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Child Abuse Imagery Found Within Bitcoin's Blockchain (theguardian.com)
German researchers have discovered unknown persons are using bitcoin's blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery, potentially putting the cryptocurrency in jeopardy. From a report: The blockchain is the open-source, distributed ledger that records every bitcoin transaction, but can also store small bits of non-financial data. This data is typically notes about the trade of bitcoin, recording what it was for or other metadata. But it can also be used to store links and files. Researchers from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany found that around 1,600 files were currently stored in bitcoin's blockchain. Of the files least eight were of sexual content, including one thought to be an image of child abuse and two that contain 274 links to child abuse content, 142 of which link to dark web services. "Our analysis shows that certain content, eg, illegal pornography, can render the mere possession of a blockchain illegal," the researchers wrote. "Although court rulings do not yet exist, legislative texts from countries such as Germany, the UK, or the USA suggest that illegal content such as [child abuse imagery] can make the blockchain illegal to possess for all users. This especially endangers the multi-billion dollar markets powering cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin."
So -- someone is going to declare that hundreds of millions of people world wide woke up this morning and are suddenly prosecute-able criminals and have been ever since that content was added to the blockchain? That should interesting to see how they work that out.
I agree with Bitcoin being banned because of this, but all cryptocurrency, PLEASE. If they can prove to the authorities there is no way to put child pornography in the coin, I see no foul done.
IDGAF what the "original intent" of networks and The Internet in general was, it has since the beginning been used by criminals for criminal activities, and this is just one more example of that. So-called "The Internet" should be outlawed. By all means use network technology for legitimate, legal purposes, but The Internet clearly and objectively needs to go.
The same thing can be said about the internet in general, but we don't see people calling for the internet to be shut down. Sexual images of children are going to be shared no matter what, and yes maybe on a blockchain, but nobody has to download and look at it if they don't want to, just as they don't have to look at all the gore and death videos out there either.
If it's criminal when I think that it's nobody's business what my business is, then I'm gladly a criminal. If you have already created a prison for my mind, you can as well lock up my body.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Libertarians, everyone.
Modern app appers know that only apps can app apps, so AppCoin's appchain only has appy apps in it, unlike LUDDITE BitCoin!
Apps!
Does possession of a blockchain count as "possession of every possible image that could be derived from it"?
Probably not. To get the "file" or "image data" you need the Blockchain PLUS some 3rd party tool, which is not part of the core implementation of the BTC protocol.
If you've never used the tool, then there is no way you could produce the image.
Ban Cryptocurrency! ...
I guess some academic nobody needed attention.
Well, he did get his 5 minutes.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This is one of the best long-con trolls that I think I have ever heard of. I wish I could claim responsibility for this masterpiece, and I don't even hate Bitcoin!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
now the feds can pull the CP line on any bitcoin user and force them into any plea deal that is good for the FEDS.
Bedobear coin ICO in 1..2..3
he who smelt it - dealt it.
It seems to me like Bitcoin would be a great place to publish leaked documents and perform whistle-blowing activities. That could be one actually useful purpose for blockchain :)
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
EVERYTHING can and always will be used by CRIMINALS.
Outlaw everything to save our children!
For a moment a few years ago I was interested in some kind of crypto messaging system loosely based on the concept of BitTorrent (I forget the name, like BitMessage or something) but your PC, acting as a node, basically got a copy of every message, encrypted, and your client could only decrypt the messages that were encrypted with your public key, so you could only read your mail. So far so good... if your PC had a copy of a message with illegal material in it, you'd have plausible deniability - there's no way you could read it without the recipient's key so no (sane) court would convict you for possession.
The problem is the system also supported broadcast messages. So I could write a message encrypted with my private key, and everyone who had my public key could decrypt it. It offers a way of authenticating that a certain person sent a message. The problem is, now I've potentially got illegal content on my PC and since the key to decrypt it is public, I can no longer claim I can't read it. Any forensic group could grab my PC and "prove" that it had illegal content on it very easily. In fact, it allows someone to plant easily provable illegal content on everyone's PC. Bad idea.
I brought up this issue, but nobody on the forums took it seriously. I gave up on the whole idea after that. Seems to me the idea of allowing random text into the blockchain is an obviously bad idea. I didn't even realize that was possible.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Just another strike against Bitcoin. What else would you expect from a so-called underground currency with its own 'manifesto'. Bitcoin is ill conceived and useless. It's easily manipulated. It consumes natural resources at alarming rates. It's garbage. Pure garbage. A perfect example of how human greed takes precedent over logic and limited natural.
And no, I didn't lose any real money investing in cryptocurrency. I never bought into the scam in the first place :) The phenomena used to be entertaining. But then I've been finding reports of how much energy is used to mine the coins. Like a single mining warehouse can consume as much electricity as a small town.
Can't wait for this fad to die completely.
Child pornography... "For the children" ..
Drug use laws... "War on drugs!"
Terrorists!
Governments use these excuses to make anything they don't want illegal, or monitor it. Don't take the bait.
You can say the same about cars and roads or many other advancements. Just because something can be used for evil doesn't mean it can't be used for good.
The Internet in general was, it has since the beginning been used by criminals for criminal activities, and this is just one more example of that. So-called "The Internet" should be outlawed.
s/The Internet/Guns
s/The Internet/telephones
s/The Internet/cars
s/The Internet/money
Need I go on?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Until someone uses cryptocurrency to buy some illegal, underground heavy firepower and shoot up a fucking school or some dumabass shit like that.
