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Australian Govt. Proposes Internet "Panic Button" For Kids
CuteSteveJobs writes "Children who feel they are being bullied, harassed or groomed online could call for help instantly using a 'panic button' on their PCs under a plan by the Australian Government's cyber-safety working group. The button shall look like a 'friendly dolphin,' who will connect the child victim instantly to police or child protection groups. Australian Internet Censorship Advocate Hetty 'Save the Children' Johnson says the Internet needs something like 000 or 911. Will this be another scheme wasting taxpayer dollars in lieu of parental supervison, or could it actually work? Are 1 in 4 children really sexually abused by the Internet? Can flaming and trolling be classified as bullying?"
Will this be another scheme wasting taxpayer dollars in lieu of parental supervison, or could it actually work? Are 1 in 4 children really sexually abused by the Internet? Can flaming and trolling be classified as bullying?
I'm sure there are plenty of experts on Slashdot that are very qualified to answer. ;)
...the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Calling 911 because someone is making you feel bad? Calling 911 because some guy 1000 miles away wrote some words that made you feel bad?
out in my van
actually it seems I have one right here in my pants
http://www.panicbuttons.com/
My wife has one of those on her keyboard, it's pretty funny.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
How long then until a worm emerges that floods the govt with hundreds of thousands of fradulent calls, making the signal to noise ratio too burdensome to navigate?
Reply to That ||
Of fucking people......certainly more than some anonymous internet perv.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Your access to the Internet is limited basically to the box on your desk, or the phone in your hand, or other devices that are similarly entirely under your control. It's not like normal harassment or bullying in that you can easily get away from it simply by turning off the device you're using to access it. If you're getting bullied in real life, you have to try to run away and get help immediately before your attackers catch up with you and continue the beating. Online, you can simply get off the computer and tell the proper authorities (be that the police or your parents or whoever) at your leisure. There is not the same need for immediacy.
Also, the whole idea of grooming children (or more often FBI agents posing as children) is that the pedophile gets the child to believe they're safe, and so they would have no motivation to push the little dolphin button. The kids that go off to meet pedophiles do so because they don't perceive that they're in any danger. If they don't perceive the danger, why would they alert the police to anything?
Or are children using any kind of unsupported OS on their own? Click the little red devil for help.
and thanx for all the filth!
achievement unlocked
you are a regular pusher, well done!
pressing the panic button 50 times in a minute unlocks this award and gives you access to Juvie hall.
Extra Rewards: Parents must pay $500.
liqbase
as long as the panic button dials the parent's cellphone/ sends a text to the parent/ sends an email to the parent
not to some intrusive government bureaucracy with an agenda having dubious additional goals beyond just good parenting, not tailored to the specifics of each different parent-child relationship, and costing tax dollars
otherwise, its basically just a good business idea for someone to invest in and flesh out
i look forward to unintentionally humorous late night tv commercials for the internet panic button
"mom! i've fallen into porn and i can't get up!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I've_fallen_and_I_can't_get_up!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You know the absolute first thing that will happen is that some pedo-hacker will use a PC virus to hack into the Dolphin and send all "panic" help requests to themselves.
Your attitude is exactly why people don't ask for help when they're in a bad place. The result is school shootings, suicides, and other depressing events. Not just among teens either. Adults in general listen to your kind of belittlement and think they're weak if they ask for help.
This is a particular problem in first responders and members of the armed services. They see all kind of horrible crap, need help in dealing with it, and are afraid to get it because they don't want to seem "weak". This is a particular problem in the Army, which is seeing a spike in suicides lately.
Mind you, I'm not equating a bullied teenager with a GI who's seen his friends blown up by an IED. But they do have one thing in common: they need for it to be easy to ask for help, and people like you make it hard.
"Are 1 in 4 children really sexually abused by the Internet?"
Err NO, exactly ZERO (0) children have ever been sexually abused by the internet. Nor for that matter have any children EVER been sexually abused over the internet, on the internet, or even around the internet. The internet has undoubtedly been a tool used by sexual predators to get access or to provide information on the location of children which they would then prey upon and abuse, but just like a gun has never shot anyone by itself, a interconnected system of computers has never abused or neglected a child, it takes people to do that....
http://www.pandys.org/whatissexualabuse.html
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The way the large percentages for sexual propositioning/harassment on the internet are pretty misleading. In order to get that number they are counting fairly tame stuff such as mildly lewd comments from friends over IM and the like. For example, a teenager asking another teenager if the other was a virgin would count or possibly even asking "hey, did you end up making out with that cute guy." When one looks at what one would normally call a real problem, such as sexual solicitation by strangers and the like one gets under 3%. See http://www.csicop.org/si/show/predator_panic_a_closer_look/.
There's already a panic button on every desktop, laptop and netbook. It's called the Power Button. It will automatically disconnect you from whatever you were doing and turn off your computer. Combine this with a talk with whatever parental figure(s) the child has (both before and after online access is granted) and kids should be covered. Not every "think of the children" problem needs a government mandated solution.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
children cannot be abused by the internet. My question is, how is it that the "defenders of children" never have a clue about children? How many law enforcement resources does Australia plan to throw at answering calls from kids who just wonder what the pretty button does, who think the police should arrest Bobby for calling him a troll, who get scared of the "2012" preview they stumbled onto, who just want to stir things up? If we really want to "protect" kids we'd be better off banning idiocy like this and restricting parenthood to those with the capacity to do the job.
How can Dolphins save you from the net when they get caught in them all time?
I think that, if I were a small child, I'd probably pound on that dolphin button all day long. Hey, pounding the dolphin! New euphemism! Kids, don't try this at home...
Steve O.
I am really, really exhausted.
So could I use this to report Internet "bullying" the next time Windows Genuine Advantage pops up to see if I have handed over my lunch money to Redmond as required?
Can we go a few months without an article on slashdot describing yet another moronic idea from someone in Australia?
Seriously, there's something wrong in that place and I'm very curious to know what. Or maybe, these stories are coming from the Australian equivalent of WeeklyWorldNews?
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/sexual-predators-200912
The short version is that the police and the media are contributing the hysteria of online child predators and blowing things WAY out of proportion. In the huge majority of the cases where minors are involved in sexual conversations online, they are engaged in them with other minors.
Here's a neat button and everytime you press it a bunch of cars with with flashing lights and screaming sirens will come zooming up to your house!
Reminds me of the diapers with the moisture sensors that played a little tune every time the kid needed changing, which was pretty often once the kids figured out how to make the music play. : - )
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
(User has been arrested for this post)
...and found nothing.
NOTHING!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
WTF happened to setting limits as a parent? This seems to be the classic "surely we can find a technical solution to a people problem" hole. What about requiring parents to take child-rearing classes that cover internet predators and how to limit children's activities on the 'net until they are ready to handle the mostly adult online world? This seems like anti-virus tools; the OS is broken so let's build a band-aid that covers the holes. It seems like it would be better, a la the US Head Start program, to educate parents early in the process so their kids don't get into these situations until they are mature enough to handle them.
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Appeasement never curbed the aggression of axis powers, but a nuke ended WWII in seconds.
Actually, Japan agreed to surrender on 8/14...five days after Fat Man and eight days after Little Boy.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Giving a panic button to an ideal child might work, but I have yet to come across an ideal child. All the children I've met would think, push button - get attention!
"Are 1 in 4 children really sexually abused by the Internet?"
If you ask organisations such as the NCMEC - who know that their funding depends on misinformed hysteria over children's safety - one in five children are sexually abused online. The reality is that the NCMEC and similar organisations use bizarre definitions of child abuse, so if a 13 year boy asks a 13 year old girl to show her breasts, the girl is reported to be a "victim of sexual abuse".
