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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."
to see porn and all its flavors, casiono/poker scams, spyware, popups, circle jerks, top20 gateways and all the other scum that floats on the bottom of the warez scene
The first problem with this that comes to mind is that there are a lot of piracy websites that have images unappropriate for kids.
Yes, yes, I know that any kid can go online and find whatever they want to look at. I'm getting at that maybe this isn't a task for children (in the government-run sense).
I don't think the main point is to find the Warez, but rather to "educate" the children by enlisting them in the battle.
First of all; Warez sites have porn. Not just a boob here and there either. Real live penetration. Often times, you have the weirdest fetish shit to deal with too.
So let's dump that on 200k kids. Lovely.
Second, kids are idiots. Truly, they are. I remember when I was a kid, I was an idiot. So now we are turning out 200k kids in to an enviroment ripe for molestation. And porn, lest we forget.
This is a bad bad idea, no mater how you slice it.
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So 1% of the kids will be all into it and be good citizens... and 99% of the kids will laugh at and mock that 1%.
Great way to make piracy seem even more cool, and to make reporting piracy something that only losers do.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
The massive attempts (and manpower) China require to keep their Great Firewall of China up to date. Who knows if these "Youth Ambassadors" won't just have their task expanded to include reporting on objectionable material? After all currently Hong Kong isn't covered by the GFC.
Video Game cheats, hints a
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"With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police."
"Asking children to do something like that is a form of indoctrination, making the implication that "ratting" to the government is grand thing to do."
..." was a little overdone, but I do agree with you in principle.
/. meme.
Not a new idea (Hitler Youth, anyone?), but it seems our capacity for learning from history seems tied only to short-term memory.
I think the "...asked my son to explore dark alleys at 3am, just to figure out if drug deals are going on
Face it, it is hard for the would be dictators/over-control types to acheive their agenda unless.....they "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", to use an old
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Living in a post-communistic country, i remember from my schoolyears how we were 'trained' to look for and report saboteurs, spies and evil western agents. Given the state paranoia, the agents were portrayed as almost mythical creatures, with ninja-like capabilities, evil to the bone. The result was that everyone i know wanted to be western agent, so cool, merciless, almost invulnerable, able to get anywhere ...
.. way to go China! :)
So
Since this is Hong Kong, one must wonder if they are looking for pirated materials in order to wipe out their competition, or are they looking for something new to pirate that hasn't as yet received wide exposure.
The idea that the children of Hong Kong are being sent on a crusade to supplement the RIAA is absurd, and should not be taken on face value.
Perhaps the Hong Kong politicians who have received gifts from the pirates along with honorariums (to cover expenses, of course) from the RIAA need to show everyone involved on both sides that they are making 'a sincere effort' to address the 'problem'.
FTA: "The program may work better here than it would elsewhere, local officials suggest. Hong Kong teenagers are surprisingly obedient, possibly because of a Confucian tradition and very strong social pressures to study hard and serve the community."
That's right! Their kids are more brainwashed! Go MPAA/RIAA.
Reminds me of the late '30s - '40s in Germany.
Remember good little kids, it's your duty to report if your mommy or daddy have anything bootlegged.
-
Please do not mod funny, that would be insulting.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Sorry, but that's really dumb, even for a conspiracy theory. If you were the Chinese government and wanted to hack in to American information infrastructure, you wouldn't hire 200,000 children, you'd hire 200 really bright graduate students, and have them write automated attack programs. Not hundreds of thousands of amateur volunteers who are (a) not going to be very effective, and (b) are going to be impossible to keep quiet about their activities.
There's also the minor detail of China having the USA as their largest customer -- attacking the USA is hardly in their economic interest.
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