Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Puts Police Link on Messenger
SirClicksalot writes "Microsoft is working together with the UK Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre to help protect Windows Live Messenger Users. UK users will be able to report suspected sexual predators directly to the police. From the article: 'Microsoft will add a "report abuse" icon to Messenger that will link any users worried about their anonymous internet buddies directly to online police services. Set up earlier this year to provide a single point of contact for the public, law enforcers and the communications industry to report the targeting of children online, CEOP offers advice and information to parents and potential victims of abuse and works with police forces around the world to protect children.'"
Microsoft is working together with the UK Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre to help protect Windows Live Messenger Users. UK users will be able to report suspected sexual predators directly to the police.
Oh yeah, I can't see this being abused at all. Especially by teenagers just screwing around.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
This is a good idea, But... how many false alarms will there be? If every alarm has to be investigated, there will be a lot of wasted time.
Besides, we all know how kids like clicking everywhere.
One of the most convenient ways of destroying someone's life forever is to hint that they're a pedd-o to the police. One of the least credible sources of information is through chat and blog and instant message internet services. This sounds like a great way to completely twist the whole of society tightly around the axle for years to come.
[
Microsoft and everyone else has more important things to do than build 'predator features' into their software.
Anybody else greatly reminded of the Warning feature on AIM? No, people aren't going to screw around with this at all, everybody will be fair and sensible and only use it when justified.
LilJen1992 says: ... UGHGHGHGH!!!!11
__OMG LIEK TEHER IS SUM RILLY CREPY CHAP TAH WANTS ME TO
Constable Nigel says:
__4 ril?
LilJen1992 says:
__Yeh he is so grss!!!1
Constable Nigel says:
__kk jess gimme his s/n
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Some people here have been saying "what about the abuse" well seeing as they will know who is reporting the abuse then if you are just pratting about then those same police who are looking for predators can also send a threating response for wasting police time (a punishable offence). Unlike making crank calls from a telephone box this is very traceable.
Good idea, and well done Microsoft.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I have three seperate accounts I use to log into MSN Messenger's services, via passport.
Only one of them contains any personal information about me. The other two, which are in use most often, are full of completely bogus information.
Hypothetically speaking, where exactly would any online 'police service' get in such a situation? I think this has the potential to be a good idea, but I'm curious to see how many resources are going to be thrown behind this, given how easy it is to enter completely false data from the word go.
I think someone has watched too many episodes of the Simpsons and thought the Springfield Online Police Report was a good idea.
Bless The Simpsons
... is that it's the poor police who'll be feeling abused.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Well thank goodness for that.
At last someone is thinking of the children.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
We already have ways of reporting pedophiles. You can pick up the phone, you can write a letter, or you can walk into a police station. It doesn't need to be made any easier. Why don't people do this? Because their confidence in the police is low. They think the police either won't act for lack of evidence(in which case it can be a waste of time or worse the police might acuse them of making the situation up), or the police may over-react to information given and you could ruin someone's life based on a vague suspicion.
What you need to do is increase confidence in the police by making sure they always respond appropriately to legitimate complaints. Adding a "report a pedo" form is just plain silly.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
So now you can rat out anyone you feel like, even when they do nothing wrong just beacuse you are an ass.
Bring down the man on them.. Good way to scare away users.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How about a button that alerts the IRS? or the SEC when someone on a stock chat room brags about something not quite legal? or the private investigator that's checking up on the housewife who seems to be having a bit too much fun online...
...you click on the button, then John Cleese appears in a London bobby's uniform. "Wot's all this, then?"
(not to be confused with the Young Ones version where Neil appears in a London bobby's uniform saying "Woah, like chill out, man.")
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This will be heavily abused by kids just messing with each other. Yeah, no one would ever click this button as a joke on their friend. Without some sort of punishment for abuse of the system by the submitter this will work the same as blanket phone wiretaps - simply increase the size of the haystack in which one is searching for a needle.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Can't wait for the first messenger worm to start reporting everyone on your buddies list as sexual predators.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
just in case this term has not made it across the pond yet, grooming in that context means preparing someone for an adult relationship - eg; convincing them that they want to try something which they otherwise would not have.
Warhammer forums
I think that this is a horrible idea that can only serve to weaken online privacy (what little there is left), security (these days being secure to me means being protected from harassment or worse from the police state as much as being protected from normal criminals).
I think that everyone who has said that this will be abused by idiots and kids is right, for the most part - but my real problem is that this is a first step to eroding anonymity (or semi-anonymity) online, because once that button has been there for a little while, then the authorities can say - "Well, we now need every IP to be verifiably tied to an ID because online police buttons might be pushed and we can't go throught trying to figure out who all of these sceennames are."
On the positive side, it is good to know that I can contact the police in case of an emergency. On the other hand, what if this service is NOT available in my area? What if I get a 404 message when a creepy axe murder/peophile breaks into my house?
What do I do?
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Another reason people don't file police reports for this sort of thing are all the technical barriers that must be overcome: the complainant has to provide contextual information, at least including the time the incident occurred and who was involved. The police would then traditionally have to obtain warrants, contact AOL or MSN or whoever and pull IP logs, then do the same with the respective ISPs to get names and addresses. And if there is no reliable log of the conversation then the accused can deny the conversation ever took place.