Sure, it's transparent and immutable, but once data is added -- correct or not -- it's there permanently. There still needs to be a method for correcting or removing data.
Always knew BitBros were child rapists
just widening his extreme claim, to show how bad it was in the first place.
> So you're saying that ARPA, the U.S. Military, and a whole slew of Universities are all criminal organizations?
No, he's saying that "U.S. Military, and a whole slew of Universities" contain criminals.
One of the first (potentially the first) sales organized over 'the internet' was a drug deal between MIT and Stanford students in 1971, about 2 years after ARPANET became a thing.
Why would anybody do that if you can buy the firepower legally instead?
Shouldn't it be fairly simple to determine when this was added to the blockchain? My assumption was this was injected early on, when single systems still had a decent chance to write a block. If we know when it was injected, we should know the wallet to which coins were issued to, then there's a decent probability this could be traced back to the individual running the system, who may (or may not) be responsible.
I was under the impression that a blockchain was encrypted. How is it that the content is now an issue? Is this because there a portion of metadata that it is not encrypted? Can someone explain?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Drugs and Child pornography are two things that, at least in America, you're basically guilty until proven innocent. It doesn't help that, like it or not, the main use for bitcoin right now is buying illegal things and laundering money.
This needs to be nipped in the bud fast, but I'm not sure how. Once the feds come down it'll be too late. The time to self regulate is before then.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The perfect future with flying autonomous cars and jobs for every millennial and gifts from Santa. YOU PROMISED!!
You* can dream about sexually abusing children all you want - nobody is disputing that. You can even scribble pictures of whatever you like in that regard - the rest of the planet generally has no legitimate reason to care (unless you're being evaluated as a potential babysitter, youth leader/coach, or suchlike). It's your brain; do whatever you want with it. As long as you're not harming anyone else in the process (or actively supporting such harm to others), do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home. The article itself doesn't;t even come close to disputing what I just typed.
Now passing around photographic pictures of sexual abuse, when such material is prima facie evidence of a no-shit crime? That's going to rightfully fall under the attention of law enforcement.
Best course of action is for someone to come up with a means of excising the bad crap without violating the integrity (or trust) of the blockchain's more important parts. I wish y'all luck on that one.
* This word means "You" in the royal sense, not "you" as in the gent with UID 166417
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The Blockchain is a 152 Gigabyte file.
While anyone could technically download it --- automatically extracting data from it would be quite a chore.
Up your meds.
In Soviet America, EVERYTHING is a felony!
This has been the modus operandi of SJW snowflakes attacking anything they disagree with for years: just post some CP to it and then report the violation.
If you pipe /dev/random long enough, some pedo picture or more likely, link will appear to be passing by.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
There's no need for you to go around proving it constantly son.
That was the entire point of his satire response to OP.
Perhaps it would have been clearer if he had just gone with "people" instead.
Well, at least links whose site owners, domain-name-servers, or IP-address-owners will take action or be forced to by a court. Good riddance.
If I hack cnn.com and upload http://www.cnn.com/badillegall...
and share it with a few friends, they may never notice.
If I put it in a heavily-watched location like the BitCoin blockchain, someone will tell CNN and *poof* there it goes, plus CNN will probably turn over any logs they have to the police and *poof* there I go, to prison, assuming I'm in America and don't hide my tracks very very well.
If I have my own domain or IP address that's in a western country and I upload porn, my ISP or domain-name-provider will get a court order to pull the plug or I will be arrested or both.
Now if I'm in North Elbonia, American Bitcoin users may be vulnerable but some countries like China may order all of their ISPs to block the entire IP address or domain to their customers. Bitcoin users will be off the hook, but others sharing my domain-name or IP address may suffer the "collateral damage" of being unavailable in the blocking countries.
For "darknet" links like .onion, it may be harder to block individual ".onion" addresses or URLs without blocking all of that particular "darknet," and nevermind the darknet-to-public-net gateways. Then again, if my BitCoin blockchain has a url of https://blahblahblah.onion/bla... and my country blocks .onion, am I on the hook because it's public knowledge that I can go to https://blahblahblah.onion.som... instead?
Tell us all about life in idyllic Somalia where you're free from any and all gibmint regulations over your freedumbs. Paradise I imagine!
Because you live in Europe and can't
The article appearing adjacent to this in slashdot's feed is indistinguishable from paranoia. Except it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
Looks like no one in the crypto currency markets really cares about this.
That's the beauty of blockchains, isn't it? You can trace transactions back through the chain. OK, so the source is an anonymous wallet address. But one can find other occurrences of that address and eventually trace it back to something that occurred in meatspace.
Have gnu, will travel.
I imagine in some jurisdictions, Mens Rea will apply to the local CP possession law. So people there will be able to possess the blockchain so long as they're unaware of what's in it; likely, even then, it'd be excusable so long as one is plausibly only interested in the blockchain for necessary administrative reasons.
More relevantly, one can use/own Bitcoin or other cryptocoins without downloading the entire blockchain, it just might cause problems for miners or exchanges in certain places. That said, the 'CP secretly injected into data stream X' problem is hardly unique to blockchains; a spam email that rests in your Junk folder for months can be equally problematic, for one example.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
or perhaps we shouldn't make criminals out of people acting as a node with no control over the data flowing over that node.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
now the feds can pull the CP line on any bitcoin user and force them into any plea deal that is good for the FEDS.
Makes you wonder who put it there in the first place....
And fascist apologism rears its head on Slashdot once again! Keep licking those boots!
W.T.F.?
