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Three ISPs Agree To Block Child Porn
Goobergunch and other readers sent in word that Sprint, Time Warner, and Verizon have agreed to block websites and newsgroups containing child pornography. The deal, brokered by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, occurred after Cuomo's office threatened the ISPs with fraud charges. It's of some concern that the blacklist of sites and newsgroups is to be maintained by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an NGO with no legal requirement for transparency. Here are two further cautions, the first from Lauren Weinstein: "Of broader interest perhaps is how much time will pass before 'other entities' demand that ISPs (attempt to) block access to other materials that one group or another feels subscribers should not be permitted to see or hear." And from Techdirt: "[T]he state of Pennsylvania tried to do pretty much the same thing, back in 2002, but focused on actually passing a law ... And, of course, a federal court tossed out the law as unconstitutional. The goal is certainly noble. Getting rid of child porn would be great — but having ISPs block access to an assigned list isn't going to do a damn thing towards that goal."
What about providing *optional* proxies that does that filtering to their users?
"Yes, truecrypt.org DOES contain child porn, so does wikileaks.org"
"Do you have proof?"
"We don't need it, it's on the list, now move along, nothing to see here."
While on the one hand I see no reason whatsoever for child porn-related sites to even exist let alone have anyone visit them, censorship by ISPs is a very obvious slippery slope. Unfair and damaging compromises without number have already been made "for the sake of the children"; it's as obvious a ploy as "..or the terrorists win", and I for one feel my intelligence is insulted whenever those cards are played. In the final analysis, I think this will be found to be a bad idea. Providers of bandwidth should not be allowed to decide what content will traverse their network any more than they should be allowed to interfere with P2P traffic. Determining the appropriateness should be the domain of hosting services, and the legality should be determined by the courts and by law enforcement; ISPs are neither -- which is as it should be.
What if they make a mistake? Is this the first step of many? Will other pressure groups make them block access to material that is legal in the source or destination jurisdiction but not in the other? Of course any ISPs that block material on their own who dared to claim common-carrier status can kiss that claim goodbye.
I would much prefer them not to block it themselves but rather cooperate with law enforcement. If the cops want it shut down, they can get a warrant to shut it down. On the other hand, the cops may want to keep it up for an hour or two so they can see the logs in real-time and knock on the customers' doors as they are up- or down-loading it.
As for newsgroups, if the KP-suppliers can't post in alt.kiddie-porn-group-de-jour, they may start invading alt.fractals.mandelbrot or some other group that has no tolerance for such material. That would be quite disruptive.
Besides, unless they are just plain stupid, people won't upload or host illegal material without encryption, with the passwords traded through other channels. Good luck to the ISPs telling encrypted kiddie porn from encrypted photographs of CowboyNeal's mother.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I use newsgroups quite a bit. Once alt.underage.porn (or whatever) is shut down, that material is just going to be posted somewhere else - and probably end up being seen by more people. If they ban keywords, they'll move onto new euphemisms. No automatic filter will do this job - and the results of the attempt will be worse in every way than if no filter was used.
All it is is scoring political points, and providing the illusion of action while really making the situation worse.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
What happens when Mom sends via email or an online album pictures of Baby's first bath to Grandma, and Grandma's ISP's software classifies the email or album as child porn? Does Grandma get a visit from the FBI/CIA/DEA/NSA/IRS/TSA/DHS in the form of a raid looking for more child porn? News gets out that Grandma was investigated for child porn and her reputation is demolished, even if some people know that it was a case of mistaken intent/identity.
Child porn is a terrible thing, but it's virtually impossible to classify something as child porn unless someone has manually classified an known image and corresponding hash as child porn.
There's also the issue of determining ages of the children in the picture if they're not obviously too young. Who took the pictures? Was it taken by a 15-year-old girl's 17-year-old boyfriend, or did she herself take it for him? This is legal in some states/countries, but a felony in others.
I don't want to get into an argument about these specific cases, but the possible cases are simply too wide and a single government authority cannot effectively press its morals onto its people. Romeo and Juliet will deviate from the norm.
The Chris Hansen approach works much better because it shows provable evidence of intent/motive and catches them in the act, perhaps even literally with their pants down.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
According to TFA, they have about 11,000 images that they generate hashes for. Then they scan the web for images with the same hash.
So the easiest way around this is to create a program that automatically changes the value of a random single pixel in a graphic. Problem solved, crisis averted.
What I want to know is will the list of sites being blocked be publicly available for review? I bet not...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
If they can create a list of sites that contain this vile shit, wouldn't it make sense to, oh, I don't know, maybe shut them down, prosecute the scumbags that are running the sites, and then use their client records to find and prosecute the people who were paying for it?
Oh, so in other words, all this does is create a huge market for constantly original child porn instead of all the same old 70's nudist images floating around? The idea...it's brilliant!
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
You already see it's start with metered internet. Once they have that, they can offer you "free" sites. Everyone loves free, aren't they nice? Then they hike the price of visiting other sites to something stupid like $5/GB so that it's cheaper to buy physical media and presto - no more internet. They are already blaming "pirates", kiddie porn and terrorists. That's essentially a smear for their competition and anyone who disagrees with them.
If they get their way, things will really get ugly. All rights fall after free press does.
The problem is the production of child porn which of course involves abuse of children.
The demand comes from perverts who like to watch the abuse of children. So what happens if you simply block their access to child porn produced by other people?
They go off and produce their own. Which means more children abused.
Far better to use the ISPs to track those who produce or regularly seek out child porn and then prosecute them or treat their mental issues as is necessary. Several jurisdictions in Europe have broken up "Child porn rings", arresting as many as 50 people at once.
finally: There is a new category of child porn that has started to pop up lately. Child produced pornography. This means 3 or 4 children, all the same age who take turns operating a cameraphone and performing for it. Then they send out the video to other children via MMS, Bluetooth and Email. The 1st such "work" that came to public attention locally was on the cellphones or computers of thousands of children before the 1st adult saw it.
How do we deal with that? Who do we prosecute? I honestly don't know, suggestions from the Slashdot crowd would be welcome.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
1) Accidentally listed innocent sites. Some place like Whore Presents getting listed as pornography when it isn't.
2) Intentionally mis-listed sites. Somebody will claim that The Pirate Bay has child pornography on it (which it may) just to keep people from downloading cracked copies of Spore.
3) They're easy enough to bypass. There are plenty of free proxies out there that'll happily slap some advertising on your screen and then serve up whatever page your ISP doesn't want you to see. Or you could tunnel your traffic elsewhere to avoid the filter lists
These blocklists will be enough to stop some people from accidentally stumbling upon child porn... Maybe stop some very casual attempts to intentionally view child porn... But nothing more. They won't actually put a dent in folks who are genuinely trafficking in real, illegal child pornography. They're already well aware of what they're doing, and that it's illegal, and they're already going to some effort to find the material. Making them use an additional proxy or VPN isn't going to accomplish a whole lot.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde