Spanish Chatbot Hunts For Pedophiles

cylonlover writes "For a number of years now, police forces around the world have enlisted officers to pose as kids in online chat rooms, in an attempt to draw out pedophiles and track them down. Researchers at Spain's University of Deusto are now hoping to free those cops up for other duties, and to catch more offenders, via a chatbot that they've created. Its name is Negobot, and it plays the part of a 14 year-old girl." (Read the original source, in Spanish).

Comments

wonderful idea!

[Tastecicles]

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:wonderful idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if two chatbots start chatting each other up? Do they both get arrested?

Only if they send each other photos of their source code.

Re:wonderful idea!

[FatLittleMonkey]

What could possibly go wrong?

Are such questions on your mind often?

Re:wonderful idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if two chatbots start chatting each other up? Do they both get arrested?

Only if they send each other photos of their source code.

Uncommented source code.

Re:wonderful idea!

[Tastecicles]

GOTO statements make me wet.

Re:wonderful idea!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

GOTO statements make me wet.

Seize the opportunity, reprogram your sprinkler system in Haskell!

Re:wonderful idea!

[mwvdlee]

From TFA:

Should they start exhibiting “suspicious behavior,” such as not caring about the girl’s age or asking her for personal information

"Suspicious behaviour" is defined as either: (A) Asking a girls' age or (B) not asking a girl's age.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Hey, great.... finally an AI...

[Tanuki64]

...which passes the Turing test.

Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Not to mention the fact that a 14 year old girl would have absolutely no chance of passing the Turing test.

Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI...

[xaxa]

I knew I'd read somewhere about Spain's age of consent being 12.

It turns out they raised it to 16 just a few weeks ago: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/10089339/Spain-to-raise-age-of-consent-from-13-to-16.html

Hopefully they'll be more careful about the law than is the case in the UK -- where the age of consent is 16, but the official guidance to the police is not to worry about consensual relationships between similarly-aged teenagers below that. It's better to have that in the law, like in Germany (where, AIUI, lower ages are permitted so long as there's not too much age difference).

Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI...

[Damnshock]

It's still 13 legally. What you are refering is a proposal to change it.

If aproved, it can show up curious situations when you can legallyl get married at the age of 12 and you won't be able to have sex until you are 16? (in case you married an older and adult partner)

Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI...

[dgatwood]

This making it even more bizarre that this bot would pretend to be above Spain's legal age of consent. What am I missing?

Everything about this story is wrong:

• The notion that being attracted to a 14-year-old girl (almost invariably post-pubescent) qualifies as pedophilia is completely absurd. There is not a straight adult male alive who, when faced with a sufficiently attractive and mature-looking 14-year-old, would not find her attractive. Thus, some degree of attraction to teenagers is normal male behavior. Mind you, most adults have the good sense not to jump in bed with them, but that doesn't mean the attraction isn't there. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding himself/herself.
• A bot (or a LEO) seeking out people and enticing them in the hopes that one of them will say "Okay, she's hot and worth the risk of jail" is a legally dubious action and is completely contrary to the stated goal of protecting kids. I'd wager that 99.999% of the people entrapped by such a bot would never go near any true kids (defined as pre-pubescent), period, because there is zero correlation between being attracted to teens and being attracted to kids. And most of those folks would not go out of their way to hit on a 14-year-old IRL, either. Given that most 14-year-old girls do not make it a point to trick adult males into having sex with them, this means that those adult males are doing something that they almost certainly (statistically) would not otherwise have done were it not for law enforcement involvement, which meets the strictest definition of entrapment as far as I can tell. But creating such a bot in a country when the act they're trolling for isn't even illegal? Priceless.

I mean, this whole concept borders on the same level of s**t-for-brains stupid as those people who troll boards trying to stir people up to become terrorists and then put them in jail under the premise that if law enforcement could get them into that state, so could real terrorists. But the thing is, unless those real terrorists had a high probability of doing so, you're really just putting people in jail for being gullible, not for actually harboring any terrorist tendencies.

