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Communications Encryption

Facebook's WhatsApp Has an Encrypted Child Porn Problem (techcrunch.com) 156

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
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.
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Facebook's WhatsApp Has an Encrypted Child Porn Problem More

Facebook's WhatsApp Has an Encrypted Child Porn Problem

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  • It's encrypted (Score:4, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:11PM (#57838830)

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

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

      I don't think the law distinguishes between encrypted and un-encrypted child pornography.

      • If it doesn't distinguish that, why is this "encrypted child porn problem" instead of "child porn problem"?

        • Re:It's encrypted (Score:5, Insightful)

          by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @07:46PM (#57839570) Journal

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

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

            Ding, ding, ding! A winner!

            Also, child porn is a societal problem and one that's awkward to address for those who want to insist all moral belief structures, particularly those surrounding sexual behaviors and attitudes, are equal. Much better and easier to scapegoat encryption. Widespread adoption of strong crypto scares the pants off of TPTB. It's also another "this is a thing and we're dong something, so reelect us and give us money!" soundbite opportunity to spam the 24hr news cycle.

            Strat

    • It *IS* a problem. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      After all the government needs it unencrypted so they can fap to it, and every once in a while publicly convict someone who isn't part of their paedo club.

      Hint: The people with power are the ones most likely to abuse children.
      See UK's parliament from the 80s-10s(and probably before and after), and
      the Jeffrey Epstein guilty plea (which allowed the network of paedos around him to escape justice, while he got a literal slap on the hand, not even real PMITA prison time.) And don't even get me started on the Cat

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 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.
  • While courts have found that identifying a suspect by IP address isn't sufficiently specific, maybe it should be enough to secure a search warrant. Then you can send in the cops and bust these creeps.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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

        So there is a queue of wannabe pedos waiting for vacancies to arise?

    • "While courts have found that identifying a suspect by IP address isn't sufficiently specific, maybe it should be enough to secure a search warrant. Then you can send in the cops and bust these creeps."

      You mean the clients of Starbucks?
      Or the VPN people?

  • Isn't Whatsapp tied to your mobile phone number? At least in Switzerland, you'll need to have ID to even use prepaid. There is no such thing as an anonymous telephone number in Switzerland.

    Is that different in other countries? Are there ways to use Whatsapp without a phone? Because otherwise I find it highly questionable to share illegal content on there. What stops any agency from infiltrating the group and collect phone numbers?

    • In the US you can get anonymous prepaid phone service you just pay cash for (through purchased service cards you can pay cash for, anyway).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by burni2 ( 1643061 )

        Yeah, but phone IMEI/IMSI -> logged cell tower - ok you can get a burner phone, but the FBI could pin-point your location, or come near it and setup an IMSI-Catcher (getting your position even more acurate) -> knowing where you are and bust you.

        • Yeah, but phone IMEI/IMSI -> logged cell tower - ok you can get a burner phone, but the FBI could pin-point your location, or come near it and setup an IMSI-Catcher

          If you only ever power the phone in a location that is not home...

          Requires a phone with a removable battery of course.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • You've been watching too many movies.. Cell tower triangulation isn't nearly as good as it is depicted in the movies (former cell tower tech here).

            That's certainly true.

            At best you can narrow the target to a sector of 90 or 120 degrees.. Maybe you can work out distance. but if the person is far away from the tower, at best you're narrowing it down to a few blocks.. or tens of blocks..

            You can certainly narrow it down to 120 degrees, because that's generally the shape of a cell. You do also get rough distanc

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, there are other countries in the world besides yours that have different rules governing anonymity and access to various services.

      Did you really ask such an idiotic question?

    • I bet I could find a burner phone inside 24 hours in Switzerland, knowing only English and some German. I might have to step across a border, but I'd have one inside a day. Yes, I know, you are all a bunch of law abiders. The first Swiss person I asked would rat me out for sure...I won't ask any Swiss people.

