How Do We Stop Child Pornography?

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   crankaliciousposted 4 years ago

   I thought I'd create a forum page on a topic other than Trump Sucks! Trump is Great!
   
   I was listening to NPR yesterday and they had this really interesting story. To sum it up, this couple's daughter had been sexually abused by her biological father when she was very young. The scumbag not only abused her, but took pictures and posted them to the internet.
   
   Now, 9 years later, those pictures are still available and whenever anyone is caught with them, the couple is notified and can seek restitution from the person who had them.
   
   The issue that comes up about this issue is regarding privacy. Only one provider actively tries to rid the internet of these photos/videos, and that is Facebook. The rest, like Amazon, claim privacy concerns. And, in fact, Facebook is likely to make this claim too.
   
   So, do the privacy concerns of Facebook and Amazon trump the rights of victims? Should internet providers who provide storage be required to scan all photos so that authorities can make requests of them for things like child pornography?
   
   How can we deal with issues like this so that there's some way for victims of such crimes to remove those photos from the internet?

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      promisemposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Great question, Crank. From everything I read, I think law enforcement is working harder than ever to stop child pornography.
      
      It won't end overnight. But the trend is moving in the right direction.

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         crankaliciousposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         I think this is a broader question than that. Do you support forcing these companies to find this stuff and violate these privacy agreements?

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            promisemposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Absolutely.

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               wildernessposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               I would disagree with this; if we wish private companies to be responsible for enforcing the law then we should be hiring them to do just that.  To require ANY company to be responsible, at their expense and effort, for enforcing the laws we make is not reasonable.

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                  Credence2posted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  Wilderness, how is that any different than a tavern keeper involved in keeping minors outside his or her place of business or not serving them alcohol?

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                  GA Andersonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  uh oh, you might want to rethink that one. In the context of this discussion, I think your "enforce the law" is the same as follow the law.
                  
                  I think Credence2's comment completes my thought.
                  
                  GA

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                     wildernessposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     Seems to me it can only be "follow" if we decide that anything on FB's servers belongs to them.  The way it is set up that isn't true, so to require that they enforce the law as to what others post is not right.  Seems to me.
                     
                     I am also very much against censorship...which is in total opposition to my feelings on child porn.  Not sure how to resolve that, except to agree that some things need censored and hope that cracking the lid on the can doesn't simply remove the lid and pour out the contents.  Either way, though, it is not the job of FB, as it stands, to provide that censorship.  That job belongs to the government.

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                        GA Andersonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                        Oh Buggers! Now I have drawn us into the debate of whether they, (Facebook et al), are publishers, or a platform for publishers.
                        
                        And even worse, to continue would hijack the thread into a discussion of the limits and responsibilities of censorship. Our thoughts are not dissimilar enough for me to go there.
                        
                        Carry on.
                        
                        GA

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                           crankaliciousposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                           Technology can do a lot. Should we require these storage companies - Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft - to search their databases for child pornography and identify those who have it?

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                              GA Andersonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                              I think those "storage companies" do have some responsibility for content placed on their platforms. To go further with that thought would require first a definition of child porn, (no, I am not splitting hairs, I can imagine some seeing a father wiping a toddler's butt as child porn), and secondly, settlement of the discussion of what is acceptable, and expected, censorship.
                              
                              GA

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                                 crankaliciousposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                                 GA,
                                 
                                 So pretty interesting subject then, no? I agree with your assessment overall.
                                 
                                 However, most of the storage firms do not and a great many people do not, citing privacy concerns.
                                 
                                 For instance, if you have child pornography in your home, the police and/or the government cannot just break down your doors without cause and search your home, can they? And we don't want them to, right?
                                 
                                 In the case of storing your digital assets, why should the police or government be able to break into your online files without cause? What we're talking about, basically, is allowing the government to look inside your house without cause.
                                 
                                 Falls into kind of a classic liberal/conservative discussion.

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                                    GA Andersonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                                    That wasn't at all the direction of my comment. It wasn't about privacy. It was about public display. It is my opinion that once you put something out in public you have relinquished your right of privacy—regarding that which you submitted to public view.
                                    
                                    Perhaps an analogy would be a storefront poster. If you had a rolled-up child porn poster in your house, folks probably don't mind—because they don't know about it, and never will until you run afoul of the law and your house gets searched. Until then your privacy is assured.
                                    
                                    But, once you put that poster in a storefront window you have given up that privacy right—for that poster, and the store owner has a responsibility to take that poster down from public view because child porn is illegal.
                                    
                                    If the issue were as cleanly clear as that I wouldn't any concerns with censorship or privacy issues. But obviously they aren't. Doesn't it go something like; "One man's porn is another man's art?"
                                    
