that's a tough one. I suppose you could claim it was a crime if you could prove intent to seek out the images e.g. the person paid for them. Just viewing the image shouldn't be a crime though.

I see what they did there

[Anonymous Coward]

That would explain why I can't get through to the first page of /b/. Apparently only the first page is obscene because I can see http://img.4chan.org/b/1.html

What the hell for?

[Mr. Freeman]

OK, they want to stop child porn. And to do that they're going to stockpile a ton of it?
Is there some question as to the definition of "child porn" or some type of miscommunication that prevents someone from looking it up in the dictionary? Because if the people enforcing these policies can't identify child porn without looking at 100 other child porn images first, then we have one hell of a problem on our hands.

Stockpiling these images isn't going to do anything at all. If they wanted to create some type of program that could identify porn, they could do it with the millions of legal (most of which are free) images on the web.

Re:What the hell for?

[Danga]

Stockpiling these images isn't going to do anything at all.

Next time RTFA. They want to store mathematical signatures of the images, not the actual images themselves. Does anyone actually read the articles anymore?

hypocricy

[kbox]

media companies are banding together to create a database of child pornography images

Oh i see, when i done it i got 12 years in prison, When they do it it's a good thing.. HYPOCRITES!!

I run an ISP.

[crhylove]

Is there anyway I can get a copy of that database? Anyone? Bueller?

rhY

Let's fix this issue real quick..

[Anonymous Coward]

rm -rf /Internet

Re:Let's fix this issue real quick..

[flumps]

.. nooo!!

Now what the hell am I supposed to do?!?!

Trivial to defeat

[wyldeone]

this sort of thing would be trivial to defeat. All a webmaster has to do is write a script that changes a single pixel in the image every time it's accessed, and it wouldn't hash the same. Criminals aren't idiots. I see this as unlikely to do much, whilst bringing up all sorts of civil liberties issues. In the end this appears more like yet another attempt to whittle away our civil liberties, to indoctrinate the principles of censorship into the internet under the guise of "protecting the children."

Standard Procedure

[TheStonepedo]

While child porn is certainly on a different level of wrong relative to illicit drug distribution, doing illegal activities in moderation to catch those causing bigger problems is common. In prostitution stings police officers dress as prostitutes and offer sex to would-be customers then haul them away when they reach the hotel room where they would have had sex. In drug stings police officers sell drugs by posing as drug dealers and sometimes even buy drugs until they have sufficient amounts of evidence to put away violent criminals for longer terms. Police officers cracking down on paid sex or dangerous drug dealings do not have paid sex or use dangerous drugs. If it is necessary to maintain a cache of child porn to bait pedophiles and that cache leads to more arrests and convictions, then it is a necessary measure.

Re:Standard Procedure

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

And in lapdancing club stings, officers have to make a very, very throughout report on the goings on in the premise. This can often take several officers, working over many nights. Taxes well spent!

Re:Standard Procedure

[bky1701]

But the question is: is it a "necessary measure" for ISPs to censer communications based on that database, when it's the police that should have it in the first place?

This is bullshit

[PingXao]

The best thing that could come from this is after a year or two of collecting child porn they suddenly realize there's not that much of it and the pervs who seek it out are an extremely tiny percentage of all internet users. At which point they will re-target the database for something else. They'll claim regular adult pr0n helps the terrorists or something.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Several media companies to be prosecuted for beeing the source of a huge child porn network.

An interesting violation.

[mcai8rw2]

Well...this is a good step forward for online protection, however...I notice this little paragraph in the text:

AOL, for instance, plans to check e-mail attachments that are already being scanned for viruses. If child porn is detected, AOL would refer the case to the missing-children's center for further investigation, as service providers are required to do under federal law.

Ahh..i see. So AOL will now be prying into my email attachments. Thats a nice violation of privacy isn;t it? how long before there are hash check techniques for all sorts of other kinds of files; or other kinds of content?

Privatisation of justice

[Anonumous Coward]

What is child pornography, to begin with, legally-technically speaking? What constitutes legal or illegal distibution of child pornography? (If the latter question seems absurd to you, remember that it is perfectly legal for a prosecutor to "distribute" kiddie porn to his aides, as well as for a defendent to his solicitor and to the court). Who is to judge where the gray line goes?

It is for a reason that justice has been entrusted to a special body, the courts, and that they have been given far-reaching independence from everybody else, including the legislative and executive branches of the state. Private entities such as ISPs taking law enforcement in their hands, arbitrarily and of their own accord, is nothing but the old habit of lynching re-applied in a new, more politically correct, way.

So much potential for abuse

[Tim C]

Hypothetical scenario 1:

I piss off the wrong person. This person has access to material of this kind, and a zombie botnet. He arranges for this botnet to spam me with pictures of kiddy porn. The emails are caught by this system and flagged, and suddenly I'm the subject of an investigation. The way that sort of thing works here in the UK, I'm likely to be splashed all over the papers before my innocence is proved (which won't make nearly as large headlines, of course). Even if I am cleared, my reputation may well be shot to hell; people over here aren't too picky when it comes to this sort of thing. A few years ago a tabloid paper raised hell about paedophiles having been released into the community after serving their sentence. Some of the resulting protests saw a paediatrician being hounded from her home - people saw "paed" and thought "paedo". Rationality often takes a back seat where kids are concerned; this could be a very cheap and easy way to utterly ruin someone.

Hypothetical scenario 2:

I go on holiday with my family. I take photographs. I email some of these photographs to my friends and parents. Some of them contain shots of my 6 year old daughter in her swimming costume. An overzealous automated process tags this as a false positive, and suddenly we're all under investigation.

To be honest, scenario 2 doesn't worry me so much; it should be obvious to even the most rabid "think of the children" zealot that the photos are perfectly innocent. It's the first one that gives me grave cause for concern. It would potentially take some effort to prove ones innocence, during which time you're very likely to have been utterly pilloried in the press. If you have kids yourself, they may even have been taken into care for the duration, and are likely to have been teased or bullied about it at school.

I appreciate that measures do need to be taken to fight against child porn, but given the highly sensitive nature of the subject, I have conerns about implementing any sort of automated system.

Re:So much potential for abuse

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

Once it's been proven that you were innocent. Kill some cops. Preferably one of those who raided you:
Murdering is a lot cooler than child porn so you'll get treated a lot better in prison. Your kids will probably brag about it in school.
And you'll get a nice headline. Remember, murdering is always better than downloading child porn.

Re:So much potential for abuse

[Thing 1]

While I like the other responder's suggestion in terms of its brutality and "the punishment should fit the crime" thinking, I have a different solution.

Set your computer up to auto-forward incoming email to president@whitehouse.gov.

Re:So much potential for abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

No, see, there will be some new laws about clothing on children.

For Children under the Age of 16, at least 4 layers of clothing, covering everything except their eyes must be provided. When you're changing the clothes of younger children, you will have to wear IR Goggles. Failing to wear your IR Goggles, will result in instant termination of your life (by use of a new collar-system).

For Children under the Age of 18, at least 3 layers of clothing, covering everything except their eyes and mouth must be provided. They can change the clothes themselves, but only when wearing a blindfold.

Maybe it's not really about child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another way of looking at this story.

The US government is putting pressure on ISPs to retain data (see U.S. Government Demands ISP Data Retention). When asked why, the government makes up reasons like child pornography and terrorism:

An executive of one Internet provider that was represented at the first meeting said Mr. Gonzales began the discussion by showing slides of child pornography from the Internet. But later, one participant asked Mr. Mueller why he was interested in the Internet records. The executive said Mr. Mueller's reply was, "We want this for terrorism."

-- U.S. Wants Companies to Keep Web Usage Records

The ISPs don't want to go along with this, and the government is throwing the child porn card at them. So instead of complying with the data retention request, they come up with this scheme instead, just to call the government's bluff. It's not data rention, but it's "fighting child pornography". Now the government will need to use another excuse to push the retention requirement on the ISPs.

Is this really a problem?

[bhima]

What is the incidence rate of the abuse of children to create pornography?

What is the percentage of clearly illegally created porn as apposed to legally created porn?

Does this justify these measures? Does this reduce the incidents of actual abuse?
My thinking is that there is not all that much actual child abuse going on and that much of the 'illegal' porn that is floating about the internet is multiple copies from the few actual abuses or it is legal porn masquerading as 'illegal' porn. I also don't believe that the problem is so widespread that I need to relinquish any more of privacy or rights than the ones already stolen from me by the federal government's 'war on terror'. I also don't think that this in anyway will lesson the incident rate of child abuse and this is what we as a society need to stop. I'm all for stopping child abuse and I don't mind paying to stop it. However, I *do* mind* loosing rights and I do mind paying for ridiculous, ineffective boondoggles. And it seems lately that the government when faced with any 'problem' can *only* come up with ridiculous, ineffective boondoggles.

This will be about as effective as stopping the consumption of cocaine in the United States by dumping millions of tons of roundup in South America.

Or about as effective as stopping terrorism by killing 50,000 Iraqi civilians *and* reading all of my email and listening to all of my phone calls.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[robizzle]

I don't know the answers to your questions but hopefully you are correct about this being "multiple copies from the few actual abuses." This is exactly how the database is supposed to work. First a picture is identified as child porn, and then its hash is added to the database. From here, the plan is that every time AOL detects the transmission of an image (email, regular isp traffic, and aol instant messenger are eventually all planned to be handled in real time eventually) they will perform the same hash on the image and check if it is already in the database. If it is in the database, then the case is given to the proper authorities for investigation. I would imagine that AOL would send the intercepted image (not its hash) to the authorities so that there is solid information that can be used in court, not just "6a204bd89f3c8348afd5c77c717a097a". The reason I began this post stating that I hope you are correct about this being "multiple copies from the few actual abuses" is that this system would not work very well if we find out that most child porn transmissions are new content. If a high portion of child porn is only transmit once or is all transmit in such a short period of time that it hasn't been added to the database yet, then these will not be detected.

And to tie up some loose ends before people jump on me:

1. The database is not going to hold the actual pictures and thus be breaking any laws -- it will be holding some sort of hash of these pictures.
2. Hopefully, this hash will be independent of the way in which the data is encoded. Converting a known child porn .jpg to .png should not trick the system.
3. Many others will argue that we underestimate criminals and they will just start putting the images in .zip and .rar. This is true, although as long as the .zip or .rar isn't encrypted with an unknown key it is pretty easy for software to go inside the archive and check to see if anything inside is an image -- even if the criminal tried renaming image1.jpg to chapter1.doc it will still be easily detected as an image. Gmail already is able to unzip and allow the person receiving an email to choose to download any file from within the zip without the entire archive -- pretty neat!
4. And lastly, many people argue that the criminals will simply change one pixel or otherwise modify the image so that its hash value is different. This could very well be the case, I would hope that this hashing algorithm is more advanced than just an md5 or such. It should be a hash the describes the image and not the file contents. Much like how the government has algorithms that can, given a satellite image, identify accurately what kind of car that is on the street or if the thing in that guy's arms is a rocket launcher. These algorithms work by searching a database containing known unique identifiers of items and if multiple of these identifiers are found, it is flagged.
5. I stated that the process begins with an image being identified as being child porn. I shrugged this off as if it is a simple step, however, it is probably the most important and difficult one. Computer algorithms aren't to this point yet. We would need to get these images from ruled court cases or someone that is highly qualified to identify these -- we don't want false positives/negatives in this database.
6. Another base to cover is the step where the crime-fighting ISP is contacting the authorities due to a hit. I proposed that they should send the agency the image so that there is some real evidence against the criminal. If the image data is not kept, there is no way to prove that the image he sent/received wasn't just a collision in the hashing algorithm. There are two problems with this transmission. 1) It could be intercepted by yet another child porn distributor. He/she may setup a server between aol and the fbi (or whoever) and have a hayday with all the images intercepted. 2) Reproducing this image is strictly against the law. Now way to get around this other than changing the law to state that ISPs are allowed to send child pornography to authorities A, B, C...etc.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[bhima]

My 25 year old little brother has a life ambition of have a personal mirror of all the porn on the internet. His collection is *massive*. Having a look at this collection I have concluded a few things. There are a lot of young people making porn (college kids filming themselves fucking each other). There is sort of an arms race of weird, naughty, and taboo topics going on with the semi-pro crowd. There is a tendency to falsely label porn usually having to do with the age of the participants or weather or not the event was staged. There is a tendency to re-edit and re-label what was produced in a single event, eventually creating hundreds of versions of what was a unique filming event. So of the zillions of petabytes of porn zooming around the internet who knows how much is really 'illegal' or unique (ignoring the pictures someone takes of themselves to send to a specific person)?

Now child abuse is the second most abused fear in the American meme. Politicians create stupid ineffectual laws using this fear. Prosecutors create headlines and positive self images misusing this fear. And now this scheme comes along with another way to spy on me using this fear. There is no mention of a method to protect a falsely prosecuted person in this scheme. This scheme does not actually protect children.

So in summary all of this money is spent, a few people will have their lives ruined because of mailing or receiving some objectionable images, perhaps even a few who are actually abusing children will be caught, but in the end the real criminals learn how circumvent it and we all lose a little more of our privacy. I don't think it worth it, at all.

I think if we are going to spent money and effort protect children form sexual abuse we should spend it on the people who work with actual children detecting and preventing this sort of crime... like educators, sociologists, healthcare workers, etc... Creating the kiddie porn version of Total Information Awareness or Carnivore won't help.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Thing 1]

Well, the changes in American law will result in turning the American public into terrorists, so it makes absolute (sickening) sense that they will want to read all your email and listen to your phone calls.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

W00T! what's the URL?

Who watch the Watchmen?

[Toutatis]

Pedophiles working as law enforcement officials will be amazed with the biggest database they could ever dream.

Child porn filtering only helps its distribution

[muzzy]

In the long run, all filtering schemes will only make distribution systems stronger. Child porn is already distributed in password protected rar files in certain places, and anonymous p2p networks have hundreds of gigabytes of the material in circulation. Technology isn't the problem here, the problem are the people who distribute the material. Any attacks on technology will fail as long as the people and their interests remain.

Essentially, any filtering mechanism depends on ability to detect the illegal act. If you prevent every method of distribution possible, the only channels left for child porn distributions are ones which are currently impossible to detect. Thus, in the long run this will only make it safer and more secure for people to download child porn. With filtering in place, the end users will know that if they're able to get the material, it means it probably cannot be traced.

If you want real solutions to the child porn problem, you should attack the people involved. "Divide and conquer" is the basic strategy, the different groups have to be isolated from each others and dismantled. Currently there are large anonymous p2p networks which are mainly run by people who want to share files, namely to perform copyright infringement. The child porn distributors use the same networks. If you want to eliminate child porn, you need to isolate these two groups from each others by giving them different goals. Currently, they both want to hide what they're doing from the authorities. One straightforward solution would be to allow filesharing for non-commercial purposes and encourage it to be done in plain sight and moderated networks, so child porn distributors couldn't piggyback in warez networks. Not going to happen anytime soon, eh, so does anyone else have any other ideas?

Who builds the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for stamping this kind of thing out but, this solution involves someone having to view all these disgusting images. I want it gone, but how do you get someone willing to do that without getting someone that enjoys that kind of disgusting crap.

Obviously anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious question here, and posted anonymously because I really don't want the hassle down the road, so.

What's the problem with seeing images depicting child pornography? The way I understand it, keeping children from being hurt is of utmost importance. Child molesters, people who actually stalk and molest children, are mentally disturbed and ill people who need, depending on your outlook, to be treated medically or barred from society or, hell, killed, but I fail to see how keeping graphic depictions of those acts off the internet would keep molesters and sexual predators from harming actual, real life children. I just don't understand the corollary between the two - is it that easy access to images of this nature somehow create more pedophiles? Is it that the vicarious thrill of a pedophile sharing video of their deeds on the web promotes more dangerous behavior?

This is an honest question - I really don't understand how sharing images of a criminal and depraved act somehow makes that act worse. I mean, now that the internet is so prevalent as a means of communication, have more child molesters crawled out of the woodwork?

Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.

Re:Obviously anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

For that matter, there are PLENTY of sub-18 year olds willing to take naked pictures/movies of themselves(Big example being Traci Lords, though any highschool girl who wants to get some attention/affection apply to). Should these really be as punished as a guy forcibly having sex with a 7 year old?

The whole system needs reform, but we're taught to feel ashamed for even thinking this. Even talking amongst other mature intelligent people you can't help but feel guilty for "supporting the pedos" or whatever. It's stupid.

Re:Obviously anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Going along with the anonymous posts (only 'cos my account has just been registered and I don't wanna get misunderstood/nuked from the start)...

If you really think about what might be going through a paedophiles head, even in the most basic sense possible, their actions can sort of be explained as a natural occurence:

Think about it, all animals have instincts and for humans procreation is pretty high on that list. With this in mind, many animals can only reproduce at certain times of the year or at a certain point in their life cycle - for humans, this is generally between the ages of 11 and 45-50 (ie, puberty to menopause (in women)), fish/birds reproduce annually and Vulcans once every 7 years or so (sorry, had to be said ^_^). The urge to commit the act that society disapproves of could be explained as mans basic instinct to procreate, and is only criminalised because of our several thousand years of social development and the fact that humans have forgotten that we're still mammals and still bound by the laws of nature.

I'm not condoning the subject in anyway and my personal opinions are strongly against kiddie molesting - this post is merely the result of my extended pondering of this subject and I haven't seen anything else that tries to explain this from a non-biased viewpoint. If anyone reads this, I hope you understand my point.

Why can ISPs break the law ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can ISPs break the law, and collect a database of illegal materials ?
There is something here I do not understand.

I know there is an european or international database with very restricted access, and I think this is the best way. We do not need more sites with the material.

If the ISPs want to filter content, then I would suggest a police controlled database, where ISPs can look up checksums (MD5 or whatever) to check the material. The ISP has no business with the actual images.

If a user gets more than ### blacklisted files, then have the police check up on him. This will be the best way IMHO.

Wouldn't it make more sense .....