How is blockchain crypto a threat to our world *at all*, let alone the U.S. Constitution?
The U.S. has functioned without a central bank during more than one era in history, quite prosperously in fact.
Debtors are slaves to lenders. What happens when the debtors are *nations* and the lenders are international banking cartels? Who is then in control? Not the voters of democratic farces nor their "elected" representatives... It's simple to understand and true. So who/what is the real threat to the world and the U.S. Constitution?
"You can even scribble pictures of whatever you like in that regard"
Not in a lot of countries. Not in a lot of USA states either.
Of course - but unless you're advocating for the decriminalization of child porn, I fail to see where our thoughts or words conflict. As for that bit of it (the porn), it shouldn't be impossible to de-porn a blockchain if these files are where TFA says they are, and if TFA is sufficient accurate. The only issue will be in keeping the integrity and trust of the blockchain itself (or at least its perception) intact after doing so.
(...and who the hell was dumb enough to leave such a facility in place anyway?)
Actual child porn, and the possession thereof, has always (at least for the past few decades) been illegal, because it is legally akin to aiding and abetting the act which produced it (doubly so if you straight-up paid for the stuff.) I fail to see where this particular prohibition somehow leads us to a police state.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
But I found someone has underlined strange and apparently random letter in page 33. When I transcribed all those underlined letters, it revealed links fo dark web, illegal porno content etc. I hurriedly returned the book. Anyone caught with that book is in for it ....
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Stenography has long been used to hide information within other files. ( text files, video, audio and static imagery )
I can hide entire images or links to whatever I want within any carrier file I want ( and even encrypt it ) and the world hasn't stopped spinning because of it. . . . .
So the only reason this gets any attention at all is because crypto-currency is pretty much the buzzword of the day.
Why logically is it legal to think about child porn but illegal to store it on a hard drive? Isn't the brain just another storage device? We humans draw weird little lines in the sand about what is right and what is wrong. In the future if you could externally read some one else's mind would it then be illegal to think about child porn? What if they were actively sharing these thoughts with others? Logically I find myself rejecting most child porn laws as being unjust but emotionally I find child porn disturbing and accept these laws. How should we as a society decide laws? Emotionally or logically?
the blockchain contains illegal numbers? They're pretty small.
Sadly, that's not far from the truth. I know someone who was forced to actually take a plea in the same way.
EVERYTHING can and always will be used by CRIMINALS.
EVERYTHING includes children.
Outlaw everything includes children.
Outlaw children!
And since without children we have no future, all human problems will correct themselves in a few generations.
TL;DR: To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem” Douglas Adams
#DeleteFacebook
My device lists EVERY number of Pi and converts them to 1 and 0, there are bound to be some REALLY hardcore shit in there somewhere.
Actual child porn, and the possession thereof, has always (at least for the past few decades) been illegal, because it is legally akin to aiding and abetting the act which produced it (doubly so if you straight-up paid for the stuff.)
Soon, child porn, (or any other video depicting various kinds of victimization), won't necessarily be evidence of an actual crime. CG animation and video editing are already at the point where it's hard to differentiate between records of actual events, and images that only ever existed as digital data. It will be interesting to see how lawmakers and LEO's respond to this in the coming years.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
After he published the first dictionary of the English language, a high society lady thanked him. "Thank you, Mr Johnson, for leaving certain unsavoury words out of your dictionary!". Johnson replied, " I am shocked, m`lady! You knew them and were looking for them!?".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Otherwise, by the same logic ISPs will become criminals for receiving and transmitting illegal data, thus killing the Internet.
The same logic would also apply to cellphone carriers, gun companies, car companies, camera companies, cellphone manufacturers, computer makers, operating system companies, etc.
#DeleteFacebook
Then how is gun crime on the rise in Britain? Oh, wait, because criminals don't obey the law.
On that point, I agree (I mess with CG as a fun little hobby.)
This will likely cross into privacy territory, though (for a non-child-based instance, making a visually perfect CG-based revenge porn, starring your ex, and splattering it online.) After all, everyone has (I think?) a right to their own persona and likeness. If the 'characters' don't look like anyone in particular, then it's going to be interesting, as you've said.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Or youâ(TM)re an Aussie cock sucker takingbin the ads by your feminist dike whores. Yes, like that.
Why logically is it legal to think about child porn but illegal to store it on a hard drive? Isn't the brain just another storage device? We humans draw weird little lines in the sand about what is right and what is wrong. In the future if you could externally read some one else's mind would it then be illegal to think about child porn? What if they were actively sharing these thoughts with others? Logically I find myself rejecting most child porn laws as being unjust but emotionally I find child porn disturbing and accept these laws. How should we as a society decide laws? Emotionally or logically?
Possession of child porn effectively makes one an accessory after the fact to the crime of child sexual abuse. Paying for child porn probably makes one an accessory before the fact, because it funds and encourages additional abuse. So I have no problem at all with most child porn laws. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, given the rapid advances in creating realistic computer-generated images, it's going to get harder and harder to differentiate between porn that documents a crime, and porn that simply documents depraved fantasies. If we ever do arrive at the point of being able to read minds, the ambiguity will be the same - did the 'criminal' thoughts originate in the witnessing / perpetration of an actual crime, or only in the mere imagining of it? Somehow I don't think legislators will care about the distinction, and neither will the average person. A lot of people will be locked up, or worse, for what comes down to imagining things.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
No doubt about it.
It's well-known that governments dislike the concept of a currency that they don't control, and that various secretive TLA agencies possess big bags of dirty tricks, so...
