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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."
There is such a list in Sweden, and some of the big ISPs use it. There was quite an uproar when someone tried to put The Pirate Bay on it, claiming they had torrents of child porn, and it never got on the list. Almost everyone agrees that the list is useless, but it's still there. :-/
So it's not a question of whether or not someone will try to use such a list for their own goals, but how soon that will happen.
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
But the phone companies are forced to keep a list of numbers that are illegal to call (crack dealers and such) so people can't call them right?? Oh wait.....
Great Idea in theory, "lets block all this bad stuff", OK now please define the rules...
Government: It has to block child porn.
Me: OK, how do we define child porn?
Government: An adult and a child in sexual acts.
Me: Right, how do we flag that to block it?
Government: *frusterated* You block it!
Me: We need to define a process or this won't work.
Government: We'll make a list then.
Me: So your going to scour the internets for child Porn and add it to this list. Nothing automatic?
Government: Yes
Me: So what venues will you block, HTTP, SSH, FTP, Torrent, MQ, Skype?
Government: All of those things.
Me: You can't decrypt HTTPS or SSH traffic, how do you know it's child porn?
Government: Because we know those servers have porn since some guy flagged it.
Me: You've heard of dynamic IP's right?
Government: *MAD* DO WHAT WE SAY OR WE KILL THE BUNNY.
Me: Um.... do it.
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
Are you kidding? I want this technology in my fucking camera phone. Then I can point it at a chick and find out if she's over 18 or not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We don't.
To me at least, the fact that the tools to produce pornography are falling into the hands of children and it's being used as such is evidence that we need to completely rethink childhood, adolesence, sexuality, and age of consent. I know parents will be horrified at the thought of their precious little fuzzy-lumpkins actually being as curious as they were when they were that age, but it's true.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Are you kidding? I want this technology in my fucking camera phone. Then I can point it at a chick and find out if she's over 18 or not.
18? That's way too inflexible.
The phone should have a internationalization feature so that using GPS and an online database it will figure out the age of consent wherever you are, where you're from, and all the relevant laws.
If you can cut off the buyer from the seller, you can make a dent in the problem.
Same broken logic that fuels the anti-drug war. Same broken logic that fuels police to arrest johns and prostitutes. It does not curb it; rather it only makes it move and change tactics while wasting huge amounts of money and man power.
Find me one sane person that can justify the war on drugs and I'll agree you have a leg to stand on.
Actually, it's far worse than anyone thought. They aren't filtering a few minor websites, they are actually blocking major portions of USENET:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Time Warner will now block all of USENET
Sprint will now block all alt.* newsgroups
Verizon will now block large, unnamed sections of USENET.
So, whoever said "USENET will be shut down in the name of 'protect the children'" on the poll last week, you win!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Rethink the "that isn't themselves" part of that.
There was a case (in Florida, I think? Heard about it second hand) where a 15 yo girl takes an indecent photo of herself and sends it to her boyfriend. Numb-nuts shows it off to his friends, and the next result is that he gets busted for possessing the image, she gets busted for both possessing it and for production.
Let's also consider that in some areas, any unclothed photo of a child is automatically child pornography, including the sort that many normal parents might have of their children and never consider them in that fashion (kids in bath, that kind of thing).
Actually, according to his bio, Marilyn Manson tried to use such a photo from his parents photo album in the liner notes for his first album, and the label refused because they might get into legal troubles over the possibility of child pornography (which was precisely his point -- this was a fairly common, normal sort of photo with no pornographic intent, so what does it say about a VIEWER who declres it to be CP?)