[ajs318]

Wouldn't it make more sense to arrest people if and when they actually harm a child?

I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with people who just want to look at pictures. Yes, they may well be pictures documenting a crime that was committed ..... but so what? The kids in the pictures aren't getting any worse just because other people are looking at them. The harm was already done when the pictures were taken, and it isn't going to be undone.

I say let people jack off into a box of tissues as much as they damn well like. At least once they've spent their pocket money, they're no danger to anyone for a couple of hours. If they're doing more than look at pictures, then by all means go after them. But what a person does within the privacy of their own imagination is nobody else's business.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense .....

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that this was modded flamebait. Just like other post i commented on that was modded redundant while being a non-redundant and very valid post.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense .....

[surprise_audit]

The problem is that, as long as there appears to be a demand, the sickos that are taking the photos will continue to take them. By getting the users "off the streets", the demand should drop.

There's also the fact that the cops aren't catching the photo-takers for one reason or another. If they can pick up a wide enough cross-section of the viewers, maybe they can pin down some of the sources.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense .....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because this has worked so well with the "war on drugs", it MUST work with CP.

The logical conclusion of this braindead argument : if they think about it put them in jail.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense .....

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on whether or not the pictures are getting paid for (or traded for, or some other form of compensation given to the original photographer). If it is, then clearly there is incentive being given and that should be stopped. If not, though, how does this "demand" (it is demand, but not demand that provides benefits for the photographer) give incentive to the photographer to continue to take pictures?

And that's ignoring the fact that, in all likelihood, the photographers generate their own demand. I don't really see someone getting into creating child pornography if they've no personal interest in it.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense .....

[QCompson]

Wouldn't it make more sense to arrest people if and when they actually harm a child?

Oh, but arresting people for thought-crimes and future-crimes is so much more fun. Easier too!

Seriously though, what's scary to me is how little discretion the cops/prosecutors use when arresting people for CP-related crimes. They arrest underage teens for sending out nude pictures of themselves!

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife /2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm

People always assume that everyone arrested for CP is a 50-year-old guy in a trenchcoat looking at pictures of babies being raped. Not so. There are so many cops working on these cases that they bust everyone they can find.

try thinking a little

[circletimessquare]

to identify victims, locations, m.o., clues as to perpetrator, etc.

so they got a picture. big deal, you say?

5 years later, someone comes forward, a victim or an acquaintence or a relative, and they have a description of what happened and how and where and with who. they identify certain characteristics of what was done

enter parameters into database...

searching database, searching database...

oh look, corroborating evidence!

that will be useful to catch the perp, to make the charges stick, and later at trial

get it now?

I want the algorithm

[Anonymous Coward]

I want the hash algorithm. If it's good enough to find matches even though they have different size, saturation, cropping and so on, it would be great to go through a (regular!) pr0n collection to find dublicates. AFAIK, programs currently available for finding dublicates aren't that good.

Completely redundant system

[houghi]

This has to be some fraud. I can imagine somebody in a company just pocketing the money. I mean, the USofA governement already reads the mails.

thanks for clearing that up

[circletimessquare]

I don't want to sound liberal, I'm against child pornography...

<sarcasm>
thanks for clearing that up, for a moment there you were sounding kind of liberal to me

you know, pro-terrorism, pro-driving while high on cocaine and heroin, pro-bestiality, pro-all men are rapists, pro-let all criminals out of jail, and of course, pro-child pornography

phew, for a second there i thought you were a LIBERAL!
</sarcasm>

But why?

[Anonymous Coward]

BECAUSE THEY CAN

How does this help?

[Jerk City Troll]

Sounds like a honey pot to me.

History lesson

[sideswipe76]

I can cite a much more painful example of how the "if you have nothing to hide... " mentality is flawed.

Rounding up 6 million Jews while fighting a massive war was a logistical problem for the Nazi's during WW2. So, where do you think they first went for information about who was a Jew? Census data. When European Jews were filling out census data before Hitler's rise I am sure they proudly checked "JEW!" -- having nothing to hide. Never did they imagine in their worst nightmares the horrors that would befall many of them because of it.

And, if your a US citizen we have McCarthyism and the Red-scare.

EVERYONE has something to hide!

mother lode

[tacocat]

Sounds to me like all they are really going to do is create the single largest repository of child porn on the planet. I wonder how long before it gets hacked and redistributed.

Re:mother lode

[Danga]

It won't store the actual images, just a mathematical representation of them. RTFA.

They're gonna get you one way or another...

[SouledOut]

If scanning email/web traffic for sigs/hash patterns doesn't catch many people out just check their credit card bill. Known offenders are going have their details passed to banks and have their credit cards revoked, presumably so they can't re-offend. At least until they get a new credit card - UK banks keep giving them out to everyone like some kind of disease.

"The order relates specifically to offences relating to child pornography and allows the authorities to inform a credit card issuer of the identity of someone who has used one of its cards to commit a child pornography offence." From here

Pretty soon this will turn into "Big Brother can check anyones bank account and take action against pretty much any online transaction just in case its kiddy porn with a false transaction reference". This would result in so many "plain brown packages" in bank accounts that we won't be able to identify legitimate transactions and thus be more open to fraud. Unless banks change their rules to conform with the goverments crazy ideas. And everyone else changes to accomodate for this change. Bla bla bla...

profit....

[Anonymous Coward]

4...profit

No, that part won't work. FBI/whoever s will buy the HD and track the money. If you have a safe way to exchange money please tell me.

It is just like the terrorist networks: the FBI and CIA is both at the selling and buying site, and most often they meet eachother instead of the baddies.

Liberal?

[Jerk City Troll]

I don't want to sound liberal

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but those sniveling, gross, disgusting liberals are the ones who stand firmly against government intrusion into privacy, for the protection of free speech, and other essentials to a functioning democracy. Yes, you are indeed in the same boat with other America-hating, unpatriotic, godless liberals like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Payne just to name a few.

Re:Liberal?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're supposed to respect those guys as the "founding fathers", but don't take their hippy nonsense too seriously.

Were any of those fellows alive today they'd be co-opted quickly, or simply marginalized to the point where media asshats could make snarky comments about them being traitors or even *gasp* stupid.

Re:Liberal?

[Jerk City Troll]

You're absolutely right! That we let those whiney lefties anywhere near our government is tantamount to letting the terrorists win!

Problems

[miyako]

Just with a cursory glance at this, I see a couple of problems with this.
If they are just doing something like taking an MD5 hash of the image (which is what it sounds like based on the article) then it should be trivial to defeat. Whats to prevent someone from simply changing a single pixel in the corner of the image? Furthermore, if they are just scanning email attachments, it seems like it could be easily defeated by just zipping the images together. That's not even considering something more sophisticated like stenographically embedding images in other media.
Of course, a lot of these problems might be gotten around if they extracted all zip files, and ran a pattern matching algorithm on the image instead of just taking an MD5 hash, but that brings up other problems, and would still be rather easily defeatable.

red flag!!!

[x-vere]

This is less to do with cooperation with the law and more to do with finding a way the public will support the filtering of content. Child porn is horrible stuff. Of course we want ISP's to be responsible corporate citizens. Filter away my friends! [Sarcasm].

Official stance

[Yvanhoe]

Sharing of child pornography leads to more child pornography.
Sharing of copyrighted music leads to less copyrighted music.

Find the anomaly.

In fact, to follow the "think of the children" idea, I believe that such a database would lead with more CP production, as you would have to "replace" the material censored (assuming this measure would be efficient) leading to profits for pornographer producer.
Just a thought

Re:Official stance

[Kjella]

Sharing of child pornography leads to more child pornography.
Sharing of copyrighted music leads to less copyrighted music.

Find the anomaly.

More sharing means more instances of child pornography which inspires more people which leads to more child molestation which again leads to more child pornography.
More sharing means less sales of copyrighted music which leads to less revenue which leads to less (copyrighted) commercial music.

While I suppose there could be some commercial child pornography producers who would stop because it's no longer profitable, I imagine most are amateur producers since money is very tracable. Also, child pornography producers can't stop others from selling it on via copyright. I imagine at lof of the proifts is in finding stuff for free, then selling it to others without any kickback to the producer. All that would happen is that a bunch of pedos which are would-be molesters would go "oh, that looks hot... imagine the girl next door doing that to me". My impression with great music is that most people simply want to listen to it, not recreate it themselves. That's the difference.

Re:Official stance

[Yvanhoe]

I only point to the fact that such measures put us in a prohibition-like situation : Nowadays you probably can pirate child pornography without enriching no one. If you begin to censor the most wide-spread image and progressively censor new images, you'll just encourage pornographer to make new images, or to send them via snail-mail. All in all I really think that the intention behind this measure is good, but it will do more harm than good.

In fact I am very cautious about people claiming to fight against child pornography because they tend to claim a lot of power for a good cause but if they abuse their power, they really could end like a big bad brother.

Re:Official stance

[TheGreatHegemon]

Alternatively, we must make other forms of porn more profitable so producers have less reason to produce child porn. Save the children; buy adult porn.