With a quick stroke of the "think of the children" brush, they can marginalise Bitcoin and, by extension, all other crypto-currencies, and be seen to be doing so for the highest, "moral" reasons.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
The federal law on the matter is 18 U.S. Code  2252A. It says it's illegal to KNOWINGLY send and receive child porn. Anyone who doesn't know it's there has not committed a crime. Even having read the summary, I know that the chain contains a) porn and b) links to child porn. I don't know/remember if it contains child porn, so it's not illegal for me to send or receive it.
Also, as confirmed in ELONIS, mens rea (guilty mind) is still required. To be criminally responsible for any action, one would have to intend to do something bad. That's true by default unless the statute for a particular crime specifically lays out a different treatment of mens rea for the elements of that particular crime. Since 2252 doesn't specify otherwise, the standard mens rea rule applies and one is not guilty unless they were they had guilty intent, unless they were trying to do a bad thing.
Now it's a story on Slashdot. I mean, come on. It's a PERMISSIONLESS distributed database. That anything other than a transaction amount was even allowed to be written was pure fucking lunacy and a vulnerability in and of itself.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
There's no need for you to go around proving it constantly son.
Sorry, father
Why logically is it legal to think about child porn but illegal to store it on a hard drive? Isn't the brain just another storage device? We humans draw weird little lines in the sand about what is right and what is wrong. In the future if you could externally read some one else's mind would it then be illegal to think about child porn? What if they were actively sharing these thoughts with others? Logically I find myself rejecting most child porn laws as being unjust but emotionally I find child porn disturbing and accept these laws. How should we as a society decide laws? Emotionally or logically?
Laws have always been about general agreement, not any sort of gold standard. Logic has little to do with most laws, it is about setting general expectations of behavior.
For example, why are there limits on interest rate you can charge? There is an upper usury rate where you are considered a loan-shark and a lower imputed rate, where you are considered a tax-cheat. These numbers are pretty much picked arbitrarily to meet people's expectations (why for instance are they not automatically indexed to inflation).
Killing dogs and horses for meat is illegal in many jurisdictions. But you can kill chickens and cows. You can in fact exterminate entire colonies of insects without major repercussions, but you can't cut down trees with a diameter larger than 6" w/o a city permit, except if it is a fruit tree. In many states, you can not kill a fetal pig (a chinese delicacy) to roast, but you can legally abort a human fetus. These laws are completely unexplained in a logical context using a "gold-standard", they are simply agreed to by society and the current boundaries of "acceptable" behavior. And these things change over time.
It isn't emotion or logic that determines if a law is a good one or not, it is the general agreement of the populace subject to that law. You are only one of the multitudes that make the determination.
Mod this comment up. We all know who has the most vested interest in obtaining search warrants for bitcoin users
No, Child Porn conviction requires "knowingly possessing."
While I agree with your sentiment, the data isn't only flowing through your node, it is being actively stored for bitcoin transaction verification. I think the better solution/though highly controversial is to quit making the mere presents of child porn a crime. There is literally no other crime where the mere photographic evidence of the actual crime (in this case the horrible abuse of children) is illegal. Go after the creators (and anyone that provably funded them), instead of this asinine system that routinely makes sex criminals out of people like 17 year-old kids that can in many cases legally have sex, but not pictures of their own bodies.
Based on the strings at https://bitcoinstrings.com/all, it appears someone encoded the entire Hidden Wiki main page's text into the chain. Is this the abusive content they're referring to?
[BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY]: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVI
Probable cause to confiscate and search with one question "Do you own any bitcoin?"
Traceability.
Downloading and copying are actions you take. In the free world, people are not prosecuted for having thoughts, they're prosecuted for acting.
They'd buy the illegal ones anyway to better hide their actions.
I'm an American and it looks like Europe is going down the shitter at an alarming pace. You people need to get your acts together.
But why is there so much more criminal gun use in the US.
They have more criminals
"If they can prove to the authorities there is no way to put child pornography in the coin, I see no foul done."
Why would they have to prove that, isn't it like asking for a vendor to prove their encryption software can't be used to encrypt child pornography.
And now we know!
Wonder what the public key field is for?
So I have no problem at all with most child porn laws.
There have been numerous articles in the past few years enumerating the gaping problems with the ways the current laws are written. They are overly broad and severely abused. Parents are guilty for taking photos of their infants. *Engaged couples* wind up on sex offender registry and face decades in federal prison for sharing their own private photos between them when one is 18 and the other is 17. Malicious ads could download thumbnails through your browser, and as the laws are written you have now committed a *felony* through no intentional act of your own. Completely unsolicited, a malicious person could send to you an image via email, sms, or facebook and as the laws are currently written *you* are now the criminal.
I'm just waiting for "porn swatting" to become a thing. Don't like your boss? Make a fake facebook profile, message him a link to kiddy porn, and anonymously tip the cops. He'll be sitting in jail for months fighting the charges--life *ruined*.
No, Child Porn conviction requires "knowingly possessing."
And now they know. If, after they know, they keep their copy of the blockchain, then they are knowingly possessing.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Why do they need to do that when they regularly plant child porn (or weapons) on whoever they feel like?
s/The Internet/Guns
s/The Internet/telephones
s/The Internet/cars
s/The Internet/money
Need I go on?
After your first line, there is no more string substitution!
That's already the case. Drawings, animation, and written word aren't evidence of an actual child being victimized but are, actually, evidence of an actual crime because the crime is not defined by whether or not there was a victim. (I don't think that's the right thing, mind you -- I think it's asinine to claim that written child porn should be criminal -- but I'm just describing the law here, not agreeing with it)
Then how is gun crime on the rise in Britain? Oh, wait, because criminals don't obey the law.
