Facebook criticised over handling of reports of child exploitation content
bbc.com
bbc.com
That's either Kafka-esque levels of bureaucratic crazy, or a very well-concocted trap...
Yet - unbeknownst to you - that file contained something so illegal, it would cost you your life if you knew about it.
Is possession of that file still illegal? Or does it only become illegal when you have knowledge of its contents? Does having that knowledge then entail a potential for "thoughtcrime"? What if you (somehow) imagined the exact information that was contained in that file - before seeing the file? You now have the knowledge, but you never saw the information - is it now illegal? Or - what if you created a very large number that matched the unencrypted value of the file? Does possession of that number become illegal?
Illegal enough to forfeit your life?
That being said,
In Florida, it is treated much like drugs.
Most cases are constructive possession and in such cases The prosecution has to show:
1. You had knowledge of the presence of the contraband
2. You had knowledge of the contraband's illicit nature.
3. You had the ability to excercise dominion and control over the contraband.
I read a case in which a person had, on their person, a over-the-counter Tylenol bottle. Inside the bottle was Tylenol w/codeine, of which they did not have a prescription for. They were convicted of possession of a controlled substance. Their conviction was overturned on appeal because there was no evidence showing that they knew the substance in the bottle was actually Tylenol w/codeine as opposed to just Tylenol.
Proving those three is a giant rabbit hole. Researching this was extremely eye opening for me, and if you live in a similar state, I would suggest you research it as well.
In your example, if there was no evidence that you knew what the encrypted file contained, and no evidence that you knew the password/key to the file, then only the first bar would be met -- knowledge of its presence, and thus your case could never even go to trial -- even an okay lawyer would get it dismissed for lack of evidence.
Now that 'evidence' word is very squirrelly. If a detective says you told him you knew what was in the file, that counts and the case goes to trial and a jury gets to decide whether you actually knew what was there. With drug cases, they might listen, weigh the facts, and be sympathetic. With a child porn case, not so much. Yes, the detective would be perjuring himself if you did not actually say that, but how do you prove that? That's one of the reasons any lawyer will tell you NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE. If you excercise your fifth amendment and do not talk to them, they can't put words in your mouth.
A site with a ton of information on this is http://www.ejdirga.com/criminal_offenses/drugs/florida-drug-...
Edit: add IANAL disclaimer at the top
If you take a picture of somebody looking at child pornography on a monitor, you could be charged with creating it. If you see it on a website, and report it, you could be charged with receiving (and possibly possessing).
Why?
Although in the US we have stupid rules like if two teens who are dating share photos of themselves with each other they can wind up on a registry for life.
* Not saying I actually want that to happen, but just pointing out that "strict liability" logic breaks down real quick.
I can guarantee you, it isn't.
He also was not allowed to share the evidence with anyone in his office: no interns, paralegals, assistants .. only people who were directly involved in the prosecution.
I think this might also be why Microsoft seemed to only have one individual looking for so much of this content. He might have been given specific clearance with Microsoft/the justice department (the guy that was in an article a few weeks back for suffering from PTSD from that job).
While I can understand this at one level, at another it disturbs me that a lawyer hired (in some manner) for the defence would refuse to look at evidence to determine whether it met the definition of "illegality" in order to present an effective defense for the client.
Without doing so, the lawyer had no way of knowing what the images consisted of - were they merely going by what the prosecutor told them? Isn't that some kind of abdication of responsibility to a proper legal defence? Could the defendant get a new trial because of this?
If this was your trial, and you knew you were innocent, would you want to hear this from your defense lawyer? Or would you rather hope that the porn star in the images showed up at your trial to absolve you (which recently happened to some poor bastard)?
who in a Jury is going to check those images?
Anyway. Yeah, there is hell lot of information that should be illegal. It's not just the information itself, it doesn't exist in a context-free vacuum
There are roughly two kinds of
> "information wants to be free" proponents
The newer kind, who are of the "post-privacy" persuasion, who don't believe privacy is actually possible in this evermore connected world. Sometimes this includes a value statement of whether that's something good or not.
And then there is the traditional kind who's philosophy can be rougly summarized as "Public information should be free, Private information should be protected".
The slogan "information wants to be free" describes the tendency of information to proliferate and the value this brings to societey, and in any useful interpretation does not mean "Every single bit of information should be free .. whoops I forgot that my browser history is information".
Documentation of the exploitation of children clearly falls within the boundy of information that is private and should be protected, yet these things are shared all of the time, highlighting how information "wants" to be free.
I don't see how you are constructing a hypocricy here.
It also creates a chilling effect on someone who winds up saving they don't want to save (browser caching!) and want to report it to the proper authorities.
It also makes framing someone easy. Just send them a link...
That certain collection of bits, can enable you to create smallpox, ricin, a gun, a nuclear bomb and all sorts of other things, can't it?
But information so powerful that merely having it should be worth automatic prison time? With no possibility to safely report the possibly much more harmful act of transmitting it or using it?
No such information exists.
That's why I used "enable", but point taken.
> But information so powerful that merely having it should be worth automatic prison time?
I don't think any prison time should be "automatic", but I do think that there's information that you should not be allowed to possess. In my view that doesn't include your examples, because that sort of scientific and technical knowledge, as you correctly point out, doesn't make a lot of sense to criminalize.
It does however include another human's private information that they did not consent to. What that entails exactly, is not clearly definable in all cases and I believe is open for argumentation, but I firmly believe depictions of sexual exploitation falls well within that area.
The general rationale that I have for this, is that someone else possessing my private information gives that other person power over me. That is bad, in my view, because it creates inequality. Now, one could argue that a society in where all information about everybody is available to everyone. But clearly, we don't live in such a society.