Re:Official stance

[kapp]

Sharing of child pornography leads to more child pornography.
Sharing of copyrighted music leads to less copyrighted music.

"getting away with something that's illegal leads to more people getting away with something that's illegal.
getting away with something that's illegal leads to less people doing the same by legal means"

oh of course... now it makes total sense. there is no legal child pornography in the United States, but there is a legal way to buy music. this comparison lacks all merit. just because people like pirated music doesn't mean that it has relevance in every single issue dealing with the internet.

Re:Official stance

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that such a database would lead with more CP production, as you would have to "replace" the material censored (assuming this measure would be efficient) leading to profits for pornographer producer.Childporn making is sex with children, only with an extra money incentive and extra risk of getting caught. Do you expect children would suffer less if less child porn was produced and sold?

But it won't be. Instead, the percentage of child porn that goes over the net encrypted will rise from 98% to 99% or something, and that's all she wrote. I'm not a criminologist of any sort, but I believe it should be obvious the only effective method of raiding child porn trader networks (at the moment) is infiltration by police informers. Everything beyond that requires hideous law changes on the investigative or punitive side of things.

Re:Official stance

[mqduck]

In fact, to follow the "think of the children" idea, I believe that such a database would lead with more CP production, as you would have to "replace" the material censored (assuming this measure would be efficient) leading to profits for pornographer producer.

Funny, I was thinking no one would have the courage to make that argument. I know I wouldn't have. Even if it's wrong, it needs to be made. So I commend you, for creative, independant thinking and courage.

So, the next task is to think of reasons it's wrong. The obvious argument is the "violent games lead to violence" argument, which I personally wholly reject. What else? Ah, how about this: it may lead to a decrease in the creation of child pornography, but it would greatly increase its consumption. But it's the creation that's harmful, not the consumption, right? I strongly believe that if it doesn't cause harm, it can't be wrong. But it does cause harm: having a recording of your rape as a child be seen by more and more people is more and more hurtful. You didn't give these people permission to view those recordings of you and you sure as hell wouldn't. I imagine it would be like being raped over and over and over.

Yet, I have this painful need to be logical. Is that continued harm less than the harm avoided by decreasing the creation of new child porn? Logic makes me want to say yes, and I don't like that. Perhaps it's good that the Internet allows people to consume child porn for free but in secret. At least then, it's less known to the victim. I would suggest the authorities never completely shutdown people's abilities to find free child porn online, for the good of many future potential victims. At least leave it safer to get it online for free than to buy it.

Re:Official stance

[Anonymous Coward]

>I strongly believe that if it doesn't cause harm, it can't be wrong. But it does cause harm: having a recording of your rape as a child be seen by more and more people is more and more hurtful. You didn't give these people permission to view those recordings of you and you sure as hell wouldn't. I imagine it would be like being raped over and over and over.

Having not been raped, I can't imagine what it'd be like to have people distributing copies of my rape to other people. However, I do realize that simply redistributing copies of a non-child rape isn't illegal (except possibly under copyright, though if the victim is the copyright holder because they're on camera depends on the jurisdiction). Further, it is the case that while there are people who have a mental disorder that makes them pedophiles, there are also people with a mental disorder that makes them rapists (ie, in both instances it's not an act regarded as something a mentally normal person would engage in). Having stated that, it would be quite useful to draw parallels between the two groups.

Why, you ask? Because of the fact that, again AFAIK, it's not illegal to redistribute non-child rape videos. First, it would be helpful to figure out why this is the case. Now, seeing how many non-child rapes occur and how many are recorded, it'd seem rather probable that there exists on the internet many circulating copies of said videos. Are there? Again, AFAIK, there aren't. Why? I would guess that it is the case because for those who are interested in "rape fantasy", there exists videos that depict in much more detail what is desired than what exists in a real rape.

And not surprisingly, there are many people who are up in arms about such videos. Yet, there hasn't been much flurry of activity because in the end, it's consentual adults who commit the acts together, a production crew who consentual records it, and consentual adults who watch it. In all, the parts are entirely legal. So, while it is possible that all of these things together actually contribute to more rapes, there isn't very strong legal footing to make it illegal.

Compare this to child pornography, where some laws are written to try to include the mere *likeness* of youth in anything *remotely* sexual, and it becomes clear that the laws as written classify "fantasy" as equal to "reality", precisely for the reason that while they can't ban the production of "rape fantasy", people are more than willing to repeatedly back make unconstituional anti-"pedo fantasy" law. In short, the people who are so interested in trying to screen out the "bad thoughts" have made it such that it's all underground and since it's all underground, it might as well be the real thing.

So, the real answer your conundrum is to encourage the legal production of "pedo fantasy" so that not only will less children be directly harmed (since commercial enterprises end up making the real thing now) but less children would be indirectly harmed (their image would be less likely to be circulated, meaning less emotional trauma). As an added bonus, many people who are now closet pedophiles might be able to be a little more open and honest, since they would have a legal outlet and be more able to point out when they discover the abuse of a child. And the laws would no longer be motivated to go after people for thought crimes but actual criminal acts (as the only people with real child porn would be actual abusers or their accomplices).

But of course, the argument could still be made that more fantasy porn could lead to more abuse. And the only thing I can say is, if that theory is true, then we should work to dissolve copyright, because if anything, copyright has been the basis for humanity's largest distribution of violent and amoral sexual fantasy; surely the support of it is then the support of violence and amoral sexual acts.

Is a picture of your kids naked child porn?

[GauteL]

Literally EVERY parent I know have lots of pictures of their kids naked. Kids run around naked on the beach in pretty much all of Europe and small children simply enjoy taking their clothes off and running around the house and garden, sometimes to the embarrassment of their parents.

While I find it mildly weird to put family photos with naked kids on Flickr or your own family picture site, I can see no reason why this should be illegal. But isn't there a chance of these pictures finding their way into the kiddie porn database? If so, isn't there a decent chance someone may end up being tracked as a pedophile simply for proudly posting family pictures on the Internet?

Differentiating between kiddie porn and legal pictures of kids is probably hard enough when you do it manually and individually, but doing this on a massive scale just sounds incredibly hard and possibly dangerous.

Re:Is a picture of your kids naked child porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

technically child porn causes harm to the child

family pics of your children dont really harm your child yet theres always stories about some mom or dad being arrested after developing innocent pictures

that said, posting nude pics of your child, even if innocent, on the net is stupid because someone WILL eventually find and use the photos for not-so-innocent purposes and in an in-direct way, that hurts the child.

Its a weird situation but in the end i think the parent should not post photos like that online, even if innocent.

Re:Is a picture of your kids naked child porn?

[alexgieg]

What about photos with nude native South American and native African children? I've seen tons of those on National Geographic alone. What if a pedophile scans those and put them online? Should scientific magazines start censoring the photos they include in their anthropology articles?

Uh...

[keyne9]

I'm not sure I'd want to create the world's largest repository of this sort of thing. Not only does it implicate the datacenter as horribly wrong, but anyone that touches it. They might not get their jollies off on that sort of thing, but that question is probably not asked of the people they're trying to catch, either.

This is just "icky." Imagine if someone decided to hack this, heh.

If you'll excuse me, I believe I need to wash my hands a few dozen times now..

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'll excuse me, I believe I need to wash my hands a few dozen times now.. So you hacked the site then?

Awkward...

[Daegras]

Each company will set its own procedures on how it uses the database This reeks of Pedophile ISP employee having -way- too much fun...

Catholic Church != Cult of Jesus

[FatSean]

Catholic Church is based on the teachings of Jesus, but they add a whole bunch of even more wacky beliefs to the mix.

Is this a required step?

[dushkin]

I know that in Denmark for example Cybercity (an ISP) along with the Danish government are actively blocking child porn websites or so. You get an error message explaining the situation in both Danish and English, you know, the whole "sorry for the interruption" sort of procedure. Freenet however isn't blocked.

Do they have the right to log IPs and such? I really don't think so.

arseholes

[Anonymous Coward]

"arseholes"?
The word you're looking for is "assholes". Curse properly or don't curse at all.

Re:arseholes

[truedfx]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=arsehole

Open up the can o'worms

[Opportunist]

Currently, occasionally CP traders are found out. Because A was getting it off filesharing tools from B, and either of them got busted during a "mundane" sting op and on the PC they found the trace to the other one.

That's pretty much it.

Now, when A can't get his pictues from B anymore the "normal" way, what will happen? Will they stop trading?

Would you stop getting music from the 'net if the RIAA (who do I fool, that should read "when", not "if") buys the corresponding law to apply this technology to music?

What will happen is that the ways to transfer those items become more obscured. Hashes are worthless as soon as you change a single byte. Both ends agree on an encryption scheme and the transfer is possible again. What automatically fails is any kind of tracking possibility.

Currently, when those files can pass, CP traders might be carelessly using traditional means to transfer their material. Because "it works". When it doesn't "work" anymore, they won't stop, they will turn to technologies that can not be stopped.

Those can't be tracked as easily either, though.

My Database

[Deliveranc3]

I am compiling a database of people who ARE NOT pedophiles.

It will consist of your SIN, bank information, name address, Drivers Licensce etc.