At this point, our world is rapidly verging on jailing people for thoughtcrime—crimethink, if you will. Are we really to the point where the goal is to lock up everyone who isn't of above-average intelligence with near-godlike self control? Is that actually supposed to make our kids safer in some bizarro universe? Could someone please explain to me why the people who came up with this bot should not be jailed themselves as an example to others who would abuse their power?

Re:What does "porque cae agua jaja" mean?

[Thanshin]

http://translate.google.com/

Let me present you this new technology. It's called "The Internet". You can use it to look for answers to all your questions*.

*: For a fully immersive experience, all your questions should start with "nude pics of "

Re:So they're breaking young boys hearts..

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the spanish girls will have to start being even more slutty to compete with the slutbots.

But your honor, I was NOT engaging in pedophile behavior! See, I am really into sex bots! I KNEW it was a script and I get off on them!'

14 years would be legal age in Germany....

[yooy]

14 years would be legal age in Germany.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe And if I can trust the link, it is 13 in Spain...

14 year old?

[Zedrick]

How will the bot catch pedophiles if it pretends to be a 14 year old girls? Pedophiles won't be very interested, instead it might, in best/worst case, attract hebephiles. Or just normal teenage boys.

Spain?

[IamTheRealMike]

Age of consent in Spain is 13 though they plan to raise it. Seems like a 14 year old is an odd choice to emulate for that reason.

That said, an AI capable of simulating a 14 year old girl? Hard to imagine they could even simulate a 5 year old successfully. This doesn't seem like a good use of a universities resources.

Re:Meh

[3.5 stripes]

Pity only a small fraction of pedophiles are out looking on the internet. That and the fact that if the penalties are higher, people will do more to hide their crimes, like instead of threatening their victims, they'll lock them up in a basement, or fit them with some cement shoes for a quick dip in the local river.

a/s/l?

[FatLittleMonkey]

version/language/repository?

Only usable in some jurisdictions

[johanw]

Fortunately, entrapment is illegal in a lot of countries. And "intent" is not always what counts. I read that that in The Netherlands someone who was having sexually oriented chats with a police officer posing as a child was cleared in court. The judge said that because the police officer was over 18 he did nothing illegal, and that he may have intended something illegal didn't make it so.

To make the car comparison: if I intend to drive too fast and believe I do so dus to a defective meter but in fact I am driving at a legal speed I can't get a ticket.

Re:Only usable in some jurisdictions

[Xest]

This is what I was wondering, doesn't this sort of thing risk giving real criminals an excuse too?

If intent is relevant then with the prevalence of police officers posing in this manner and now bots, couldn't a real criminal just claim "I assumed nowadays that they were all just chatbots or above age of consent officers" if caught chatting to someone who is underage?

It seems to be a dangerous precedent to set. If the police have to prove intent how can they prove he didn't now believe it was a bot or an officer and hence not illegal?

Re:Oh great...

[DarkRat]

so are you ;)

If it's posing as a 14 year old,

[middlehead]

If it's posing as a 14 year old, they're not targeting pedophiles.

Re:So they're breaking young boys hearts..

[hairyfeet]

I don't know but as somebody who used to run a chatroom dedicated to fricking computer repair i can tell you that if the other chat rooms see/saw what i did what those cops are doing is bullshit and how it can't be entrapment? Fuck if I know. I know I ended up having to threaten harassment charges on a couple of cops to get them to finally STFU with that shit.

I mean here I am,running a chat with such "sexy" titles as "Can't install graphics driver" and "Need help bad I keep BSODing" and while me and a couple of the mods would be trying to walk some poor guy that has been bashing his head against the wall trying to get something fixed and suddenly here would come one of those fuckheads, just spewing filthy shit trying to get somebody to talk to them. By the end there i was getting seriously fucking PISSED, cursing the assholes after pointing out for the hundredth time "This isn't that kind of chat asshole, go peddle your "catch a predator" bullshit somewhere else porky".

So if the shit they are doing is the same as what i saw they can fuck right off, they push that shit even in places where it has no damned business and they will harass the hell out of guys to try to get them to talk, really sleazy shit too.