      I the USA, you get a prepaid credit card for cash, then buy and activate a prepaid phone 'plan' with that.

      You can bet these groups are already infiltrated. Good, the internet _busts_ another bunch

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by burni2 ( 1643061 )

      Actually in Germany you could - till around 1 year ago - get a pre-paid SIM for example from Aldi/"AldiTalk" without showing your ID, and you didn't even needed it for activation - this has changed.

      However in the U.S.A. knowing from media coverage that the FBI has a great deal of possibilities to prosecute, I would think that they get the IMEI/IMSI logs from a cell-tower and then they got a location and perhaps a route somebody drives, than you can IMSI-Catch someone and pin-point the location pretty exact,

  • Doesn't WhatsApp have "end to end encryption?" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by w3woody ( 44457 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:25PM (#57838902) Homepage

    Uh, hang on a cotton-pickin' second. Isn't WhatsApp supposed to have "end to end encryption?" [whatsapp.com] 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?" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:36PM (#57838976)

      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?" (Score:5, Informative)

      by dissy ( 172727 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:42PM (#57839310)

      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.

      • the encrypted part literally has nothing to do with it.

        Yes, but the idea is to make encryption look evil, that it aids and abets criminals and must be banned. The "kiddie porn" angle is to draw eyeballs and provoke outrage. The government has been hammering on this for decades, trying to pry open private communications.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alexo ( 9335 )

      How did that got upvoted to +5 when the answer is right there in TFA:

      A WhatsApp spokesperson tells me that it scans all unencrypted information on its network — basically anything outside of chat threads themselves — including user profile photos, group profile photos and group information.

  • You can't control the flow of information (Score:4, Interesting)

    by James Carnley ( 789899 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:33PM (#57838952) Homepage

    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: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "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"

      You underestimate the power of the "think of the children" crowd.
      They'll arrange so that you can only get on the internet by signing in and being verified and your ISP will be watching and actively reporting on everything you do.

    • I get the idea that whitelisting is exactly what is going to happen. Google can already identify us. Next, they're going to develop a successor to the internet that will have zero anonymity. You will need to have an ID card to even move a single byte. Google doesn't agree at all that there will be things they don't like on networks. They are already proud to announce they are firmly against freedom of speech and they will work hard to eliminate it from their world.
    • none of this is new. They were doing this crap via IRC when I was a lad. The encryption isn't very useful since you still need to advertise the crap for trading and there's plenty of honey pots out there to catch these sickos.

      This is just more bullshit fear mongering narrative from the "ban encryption" crowd.

  • A few decades ago I admined an server on an IRC network. If you got a full list of channels, well... you saw channels with a lot of these sorts of titles. I know from conversations with other admins that the FBI liked these sorts of channels. They could just hop in, start collecting all sorts of logs with people offering up stuff and downloading other things. They were less pleased with well-meaning admins wading in and shutting those channels down. It made their jobs harder than when people were providing

  • I mean, he just looks like he's into that kind of thing. He looks like a child molester.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by burni2 ( 1643061 )

      And you can really tell how child molesters look like?!

      Or people that watch child porn?

      The FBI should hire you!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ... and the only real cure is unattainable.

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

    The social structure is similar to America's need for drugs: Stop the desire for drugs and Bob's yer uncle,

    Until then, it's wack-a-mole.

    • Re: Formulaic problem ... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You may as well be suggesting that we cure the desire for gay sex.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's the problem right there, though. Whenever anyone considers trying to cure pedophilia, the rest of the LGBTQAY crowd comes out and starts getting mad that you're considering "curing deviant behaviors" and blocks it. So thanks to the LGBTQAYs, we can't try and cure people of something that a lot of people agree hurts children.

      • No, I may as well not.

        If you can be converted from gay to heterosexual, you can be converted from heterosexual to gay.

    • Only real cure? What are you proposing, chemical castration of all men (and women)? Internment camps for all children, for their own protection?Even then there's no guarantee.

