Child Porn Is Being Hidden on Legal Commercial Websites (theguardian.com)

People who visit porn websites or search for adult pornography on the Web are facing the risk of being arrested for accessing child abuse images. The Internet Watch Foundation is warning that vicious minds are increasingly hiding criminal content on legal commercial websites, according to a report on The Guardian. The IWF found 743 websites in 2015, compared with 353 in 2013, in which child sexual abuse content was hosted on legal porn websites, and could be accessed if a special link was requested. From the report: "It has really started to become an accepted practice for the commercial side of the paedophilic community because this obfuscation technique is more effective at keeping its content live for longer," said Fred Langford, chief executive of the UK charity. Last year, the IWF found that 21% of the webpages containing illegal images and videos were commercial and those seeking to profit from the abuse were increasingly disguising it behind legal content, usually adult pornography. Langford said the trend raised the risk that people searching for adult pornography could unwittingly access child abuse images on disguised websites.

Comments

The Answer is Obvious

[cyriustek]

We need to ban all internet sites. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's what got us into this mess in the first place. Stop thinking of the kids already!

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[cyriustek]

Please note that I said the previous comment with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek to illustrate the mindset of politicians and much of LE.

* They want access to our data because of terrorist and child pornographers.

* They spy on us because of terrorist and child pornographers.

* They want encryption backdoored because of terrorists and child pornographers.

* List this goes on and on.

By using their logic, it would seem that legitimate site would either need to be banned, or monitoring software installed for LE to see when porn is put on to the site.

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[Dutch Gun]

What's really sad is that the government has actually managed to desensitize me to at least the *idea* of something as vile as child porn and terrorism. I now mostly associate it with attempts to stomp out a tiny bit more of our freedom. Congratulations, government.

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[TheGratefulNet]

yup - the governments have all played that card too many times, they have cried 'wolf!' and now we are totally desensitized to it.

I could care less about 'terrorism' or 'child porn' or anything else they want to make me feel AFRAID about. if the government wants it, its bad. that's how many of us feel, now. we have extreme distrust in anything the government says. they have ruined their rep beyond repair, world-wide (not a US problem but a human problem).

I truly cannot tell who the bad guys are, anymore. but likely, if someone is 'here to help' they are likely a bad guy. my, now things have flipped on us!

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[AmiMoJo]

They need to stop their crusade against paedophiles. As they point out, it's possible to stumble on this stuff while looking for perfectly legal porn. Trolls sometimes post child pornography, especially on forums not requiring registration like 4chan. People have been prosecuted over stuff like that because their IP address appeared in some logs or the police found an imagine in their browser cache that might not even have appeared on screen at any time.

It's also rather unfortunate that the police use child pornography as a weapon. It's not uncommon for them to throw in a few child porn charges, especially if they made mistakes in the investigation. It's sick and it needs to stop.

Go after the people who make that stuff, by all means, but recognize that a browser or P2P client merely downloading a file does not constitute "access" and certainly not viewing.

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[myowntrueself]

It's also rather unfortunate that the police use child pornography as a weapon. It's not uncommon for them to throw in a few child porn charges, especially if they made mistakes in the investigation. It's sick and it needs to stop.

Its especially nasty when they take photos out of context and declare them "Child porn". Eg you have photos of your kids on the beach. Oh but whats this? There are OTHER PEOPLES KIDS in the background. Kids in skimpy clothing! OBVIOUS child porn, busted!

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[Dutch Gun]

I truly cannot tell who the bad guys are, anymore. but likely, if someone is 'here to help' they are likely a bad guy. my, now things have flipped on us!

I'm not sure I'm quite that cynical yet, as I believe most people are still fundamentally good, even if a bit self-serving at times. I still assume that most of these people have the best of intentions, but are dangerously misguided in their narrow focus to ferret out those who would genuinely attempt to do us harm without looking at the big picture in their zealous pursuit of policy to benefit their investigations.

Those charged with protecting us really need to acquire some serendipity - in other words, learning to understand that there are some things too precious to lose, even in the name of protecting lives. One of the drawbacks of a free and open society like ours is the absolute impossibility of preventing someone from doing harm to others, especially if they're willing to forfeit their lives in the process. Nor is it possible to always prevent monsters from harming innocent children, although every decent instinct in us screams at us to try.

Extremism in the pursuit of security, especially when it comes at the cost of liberty or privacy, is most certainly not a virtue. It's an insidious slippery slope that's all too easy to start sliding down, even with the best of intentions. And we also have to assume that not *all* intentions are so benign, or, more to the point, we can't know if *future* governments will restrain themselves even if the current government does, once that power is acquired.

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[tnk1]

I agree that they shouldn't simply target people who "view" anything, especially if you can be entrapped into it by going to a perfectly legitimate adult porn site and suddenly, you're looking at child porn. That could affect anyone, being an actual pedophile is not required. That is just scary.

Unless you can trace back monetary payments to the producers or traders of such material, I don't see how simply viewing that material exploits anyone, even if it is for more perverted reasons. It's like a Go to Jail, Go Directly to Jail card for doing nothing to anyone but viewing some pixels.