It is still extremely rare. Your average Joe the criminal can't get a gun in the UK.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Just want to say that i do think that anyone that abuses a child in that manner should be castrated with a rusty fork, or at at least be chemically castrated.
But... We have strange things all over today, not only for photographs of actual abuse..
For actual child-abuse images i'm still for keeping those illegal, even with my reasoning below because of what they may do later in life to the abused.
To start with we have laws related to a teenage-couples sexting.. Not sure if that could be classified as abuse, but up to 15 years in prison(?!). Not sure who that is supposed to protect.
https://www.teenvogue.com/stor...
Taking a picture of yourself, as a teenager, and sending to someone else voluntarily could land you in jail?! Sure it might not be good for you, but neither is jail in that age.
A breakdown of the laws in different states: https://www.netnanny.com/blog/...
This one gives a quite good overview of how the laws looks in different countries.... For *cartoons*!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Laws are going towards "anything that can be interpreted as X" being flagged as illegal.
I don't object to their goal of reducing the amount of child-abuse, but they go with "this feels like a good idea", not basing it on any actual proof that it will reduce child-abuse.. Studies shows that the laws actually increases the risk of child-abuse.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
I know that this is a sensitive topic, and for parents of abused children i cannot even imagine the grief caused by allowing the images of their abused child to not be illegal. And for the abused children i cannot even grasp of how you feel.
So yea, i don't even know what i wanted to say with this post... But the laws do not seem to make it safer for kids, but they might actually increase the risk of child-abuse.
To make a long story short... Laws should not be created based on feelings but based on actual facts and studies that shows the law will be effective, or at least not have the opposite effect of it's intention. Today they are based on "this feels like a good thing to do" without any actual backing facts.
I want laws that work, not laws just because they sound good.
A few generations?
The mitosis generation - When saying "go screw yourself" is actually a good thing. :)
You wish.
Source: I've done expert witness work in trials based on this.
A link, something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ?
A link is a pointer. It can point to anything - it could even change after the fact.
If there's a link to something bad, then go after what's linked to, not the link itself.
To be extra pedantic...
The input of
The Internet The Internet The Internet The Internet The Internet
Would become
Guns telephones cars money The Internet
without the /g ...
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Look in the mirror. Seriously.
17 Trillion. And that's just America. If all the bitcoins in the world are mined and they're worth $20k a pop they'd be worth $420 billion (based on 21 million being the estimated max # of bitcoins). The bank industry could buy out and/or crush bitcoin any time they want. They're not behind this.
This is probably just an offshoot of the illegal activity bitcoins are used for. Folks think (wrongly) that BTC is untraceable. So they do dumb things with it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Now you know. You scrubbing your hard drives now?
I've been a juror on a federal trial. It scared the shit out of me. There's a huge difference between what the law says and how it's enforced. You didn't successfully correct any misunderstanding of the gp post, but you did show that the real world doesn't play by the rules we all thought we were agreeing to.
You can't tax or confiscate cash if you don't know who's got it or how much there is.
THAT is the problem.
The same people that decided not to print US denominations larger than $100 would like to see crypto currency disappear, and for the same reasons.
Hiding the most offensive possible data in the currency then deeming it "illegal" is *exactly* the same tactic as testing the money for dope and confiscating the money.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
An old lady calls the police, complaining that her neighbors parade around, naked, in plain view, putting on lewd displays, even having sex.
The cops come, she leads them to a tall fence, and says: "there".
The cops says, "All I can see is a fence".
The old lady says, "Well, you a have to stand on this chair to actually see them."
-------
It's a terrible joke, but it has a kernel of truth.
No one would know about these images, or care.
You really have to go out of your way to be offended.
> Actual child porn, and the possession thereof, has always (at least for the past few decades) been illegal,
Nude beach photos of children are considered by some to be child porn. This has included family nudist outings. The definitions have often been quite vague, to avoid criminalizing art and medical records.
I know enough about Bitcoin to find this highly dubious, but not enough about it to say it's impossible. I'm certain that blockchain technology can be used to store files and images...it can be used to store any sort of information, just like any file system, notebook, or bathroom stall. In my limited understanding the Bitcoin ledger works by presenting a string to decrypt wiith an intended possibility of error....thousands of computers work on the decryption and come up with a solution. When a large number of them come up with the same conclusion, that's written to the ledger and the computer, or pool of computers are credited a portion of bitcoin....I suppose that if you used a computer that also served illegal content then the IP could get into the Bitcoin blockchain. I don't see how any intentional images would be possible without using ASCII art and a great deal of imagination. I suspect this is an article with an agenda....
Feel free to widen it further to telephones, roads, cars, the postal service, horseback, boats, shoes. All of these things have been used in the commission of a crime in the past. If we start banning shit because it was used at some point to commit a crime, pretty much everything gets banned.
If Slashdot had it's way... this is why we can't have nice things.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It has been and always will be used by CRIMINALS
What, like money has, you mean? And cars? And hammers? And cheese graters? Okay maybe not cheese graters.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"Somebody's poisoned the waterhole!" -- Sheriff Woody
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I think it would be more important that one prove that any such illegal content can be purged from the network. If files, programs, or data unrelated to the use of the crypto currency as a currency and distributed ledger can be inserted, then there needs to be a way to remove it to prevent further distribution of potentially illegal content.
If any extraneous data cannot be removed, then ban the currency (hopefully merely leading to a fork that is compliant.)