Remember we are only logging people who ARE NOT pedophiles, if you are a pedophile don't submit your information.

All of this is being done to PROTECT THE CHILDREN.
End Transmission.

On the other hand...

[s_p_oneil]

The servers will probably get hacked (possibly even from the inside). If this gets implemented, most pedo's will consider an IT job at one of these ISP's to be their dream job.

REALLY bad idea.

[TomatoMan]

So what this database is telling the producers of kiddie porn is: if you distribute the stuff we already know about, there's a higher chance you'll get busted, so be safe and only produce/distribute fresh new material?

I don't think anybody is against the idea of nailing the kiddie pornographers and getting their "customers" into therapy or whatever they need, but I think this particular idea is a bad misfire.

ISP's to Create Database to Combat Child Porn

[sm62704]

How is this legal? ISPs aren't law enforcement, and I don't think (but ianal) possession of ANY child porn is legal.

And how is this supposed to cut it down? It's just going to get more children molested on camera if what's there goes away.

The software can't possibly tell whether it's a picture of a child unless a human has tagged it. Methinks somebody at AOL and Yahoo and Microsoft wants to watch child porn legally! Fucking perverts.

Plus, different states have different legal ages. In Illinois it's 17, in some states it's 18, in Arkansas it's 13. So a movie of two fifteen year olds its legal in Arkansas but not Illinois.

Redd Foxx once asked "what looks like sex but isn't? Fidel Castro eating a bananna!

If the computer can tel Castro from oral sex, how can it tell a 16 year old from a 17 year old? Hell, at my age the thirty year olds look like children! If a human can't tell, how can a machine?
</on topic>

<-1 off topic>
It's bad enough when the New York Times stubbornly insists on being illiterate, but this is allegedly a nerd site.

If "ISP's" is plural for "ISP" then what is the possessive? What is the plural posessive?

ISP - a single ISP
ISPs - more than one ISP
ISP's - singular ossessive; "the first ISP's routers were down"
ISPs' - plural possessive, "the next two ISPs' routers were down"

The Times says ISP is a contraction, but it isn't. Its an acronym. Just because the New York Times editors are illiterate morons doesn't mean slashdot has to be, to.

You learned this is the fourth grad, guys. Stop embarrassing me.
</off topic>

Re: ISP's to Create Database to Combat Child Porn

[windowpain]

ISP is neither a contraction nor an acronym. It's an initialism. (I didn't make that term up. Check the Chicago Manual of Style.) An acronym is an initialism that is spoken as a word, like NAFTA, NASA and NATO.

You're right about the apostrophes though.

Re: ISP's to Create Database to Combat Child Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just because the New York Times editors are illiterate morons doesn't mean slashdot has to be, to."

Before you lecture about grammar, why don't you lern two spel (sic)? :P

Re: ISP's to Create Database to Combat Child Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, different states have different legal ages. In Illinois it's 17, in some states it's 18, in Arkansas it's 13. So a movie of two fifteen year olds its legal in Arkansas but not Illinois.

Wrong. Possession of pornography involving someone under the age of 18 is illegal in the entire United States, no matter which state you are in. The age of consent laws vary from state to state, but not the child pornography laws. This means you may be able to legally have sex with a 15 year old in Arkansas, but if you take a picture of said 15 year old while you're doing it you'd be breaking the law. Logical, isn't it?

Re: ISP's to Create Database to Combat Child Porn

[sm62704]

Because I'm not the one getting PAID for it.

warrants? any rights?

[CaptainNerdCave]

any thoughts on how long it will take for some sort of bill/law/something to be passed that declares email and instant messages to be as private as telephone calls and snail mail? i'm sorry if this is an old subject, but it bears re-addressing, this is a serious subject. sure, if it's possible to create any means to scan a file for a known code, whatever (fell out of playing with highly technical pc stuff a few years ago), fine. i see this as being akin to using some sort of sniffing device on packages; if you were dumb enough to send a box of marijuana somewhere without any sort of insulation, you deserve to get caught. however, i think it's another thing entirely different to punish someone for scanning their email to find a file that is an illegal picture... and had to be extracted from 2 or 3 passworded archives (i know, pretty simple). if you're going through all that trouble, you obviously weren't the intended receipient and you were pursuing an investigation without a warrant. hello? am i the only one that sees a problem with this? if this does turn out to be a real threat, how long until spam starts containing images deemed to be child porn? the receiver gets arrested because he happens to have an email account? FOUL! just another reason that spam is almost the most important problem to tackle with the internet. something to think about.

Child porn on Wikipedia and Snopes

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true. What do you do about "academic" pictures like the ones you find for Lina Medina on Wikipedia and Snopes? It's hard to find any link on the internet about her without her picture also available.

Or what about all those National Geographic photos?

Abusive child porn is easy to spot, but when you move out to just plain nudity, child porn is a very hard thing to quantify.

Dangerous Intentions

[TaoPhoenix]

I must respectfully disagree. I feel Damien posted a classic example of a well meaning post, which offers tremendous room for the abuses mentioned elsewhere. Let's look.

1. "Your argument makes no sense whatsoever. If somebody weren't looking for MP3 files, he would not stumple upon any either."
--- Any time I do web research, ads for edgy materials abound on pages, presumably originating from sponsors who pay the page creator. After all, we are moving towards the ad-supported web model.

2. "I don't see how creating a database to help combat child porn limits your freedom, or that of your children."
--- Change the emphasis; Database the noun, is an object that sits somewhere, and looks innocent. (Is it?) Instead, it's Create the verb, that leaves room for abuse.
--- And is the database innocent? To imagine that *no-one* wants a crack at the Dark Side's Holy Grail is an innocence that died in the 20th century.

3. "Are you trying to imply that doing your best to make sure the laws are enforced is a bad thing ? No matter how unpopular a law is, it's still law as long as it is on the books."
--- It isn't a law, until the Administration PR campaign swindles enough congress-people into making it a law. And some of the laws themselves are created for less than noble ends. That's why the Judicial System exists - to prevent unholy collaborations between the Executive and Legislative Branches. ... Except the Administration is trying to stack the Judiciary Deck.

---TaoPhoenix

Gov. sending you child porn?

[Revolver4ever]

So, the ISP's put this system in place, the GOV hires a bunch of spammers (all under the table of course) to email low grade kiddy porn to everbody who looks like the next terrorist and VOILA instant access to all your information: digital and physical. A kiddy porn investigation gets the judges to write out all kinds of warrants for the FBI and you are powerless to stop it.

Some asshat senator mad at your company for opposing one of his bills? Send some kiddy porn to you, and start an investigation. Even if they don't find anything, you'll most likely lose half of your cusotmers and most of your respect.

I'm scared.

mod parent "confessional," not "informative"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how he premeditates on statutory rape is informative...

Re:mod parent "confessional," not "informative"

[hackstraw]

I don't see how he premeditates on statutory rape is informative...

Like I'm the only male/female that has sexual thoughts after checking one's ID and verifying that it is real.

Arg

[idiotdevel]

... I never liked ISPs

Oh, please.

[MisterSquid]

Sharing of child pornography leads to more child pornography. Sharing of copyrighted music leads to less copyrighted music.

Find the anomaly.

How did this get moderated up? I'll find you the anomaly: No company in the world has a legitimate market in online pornography. The rationale is that illicit/illegal downloading leads to more illicit/illegal downloading in the cases of both child pornography and copyrighted music.

The damage (theorized by the RIAA) to legitimate music markets by illegal downloading cannot happen to the market for child pornography because there is no market of child pornography to harm.

Re:Oh, please.

[MisterSquid]

Shoulda used preview (I *did*, honest) and the lameness of replying to my own post, but I meant to say "How did this get moderated up? I'll find you the anomaly: No company in the world has a legitimate market in online child pornography."

dur.

Re:Oh, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

No company in the world has a legitimate market in online pornography. The rationale is that illicit/illegal downloading leads to more illicit/illegal downloading in the cases of both child pornography and copyrighted music.

In the world of the RIAA, it costs thousands and thousands to make the music, so when people download it for free, less music gets made.

But as we all know, child porn springs automatically from the aether, and downloading it from the network only causes more to appear to fill that void.

Shoot First, Question Later

[Doc Ruby]

"officials combat distribution of questionable material"

That's the problem. Officials should be questioning questionable material. Once the question is answered "prohibited", then they should combat it.

Wanted: Perverted DBA

[Hoi Polloi]

They'll need people to build this database and manage it. Finally, a job description where being a pedophile is actually an asset.

"I know Oracle recovery, backup and restore. Oh yah, I also love sweet young innocent things...ohhhh"

Total Information Awareness

[Ardipithecus]

Since the US is implementing TIA (in steps), how hard would it be to add, to whatever is the "signature" of a terrorist, the "signature" of a pedophile. Might as well get something out of the effort. OT. Do James Bond fans find a resemblance between S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and Al-Qaida?

So now these anonymous media companies...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

are now collectors and warehouses of child pron? I'm just curious, when is it legal to obtain, retain, collect and warehouse something illegal? Oh ya, when you are the law. Only then can you break the law.

The distribution?

