Google Helps Police With Child Porn WebCrawler (siliconbeat.com)

The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that the Internet Watch Foundation, "an organization that works with police worldwide to remove images of child sexual abuse from the Internet, has credited Google with helping it develop a 'Web crawler' that finds child pornography." The pilot project makes it easier to identify and remove every copy of specific images online, and the group says "We look forward to the next phase of the Googler in Residence project in 2016." Last year Google also had an engineer working directly with the foundation, and the group's annual report says "This was just one part of the engineering support Google gave us in 2015." [PDF] Their report adds that the new technology "should block thousands of their illegal images from being viewed on the Internet."

Comments

I'm not entirely happy about this.

[SuricouRaven]

The IWB is a well-intentioned organisation, but they have no accountability whatsoever. They publish a list of links they claim are child abuse imagery, and ISPs block what's on the list - but the list, for obvious reasons, is super-secret. The processes by which the list is generated is also secret - even those who are put on the list are not informed that they are now on the list. Some (not all) ISPs actively try to prevent those who are censored from finding out by spoofing 404 error page rather than explaining that a deliberate block is in place - they certainly aren't going to contact the site operator. Even if someone wrongly blocked finds out (as happened with Wikipedia only because the block process inadvertently broke the site) there is no appeals process in place. That's a lot of power for an unaccountable and opaque organisation.

Re:I'm not entirely happy about this.

[EmeraldBot]

The IWB is a well-intentioned organisation, but they have no accountability whatsoever. They publish a list of links they claim are child abuse imagery, and ISPs block what's on the list - but the list, for obvious reasons, is super-secret. The processes by which the list is generated is also secret - even those who are put on the list are not informed that they are now on the list. Some (not all) ISPs actively try to prevent those who are censored from finding out by spoofing 404 error page rather than explaining that a deliberate block is in place - they certainly aren't going to contact the site operator. Even if someone wrongly blocked finds out (as happened with Wikipedia only because the block process inadvertently broke the site) there is no appeals process in place. That's a lot of power for an unaccountable and opaque organisation.

This is my primary concern as well. Child pornography is something that should be prevented, but people are going overboard with this - it's in the same vein as the war on terrorism. Child pornography is definitely despicable, but most of the efforts against it are either extremely creepy - such as this, handing over power to an almost completely unknown organization - or evoke incredible amounts of self-righteousness, especially when people start accusing each other of this crime without any proof. Between the overreach of trying to stop, it's hard to say you support, especially when the countries most against it consume almost all of it.

Furthermore, the approach we use today is fundamentally flawed. Currently, we try to block all images of it, but we can only target those existence that we know of - and even then, it's trivial to add an extra byte here and there to through of the checksumming. This creates a drive to make more of it, which more people get, before that too gets blocked. It's very profitable for these businesses and only encourages the cycle, so with all these programs in effect we're making the problem worse and worse. Most shockingly of all, when you legalize child porn, rates of it actually go down, and sex abuse goes much farther down. Given what we know about ancient societies, where children also engaged in sex and didn't show any signs of being traumatized, it's a really hard issue to grasp, because all of the morals we grew up with are being disproved by numbers. If it weren't for the fact I'd be put on a government watchlist for the rest of my life, I might even suggest that perhaps the issue is more complex than we think.

Re:I'm not entirely happy about this.

[Linsaran]

If it weren't for the fact I'd be put on a government watchlist for the rest of my life, I might even suggest that perhaps the issue is more complex than we think.

Like almost everything, the issue IS more complex than we think. Drugs, for profit prisons, whether or not 'hitting your kids' is acceptable. You name a topic and I'm sure I can come up with a half dozen different sides to it. As for the government watch lists, I'm sure we're both on a couple dozen already. There's just the matter of 'is this an issue people care about right now'.

Re:I'm not entirely happy about this.

[AK Marc]

Child pornography is something that should be prevented,

Why? Given that the definition almost everywhere now seems to include simulated child porn that didn't involve an actual child, the issue is obviously not about child-harm. The studies show that a pedophile with access to CP offends less, because they have an outlet. So, in actual fact, the only reason to ban CP is because someone finds it icky. Once icky is the only requirement, lots of things get put on the list, being gay, being a jew, whatever.

Re:I'm not entirely happy about this.

[drinkypoo]

The problem with your analogy is that being Jewish or Gay isn't inherently icky.

An assortment of cultures have had sex with people younger than we claim to be inherently icky, as a matter of course. Maybe it's not inherent. Maybe we make it up. (Maybe that's a good idea, that is another argument — the point is that it is somewhat arbitrary.) I was having sex with a 20 year old when I was 15. I pursued her, she wasn't initially interested. Did that warp my fragile little mind? I submit that it was warped already.

Re: The "internet watch foundation" wins

[Anonymous Coward]

It always starts with taking down images of child pornography / child exploitation. I'm all for getting rid of this sort of thing but the OP does have a point. The same system could be used to filter out all identified cartoon depictions of Muhammad!

Re:Well-intentioned my foot.

