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?

[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?

[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?

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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]

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!
 

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[Lehk228]

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

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

[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

[oyenstikker]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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).

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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'"?

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

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

[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.

You Be Quiet Now, , , ,

[Slugster]

Finally! I can stop wasting my time applying to be the Vatican's porn archivist....

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??

[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.

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.

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

[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

[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: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.

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.

I run an ISP.

[crhylove]

Is there anyway I can get a copy of that database? Anyone? Bueller?

rhY

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.

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?

[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.

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?

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 .....

[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.

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...

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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>

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.

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.

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.

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.

Re:That sums up all religions

[operagost]

Come now and let us reason together.
- Isaiah 1:18

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.

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!

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!"