      Probably the worst course of action is to make real, live children the only source for satisfying that urge. As much as I find the thought utterly distasteful, cp can be simulated or animated. Let them fantasize that shit all they want, but deliver severe, brutal punishment when actual kids are abused.

      That wouldn't prevent all case

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        What kids are abused by looking at an image? Don't bother repeating the obviously false "looking at it is re-victimization" trope, nor the "it creates a market" lie that denies human nature leads to this shit naturally anyway. Come up with a real answer to the question. If the abuse has already happened and the images are already available and you're looking at one, how is it hurting anyone other than possibly yourself that's doing the looking? Why is the standard for kiddy porn images not applied to any ot

      • Your histrionics don't work well as a persuasive tactic.

        Your lack of research [arizona.edu] is showing, as well.

        Chemical and physical castration will not stop sex offenders

        Why in Sam Hill did you bother posting?

    • Until then, it's wack-a-mole.

      Or you could say it's garbage collection. You don't want that shit to pile up everywhere.

      Anyway, unless we can prove the admins are reading the chats, we don't have much to worry about. Though it doesn't hurt to assume the worst, considering what we know about the spies.

    • Re:Formulaic problem ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by goose-incarnated ( 1145029 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @01:11AM (#57840388) Journal

      ... 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.

      • In other words: What I said.

        • In other words: What I said.

          I dunno, it's a fine distinction to me: pedophilia is an action, sexual orientation is not, therefore pedophilia is a choice that a person can decline while sexual orientation is not.

          If someone's sexual orientation is "children" they can't help that, while someone who fiddles with children can choose not to.

          (NOTE: I don't offer any opinion on whether sexual orientation can be changed or not - I don't care - but the popular thinking is that it cannot be changed.).

          • Go back and read what I posted:

            Pedophilia is a sexual preference .

            I am very fond of women's asses and I'm not particularly interested in their tits. Try changing that.

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

      The social structure is similar to America's need for drugs: Stop the desire for drugs and Bob's yer uncle,

      Whereas if you stop peadophilia, Bob stops being your "uncle". It wasn't like he was a real uncle anyway.

    • so you're proposing a demand side solution.

  • Won't somebody PLEASE think of the pixels... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:51PM (#57839358)

    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.

  • Or at least that is what the mainstream US media wants me the believe. So that is why all Facebook's attention goes to the wrong area.

  • Hmm, suspicious (Score:3)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:54PM (#57840246)

    Groups with obvious CP related names? Maybe, but it could also be an organization that wants to outlaw strong encryption so that they can monitor all communication, and which is safe from prosecution under CP laws.

    There are many claims (which of course may be false) that the FBI is the worlds largest distributor of child porn - done of course to attempt to catch (entrap?) peole trading illegal material.

    This may legitimately be a bunch of incredibly stupid child pornographers, in which case I hope they spend a good long time in prison. OTHO, its sure convenient for organizations that want to stop encryption.
       

    • you think Power cares about CP or children's welfare? It only wants to ensure rivals (political/economic) are kept in check so you need a way to snoop their encryption or access to their computers. So create law so that you can legally do that [get a court order of suspected CP and then hack into them - pure objective of gaining political/economic advantage.]
  • Will be interesting to see what happens when computing power is sufficiently powerful to both break encryption and possibly to match abuse photos to their owners. A lot of traffic is already recorded, it just can't be read currently. In 10 years, when authorities have a clear record of CP being transmitted/received, will there be a lot of doors being knocked down?

  • What good is banning the users and groups going to do?
    They will just move elsewhere...
    Given that what they're doing is illegal, why not report the users to the appropriate authorities?

    • WhatsApp is zero rating (which is against net neutrality...) in every carrier here on Brazil: I think is the same on several countries...
      It's a huge incentive to use (without this incentive, I think it will be barely used: there's several better alternatives...) - add it with end-to-end encryption by design and the great spread in crimes using it occurs!

  • The only way to stop a bad guy with encryption is with a good guy with encryption

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