Google and Microsoft To Block Child-Abuse Search Terms 308
mrspoonsi writes "Leading search engine companies Google and Microsoft have agreed measures to make it harder to find child abuse images online. As many as 100,000 search terms will now return no results that find illegal material, and will trigger warnings that child abuse imagery is illegal. The Google chairman said he hired a 200-strong team to work out a solution over the last three months. Google's previous set of measures, which displayed a warning to people attempting to search for illegal material and caused a 20 percent drop in illicit activity."
Well, it's something. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's something to INCREASE abuse by:
1) Redirecting resources away from finding abusers;
2) Giving the impression that "something is being done already" so resources don't need to be reviewed;
3) Misidentifying abuse as something which is caused by the availability of images of abuse, when in fact almost all child sex abuse occurs within families or thanks to trusted acquaintances for various complex reasons which require careful analysis rather than knee-jerk political reactions.
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Unfortunately this is tactics of sweeping the dirt under the rug. Shutting your eyes and pretending it's not happening. I don't understand why noone in their right mind thinks that hiding criminal activity reports will stop crime, but are sure that if we remove all child abuse pictures from the internet, then the problem will solve itself.
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It is an executive issue if the police are picking+choosing which laws to enforce and when.
The legislative matter needs to be addressed additionally, not instead.
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Because there are really dangerous people to arrest, like Jeremy Hammond
Crime is decreasing [Re:Well, it's something.] (Score:5, Insightful)
You ask ANY of the guys that are actually in the streets, or people that live in edge neighborhoods... crime is going up and going up rapidly.
Perception of crime may be going up. Fear of crime may be going up. Actual crime is going down.
--this is probably, however, simply a function of the aging of the population rather than the effects of policies. The largest component of crime is teenagers and early twenties.
99% of what you hear from your local,state or federal government is 100% BS to simply calm you down.
Unfortunately, when you dismiss all data that disagrees with what you have already decided to believe, you can never learn anything.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/june/crimes_061112/ [fbi.gov]
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0524/US-crime-rate-is-down-six-key-reasons [csmonitor.com]
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/29/justice/us-violent-crime/ [cnn.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-dimond/crime-reduction_b_2878003.html [huffingtonpost.com]
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear? Cripes for the last sports event here they had M16 machine guns in the open and wearing full military armor.
The equipment used by police departments has no relationship to the amount of crime.
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nail meet hammer.
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> I presume three-shot-burst capability means it would count as an assault-weapon in the US legal
> definition (i.e. as far as civilian ownership goes).
I am sure someone knows better than me, but, the assault weapon ban was hardly so straightforward. In fact, what defined an "assault rifle" was mostly cosmetic. For example, a firearm would qualify if it had both a pistol grip and a bayonet lug. Neither of which really have any bearing on the real issues.
Back when it was in effect I actually read the la
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear?
Because people like you seem to think there's a need. They need military gear because they need military gear. Tautology, yes, but no less the truth in this case. Crime rates have been going down across the board since the 70's: lower rates of violent crime, less non-violent crime, less white collar crime, everything. The only reason you may get the impression it's happening more frequently is because channels like CNN didn't exist in the 70's.
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear?
Because people like you seem to think there's a need. They need military gear because they need military gear. Tautology, yes, but no less the truth in this case. Crime rates have been going down across the board since the 70's: lower rates of violent crime, less non-violent crime, less white collar crime, everything. The only reason you may get the impression it's happening more frequently is because channels like CNN didn't exist in the 70's.
A local suburban police force got an armored ram-car a few years back. They had no need for it. What they had was a bunch of federal "beef up the national police forces" money and nothing to spend it on. So they bought a tank. Some military contractor made a ton of money selling those things.
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If it's a Homeland Security grant (which is where the vast majority of this hardware comes from) your local suburban police didn't just 'get it', they specifically filled out paperwork asking for it.
If they had no
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I think they need it?
The GPP did not say you, but people like you: voters in your area. The place to change the militarization of our police is the ballot box. Get informed. Learn who on your city council supports more police, higher police budgets, and uses scare tactics about "rising crime" in their campaigns. Vote against them. A quick rule of thumb is to vote against anyone endorsed by the police union. Instead you should vote for candidates that support community policing and drug legalization.
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
These have nothing to do with eachother and everything to do with congress and homeland security money.