[unix_core]

Actually, I don't see why we focus som much on the distribution itself of these pictures. I find it very sad and disgusting, but real problem must lie in the production, that's where children are abused.

And what about those who work with these filters, are they allowed to see these images and if so, is that much less bad than if they are viewed by a pedophile? From a technical point of wiew, I think a filter would be completely useless in stopping child-porn on the internet. So in this case we would simply be sacrificing some privacy and freedom for nothing.

I'd worry more about Usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think a ton of child porn is being distributed via the WWW part of the internet.

More of it gets done via secret FTP sites, and the big daddy of them all, Usenet.

Besides which, until there is a global hard point to call something "child pornography", what does it matter? As long as some countries have a more liberal viewpoint, such as saying 16 is old enough to be photographed nude, how can we hold a international thing like the internet to a U.S. or some other country's standard? Someone will just move their servers to a country where they laws make it legal, and go from there.

Anyone that goes to Usenet binary groups that has pictures knows that sooner or later some child porn-like photos are going to end up on their system. Some spammer is throwing them up. And that makes the decision to report the poster(s) more hazardous. Reporting to may places (like the FBI), they want *YOUR* info, as well. I don't want some FBI agent coming to my house to talk to me about child porn, knowing that there is the small chance some photo that is on my system could fit the criteria for some draconian anti-child porn law that got passed in some whacky place.

Most of what gets found, from a business that actively produces child porn, is coming out of Russia and former Soviet block nations. Nothing happens to those, as the Mafia is too hard to crack. But those mom and pop shops are harder to track.

Great idea

[t_allardyce]

Creating a database of child porn, a Titanic database if you like, great idea seriously. Apart from the obvious - database getting stolen, pedophiles deciding to make new content that's not on the database, etc. Governments are coming dangerously close to defining what an ISP is at a time when the concept of Internet service providers is becoming vague - with people setting up wifi hot spots and distributed proxies there's not going to be an easy definition of ISP.

Good police depts. mitigate this

[davidwr]

Good, well-funded police department anti-kp squads have ways to combat fatigue.

First, you are part of a team.
Second, there's psychological help available and/or required.
Third, you are on a rotation. They don't allow you to look at this stuff for more than a few months at a time.

They know it can wear a normal person out and/or push a person with slight pedophiliac tendencies over the edge.

BTW you know some cops in the anti-smut control DO get turned on by this. They do this kind of work to convince themselves they are not turned on by flesh after all.

yahoo

[dallase]

hell, i bet yahoo could create the database by themselves. based on the amount of KP sites that show up on their nameservers http://rss.uribl.com/ns/yahoo_com.html

That sums up all religions

[Viol8]

The catholic church is nothing special. Judaism , islam, hinduism , they all do it.
The only religion that makes you think (IMO) is buddism , but even that has some
tenets that you have to just accept.

Religion is simply mind control of the weak by the strong.

Re:That sums up all religions

[operagost]

Come now and let us reason together.
- Isaiah 1:18

Re:That sums up all religions

[Viol8]

Come now and let us reason together... .... but at the end just agree with what I say or else.

Isiah (the bit that was edited out)

Re:That sums up all religions

[Anonymous Coward]

> Isiah (the bit that was edited out)

You would have a bit more authority if you were able to spell Isaiah.

Or if you had actually, say, actually quoted the rest of the context to that verse which doesn't really match your paraphrase (hint: they'd agreed to do certain things and hadn't). Or, say, read Proverbs, which better supports thinking for oneself than the out-of-context bit of Isaiah. Assuming you understand the imagery in some of the Proverbs...

Honestly, I'm not sure that contemplating nonsense in Buddhism makes you think. Also, don't you realize that there's a fundamental asymmetry in the universe? Matter dominates over antimatter and the whole universe is unbalanced. Go ponder that for a while, it pretty much shows one of the tennets of Buddhism to be false.

Re:That sums up all religions

[ltbarcly]

"As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may aquire male and female slaves." Leviticus 25:44

"a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock!" Psalms 137:9

Re:That sums up all religions

[Viol8]

Buddism is just as much bollocks as every other religion , but at least it tries
to make its followers think , even if its about nonsense. All the other religions
just want obedience. End of. As for the imagery in proverbs, so what. Imagery and
implication is easy. Hard facts arn't. Which is why science has hard facts, while
religion just relies on hearsay from thousands of years ago, metaphor and if that
doesn't work , outright threats. Religion was an ok belief system centuries ago
when we were still ignorant about how the universe worked , anyone who believes in it
now is either credulous, a fool or both.

(And yes I know we don't know everything about the universe yet and perhaps never
will, but google for "god of the gaps" if you want to know what I think about
religion in this scenario)

Re:That sums up all religions

[bobk33]

Isn't that pretty much what we say to the pedophiles? Agree with us or else.

sounds so wrong

[Scrameustache]

I'm only interested in girls once they get signs of being able to breed. You know those things like boobies and hips. [...] How common, and what exactly is the fascination with pre-pubescent kids? I just don't get it.

So you like 'em at around 12... 13? Just when breasts start showing?

Eeeeeew.

Hmmm Database... Full of Child Porn

[Mijion]

Now who gets to build this database? What kind of sick person will sit all day looking at the pictures deciding if it is good enough for his database?

Why not just keep going after the people who make the child porn. They are still going to keep on making it even if no one is looking at it.

What's even more disturbing than child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

As revolting as child pornography is I find the presumption of guilt attached to it even more disturbing. Certainly any reasonable person can tell if a very young child is being depicted. But how does the prosecution prove that a given model was 17 years and 364 days of age or younger (making the image child porn) or 18 years of age (making the image perfectly legal)? If the prosecution isn't required to prove that a certain subject was less than 18 years of age at the time the picture was taken then we have gone from presumption of innocence to presumption of guilt.

On the "To Catch a Predator" series of investigations on NBC Dateline they use a very young sounding and looking 19 year old actress to play the part of a younger teen. So if she decided to go into porn modeling, presumably images of her would be legal. But images of an older looking 17 year old would be illegal. This is crazy.

Search Warrant

[Detritus]

Whatever happened to the idea of a search warrant? The Postal Service isn't allowed to open my mail and check it for illegal or subversive material without a warrant. An ISP has no business scanning my email or web requests for questionable material.

Typical Slashdot

[cdrguru]

First off, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children already has this "databae" or "library" of child porn images. They would be the maintainers of it, not the ISPs themselves. That is what the article says, and that would be the legal requirements - police and other government agencies cannot keep child porn even for sample purposes.

NCMEC will be undoubtably supplying a hash database to ISPs. MD5 or SHA1 probably as these are in common use today. This would enable matching of identical files quickly and easily.

Unfortunately, we are already running into the limits of simple MD5 matching with child porn cases today. You resize the picture or brighten it up a little bit and that changes the MD5 value and your database, library or whatever is then useless. You have a new, original picture with a new original hash value. There are other ways to accomplish this which do not suffer from these limitations without giving up high-speed autonomous comparisons. Check out http://www.infinadyne.com/icatch.html for some ideas.

Yes, I work at the company that is producing this product.

Pervert media companies

[chord.wav]

...several media companies are banding together to create a database of child pornography images to help law enforcement officials combat distribution of questionable material...

Yeah sure. You perverts!

"illegal drawings" are a disgusting concept

[Anonymous Coward]

>>It is socially less acceptable to fantasize about child molestation than murder. To tell you the truth I don't really have a problem with that.
So - in your opinion, it would be morally preferable for one to kill a child than molest her? ..I'm not following your logic, I don't think. Or I hope not..

>>watching Kill Bill, or playing GTA... ...poses a threat to all humans, because, as we all know, violent video games & films 'undemonize' murder and antecedent copycat behavior by teens.

(Excuse my lack of evidence, but can't we criminalize simulated murder on my word? I put several minutes into forming this opinion.)

>>quasi-child porn breaches the barrier to real child porn.
You lost me.

Are you trying to say that checking out lolikon (drawn pictures of young girls) will lead someone to look at real kiddie porn?

Without any evidence? I'd like to see it, since all the anecdotes I've encountered suggest otherwise - most even that "quasi-child porn" acts as a substitute for real CP and helps them keep away from that shit.

>>quasi child porn is similar enough to real child porn that there is no substantial difference between a child porn consumer and a quasi child porn consumer.
Real child porn hurts children - its creation innately requires the exploition of (meatspace) children. "Quasi-child porn" doesn't, 'cuz it's just motherfucking ink on paper. 'No children were harmed in the making of this porn.'

>>The offence that kiddie porn consumers commits isn't the molestation itself it is the creation of a market that hinges on abused children. If you get your rocks off looking at quasi porn you are creating the exact same market as if you were looking at real porn.
Good God...

THE MARKET OF "QUASI-CHILD PORN:" PEOPLE DRAWING.
THE MARKET OF CHILD PORN: PEOPLE RAPING LITTLE KIDS.

"Exact same market," my ass.

>>I'll again pose the challenge, what is the difference between..

>>real child porn.. ..involves child exploition.

>>photo-realistic child porn with a model.. ..involves child exploition.

>>and photo realistic child porn without a model? ..doesn't involve child exploition.