Most studies on this topic are remarkably biased (for financial reasons, or because they have been commissioned by governments) and based upon grossly inappropriate methodologies, so that question will probably never be answered. Consider Bennett Haselton's article article about NCMEC "research" as an example of how such data is biased.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the main attraction for children is that the weirdo in the bushes is actually paying attention to them. Someone is talking to them, actually holding a conversation rather than just telling them to do stuff or to go somewhere else. You aren't going to counter that very easily because in today's society parenting is equal parts of pushing the kids away and trying to convince yourself that you should really say NO when everyone else on the planet seems to be saying YES.
So when they encounter someone that is interested in their life, their thoughts and just talking with them they are going to gravitate to it. In the background are the busy parents and the teachers trying to meet all the requirements of both parents and administration. No time to actually talk with the kids. So the pedophiles have an advantage over just about everyone else in the kids lives.
And until people understand that, all the dolphin buttons in the world aren't going to make a difference.
Internet community proposes "Stupid" button for Australia.
If parents are worried about what their kids are going to see on the Internet, maybe they should, you know, spend some time with them? Teach them? Oh, wait - that won't work. They're to busy replying to the latest email hoping to make money from the latest scam.
I hope they do this. 50,000,000 fake alerts a day triggered by malware/viruses/whatever should be interesting ...
That's what the button should be shaped like.
The only true danger for kids on the Internet is if they get tricked by child predators into meeting in real life. A "panic button" does nothing in that case, since the child does not think he/she is in danger. Here's a better way to spend tax money to protection children on the Internet: Pay a software company to develop a good, free "Net Nanny"-style software program and make it available for everyone to use. The market for software like that has always been weak, since most parents don't care enough about protecting their kids from the Internet to actually want to spend money and time buying and configuring the software. Part of the reason is because the software is not known to be very good. Government spending could keep software like that universally compatible with all major OSes, browsers, etc., with a very good matching algorithm or a database on which sites are safe and which aren't. And it could be a free download from your government's website.
Are 1 in 4 children really sexually abused by the Internet? Only if you count reading the "fuck you!" that somebody typed at you as sexual abuse. Seriously, one can only do emotional, not physical harm over the net, and chances are anything some stranger tells my daughter over the 'net isn't going to effect her more anywhere near as much as something I myself say when I'm pissed off at her. Yes, parents should monitor their children's internet use, and children should be instructed to never, never provide personally identifiable information over the internet. But if you are doing that, then who cares what some immature asshole says in a chat room? And how is pushing the panic button on the typed input some anonymous coward really going to help anything? You know, at some point you've got to let your kids fall and skin their knees so they learn it is not the end of the world and they can just get up and go about there life even after something "bad" happens. Trying to protect them from everything harmful in the real world just trains them to not be able to handle the real world when you're not there, and since I plan on dieing before my kids, that's probably not a good idea.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"My question is, how is it that the "defenders of children" never have a clue about children?"
The "defenders of children" are not really "defenders of children". Many of the larger children's charities are self-promoting organisations who do very little to help children. They plead for donations, but rather than using those donations to protect children, they use the money to pay for advertising and other marketing activities. The extra donations which they receive as a result of those marketing activities can be used to pay for more advertising, and the cycle of growth continues, with the organisations becoming increasingly profitable, without helping children.
Frank Furedi dicussed this issue a few years ago, in an article at Spiked Online.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
They pick a dolphin? the pack-rapist of the sea?
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
There are people in this world who dream of lording themselves over others. This is just another scheme that they have cooked up using the tried and tested method of presenting that which they wish to control as a threat to children, with the remedy being that they are given more power.
This is horseshit and the people who are proposing it should be beaten to death with a tire iron.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
What strikes me most about this is that the dolphin shape has been decided, while other details, like: what will the button actually do? where do we buy/acquire the tech? is this a good idea? are still undecided. It's like in the hitchhikers guide book where they are back in time on earth with the golgafrinchams and they are wanting to invent a wheel, and the most important decision to them is what color (colour in the book I suppose) to make it.