The problem is that what politicians like doing is creating big funds that need to be spent. So they hand money to the DHS and the DHS runs programs to distribute that money. The only reason you see the police getting all this new gear is....it costs them nothing. All they have to do is fill out some request forms and the new equipment comes showering in.
Of course it comes as equipment so, it can't be used for training, or salaries, or improving their ability to fight real crime in any way, all they can do is request new toys....so they do.
I mean if someone handed you a credit card, said it can only be used to buy guns and ammo, but you can pretty much use it as much as you want and you don't have to pay the bill.... can you really tell me shooting wont become your new favorite past-time? Would you really not want an APC and some body armor if you didn't even have to pay for the gas? How about some robots? Surely you would take those?
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear? Cripes for the last sports event here they had M16 machine guns in the open and wearing full military armor.
Because whenever the government funds get doled about, everyone lines up to the trough, whether they actually need the stuff or not. Like right after 9/11, cities that were in no way threats on the same level as NYC all tried to get in on the newly allocated funds. It is government waste at its finest.
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I think it's done for no other reason than to shut Claire Perry and The Daily Mail with their "Stop online porn" campaign the fuck up - yes, that's a real thing.
Since she was elected this is the only issue she's focussed on, if I were Dave Cameron I'd be pretty sick of hearing her harp on about things she doesn't understand by now too and would probably do something useless and pointless just to get her off my back.
Not saying it'll work of course, and not defending it, but I can understand why someone would cave in to a multi-year barrage of whining from that silly cow.
Now we just need her to suffer the same fate as Jacqui Smith, the last MP who was as whiny and clueless as Claire Perry - her being caught charging her husband's porn to her expenses. Karma - it's great.
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Wait, I checked the Daily Mail website and it seems to be peddling porn... Even child [dailymail.co.uk] pornography [dailymail.co.uk]. Are they trying to get themselves banned?!
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Protecting the children is not the point of this.
(In US) quite a bit of effort has gone into banning art drawings that may look to contain underage characters or actors that may look under-18 (regardless of whether they are underage or not). So I think it is fair to say that the actual children are long forgotten in this crusade.
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:4, Informative)
Similar in the UK. We have a ban on 'extreme pornography' that had to include an exception for BBFC rated movies - otherwise, even by the writer's admission, a lot of the horror films coming out of Hollywood would meet the definition.
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I have no idea how plausible that hypothesis is, but it might give some of those knee-jerk political reactions a second thought.
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I think the opposite is probably true. I know watching woman in pornographic videos increases my visualizing women in day to day interactions in similar roles.
One of the best things for my marriage was when we decided to quit watching these types of videos. It moved the focus of sex back to love instead of a sport.
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Interesting)
You understand the difference between "visualising" and "raping", yes? Watching porn did not making you a rapist?
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Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Informative)
I think the opposite is probably true.
There is no evidence to support your belief. There have been many instances where the availability of pornography in a society changed, either by legal changes or technology (such as the spread of Internet porn). These changes are correlated with a decline in sexual violence. Here is an overview of the evidence [psychologytoday.com].
I have known several guys that watched porn compulsively. They all had no relationships with women. The porn was a replacement for actual sex. I don't know if the same is true for pedophiles, but it seems to me that child porn is as likely to reduce molestation as it is to cause it. It seems reasonable to me to ban any porn depicting an actual child, but banning porn using adults posing as children, or animation, should not be done without clear evidence that it is harmful.
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Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue is massively complex.
We like the feel-good measures. We "rescued 380 children" last week by finding people associated with a nudist site that had pics of naked kids. The news articles collectively indicate that about 14 children in India were "identified" (not rescued), and that a bunch of teachers and such were removed from schools. In general, the conclusion by the online community is that 380 children were under the purview of teachers who might be into kiddy porn, and so "we rescued 380 children!" In other words: no actual children who were being abused have ceased being abused.
The actual act of censoring child pornography is highly disturbing in itself. If we're assuming that people who have an internal thought and interest in children sexually are a threat, and thus making child pornography illegal, then we have two problems. The first problem is we're trying to punish thought-crime: child pornography isn't illegal because it's harmful, but rather because we want to punish people for having these thoughts we find personally disturbing. The second problem is we're completely incapable of pursuing enforcement against persons who we've deemed dangerous (for their thoughts), until they take some kind of action.
