Slashdot Mirror
UK Child Abuse Investigators Resent Being Charged For ISP Data
nk497 writes "In the UK, ISPs are charging a child protection agency for access to IP user details they need for their investigations into online-related abuse. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has paid out over £170,000 since 2006 on IP data requests related to child abuse cases, and expects to pay another £100,000 this year — enough to fund another two investigators. The CEOP's CEO said that any ISP which can't afford to give the police such help 'simply can't afford to do business.'" Surely it must cost the ISPs money to comply with such requests, no matter how official the quest.
First off, when did it become private enterprise's problem to pay for law enforcement?
There is obviously a cost of some form to the ISP for providing this information, and it seems fair that this cost should be passed to the law enforcement organisations to be serviced out of their budget - this is what their budget is for. If it's not sufficient, they should lobby for it to be increased via taxation or other methods.
The telcos are already allowed to charge for providing background information - and this is as it should be. If information is made available freely and at the drop of a hat to third parties then it encourages misuse of that information and encourages scope creep to monitoring a wider population than you might originally have required.
Any chills protection agency who can't afford to help ISPs with the costs of THEIR investigation simply can't afford to do business
TIAEAE!
The ISPs should not be cooperating with pseudo-government institutions who want to know the addresses of people who look at album art on Wikipedia.
I'd say A few pounds per person is a very small price to pay to ruin someone's life.
Many innocent people are accused and even convicted of "abuse" of children, only to be exonerated after their businesses have failed due to boycott, they've lost their jobs, they've been driven from their communities, they've spent years in jail, etc.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The costs of this seem to average out at approximately £18 per query, which is less than the amount that can be charged for a "Freedom of Information Act" request, so the ISPs definitely are not gouging the investigators.
It also definitely does cost the ISPs money to obtain the specific requests, so by any measure, they should be able to charge. If they're suddenly expected to donate their time for free "because of the children", then surely the investigators should be expected to do the same (how would they like their job to be suddenly unpaid)?
This token amount, though small, operates as one of the balances to ensure that investigations are at least slightly sane, otherwise I can see requests flying out on every person they can find, simply because there is no reason not to.
From reading the figures, the information gained from about 10,000 requests was useful in about 240 arrests. While a little on the low side for hit rate, it does show that they're targeting the searches at the moment. Long may the targetting, rather than scattershot fishing expeditions so favoured by digital enforcement agencies, continue.
Well the frist sensible decision which involves children in a decade. As other posters have pointed out it is not the (direct) responsibility of businesses to pick up the tab for crime fighting irrespective of how vile that crime is. This is just another one of those quasi-governmental bodies the UK is so fond of throwing it's weight around.
Personally, I'd like to see more crime fighting measures costed out like this. Perhaps if the public got to see how much these stupid wars on X, Y and Z cost they would grow up a bit and realize that there will always be bad people in the world and, with finite resources, you are only ever going to limit their number.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
If the law was passed to make it free the first thing the child protection agency would do is request information on everyone. This would bankrupt some ISPs and force others to increase prices. They would probably put a request like this in every month and arrest hundreds of people who followed those nasty links that slashdot (and other) trolls like to put in their posts - then shut down the browser as soon as they realise it is not a computer related site.
The real story here is how the agency obviously thinks it can frighten ISPs into giving them a free ride, by invoking the dreaded paedo-bashing tabloids. Pretty shabby behaviour.
The UK government uses 'child protection' to justify a wide range of authoritarian measures. It's even better than 'national security' because, after all, only a witch would defend a witch. Burn them!
All the other UK law enforcement agencies pay ISPs for investigation, and have never raised a stink about it. The only reason why this has become news is because child abuse is a highly emotional and touchy subject here in the UK at the moment.
As bad as child abuse is, what good reason is there for giving the investigators cost benefit over, say, murder and rape investigations?
Whats next? They resent having to purchase the fuel to put in their squad cars, the electricity they use, the water they use? Use bandwidth, pay for it, that includes police. It is actually important that they do so. This keeps them from just assuming everyone guitly and spamming their way across the internet and crippling networks.
The CEOP's CEO said that any ISP which can't afford to give the police such help 'simply can't afford to do business.'
If the police can't afford to pay for the ISP's time, perhaps they simply can't afford to continue their witch-hunts against teens doing what teens do or works of pure fiction.
Can ya hear the violins, CEOP?
Hey, we'd all love to see actual kiddie predators burn at the stake. But we also know that 99% of these "child protection" laws exist to make it difficult or embarassing (or sometimes even illegal) for adults to see or do things that society (C.1690) has deemed of questionable morality.
Incidentally - I did have a professional involvement in this as a member of BSI electrical safety committees in the 80s and 90s. Did you know that the Government would not make the Wiring Regulations statutory, against the advice of their own experts, because of resistance from the electrical installers?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I could understand it if you were doing it for someone else as a business - for hire or reward, I think the phrase goes - or if the house was to be rented to someone else. But it's just madness if it's your own house where only you and your family live. I suspect this originated in Brussels.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think the argument is that it's necessary to make sure any home is properly and safely wired up. If you sell it to someone else and they move in expecting the wiring to match the usual design specifications, and someone ignorant of those specifications has messed around, then... Well, I'm not quite sure what bad stuff they expect to happen, particularly if there is a record of how the new wiring was done, but I'm sure it would be very bad and nasty.
You're right, it probably originated in Brussels. But I bet our own guys pushed for it!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
More child sex predators scare. I keep on wondering about why they do this and I know why now. They can't really do anything about the real face of it. They're all too afraid.
...
I'll tell you something interesting: No stranger can hurt you as much as mom/dad can. Strangers are easy to single out, but no one wants to think about what goes on behind closed doors. You can get over occasional molestation a lot easier then being shut in a room for every day after coming home from school and being convinced that you're worthless.
The truth is too scary, so it has to be strangers, school teachers, etc
To all of these agencies: Thank you for all your wonderful protection from the scary strangers.