If dangerous top secret information were to be disseminated via Bitcoin blockchain tech, that'd be a serious national security issue & we'd ban it immediately. It's the designer's fault for including a feature without thinking through nefarious uses and a way to isolate the damage and purge the corruption of the system.
In your example, one can at least delete a corrupted file or destroy an encrypted disk. How does one delete this included data from the Bitcoin network without destroying the currency or the transaction network? Maybe it can be done, but I haven't read anything yet on how to purge these unwanted files yet.
Idiots put highly illegal content on a public permanent ledger thinking they're protected by the dark net. Pretty sure this is FBI's wet dream.
Hopefully they didn't use a KYC exchange to buy their bitcoin also.
The federal law on the matter is 18 U.S. Code  2252A. It says it's illegal to KNOWINGLY send and receive child porn. Anyone who doesn't know it's there has not committed a crime.
Now that it's been made public knowledge that the Bitcoin blockchain contains illegal child abuse images, if you continue to maintain a copy on your computer you won't be able to claim that you didn't know it contained illegal child abuse images. So yes, now that you are fully aware of the presence of illegal material in the blockchain, you cannot claim ignorance in regard to sending or receiving that material.
I get that there's a way the law is supposed to work; I hate to break this to you, but it doesn't actually work that way. The law is written to be advantageous to the prosecutor, not the persecuted.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Assuming there are images in the blockchain, that is possession. Possession is enough to charge you. If you didn't know, that's an affirmative defense. Bring it up in court pedophile.
https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-child-pornography
*black people
I had to scroll a long way to find this post, but it seems so obvious. Literally, what, one day after the US tries to make Venezuela's cryptocurrency illegal?
Then how is gun crime on the rise in Britain? Oh, wait, because criminals don't obey the law.
It is still extremely rare. Your average Joe the criminal can't get a gun in the UK.
In Europe, it takes terrorists with international connections to get guns and slaughter people. Oh, or highly dedicated nazis who strike while the cops are all on vacation at the same time.
Obviously you weren't and aren't an expert on law. I cited the section for you. You can read it here:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
Here's the first line of the law for you so you don't have to even bother clicking the link:
"Any person who knowingly:"
No, the affirmative defenses start at 6a. See for yourself, this is the law, which I had already cited for you:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
Here's the first line of the law for you so you don't have to even bother clicking the link:
"Any person who knowingly:"
Knowingly is the first element of the offense.
The affirmative defenses are:
6a the alleged (simulated) child is real people who were adults at the time.
6d gives an affirmative defense to a(5):
(1) possessed less than three images of child pornography; and
(2) promptly and in good faith, and without retaining or allowing any person, other than a law enforcement agency, to access any image or copy thereofâ"
(A) took reasonable steps to destroy each such image; or
(B) reported the matter to a law enforcement agency and afforded that agency access
Those are the affirmative defenses. "Knowingly" is an element of the offense, not a defense.
I'll never understand why people post on topics that they know nothing about. ESPECIALLY in reply to a post with a subject line citing the specific section of statue - it's pretty obvious that I know the statute when I cite it.
Need I go on?
Yes, clearly everything needs to be made illegal. Only then will we save the children.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
But why is there so much more criminal gun use in the US.
might have to do with both social economics and that there are 66,6 million people in England and 325.7 million in the US and just using #'s we should have at least 5 times as much criminal gun use in the US. Just sayin'. Now true we here in the US have a "gun culture" as that is how we were brought up as. England, being far older, was not as there were no guns back then.
Is the freedom to take away freedom, also freedom?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
We have the option to decide between liberty and controlled environment. At least now we still have that choice. Freedom entails also that some will abuse this freedom...Freedom means responsibility. That's hard for some, I know. Living in a nanny state where your don't get to decide anything and everything is decided for you depends on how benevolent your daddy is.
This maybe provocative however I don't understand why this is modded down. Opportunist is right about Freedom and responsibility. Just because people are angry with pedophiles doesn't mean these statements are false.
You can judge a society based on how they treat their most despised and if our emotional states are so fluid that they can be altered by someone simply pointing out 'Hey this affects all of us', as Opportunist has done, then child porn in the blockchain is a very small problem by comparison.
And if history teaches us anything, then that police states usually make abusive parents.
Which brings us to the crux of the issue. Every police state screams 'SEX CRIME' whenever there is something they need to control so here we go again, 1984 and all the lessons of a police state generating a false reality.
abusive parents.
and how pedophiles got that way in the first place. I'm pretty sure they didn't consent to being abused either, it doesn't make it right that they become abusers themselves however the real issue we seem to be talking about is a mental health issue, not a blockchain issue.
Stealing some kids innocence is and should be a crime, but if we want to make *real* inroads into solving the issues we have to find mental health outcomes that break the abuse cycle that perpetuates this form of child abuse.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The federal law on the matter is 18 U.S. Code  2252A. It says it's illegal to KNOWINGLY send and receive child porn.
oh, oh, now we all know.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Or they just use a car. Disarming a population will always put the law abiding in a helpless position, if not to criminals then to abuse of authority. What kind of moron blindly trusts 100% of authority figures with their lives? The top of the pyramid seek power and that usually means they are evil. Some people have no sense or are also evil themselves..
Child porn isn't only illegal because of the crimes already commited.
A study was conducted which indicated that if you viewed child porn you were more likely to molest children.
Child porn is therefore the cause of crime as well as evidence of a crime, that is why it is so illegal.
The study wasn't particularly well done but it was well received.
