Facebook's WhatsApp Has an Encrypted Child Porn Problem (techcrunch.com)

Videos and pictures of children being subjected to sexual abuse are being openly shared on Facebook's WhatsApp on a vast scale, with the encrypted messaging service failing to curb the problem despite banning thousands of accounts every day. From a report: Without the necessary number of human moderators, the disturbing content is slipping by WhatsApp's automated systems. A report reviewed by TechCrunch from two Israeli NGOs details how third-party apps for discovering WhatsApp groups include "Adult" sections that offer invite links to join rings of users trading images of child exploitation. TechCrunch has reviewed materials showing many of these groups are currently active.

TechCrunch's investigation shows that Facebook could do more to police WhatsApp and remove this kind of content. Even without technical solutions that would require a weakening of encryption, WhatsApp's moderators should have been able to find these groups and put a stop to them. Groups with names like "child porn only no adv" and "child porn xvideos" found on the group discovery app "Group Links For Whats" by Lisa Studio don't even attempt to hide their nature.

Better manual investigation of these group discovery apps and WhatsApp itself should have immediately led these groups to be deleted and their members banned. While Facebook doubled its moderation staff from 10,000 to 20,000 in 2018 to crack down on election interference, bullying, and other policy violations, that staff does not moderate WhatsApp content. With just 300 employees, WhatsApp runs semi-independently, and the company confirms it handles its own moderation efforts. That's proving inadequate for policing at 1.5 billion user community. It's a similar problem that WhatsApp, used by more than a billion users, is facing in developing markets where its service is being used to spread false information.

Comments

It's encrypted

[nospam007]

It's not a 'problem'.
You are just not yet used to the 3rd millennium.

Re:It's encrypted

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a slippery slope. If the SJW's and the thought police come after kiddie porn, next thing you know they'll want to come after vanilla porn etc.

Re:It's encrypted

[rogoshen1]

Not sure either. BUT it sounds like a lot of piracy is going on. As hollywood and the RIAA have taught us -- it should put the producers out of business. So, it hopefully might be a self limiting problem?

Re:It's encrypted

[jpaine619]

It is a problem. Of that there is no doubt. The question is "How do we solve or at least tackle the problem without devolving to a point where no communications can take place that aren't vetted by a third party?"

That's a tough one....

This may not be an issue that can be solved in the context of freedom. If you give two people the freedom to communicate in private sometimes they will communicate evil.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting we don't keep trying to come up with solutions. But in a free society it may not be possible to prevent all types of crimes. Some will have to be punished after the fact.. The only solution I see, at present, is to devolve to a Though Crime or Pre-Crime society... That's not an appealing thought either.

Re:It's encrypted

[fustakrakich]

Because the object of the article is to vilify encryption so the public demands that it be outlawed. It's a pretty old trick

Re:It's encrypted

[rtb61]

The reality in this case, the crime is not what they share, the crime lies with the creators and distributors of the content. Is there a problem on the web site, no, the problem appears to be a failure with policing to track down the creators of the problems on those web sites. Encrypted, should not be a problem, if it looks bad, check into the end user, if they are overseas, well, use cyber treaties (oh wait you can because hack the planet), well then fucking establish treaties and if they wont play ball, cut them off, not their balls of course back their backbone connections.

The problem is not the distribution of that content but it's creation, and that can not be encrypted and this bullshit to weaken encryption, just more bullshit. The problem can readily be dealt with if the US government would simply stop being dickbags and stop trying to hack the planet.

Doesn't WhatsApp have "end to end encryption?"

[w3woody]

Uh, hang on a cotton-pickin' second. Isn't WhatsApp supposed to have "end to end encryption?" Didn't they like publish a whole paper describing how their end-to-end encryption made it impossible for third parties to know the content that was being sent? Wasn't it supposed to be impossible for anyone, including WhatsApp themselves, to know the content being transmitted on their system?

Doesn't end-to-end encryption, where "even WhatsApp" can't see the contents of the messages, sorta preclude the use of moderators to moderate content? That is, if WhatsApp can't see the messages, they can't moderate the messages, right?

So, um, am I wrong in thinking that WhatsApp's claim to being able to moderate messages and claims that messages cannot be read by WhatsApp are sort of incompatible? Unless WhatsApp's supposed "end-to-end encryption" is more of a bullshit marketing ploy rather than a description of the actual algorithms in play here...

Re:Doesn't WhatsApp have "end to end encryption?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Group names, profile names, and profile pictures aren't encrypted. TFA is about group names indicative of CP.

Re:Doesn't WhatsApp have "end to end encryption?"

[dissy]

Uh, hang on a cotton-pickin' second. Isn't WhatsApp supposed to have "end to end encryption?"

They do but they have groups as well.

Similar how this very post is encrypted end (my browser) to end (the slashdot server) yet you can read it.
In fact the headline is equivalent of saying "Slashdot has an encrypted web troll problem" - the encrypted part literally has nothing to do with it.

Re:Doesn't WhatsApp have "end to end encryption?"

[dabadab]

In a group named "child porn xvideos" I would expect to find troians and spam, not actual child porn.

You can't control the flow of information

[James Carnley]

This problem is only going to grow in the future. You can't control or reliably censor information on a free and open internet. The only way to ensure that nothing "bad" happens on the internet is to completely lock it down and whitelist everything that is posted. This isn't going to happen.

In a few years blockchain based messaging apps will be launching and they will not be controlled by Facebook or anyone else. You won't be able to ban anyone. This is something we are going to have to accept and deal with. There will be things you don't like on the internet.

Re: ID by IP address?

[Anonymous Coward]

For every creep you bust .a new creep is created to fill the vacuum left by the last.

Nonsense on its face and an entirely evidence-free assertion. You paraphrased the common anti-war line from about 10-15 years ago that said if you kill terrorists you just create more terrorists.

And guess what . . . . that's exactly what has happened.

We've spent the last 20 years killing "terrorists", and we've killed a lot of them, and it hasn't reduced the number of terrorists one bit.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the pixels...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait. Funny how sharing of pictures of child exploitation is supposedly the big problem, and not the exploitation itself. Gotta love the backwards logic.

Name one other crime where they would complain that it is too easy to find photographic evidence of the crime.

Re:Formulaic problem ...

[goose-incarnated]

... and the only real cure is unattainable.

People want child porn and the cure is to stop that desire. Pedophilia is a sexual preference.

No, it is the result of a sexual orientation. Problem is, society already agreed over the past few decades that sexual orientation is something that someone is born with and cannot be changed.

If it is possible to change someone's sexual orientation I'm pretty certain we would have done so by now.