That second problem is exacerbated by one questionable hypothesis: with the pornography outlet blocked by being as risky if not riskier than sex, will these people express by child abuse? If they're trying to find satiation and weighing risk, it's obvious that your Internet can be invisibly monitored (and thus is extremely risky) while you can at least manipulate and control children if you can get them to keep secrets (thus the spread of information is slow, if not controllable--and it's absolutely more controllable than the monitoring of your Internet activity). So it's much better to have actual sex with children than to search for child pornography at this point: it's safer.
The above hypothesis is questionable for two reasons. First: we know that exposure to pornography and other visual effects provides comfort. People start looking at perverse stuff online, then they start watching gay porn, they move to bath houses and start experimenting with homosexuality... it happens, it's a common pattern, and a lot of straight men (and women) have experimented with homosexuality or bondage or whatnot by the cycle of introduction (initial thought or suggestion), curiosity, exposure, and then action. Thus we have another questionable hypothesis: that watching child pornography may acclimate a person to action, leading to actual child sex interactions.
Another problem: action may come in different forms. Wired ran an article about online sex roleplay services, including everything from vanilla stuff to furry MUCKs (hilarity ensued: apparently a lot of not-furries got on furry sex mucks and were culture shocked). Common sexual exploration includes everything from furry fandom to group sex to, yes, underage roleplay. There are also real-world analogues of this: people actually roleplay scenarios, everything from teacher-student (college) to maids to rape play, up to and including finding young (18-20) and/or young-looking girls who can dress up as even younger girls. Schoolgirl roleplay is common; I've even known a number of girls who, in a nutshell, had the body of a thirteen year old when they were 25-ish--they could dress enough to look young-20s, but if you threw one in jeans and a t-shirt and tennis shoes you would swear she's got to be 12, *maybe* 13. That means there are many perfectly legal ways to act on these fantasies directly.
So we have a complicated net of censorship, inaction, thoughtcrime, opposing psychological theories on whether outlets help or lead to bigger crimes, and outlets that are physical but provide a harmless mechanism of action. We could also get into some social considerations like the abridged rights of minors and the philosophical concern of this whole age-of-majority thing: apparently minors don't
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at the 2012 CEOP report and you can see some of that feel-good in their dubious statistics.
http://ceop.police.uk/Documents/ceopdocs/CEOP_TACSEA2013_240613%20FINAL.pdf [police.uk]
For example, they claim to have identified 70,000 new 'IIOC' files. Except on closer reading, duplicate detections of the same image count more than once, so that figure may be several times higher than it really should be. And of those, 75% are on their 'least serious' scale, a level which includes things you'd find in the family photo album. And one-fifth of them were classified as 'self generated' - most of which are likely young people taking a naked picture for their boyfriend who then sends it to the wider internet.
My favorite part:
'The commercial distribution of IIOC on the open internet is estimated to account for a very small percentage of the transactions taking place. This low level is likely to be a result of the large volume of IIOC in free circulation.'
Yes... piracy is killing commercial child abuse!
"Schoolgirl roleplay is common"
Of course it is. For the majority of people, school was the time of sexual awakening and exploration. That's going to leave an impression, so it's no surprise many people want to re-live it.
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in b4 half of 4chan infecting people with this malware "for lulz"
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it does not do anything about child abuse. It just hides the problem. People that look at such images are a minor side-issue. The real issue is people that abuse children, and even there those that document their crimes in images or video seem to be a small minority.
I think this is designed (like so many efforts by law enforcement) to give the appearance of doing something really valuable, while it is likely rather meaningless in reality and may even be counter-productive. If this effort went into preventing children from being harmed in the first place, it might actually accomplish something. Instead they go for an easy, but fake, win.
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Re:Well, it's something. (Score:4, Informative)
That is a red herring. Those that _sell_ this stuff can easily be identified and shut down by a very classical police technique called "follow the money". And that, again, has the added benefit that it may actually help some of those getting abused. Just drying up public business will just drive them underground (remember the prohibition?) and do nothing to help any abuse victim at all.
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Actually, the CEOP 2012 report states that commercial distribution is almost non-existent.
http://ceop.police.uk/Documents/ceopdocs/CEOP_TACSEA2013_240613%20FINAL.pdf [police.uk]
It's all people swapping collections and images with friends.
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Really? I somewhat doubt this is true in all but a minority of cases. The fact that you don't have porn doesn't mean you're going to go rape someone. Is everyone secretly a rapist or something? Pedophiles are not necessarily child molesters, and vice versa.
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Well, there is a strong indication that suppressing adult pornography does increase rape. By analogy, something along the lines you describe could be a real consequence. The problem is that nobody knows as no scientists wants to touch that hot potato and the topic is readily abused.