Let's be clear, though. The people who produce this material are the scum of the Earth and need to go to jail immediately and stay there. That does not mean that we allow that sentiment to explode outward so that it affects even people who are unwillingly viewing that material. That's just too far.

They should end the laws that make viewing the material illegal and concentrate on trading and, most importantly, production. Anything that monetarily supports that business needs to be stamped out. If no one is trading this material, then no one is going to see it, and there is less incentive to produce it. There will always be some sick people who just do that for their jollies and trade with like minded pedos, but I don't see why fighting that has to turn into something that can pull in non-pedos and ruin their lives.

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[Locke2005]

How about cases where people under the age of 18 have been arrested for sending other people pictures of themselves? Yep, that's considered "distributing child porn" when a 17-year old girl texts a topless picture of herself to anyone!

I get scared on redtube sometimes then I don't

[JoeyRox]

Sometimes when I click on a video the female protagonist underaged. Then I notice her tramp stamp tattoo and c-section scar and go merrily on about my "business".

Re:I get scared on redtube sometimes then I don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this. I would bet these "child abuse images" are home-made videos or pictures where the participants look of age. It's difficult to visually guess someone's age. Given there was a fairly well publicized case where a man was charged with possession of child pornography where the video in question was a legally made video with an actress who was 26 years old... but looked young.

Realistically, how is the general public supposed to know if a posted amateur picture or video is of a mature looking 17 year old or a young looking 26 year old?

Re: I get scared on redtube sometimes then I don't

[John Allsup]

They don't. The anti sex lobby probably want to use the uncertainty as a weapon against all remotely sexual material.

Nothing to see, move along.

[Frosty Piss]

Click bait / flamebait / nonsense-bait / bait.

"...could unwittingly access..."

[turkeydance]

officer, don't you read /.?

Not at all suprised

[thegarbz]

I remember going through RedTube searching for Russian blowjobs (because that search produces some nice cute girls performing my favorite sexual act). Low an behold a Siberian Mouse video that was discussed on 4chan a day earlier comes up in my search results. I did nothing but apparently some others on 4chan reported it. I say apparently because either RedTube didn't care that they were serving child pornography to a legitimate search or the guys said they reported it just to prevent others reporting it. Either way it was on there for several weeks before anything happened.

How to create a problem

[phatsonic]

Yeah, I'm sure that rising number has nothing to do with increasingly weird laws... For example in Germany it can be classified as "child porn" to have an actor act childish and LOOK like they theoretically COULD be under 18 - even if the actor proves to be an adult in front if the camera, for example by providing legal documents. Also even innocent pictures of, for example, children playing on the beach are increasingly classified as porn now. I'm not trying to marginalize a real, existing problem here, but it doesn't help that jurisdictions world-wide actively inflate the statistics for their own agendas. Quite the opposite in fact...

Mice? Those are no mice!

[davidwr]

"These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings."

-Douglas Adams

As for rodent- or for that matter pandimensional-being-porn, I guess to each his own.

Re: so the actual news here is??

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear that removing pedophiles from the gene pool is impossible. We need to have more rational conversations about helping people, and finding a safe outlet for their urges, if we ever want the abuse to stop.

Steganography

[Locke2005]

You can hide child porn images inside cat pictures... why don't we start doing that and start getting those damn cat lovers arrested for kitty porn?

Fearmongering - cos PORN!

[Dunbal]

People who visit porn websites or search for adult pornography on the Web are facing the risk of being arrested for accessing child abuse images.

could be accessed if a special link was requested.

Good thing they don't leave the court system to journalists. Yeah ok he was in the same bar as that murderer, arrest him too! I think it's pretty reasonable to expect to be found guilty of a crime if you actually, you know, commit the crime. If you're not interested in kiddie porn there's a good chance you won't be clicking on that "special link". IANAL but I think the intent part is pretty important too. If you click on a link that says "Click here to send flowers to your girlfriend", even if that link opened up a kiddie porn page the prosecution is going to have to work a little harder than that to prove that you actually were interested in the porn and not, say, sending flowers to your girlfriend...

Re:Intent and Arrest

[quintessencesluglord]

Misses the point.

The intent isn't to get pedophiles off the street, but effectively ban all porn. You had the same MO in the 80s with Judith Reisman claiming Playboy facilitated child abuse by having underage looking models, and shoots that simulated underage girls (because your standard 12 year old has 34DD breasts)..

I mean after this report why would anyone visit any porn site, knowing full well there was a possibility of child porn there unless that's what they were looking for? You can't even report it without an admission of a crime.

Even in the days before the internet, child porn stings were incredibly dubious (really, read the history. The vast majority of child porn was produced by the US government for sting operations), but any sense of due process is just covering for child molesters. Where there is smoke there must be fire.

The real problem is that while decency laws are localized, the web is not, and what may be perfectly legal in one jurisdiction is worthy of hanging in another. This sets the stage for The Great Firewall, and ultimately shutting down all porn sites, just in case.

Can a jury look at CP without barking the law?

[Joe_Dragon]

Can a jury look at CP without barking the law?

What about your own expert witness? say there is question on under/over 18 / 21?
Look at the files to see if there was hacking / popup porn?

Now if the jury / your own Expert witness can't view it then the case needs to be voided due to lack of due process / right to trial by jury / other rights.