>>Now what is the difference between photo-realistic porn and more stylized child porn?
One involves child exploition - one doesn't. Do we really even need to explain this stuff, man?

BTW - it's good that lolikon can 'whet' a paederotic individual's appetite. Starving people who love children sexually *until* they snap isn't a great way to prevent child molestation, IMHO.

Slow Down for Everyone.

[twitter]

Actually MusicBrainz does a reasonable job for music. It would be very stupid to apply such a thing to law enforcement. Like you said, the false positives would eat all sorts of resources. Worse though, is going to be the ISP effort required to make a hash of every photo sent by email or uploaded to a web site. AOL, M$ and Time Warner don't want you sharing anyway so they could care less. This is just one more attack on the world of ends. The big media companies never liked the internet and want it to be much more like broadcast TV. What better way than to cry kiddie porn?

Re:Slow Down for Everyone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi - we were wondering if you were planning to reply to this soon. Thanks.

you are all missing the point

[TheGratefulNet]

the point is NOT about the KIND of content. that's just a way to get popular soccer-moms (etc) up in arms and mobilized on your side.

what is REALLY shocking is that this opens the door for ISPs to get their 'fingers on the bits' (its a data comm term - sorry about the double ententre).

so far, it has not been 'ok' to let ISPs scan for content and make judgements on it. most ISPs have drawn the line to say that we are just a carrier of bits and we are not RESPONSIBLE for what the user includes in the payload.

the music and film industry has tried to get ISPs to do their spying. with mixed success.

but scream 'CP' and you can't publicly NOT support that (and still keep your job). "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" goes the old joke. there's no safe way to answer that. if you publicly oppose such a politically charged idea, you are a boogeyman and an evil person. if you support it, you will pass under the suspicion-radar and will more or less be left alone.

this is a power grab to OFFICIALLY define an isp's job as net-nanny. first they claim to be protecting the citizenry - but its really far more devious than that. once the gov and the isp's convince joe sixpack that its in their 'benefit' for the net-nannies to read all your content ahead of you, you will NEVER get that level of privacy back again.

this is a sham. whenever someone says "won't you please think of the children!" you can bet that there are alterior motives going on.

remember: those in power just want to keep and increase their control level. fingers on the datacomm bits is one thing they've been after for a long time!

Wonky Idea

[blueZhift]

Hmmm, creating a huge database of child porn in order to fight child porn seems like a pretty wonky idea. Wouldn't it be better to simply hire and train real humans to track this stuff down and aid law enforcement in finding the producers of this junk? Technology is great, but there are quite a lot of tasks for which automation is not a substitute, especially if one's goal is the just application of the law. But I fear that right now we are living in a climate in which a thirst for surveillance rather than a thirst for justice is holding sway.

Depends on what you search

[phorm]

Newsgroups tend to come and go for trashiness, but as of lately I've found them to be an absolute cesspool. It probably wouldn't be hard to setup a bunch of hashes on known illegal pics and then:

a) Check the hash after an upload of an entry with image attachment
b) Trawl the lists for attachments matching the hash of illegals, and remove them

In the end, you might catch some of the pervs doing the upload (match the sending IP and trace back), and for people that actually like to use newsgroups for what they are intended (conversation, or perhaps legal pr0n) it means there's a whole lot less disgusting sh*t out there. Of course, there are ways around this such as minutely altering a few pixels on the image before upload, or changing contrasts, etc, which would change the hash. And worse:

a) Somebody has to go around classifying these things (can you say worst job ever!? maybe a "submit for review" button on newgroups would be useful or some site where you could plug in a url)
b) It hasn't worked for drugs or anything else yet, they'll just get better at hiding (the plus to this being again that it's less likely you'll run into such crap if not looking for it)
c) They'll produce more of such things in an effect to create material that hasn't been classified for the filters...


As for the comment about matching TCP/IP packets... that isn't all that likely or feasible. If you have a database of 100,000+ images, videos, etc (or even hashes on such) it would be very very expensive and cumbersome to packet-match each and every one without some major performance impact.

Not that unlikely

[phorm]

At one of my prior jobs we had an NT server running that a contractor (not sure why admin ever hired the guy, but hey) left the anon FTP open. Yes, he used anon FTP rather than making a proper account.... but I digress.

After a weekend of being left open, the box was filled to the brim with shit. Warez files, cracks, and tons of images. I intentionally avoided looking at the images, because I'm sure that if not something illegal, there was probably at least something nasty in there.

We wiped the drives and rebuilt from backup... once you've got a machine badly compromised it no longer belongs to you, and you can't trust that it's safe. Think of it like a bad ant problem, no matter how many traps you set the little bastards always come back and bring their friends too.

Welcome to AOL... You've Got Child Porn!

[arclyte]

Nothing like mentioning child porn to grease the wheels of a /. discussion.

From TFA:
Plans call for the missing children's center to collect known child-porn images and create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula. Each participating company would scan its users' images for matches.

Forget all these arguments about child porn and whether it helps and blah blah blah. It's not an issue that's going to go away any time soon. What really frightens me about this is that they're not only using this database to tag child porn they've found, but to look for new child porn according to a (surely infallible) mathematical automation process... Exactly what kind of digital signature does child porn have? Will this be able to differentiate between a naked 18 year old and a naked 12 year old? Will it be able to tell the difference between real child porn and pictures of my 10 month old naked in the tub that I send to his grandma? This is like the post office opening your mail, photocopying it, and sending it along to the FBI for archiving... These guys sure have their work cut out for them...

Re:Welcome to AOL... You've Got Child Porn!

[Jerry Rivers]

Yes but pedophiles who work for law enforcement and ISPs will be able to browse with impunity.

They are not stockpiling the actual pictures!

[fluffy99]

They are probably amassing a collection of MD5 sums or some other fingerprints. These of course would be derived from the collections previously seized. Then the ISPs would use somthing like Carvnivore to watch for these fingerprints on the wire. No different than the NSA tapping all the phone lines listening for key words. Oh wait, that was illegal too.

RI** has already proposed fingerprinting their songs and then pressuring the ISP to allow them to monitor key internet streams for their songs being traded. This is truly a 1984 Big Brother kinda thing to do. "You're under arrest sir, your ISP reported you downloading nude images of Gary Coleman!"

Re:They are not stockpiling the actual pictures!

[iggymanz]

of course, it's a rather trivial matter to alter an image or movie file to obtain a different md5 or other checksum sum while visually appearing the same.

ISP cooperation

[6ULDV8]

"but most notable is what some perceive as a willingness to cooperate which critics say has been lacking in the past."

Translate that to "Hey! I've got a great idea for a project... build it for me for free, k? You're a jerk if you don't... probably hate puppies too."

Prevent?

[nurb432]

And a database of current child porn will do what exactally to prevent more?

Sounds more like an excuse to do more monitornig and 'mandatory filtering' ( foot in the door type ) of our data.

Most child abuse isn't done by pedophiles

[the_raptor]

The thing that everyone seems to miss in any discussion about child porn/pedophilia, is that pedophiles and especially ones who aren't parents, are not the ones doing the majority of abusing. Stranger danger is complete paranoia. Children are kidnapped and sexually abused by strangers, but the overwhelming majority of physical and sexual abuse is done by the childrens own family (who rarely self-identify as a pedophile). If the worlds Governments actually wanted to stop child abuse they would put more money into child protection agenices rather then trying to stop people looking at kiddie porn. My mother works for an Australian child protection agency and her work conditions are fairly horrendous. Reports of abuse are regularly not investigated (and many more are investigated poorly) because they only have the manpower to investigate the worst examples. The people you should worry about are the parents and extended family of the child, not some guy parked in front of a school.

Re:Most child abuse isn't done by pedophiles

[inKubus]

It's easy to see that what we need to do is neuter all men at the age of 18 and then we don't have to worry about it.

I mean really, what's the point? Sex just gets men in trouble all the damn time. If we were all neutered, we wouldn't have to think about it and could be good little robots, working our jobs until we die. There would be no luxury, no wasteful spending on shiny things to impress the wife because you wouldn't HAVE ONE. What about continuation of the species? Well, they could get a sample of sperm from every man and store it and partner the sperm up with a computer database of women. Of course, you would have to build a whole new religion around it, so when all males reach a certain age, they expect the snip as part of a coming of age ritual.

Anyway, you can't civilize out sex without something like this enevitably happening. However, I do think sex is a pretty primative way of continuing the species and I think that we can probably come up with a better and safer way nowadays. After that, a simple pill to take away the desire and pleasure associated with it and we'll have fixed the number one problem with the human race. Seriously, 4/5 of the bible is about dealing with the problems related to sex, having sex with your neighbors, having sex with your neigbors dog, etc. 99% of daytime television deals with the same topics (Whose baby, you're banging your brother's mother, etc). And look around at your own immediate surroundings, your office for instance. Provided you don't work at a game publisher, you probably have some women around the office and probably there's been some relationships. THAT CAUSES PROBLEMS! YOU KNOW IT!