But without scientific facts, it is impossible to tell and the current efforts may well be counterproductive and may significantly increase the number of victims. Acting without knowing what the effects will be becomes highly une
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Sure it does something. Blocking all the slang terms will make it harder to find child porn.
Unfortunately it will also make it a lot harder to find perfectly innocent items like "chicken", too.
Re:Well, it's something. (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but there are leads you can follow up with traditional police work, e.g. trying to find people that make and sell this kind of material. Focusing on those that search for it just deviates resources from it for cheap, bombastic, but meaningless headlines. Example: In one of these operations in Germany, 3000 homes were searched. That made for grand headlines. Do you know how many people were actually charged? Less than 20! But the police got their headline and gave the impression of doing something. (So much for violating rights and privacy...)
I have the impression by now that they care far more about the appearance of doing something than actually doing something, because actually doing something worthwhile here is hard and gives far less impressive headlines. So they go the easy way, and all the abused children are just out of luck. That strikes me as incredibly unethical.
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hat seems rather difficult, and the usual 'solutions' seem to involve violating people's rights or privacy.
Just as if this witch-hunt against pictures wasn't invading people's privacy or violating their rights...
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Actually all I hear is "we're bowing to political pressure" and "using either Google or Bing is a mistake" (and not just for child abuse).
Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
Please search for and compile the list of 100,000 terms.
Which will inevitably all:
- Have double meanings;
- Be likely to be used by victims of abuse who are looking for help;
- Be useful for legitimate research;
- Be searched for by people looking for news or discussion on censorship;
- End up with a lot of political hot topics thrown in.
Thanks!
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, there is a popular French singer who does a song called "Lolita", presumably after the novel. For that matter the novel itself is perfectly legitimate.
Anyway, what kind of idiot googles for child pornography. Really, how many users are that dumb?
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:5, Funny)
Really, how many users are that dumb?
The answer to that question should be clear* to anyone who uses the word "users" and has over one month or professional experience.
*: In this context, the word "clear" is to be interpreted as "painfully obvious. Crystalline as one of the axioms on which the universe stands; bright as the one truth all other truths are to be measured against.".
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:4, Insightful)
I think nobody will be that dumb. But on the other side, people may be dumb enough to think that some searches were for such material. That all this has very little to do with children actually being abused seems to escape them as well, because most of the messed up people that abuse children will not document it and the few that do will not put that material online where Google can find it.
This is designed to give the appearance of "doing something" about child abuse, while it really accomplished nothing. It might be a test-run for a censorship list though.
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nobody will be that dumb" is one of the most dangerous bets a person can make, regardless of context. Someone will always be "that dumb".
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And those few "that dumb" will easily be found. But they are certainly not the main target. Your point?
"Nobody" in this context does mean "almost nobody", or "only an insignificant number of people", quite obviously.
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Anyway, what kind of idiot googles for child pornography. Really, how many users are that dumb?
Obligatory You Must Be New Here.
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And since this is done by a set of companies, one would hope that politics would not come into play in how the list of terms is managed. But in this day & age, I highly doubt it.
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It didn't say that 100k terms returned no results at all. It said that 100k terms returned no child abuse results.
It looks like what they're doing is removing the sites from their index, not really screwing around with the algorithms (which is why it's possible for Bing and Google to share their work here).
As such, none of the things you mentioned are particularly relevant, because none of them would be removed. In fact, by removing child porn from the results, they would be promoted. You could argue tha
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It didn't say that 100k terms returned no results at all. It said that 100k terms returned no child abuse results.
Wait... Google has EVER returned results with pictures of child sex abuse?!
I suppose I'm lucky in that for the past 15 years I've never accidentally entered the wrong terms, because I've never seen anything I'd regard as an image of child abuse.
Given this, my concern is what new things they are doing - particularly (see above) re manipulation of text results.
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:4, Insightful)
Please search for and compile the list of 100,000 terms.
Which will inevitably all:
- Have double meanings;
- Be likely to be used by victims of abuse who are looking for help;
- Be useful for legitimate research;
- Be searched for by people looking for news or discussion on censorship;
- End up with a lot of political hot topics thrown in.
Thanks!
Very true ..... for example I was thinking about searching about how this technology works but to do so would mean searching for dodgy things like "child abuse image filter"
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"child abuse image filter"
Oh my! You were probably... trying to bypass it. Pedo!
