Hong Kong Using Children to Hunt for Piracy

westcoaster004 writes to tell us that according to The New York Times the Hong Kong government will be using some 200,000 youths to scour the internet for piracy. Members of the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and nine other youth organizations will be drawn from with the first 1,600 being "sworn in" this Wednesday. From the article: "Tam Yiu-keung, the Hong Kong Excise and Customs Department's senior superintendent of customs for intellectual property investigations, said the program should not raise any concerns about privacy or the role of children in law enforcement. The youths will be visiting Internet discussion sites that are open to all, so the government program is no different than asking young people to tell the police if they see a crime while walking down the street, he said."

Comments

Re:Its not that hard

[cdrudge]

"Here you go kids, this is how you can find/download the latest app/song/video."

It's kind of like education kids about drugs by showing them where to buy all the ingredients to make meth...

maybe they've been reading

[hachete]

http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/

which is a damn fine webcomic as well

Re:The real reason

[1u3hr]

I submit to you that those 'elite hackers' start off as motivated script-kiddies.

You obviously know nothing about Hong Kong. China does not trust Hong Kong people politically, (having beeen tainted by British colonialism and western concepts of democracy) and they not allowed to join the PLA. For various reasons the Beijing govt keeps a hands-off policy with regard to HK governance (except for ruling out real elections, etc), and I can assure you this idea is entirely home-grown and in line with other of it's nany-state ideas.