I wonder if this will affect the value of bitcoin much, it certainly makes it less savory.
Information wants to be free.
http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html
Removing content from the block chain is pointless. Once in, so many people have local copies that you've lost all control. Further, if content can be removed, it's no longer a reliable ledger.
Now you've removed a useful feature (permanent ledger) and gained nothing.
Needs a /ig
No, it's a crime because nobody wants to be the guy who votes against that bill.
Criminals would never use a car to harm someone! That would be illegal.
Here's what I know, having not memorized the article or further investigated it's claims after discovering it contains claims that are easily proven false:
A. Someone wrote an article making false claims, claims that are easily debunked by reading even the first five words of the relevant law.
B. This same article, written by a highly unreliable source, claimed that the blockchain contains links to porn. (Porn is legal).
C. The unreliable article also claimed there are images of some sort in the blockchain.
D. The same BS article attempted to draw some sort of connection to child porn.
E. A common scare tactic is to deliberately conflate porn and child porn, saying something about child porn, then saying "there is porn ...", then something else about child porn. This is a deliberate tactic to mislead the reader into thinking the second statement is about child porn.
Possession of child porn effectively makes one an accessory after the fact to the crime of child sexual abuse. Paying for child porn probably makes one an accessory before the fact, because it funds and encourages additional abuse.
If we apply legal theory about copyright infringement, then it turns out possessing child porn without paying for it is incredibly damaging to child porn intellectual property owners. Redistributing those images is basically putting child porn producers out of business. Isn't that a good thing?
That's why these comparative statistics are handled per 100,000 people. You are 55 times more likely to be a victim of a violent gun death in the U.S. than the U.K. https://www.npr.org/sections/g...
Checks source. Oh, includes suicides. Nice way to skew results.
I thought there needs to be some sort of "sexual" tone to the photos, otherwise every mother who took a picture of their two year old in the tub is fucked.
Actually that isn't true. We don't know there is child port. We merely have read that there may be a single instance of child porn and that isn't entirely clear either. You would have to actually go looking for it to know for sure. The other issue is that while we generally say child porn is illegal the law requires three instances of it. Knowing you have child porn may not be a crime unless you knowingly have three images.
Now in the real world you are pretty much fucked because the government will make sure your name and picture are plastered everywhere, you lose your job, and pay significant amounts of money for lawyers that advise you to plead guilty. But ... yea... that said... your basically right in that you are fucked either way.
Maybe- but one doesn't know for sure. It's at best knowing that there could possibly be and that isn't the same thing as knowing that there is. The researchers have left it unclear and even if what is child porn? There are different definitions. No. There is no knowledge of possession here. The other issue is in at least the US the law requires 3 images. The researchers only identified possibly one. They didn't factually state there was one. The wording or the article anyway utilizes words that are not child porn too. So its unclear if this is a child being beaten which probably wouldn't be child porn or sexual abuse of some kind which would be child porn.
The "sexual" tone need not follow any defined standard. Examples include http://www.wpbf.com/article/nu...
We have the option to decide between liberty and controlled environment. At least now we still have that choice.
We also have a third option: Don't be a fundamentalist about anything.
Allow for limited control to achieve specific goals that can be articulated and checks and balances to help prevent and punish abuses and monitoring to ensure that those control mechanisms are achieving the articulated goal.
The biggest challenge of security engineering is that It's very easy to allow things but very hard to prevent things.
In the case of Bitcoim's blockchain, it is designed to be tamper-resistant. It would be very interesting to design one that allows for limited tamper-evident behaviour.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
So we should force digital camera manufacturers to make it so their camera can't take pictures of child porn?
Making something illegal just because it can be used for "bad(tm)" purposes is stupid. You'd basically have to ban everything on the planet.
I also checked my source, and the first chart clearly notes: "All charts exclude deaths in armed conflict and from accidents or self-harm" which means suicide (self-harm) is excluded.
If you argue for the banning of Bitcoin. You have shown you posses zero functioning neurons.
Because if you believe that then you believe the internet should be shut down.
That would make you a hypocrite.
You are likely a liberal.
Just like if you believe scary guns should be banned, then you believe cars and knives and ropes should be banned.
Saying otherwise makes you a hypocrite.
I hope it's become evident how much the right is laughing at the childish nonsense that has gripped the modern left.
If you were a juror couldn't you have voted not guilty? That's sort of the reason that a trial by jury is a protected right. Jury trials in Criminal courts are an all or nothing exercise.
That may or may not be true, but they definitely have way more guns.
Few people possess the full blockchain record, only more recent stuff. So, then the questions are when will the CP be flushed out of the likely recent ledger entries, and will a troll put it back in again? If it's already been flushed, then the only people with illegal content are full ledger archivists and bitcoin exchanges...
You see what you want to see.
Link + Picture or it was all in your imagination ! :P
That's true by default unless the statute for a particular crime specifically lays out a different treatment of mens rea for the elements of that particular crime.
In the United States the statutes covering possession of CP are what's called "strict liability" which means that mens rea or "guilty mind" does not have to be proven in relation to one or more elements comprising the actus reus "guilty act". A prosecutor would probably still need to prove knowledge of the materials to make the charges stick, which would exclude cases where the evidence was planted or otherwise possessed without conscious knowledge, but strict liability means that intention is more or less out the window because mens rea doesn't apply. Although IANAL, so this is just my non-professional understanding of how these laws work. Can a lawyer among us clarify?
The human mind needs to be outlawed too, since it can store, pass along, and create illegal content.