[Anonymous Coward]

The results are simple: CP is driven underground, to sites where there is all kinds of CP, even hurtcore, and where membership is granted by invitation and one actually has to be an active producer / contributor of new material.

Meaning, those who consume CP and would be fine with just a little softcore, are exposed to much more materiall including hardcore, and also encouraged to start sexually abusing children in real life.

End result, IWF profits on a circle of itself perpetuating it's own purpose for this initiative, by creating the perverse incentives for more abuse for which it next can argue that it needs more funds to "combat".

Oh and more people start using darknets, which at least is a plus, I guess.

Anyway, good luck jailing everybody who consume what is defined as "CP", including minors that sext.

NEAD MOAR PRIASONS PRECIOUSSSS

In conclusion, fuck the fucking piggies and moral fags.

* "UK pedophiles too many to prosecute": http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/383015.html
* "Children as young as SIX questioned by police over sending indecent images as number of child arrests increases five-fold ": https://archive.is/G1YAO
* "Legalizing child pornography is linked to lower rates of child sex abuse: study": http://phys.org/news/2010-11-legalizing-child-pornography-linked-sex.html

Re: The "internet watch foundation" wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I know you're playing Devil's Advocate - hence "political heterodoxy" tacked on the end of your list - I appreciate the jumping off point you provided...

How about you grow a pair and understand that pushing evidence of a serious crime underground will only make it harder to police the crime itself?

With no other act - murder, theft, corruption, etc. (well, except political corruption, publishing evidence of which brands you a traitor) - do we put so much more effort into criminalising those who have seen an image of the act than the act itself. Pictures of child sex abuse are used as an excuse to engineer surveillance software that's used for other things. Child sex abuse itself is a firm part of certain political establishments, e.g. the British establishment as already confirmed through the 1980s, so it'd also be in the interests of such establishments to make sure that everyone is afraid of having evidence of the abuse.

Unless you're a paid employee of a private company selected by an unaccountable quasi-governmental body. Then knock yourself out and look at and store all the child sex abuse images you want, without the permission of any of the original victims.

The Pete Townshend defence

[Hognoxious]

1st Googletard: If anyone finds this there'll be big trouble.

2nd Googletard: I could say we were doing it as a hypothetical exercise or something.

3rd Googletard: Won't fly. The first thing they'll ask is why we didn't choose another subject. *Any* other subject.

1st Googletard: We, paleface? And why didn't you, by the way?

2nd Googletard: Ummmm....

3rd Googletard: How about ... we were doing it to help the police?

2nd Googletard: Froppwoppalattes all round!

This kind of technology will never be misused

[Required Snark]

1984 Winston Smith

Winston Smith works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents so they match the constantly changing current party line. This involves revising newspaper articles and doctoring photographs—mostly to remove "unpersons," people who have fallen foul of the party.

Orwell couldn't conceive that Winston would be automated out of a job. That may be the only part he got wrong.

Re: The "internet watch foundation" wins

[AK Marc]

They aren't arresting the people making the images, nor those profiting from them. They are deleting them, and going after anyone who viewed them. If they went after the producers of such content, it would be a different story, but that's hard, so Law Enforcement doesn't even try.

Re:But they do, so do you

[darkonc]

While I have no problem with Google nailing pedos on the net, the problem I have with them searching through private images to do so is that it opens up a slippery slope for searching for other content that certain people might find 'subversive'... like being a Bernie supporter, or wanting to turn in certain kinds of corruption.

The privacy of private information that Google has access to needs to remain sacrosanct or there will be a huge pile of people walking away from Google.

Re:But they do, so do you

[JoeMerchant]

Do you have Netflix? Or other access to the film 1971? The FBI under Hoover was just looking out for America, Hoover's America, decent people had nothing to worry about.

Re: But they do, so do you

[jmcvetta]

You know real pedos are vanishingly rare, right? The only people who actually get turned on by kiddie porn are the Law Enforcers and their boot lickers who built a special search engine just so they could find some.

Re:But they do, so do you

[fafalone]

So my daughter might be taking nude selfies of herself on her phone, which Google flags as child porn. But its not a pedo, its a selfie. So the engineers should carefully review those selfies, decide the phone belongs to a child, and the pictures are likely her own.

Except it is pedo, she's guilty of manufacturing CP, distributing CP if it's been sent to her BF, and exploitation of a minor (herself).. and the authorities should handle it since criminal charges will teach her not to ruin her life, by ruining her life. At least that's what some police officers and prosecutors think, and judges don't seem to mind either. It's not theoretical either, kids have actually been hit with those charges, most commonly for sharing, but for possessing too-- that's right, a prosecutor in NC actually had the gall to charge a 17 year old and his gf with exploitation of a minor for possessing naked pictures of themselves (distinct from the various other charges for sending and having their partners pics), in just one example of this obscene abuse of the law. If you think that's crazy, the insanity didn't even stop there: the boy was charged as an adult!
This country has completely lost its shit over teenage sexuality since it's been combined with technology. Probably because childhood has been extended so far that people don't recognize the difference between 17 and 7, so are equally freaked out by sex with the two ages.