                                    Can we ask facebook to censor a lewd* Stormy Danials image but leave a Michelangelo, (credit: Wilderness),  nude in place? Or to censor a Russian-sponsored opinion but leave a Democrat-sponsored one alone?
                                    
                                    And it gets even stickier when our demand is that those "storage companies" become arbiters of truth. Whose truth? The Republican's truth that the economy is booming, or the Democrats' truth that our Constitution is being destroyed?
                                    
                                    And even worse still is the idea that these decisions can be put into algorithms. Who will put in the rules the algorithms use to define 'truth'?
                                    
                                    *who gets to define lewd?
                                    
                                    GA

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                                       crankaliciousposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                                       Okay, what about the person who simply has these child porn pics in their personal possession?
                                       
                                       The argument of the family is that they want these things gone and Amazon/Google/Microsoft have the power to get rid of them.

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                                          GA Andersonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                                          I think I see that I was addressing a different idea than you intended with your OP.
                                          
                                          It sounds like you are talking about a specific case. Or at least, not a case of public promotion by the owner/author. Assuming you are speaking of someone's 'private' data that is only being stored—not displayed or distributed, then my first thought is that the storage companies have no responsibility, or authority, to censor that data.
                                          
                                          They may have the power, but I can't see any justification for the authority.
                                          
                                          But, let's make it a more specific and tricky scenario. If, the data/image was not the original creation of the one storing it, (for instance, if it was a family image that was taken from the 'Net without permission), then I could see a justification for the "storage company" removing it. Almost like a copyright-infringement justification.
                                          
                                          GA

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                  promisemposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  So Good Morning America can show porno on TV to boost ratings?

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                     wildernessposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     One person's porno is another's art, setting aside the whole "child porno" thing.
                     
                     Given that, yes.  Good Morning American can show porno on TV...or would you rather throw the CEO in prison for showing a pic of Michelangelo's "David"?
                     
                     The whole "I cannot define it but I know it when I see it" is more than a little inadequate.  Even when used by a member of SCOTUS it is ridiculous as a useful part of law.
                     
                     (As an aside, I don't find your question to have anything at all to do with child pornography.)

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            Hxprofposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Why not? Aren't companies (platforms) ultimately responsible for what they allow on their sites?  I understand that individuals are "publishing", but once child pornography is published, regardless of who did it, it's on YOUR platform, and arguably, regardless of the terms you have with those who're publishing, you (platform) are partly accountable.

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      Stevennix2001posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Well considering Amazon did allow the book "how to be a pedophile" to be sold on their site for awhile with no concerns whatsoever, I'm not surprised.     
      
      Honestly I'm not sure how to answer your question because even if sites like Amazon, Facebook and etc do all scan photos for the authorities to request on demand, it's not going to stop photos like that from leaking online.   Plus there are vpn services out there that can block a person's location from the authorities as well.   
      
      Plus even if they do take down the photo from the site, there's no guarantee those same photos won't pop up somewhere else as the internet is forever.    Even if you delete something on it, the thing you delete never truly goes away because people can screenshot conversations and whatnot even before you erase what you post or say so I'm not sure what to tell you.    I do feel bad for victims like that.
      
      Heck I have a friend of mine who was a victim as well whom I brought up in another comment thread awhile back so I can certainly understand how frustrating it can be when assholes get away with shit.

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   Kyler J Falkposted 4 years ago

   I think the war on child pornography is a bit like the war on drugs. The more you try to fight it, the more you create a market for it. 
   
   Now, I'm definitely not saying normalize it by any standard so please don't misconstrue that last statement, but I am saying that companies such as Facebook and Amazon are required to relinquish any information they have depending on the laws of the area in which their servers are based. Often this leads to the arrest of individuals who used the platform for illegal doings, and the relinquishing of all information available to the site to the agency that requests it.
   
   So if the servers are in an area like, say, Serbia then the content stored on those servers are subject to the laws of Serbia.
   
   Therefor I don't think the issue should be about breaking a privacy policy that is legally bound by the laws of the land, the issue should be getting lawmakers to eliminate the loopholes that allow withholding evidence to be legal.
   
   Attacking or otherwise disparaging the companies who are simply using the law to their advantage, like any good business does, is counter-intuitive to combating child pornography and the criminals who concern themselves with it.

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   Kyler J Falkposted 4 years ago

   I would also like to add that both of these companies have an automated process that works in conjunction with the algorithms of other companies, like Google, to auto-identify and disable the accounts of the perpetrator sending the files. Send a picture, that those algorithms recognize the exif data of, and say goodbye to your account access forever, though they will keep the content in case of proper legal action against you.

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