Your name vill also go on ze list.
(To think we do with sincerity what we once saw as so wrong that we once mocked it...)
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Non-Brits wont be able to help. According to the article I read this morning this is a global thing. Microsoft and Google are going to censor these terms right across the globe.
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Cue shift in pedo code words. "Anyone know where I can find a farm stand with underripe melons and bananas?" "Looking for a late model used car, less than 13 years old. Must have tiny headlights." "Need small pizza, smothered in sauce, no sausage."
Tom Lehrer said it best: "When correctly viewed, everything is lewd!"
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:5, Informative)
That's not the impression the BBC article [bbc.co.uk] gives me. Indeed, it says:
Typing "child pornography" in to Google's search engine now brings up a set of search results that include warnings that child abuse imagery is illegal.
The first three links are all related to reporting disturbing images or seeking help if you think you or someone you know has a problem with child porn.
The first link is an advert that links to a Google statement about protecting children from sexual abuse. The next link directs you to the Internet Watch Foundation, where you can report criminal online content, and a link to Stop it Now advises users how they can get help and advice.
The remaining search results are mainly news stories from around the world reporting on child pornography.
So Google are now engaging in government-directed manipulation of search results covering the discussion of child sex abuse images.
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:4, Funny)
The Catholic Church sighs with relief.
Re:Friendly request to non-Brits (Score:5, Informative)
There was a Finnish site called lapsiporno.info (= "kiddieporn") which was an freedom-of-speech advocate's site who was complaining about excessively wide (and anti-constitutional) governmental blocking of things which weren't actually the distribution of child pornography. His reward for his actions - being added to the blocked list himself.
http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2008-02-18.html
But it's a small price to pay, because think of the chiiiiildren!
Well, (Score:4, Funny)
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No child should be violated without benefit of clergy.
Just the Start? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yesterday I was not allowed to take a single photograph of my daughter who was in a dance competition, to quote "in case it ends up on the internet". This memory (dance competition) will be lost now, because it was not recorded. There was even an announcement, make sure all Phones and iPads are kept in your pocket / bag, something seems very wrong with this endless search for the boogeyman.
Re:Just the Start? (Score:4, Interesting)
How fitting, the current quote:
Do you guys know what you're doing, or are you just hacking?
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They did that at my niece's dance competition, but guess what? They had photographs and recordings that I could buy at some ridiculous price.
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Fair enough, child abuse is universally against the law (unless there are a few countries without such laws on their statue)
Read most countries with sharia based law [rawa.org]
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The country with the 5th highest level of child brides is overwhelmingly Christian (80%). Two of the top 4 include a considerable Christian population which participate in child marriage. Child marriage is obviously a big issue in some Islamic countries, but only the ill-informed or racist, wouldn't be aware that child marriage has been common in many religions and is often present because it was common in countries prior to conversion to the worlds major religions.
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That sounds like people there are in hysterics and have lost all rationality. Even if it ends up on the Internet, so what?
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Re:Just the Start? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yesterday I was not allowed to take a single photograph of my daughter who was in a dance competition, to quote "in case it ends up on the internet". This memory (dance competition) will be lost now, because it was not recorded.
Are you keeping a scrapbook? One fun thing to do would be to put a MEMORY REDACTED card in it for every event you're not permitted to photograph for some bullshit reason. Hopefully in 40 years you'll be permitted to look at it and shake your head.
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Re:Just the Start? (Score:5, Insightful)
So join or put a question to the PTA demanding the school answer why on earth it's preventing parents from saving memorable moments of their children's upbringing.
If no one questions it this shit will keep propagating, I'd wager you're not the only parent pissed off about this and given that the school wouldn't exist without the parents and their kids then it needs to be stamped out.
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Yesterday I was not allowed to take a single photograph of my daughter who was in a dance competition, to quote "in case it ends up on the internet". This memory (dance competition) will be lost now, because it was not recorded. There was even an announcement, make sure all Phones and iPads are kept in your pocket / bag, something seems very wrong with this endless search for the boogeyman.
That. Is. Certifiably. Insane.
I believe there is a step coming up shortly in this descent into madness where we will all be forced to pluck out our eyes, cut out our tongues, puncture our eardrums, surgically remove our genitalia and chop off our hands.
You know, to make the world safe.
For the children.
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Universally? There are countries where it's legal to wed a girl, then less than a year later demand the brideprice back because she died in labour... aged 11. So, no. Not by a long shot. That's just what prudish westerners like to think.