With this service, I would expect MSN to forward aliases, a full chat log with accurate timestamps, the IP addresses of the involved parties, profile information, and anything else MSN may have on record. This eliminates the need for diligence on the part of the complainant and a good bit of footwork for the police handling the issue. And so long as the interface is designed properly, I think the chance of accidental or fake reports to be quite low (not considering worms that may target the feature).
All in all I think this is a fairly decent feature to add to a commercial chat client. If nothing else, it will likely be better than what we have now--ie. nothing.
Yep, I bet we'll have a 'Report as Terrorist' icon soon too. And we know how lax the definition of 'terrorism' is in the Terrorism Act here in the UK.
They stick like shit. They're honestly the worst policed, and worst handled crime out there. Societies reaction to them only compounds the issue.
Given the stigma attached to them in just about any society going, they should be handled like a black ops. There should be an immediate gag order on the proceedings from the time of the complaint until a verdict is reached unlesss an extreme need can be proven for otherwise.
I lost count but I was keeping track of all the false rape and other claims being made from the beginning of the year. www.dailyrotten.com is great for that. All the stories where "Woman cries rape..oh wait..video evidence provided shows she was shooting a porn film" kind of stories, and other stuff.
I've now required that any woman I'm to have sex with have a form filled out in triplicate, with 4 witnesses and then notorized. I usually require this being taped by a neutral third party. Usually I just arrange to have sex at the police station with at least 2 officers watching so that all is legit.
Back to the black ops. Any reporter found releasing information about an arrest or trial about a sex crime before its concluded should be shot as an example. If the claim is found to be outright false, the complainant should be subject to no less than 5 years in jail. If its not guilty, everyone gets a cookie and goes home.
The amount of stories I've read about teenagers who've accused a teacher of a sex crime then x amount of years later turned around and said "Oh.. we uh..made it up" is ridiculous. This tool serves no purpose other than to further this type of behaviour.
Oh, wouldn't that be deliciously ironic - being tried as an adult for using a feature that implies you are a child...
Who cares about kids? Why are they so freakin special? If you want a button, have it be a button to notify the police of illegal activity, period. Crimes are being committed against all sorts of people. Kids are nothing special.
It's the damn parents that are responsible for their kids. Don't have time to watch them? Don't have kids!
eTrade SUCKS
Allrighty, Being from Belgium where the worlds most (in?)famous pedophile stuff takes place (anyone remember Dutroux? the guys that abducted, raped, killed and then made the bodies disappear) I feel we need to take a step back and look at this hole thing at once before zooming in the issue of "the button"...
Anyway, Belgiums (and mostlikely the whole world) most known pedophile is Dutroux. He abducted, raped, imprisoned for months and then killed his victims. Most of this was going on AFTER the internet got full of chatsites, MSN/ICQ/... and other communication technologies. As far as any reasearch can prove he never even went online, let alone use it actively.
That proves that pedophiles and the internet have no relationship. Not all pedophiles use the internet, (most pedophiles are "older" people most of whom haven't got the foggiest clue of what the interenet is, let alone how to poperly abuse it) so IMO tht means that during the present generation (of course as generations progress and the "elder" people on average know more about PC/net the use of tracking them gets more important)isn't to productive.
Then let's go to the zoomed bit and talk about the actual "button of doom"..
First, I agree, that buton is just SCREAMING to all underaged kids to "see what it does" or to use when they are really pissed at for example their parents who forced them to eat brocoli? Or if they've been to grandmas, because she sent them to bed at 20.00 insted of letting them see.. I dunno, American gladiators? Kids never seem to look or think beyond the next 2 seconds of their life.
Secondly, I'm all in favor of catching pedophiles, just in case I ever decide I just might want kids, but I do see in all countries in Europe (and I've been almost all over, from Portugal to Finland) seem to be seriously overracting to any and all CLAIMS of pedophily.
It's still a Europewide (or even worldwide) overreaction that has been going on for 5-10 years. To give a good example of how much overreaction, here's a quick recap of something that happened in Belgium.
A retired coupple (the husband so old he reached impotence) was charged by their neighbours (apparently mommy was jealous that her kids enjoyed going over to the neighbours after school till he parents got home) of pedophily. The coupple was immediately arrestd nd put into arrest. It took 6 MONTHS in jail to prove that A, the old man was impotent, B, the neighbours were lieing and most importantly C, the kids themselves continiously claimed nothing had happened, but it took 6 months apparently to read and understand that the kids (supposed victims)had always said the old coupple never did anything.
So in cunclusion, all I can relly see happening is either the police ignoring the entire button report because there are to many and after a while they realise virtually any underaged kid with a tempertantrum is reporting their family OR they come up with some INSANELY draconic punishment system for abuse. Which will of course NOT be implemented towards underage kids. Ergo, the entire idea is useless. There are allready MANY ways to accuse someone of pedophily. There's no need for more, especially not when kids can so easily abuse it, and that most pedophiles probably know less about PC's and the internet then youraverage 14 year old.