(UK) Technically doesn't matter how well the CG is done. The depiction doesn't have to be realistic, so manga counts. Even stick figures count if they want it to. They like to make the laws overbroad to avoid bad guys getting away on a technicality. Just hope they never decide that you're a 'bad guy'.
It's only legal to think about it because they can't prove what a person is thinking about (yet). No point in making a law when you can't prove it with evidence.
Yes, you could terminate your regular expressions.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Doesn't come close to explaining the size of the disparity.
In the US drawings are protected. I donno where you're from.
Someday, sooner or later, people will start to figure out that you can't fight child porn, or any other crime, by pretending that certain large numbers are somehow "illegal". All digital content by definition consists of large numbers. All digital content can be XORed with a certain other large number to transform it into any other digital content. There exist an infinite number of combinations of large numbers, which, when XORed with one another, can be interpreted as "child porn" or any other content. The war against large numbers cannot be won. The war against child pornography needs to be one. Hence, it will need to be fought some other way.
Nonaggression works!
> The other issue is that while we generally say child porn is illegal the law requires three instances of it.
The rule there is no more than three IF the person immediately deletes it or reports it to law enforcement, without sending it or showing it to anyone else.
A lot of pressure to remove guns, so militarized state (aka Nazi Germany) can roll in and not have incidents. Which is exactly why an armed population is a protection again militarized governments. What is it that oppresses people? Frivolous Government that cannot add value so create systems to steal value. Very negative poverty-mind.
Not true. Since the 1990's very easy to get a gun in England.. if you are willing to break the law. For most that makes it difficult. For the lawless or those who seek to harm.. not really a barrier.
Only in Chicago. Where do you find that statistic? I have had a gun pointed at me twice in England, one by a 1/2 wit joker in Brixton showing off. Never had a gun pointed at me in the US.. because people have gun sense.
A pattern I've noticed over the years is how kiddy porn is used as the excuse for greater government control and surveillance. Are child pornographers REALLY always tech geniuses? How would you embed something like child porn into Bitcoin's blockchain? I certainly have no idea. That smells more like intelligence service disruptive ops.
Only boring people are ever bored.
It does not include suicides.
Guns per capita are at least 10 times higher in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I referred to the first chart in my linked source. 3.85 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S. versus 0.07 deaths per 100,000 in the U.K. so I divided 3.85 by 0.07 and arrived at 55 times as many deaths. U.K. deaths are roughly 1 in 1,400,000 whereas U.S. is roughly 1 in 29,000. We're meassuring violent death by gun, not merely being pointed at with a gun. One could say that, in the U.S., the trigger is pulled quite a bit more often.
More than that - if there is no CP in a coin, there's no CP there. Nobody has to demonstrate that it's impossible; the authorities have to demonstrate that there is CP there.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
For almost all of the Internet, things can be removed. That's what we have a DMCA takedown procedure for (in the US). Criminal activity doesn't last forever. Unless it's in a blockchain or other immutable form that can't be discarded.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Many laws against child porn are specifically about records of things that actually happened. Last I looked, the law in my state said child porn was imagery from an actual sex act involving someone under 18. In other words, CP production means an actual sexual act happened. If I imagine such a thing, no actual child is involved. (There are jurisdictions with rules that do include imagery that didn't come from an actual sex act, but I really dislike those laws.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Morality. The left keeps trying to do away with any respect. Don't believe in God either. You are a victim if you're not a white male. Then you really are a victim but can't say anything because it's not PC. They have people to stir up and get upset enough to commit crimes and act like assholes.
Are you gay? Are you a woman? Are you hispanic? Are you just an asshole? You can protest and make a fool of yourself too! Just participate in the not so thinly veiled leftist protests.
BTW, there is also far more non criminal use of guns in the US than the rest of the world.
I've got a gold razor blade around somewhere. I found it in a snowdrift next to the street once. There was white stuff caked on it, so having it would legally have meant I was in possession of white stuff, likely cocaine. I carefully washed the white stuff off, and now it's a gold or gold-plated razor blade, perfectly legal.
However, suppose I have a blockchain with a child pornography image embedded. It's illegal to possess here. However, I can't remove the image, so I can't keep and use a legal copy of the blockchain.
That's the difference. I have a net connection, so if I got the right (or wrong) link I could access child pornography. I can also not access child pornography. I have a car. I can use it as a criminal getaway vehicle (which would be stupid, since it keeps in touch with the mothership) or I could hit someone or something with it (I know where the button is to disable collision avoidance). I can also use it to drive to work and the grocery store.
There's choices in all but one of these. I can wash the razor blade. I can drive the car legally. I can't remove the CP from the blockchain, and I can't validate transactions without it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Adding child porn to the blockchain and then prosecuting all the miners is the perfect way for abusive governments to destroy cryptocurrencies and force everyone to use the fiat currencies those governments fully control.
You thought you had freedom? Think again.
LOL: captcha = "inflate", which is exactly what continues to happen with fiat currencies.
The internet is full of links to criminal activity. The Bitcoin blockchain being contaminated is merely a symptom of a much larger problem. We must act now, and shut down the internet!
(I'm totally not Italian)
Hmm, I think the mob has owned some pasta restaurants. Cleaning the money using a legitimate business is a crime, so yes, even the cheese grater!
I know this is a bit tinfoil hat, buy is it possible this was a black flag operation by a group interested in bringing down Bitcoin?
Nazi Germany repealed the total gun ban that had been in place, and encouraged gun ownership.
... there's another asshole with a computer. ~ © CaptainDork
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.