Moreover, I'd not say "fair enough", because it equates "looking at pictures of $crime" with "committing $crime". So, anyone who's looked at world press photos is now also guilty of war crimes then? No? Why the double standard?
While I think these blocks are the wrong way of addressing this problem, your comparison is a very poor one.
Unlike child abuse images, people looking at world press photos doesn't create a market for war crimes.
How can you look at two categories of images and make two different logical conclusions about the market for those images? They either both create markets for those images or they don't. If child abuse pics continue the cycle of abuse, war crime photos would do the same. The average person cannot commit war crimes as they cannot create their own war, but they can certainly commit violence and murder based on imagery they've seen.
Considering how much violence there is in movies, televisions shows, news t
Why that sounds useful!: (Score:5, Insightful)
You could try to get a secret court order that Google wasn't allowed to talk about that made them add noted child pornography search terms like "Edward Snowden" to the list.
Depressing job (Score:3, Insightful)
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Unintended consequences (Score:2)
How is keyword blocking going to help abuse victims find recovery resources? I thought most kiddie-pr0n was on the darknet.
Far more innocents will be hurt than the intended targets.
It's a mad mad mad mad world (Score:2)
http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/content/pictures/family/HomerStranglesBart1.gif
is blocked, while
http://www.manowar-collection.de/Manowar1984Poster.jpg
is considered safe.
NOT FAR ENOUGH! (Score:2)
If they can do this, why not block anti-American speech while we're at it? I mean, those people are terrorists right?
Feel good move, nothing more (Score:2)
Gonna get sued (Score:2)
They're baiting the MPAA/RIAA by doing this. They're going to get sued by every agency that doesn't want something found be they torrents or unpopular political views. Slippery slope ready for action.
Stupid and shortsighted (Score:2)
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1984... (Score:2)
Sex Crime!! Sex Crime!!
I predict that...^2 (Score:2)
Wow, two for two [slashdot.org] today, eh?
I predict that this will be about as successful as all other attempts to censor information has been. But don't let that stop you. At least you look like you're "doing something" just like the fool politicians in the other story, right?
Statistics (Score:3)
This is likely to be hugely ineffectual, as the actual numbers point to a rather different typical abuser:
From: Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
So what is this actually supposed to accomplish apart from censorship? What sort of "unsavoury" things are in this list of 100k search terms that are not even illegal? Snowden perhaps?
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Looks like something was overlooked ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm... Seems to me that if google and bing have enough content indexed so as to be able to identify content as matching those 100,000 prohibited searches, then they ought to be able to automatically notify authorities about those web sites holding said prohibited content. Who can then take the appropriate legal actions. Which would target those who are making such content available, not the mere sick individuals seeking such content.
I've got to wonder why such wasn't mentioned.
100,000 search terms blocked? (Score:3)
I didn't know there were that many words in the English language. Are any left to search with?
Re: (Score:2)
Instead of blocking the searches why don't they just forward the request to the State Police or FBI along with their IP addresses and any other pertinent details they can?
How do you know that they don't?
Re:yes (Score:4, Insightful)
You realize there is a difference between people that harm children, and people that look at pictures of it, right? And that in order to protect children you have to find the first kind in time, and not the second one?
This while action just gives the appearance of doing something valuable, while it is pretty meaningless for actually stopping abuse.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Children are harmed and continue to be harmed the moment a photo is snapped of them... they have to go through life not knowing what has become of the pictures. This is why viewing such images is illegal and must be stopped- because it is indeed an ongoing form of abuse, and courts have ruled this way.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why viewing such images is illegal and must be stopped
Because people believe in voodoo? I find such censorship and prosecutions to be futile, and more of an eyesore than the actual images themselves.
Re:yes (Score:4, Interesting)
Spoken like a true law-and-order fetishist that cares nothing about the actual victims. You seem to miss the little fact that focusing on the image-distribution aspect does nothing to prevent creation of such images and the child-abuse that comes with it. You also miss the little fact that you cannot practically remove stuff from the Internet, hence these victims will never know. This is just an instance of "the viewing of these images must be stopped", no matter of how many children get hurt in the process (because of misapplied limited resources) and no matter how much freedom it will cost the world. I find this highly unethical.
An ethical stance would be to demand that the acts that allow creation of such images must be stopped. But that is apparently a minor consideration today and I am pointing that out.
Re: (Score:3)