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.
It does. And don't call me Shirley.
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.
The answer, which won't happen while the Civil Service is run by Civil Servants, and while the government is run by politicians, is either to roll back the SIs and rely on properly thought out laws, or to require that any SI must first identify all funding issues required and explain how they are to be addressed.
My favourite idiotic SI is the one passed a few years ago, under which it is now illegal for, say, a professor of electrical engineering to rewire his or her own kitchen or bathroom, while the same job can be done by an unqualified trainee who merely works for a registered electrical contractor. That's typical of Civil Service thinking: don't look at the job to be done, look at the paperwork.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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 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.
[phone rings]
Ford: Hello, fleet sales. How can I help you?
Police: The Met here, we're after some new cars. About 20 mondeos, we were thinking.
Ford: Estate or saloon?
Police: Hmmm, ten of each.
Ford: To you squire, bulk discount and you being on the level and all, I can do that for [tappety tap tap] 400 grand.
Police: But it's for the children!
Ford: Well why didn't you say? Have them, just have them. Do me a favour and take them off my hands. I'll throw in a full tank of fuel and fluffy dice.
Police: You're a gent! Careful how you go now, sir.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because the tabloids use child abuse as a big stick to further their own political aims, whipping the unwashed (and mostly dumb) masses into a frenzy with a big "think of the children" stick.
Of course, this is a really easy one, because anyone who tries to logically argue that there has been no actual increase in child abuse or child kidnap in the last 30 years can be pointed at and branded as "doesn't care about children being abused" or onside with paedophiles. I thoroughly recommend getting hold of the satirical "Brass Eye" special on paedophilia which addresses this exact hysteria and caused outrage in the tabloids for trivialising this "serious issue". Most notable was the Daily Star who had a full page decrying the show and writer Chris Morris while the page opposite had a picture of a then 15 year old Charlotte Church in a bikini with the headline "She's a big girl now".
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again