Ok, so we just eliminated 100% of rape, 100% of murder (mostly jealousy related, although theft also. BUT WHY WAS HE STEALING? because his wife said, you betta go out and get a job!), 100% of problems with unwanted/unplanned children, 100% of wasteful production being spent on useless crap like toilet seat covers and clothes, there's almost too much to list!

And because we wouldn't have testicles, WE WOULDN'T MISS IT!

It's a brave new world. And I'm leading the charge into the mid-21st century with my Neuterist platform. I promise to rid the world of all crime and suffering, all murder and rape, all war, all greed, all lust. Vote with the Neuterists and we'll literally sieze all of these problems by the balls, separate them with a razor scalpel and a quick flick of the wrist, and toss them out with the tater tots from last nights dinner.

So they are building the worlds largest collection

[lowell]

of child porn, this sounds just too distasteful.

interesting opportunity

[mgabrys_sf]

For people to unleash holy terror on the blackmail circut. I'm amazed how many tools lawmakers provide in this regard.

Now, we can create documents and emails that will create a massive data-trail for the police while shaking down the target all in the privacy of your offshore spoofed server. Brilliant. Ka-Ching!

Thank you America! Thank you!
Nigeria, start your engines!

WTF?

[fatdog789]

So I assume this is one of those "To catch them, we must become them" scenarios? I always thought that possession of child pornography was a crime, regardless of the circumstances. But I guess it's better to have ISP executives getting off to little children than it is for them to eat them.

If they want an easy way for ISPs to detect users.

[Cherveny]

If they want an easy way for ISPs to detect who is looking at child porn, couldn't the ISPs just check the access logs to their UseNet servers (yes, some ISPs still provide these), and look for people who are accessing groups like alt.binaries.pictures.child.rape.whatever? It's always struck me as odd that ISPs even carry newsgroups with names that tell they are only for underage content. (But, on the other hand, I can understand it too, just due to lazyness, and just letting the system newgroup any group request that comes through.)

Exactly

[Hillgiant]

You fight the war on [$GENERALITY] with the consitution you have, not the constitution you would like to have.

I don't think that's such a great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Here's an idea. Remove all laws against copying, selling and downloading child porn, but keep the laws against things that actually involve the children - like statutory rape, child abuse, etc.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want the pictures of my abuse all over the internet were I so unfortunate as to be one of those kids :-/ Let alone whatever poor sod ended up being one of the most popular child pornstars.

That's the rationale the Supreme Court has for blocking it: that a child is abused again every time someone looks at it, because on some level it's like defamation (even though it's true).

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for neutering pedophiles with a hammer, but I fear that the government will do nothing but make this into a massive spy operation that will do little, if anything, to actually protect children. Far more effective, IMHO, would be to *educate* those kids about not giving out personal information online unless absolutely necessary and to have a *central point of contact* for reporting child porn. Oh, and I should mention something I found out when reading the actual, federal laws on CP: there's a limited safe-harbor for people who come across it accidentally. IIRC, you must not tell anyone else or show anyone else (except law enforcement) and you must destroy the file ASAP (although you may be allowed to make a copy for law enforcement). I wouldn't suggest going around and looking for it, though. But that's just about wide enough for anyone who accidentally comes across the filth to pass it along to some anonymous police contact so that they can bust whoever is spreading it.

Those two things alone would probably be about a billion times as effective as storing a database of hashes of CP. Haven't they learned *anything* from all the hash-busting spam we get!? I don't seriously believe that they can find a hash of the image that cannot be busted by trivial things like cropping the image, adding JPG comments, randomising the less signficant bits, changing the compression, etc.

Oh, right, they're legislating without a clue. That should be a crime, but who would pass that law? :-/

Hack it

[WiggyWack]

So all the pedophiles need to do is figure out a way to access that database... No more cruising Usenet! Get all your child porn in one place!

And if they ever ran short on cash

[Anonymous Coward]

They could raise plenty by selling the images...

Seem tasteless? Here's the point: Law enforcement agencies already have a bigger collection of child porn than anyone else.

The problem is that every discussion of these topics becomes hopelessly tainted by the pathological puritanism of our culture, which smothers any possibility of sensible discussion, hence of effective problem solving.

E.g. does anyone ever question the definition of "child?" Our culture defines "child" exactly in terms of eroticism (i.e. the lack therof) thereby creating about the most erotic construct one could imagine.

Solving a problem without first understanding it, we wind up with these solutions that resemble using a bazooka to kill mosquitos.

Here's a sick thought...

[I*Love*Green*Olives]

For all we know they've been doing this for years already anyway.

Who here (Alt OS users put your hands down) runs their system without a virus scanner?

How do we *know* all the scanner does is look for viruses? For all we know it also matches mp3s by MD5 checksums and confirms that copy of XYZ Pro is legit! We've become so accustomed to running a virus scanner and scanning everything before opening it, someone could easily integrate this type of functionality into the major virus scanners and no one would be the wiser.

--I*Love*Green*Olives

Don't we already have one of these?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was called 4chan.org...

Lol!

[Mad Quacker]

How much do you want to bet that soon enough nearly every employee with access to the database is going to be a pedophile?

Collecting child porn to prevent it, it's like fucking for abstinence.

bitwise NOT?

[rabiddeity]

it's trivial to come up with a way of altering images so that they look identical but where every bit is different to the original

If you apply a bitwise NOT on an image, it will hardly look identical.

False Positives

[zoephile]

So, they are going to acquire a database of these images and then compute a checksum to identify the images and then match them against files that users download. And what happens if someone accidentally downloads one of these images ? Say as part of some spammers email or maybe attached to a newsgroup post or by accidentally hitting a bogus link on a website. Does that person now get busted for downloading CP ?? I am against CP just as much as the next guy. But can this eventually lead to people getting in troublke for something they did not willfully do ??

it already exists

[coaxial]

A child porn database already exists. It's run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The government searches it everytime they prosecute a child porn case, because the same photos are circled around the Internet for years. Once the child in the photo is confirmed by medical examination to be both a real child under 18 years of age, the photo is flagged as such. US attorneys tell grand juries this every time they bring an indictment against someone. Given this, it strikes me as basically just a showey "we're doing something" move.

Hogwash

[obnoxiousbastard]

Whenever the keywords terrorists, kiddie porn or patriotism come up, you are about to be sold a bill of goods.

Who is it that said That which you fear controls you.

I fear grandstanding and manipulative politicians with an agenda that has nothing to do with what they are currently lying about.

This does not bode well

[jerunamuck]

Setting aside the implications for abuse of the system (which, I agree with other posters here, is the real motive of this)....

So ISP's build a database of tags identifying all existing CP and use it to prevent use of their bandwidth for distribution. Let's assume that it's a spohisticated marker that will tollerate significant alteration of the digital stream and still identify CP with 99.99% accuracy.

What they've done is prevent the flesh peddlers from re-selling their 'stock art' and force them to acquire new images that have not been tagged by the CP database. Of course the flesh peddlers could just give up their lucerative black market income.

Remind me how this is going to prevent or reduce child abuse?

Re: Asperger syndrome

[wilec]

Out of curiosity I looked up Asperger syndrome on Wikipedia. I did not read any references in the article about concerns of pedophilia. It did indicate that there could be some social maladjustment issues, especially among age specific peer groups. Is this the concern the therapist had? That you might gravitate to relationships with those younger than yourself?

I have not see such gravitation in myself but I did read many aspects of my own life in the article description of this "disorder". My nickname from about the fifth grade on was "professor". I did have a keen interest in the sciences, the details of history, and philosophy. I regularly read college level texts by junior high, but then my IQ had tested in the low 140's and such was encouraged, even pushed at me. I was regularly addressed in a patronizing manner by many adults including teachers or avoided like a leper by others, most adults don't like being corrected by a kid I guess. I usually found conservation with adults embarrassing or painful but easier than most of my peers. Plus I was small for my age and not very athletically inclined, in fact generally awkward and clumsy, I would have 'nawed off my arm at the elbow to get out of PE, and somewhat thus picked at and ostracized by my peers. This led me to becoming very defensive and thus quickly to be offensive at times. Thus I have many encounters with those set on installing discipline in my life, including a mostly miserable summer in a early precursor of the "outward bound" program. If it had not been for the easy going open minded nature and patient mentoring by my grandfather I believe my life would have been a disaster or worst ended early.

To this day I have some issues with communicating with the average person. I still have trouble, not so much with public speaking or writing via a PC, though I do have trouble drifting between lower case, caps, cursor and print in my handwriting, though mechanically it is very good. My thoughts tend to outrun my speech or writing so live non preprepared events sometimes get away from me. In presentations and reporting of technical issues to non technical types and even other technicians I sometimes tend to go way too deep in detail and explanation for most of them, I usually don't realize it until their eyes glaze over though. I have to stay conscious of my physical state less I regress to some apparently incorrect posture, expression or make an inappropriate body adjustment. In discussions of philosophical and political issues it seems as often as not I just piss people off. I do realize these things and hack away at them though, and it seems I am getting more adept at these interactions over time.

  All in all I always though I was just a independent thinking geek. However I now feel the need to ask, does any of this sound familiar to you? If you don't wish to discuss this here I will understand, but I am curious.

Matthew