How do you figure? If someone has on their person a thumb drive containing your.. by way of example: PII, bank account info, and browsing history for the last week - but isn't giving it to anyone else, using it in any way, heck, they might not even know they have it:
How, exactly, do they have power over you? Be specific.
We can, and should criminalize those two things, but we're not talking about use or transmission, we're talking about existence.
For a sobering thought experiment, consider how many times someone may stumble across video or images of sexual exploitation, and then make the rational decision to scrub their history and cache rather than report it because doing the right thing opens them up to life-ruining liability.
A part of me wants to apologize, because I wasn't using that narrow of a definition, and under it, I think you are correct.
The other part of me likes arguing on the internet.
You're of course correct, that just by mere existance information is not power, nor is it anything else, nor is anything else. But to tune one parameter of an issue to an extreme that make the entire issue absurd, is not a useful way to have a conversation about a real life issue.
The point being, that of course existance implies the possibility of use and transmission.
Clearly, nothing is dangerous just by existing without the possibilitiy of interaction with it's environment, not guns, not anthrax, not information, and clearly not humans.
But the whole point about something "being illegal", whatever it is, is that there it the possibility for it to interact with the system it's a part of.
We are talking about the legal system, which can and does make that fine grained of a distinction. Creating, transmitting, or being in possession of certain kinds of data are all specific, individual crimes.
The absurdity of the issue under discussion is the entire point.
You seem to be of the opinion that just because things are digital means they can never be dangerous. Your opinion is very wrong. A collection of bits on a hard drive is very much able to kill people.
Criminalizing the use and transmission of some kinds of information makes sense. I've yet to hear a convincing argument why mere possession should be criminalized, especially given the incentive it induces in otherwise law-abiding people to hide, rather than report. Browse the wrong web page, and you are immediately guilty, the actions you take afterward to hide it or not the difference in how the rest of your life ends.
That is not an action that a normal person should ever have to take.
Nuclear bombs aren't actually dangerous, so everyone should be allowed to have them. It's only dangerous if you actually use it as a weapon.
Smallpox isn't dangerous unless you're infecting people, we should give everyone a vial of smallpox to wear on a chain around their neck.
Children should be given hand grenades in school, I mean they're not dangerous unless you pull the pin. We would just teach them not to do that.
I completely agree with you. Weapons are just atoms. We shouldn't criminalize the possession of WMDs, only the use and transmission of them. The fact that I'm stockpiling mustard gas in my apartment is of no concern to my neighbors and the police have no right to question me until I actually release the nerve gas into my city. I'm glad we've cleared that up.
Or you are you seriously making the equivalence that information on a hard drive is equivalent in danger, scope, or really anything else to a nuclear fucking bomb? Smallpox and nukes are not "inert" even when sitting unused.
At least try to continue this discussion in something resembling good faith?
You argued that bits on a hard drive could never hurt anyone. I provided examples showing the opposite. You responded by saying that those examples can only hurt someone if they're being used, to which I reminded you that any weapon can only hurt someone if it's being used.
It's not reduction to absurdity, it's the exact and obvious truth. Stuxnet is completely harmless until it blows up a centrifuge in an Iranian nuclear facility. Which is its only designed purpose it has. And there is no way to argue that you weren't planning to commit a crime with those bits and bytes. We used a cyber weapon to physically stop someone from developing a nuclear weapon and it worked. How's that for "bits on a hard drive"?
Now tell me: how many times have we used a nuclear weapon against another human in the past 50 years? Even though we have thousands of them scattered across the country, and thousands more across the world, they haven't hurt a single soul since WWII. Sounds pretty god-damn inert to me. Meanwhile people are using "just bits on a hard drive" as weapons constantly. Not just being used by the military like with nuclear weapons. Civilians attacking governments, civilians attacking civilians, governments attacking civilians, governments attacking governments. Every single day.
So no, I'm not arguing that information on a hard drive is equivalent to a nuclear fucking bomb. I'm saying it's worse.
Right. We're done here.
..and I'm sure somewhere, someone is jerking off to one.
When someone rapes a child, they put something into them; into their body, cause permanent mental and sometimes physical damage or death and leaves them with a high chance of developing PTSD.
When someone shoots a child, they put something into them; into their body, cause permanent mental and usually physical damage or death and leaves them with a high chance of developing PTSD.
I don't know what the correct solution is either. Both are terrible terrible things. But this disconnect shows where the priorities are in our current social structures.
But the BBC found five convicted paedophiles with profiles, and reported them to Facebook via its own system. None of them were taken down."
This tidbit in the article didn't so much surprise me exactly as pop out as something that seems unreasonable upon consideration even if it looks like a good idea on its face.
Key points for me regarding this is that recidivism rates are greatly affected by successful integration back into the community after serving time, and sex offenders have the most difficulty integrating already. While there's certainly reasonable concerns around the risk of these people accessing Facebook, by the admission of the company itself it's a new type of influential global community. By banning sex offenders outright they're being othered in a way which is a significant impediment to being reintegrated into society.
That aside, at least in the US, you can end up a sex offender for life for things as innocuous as stopping on the side of a long stretch of highway to empty your bladder. There's also no unified worldwide or national database of sex offenders to check against, nor are their uniform standards between states and nations on what qualifies. This means it's both difficult for Facebook to enforce this rule at all and practically impossible to do so in a way which would only apply to people convicted of offenses we can agree qualify (molestation, rape, sexual assault).
I find it extremely odd that Facebook would willingly put itself in the position to police accounts this way and that there'd be public support for the idea of banning people outright without any basis in their activity on Facebook.
What do you mean? Facebook's business speak about being a new global community means what? People aren't being "othered" because they can't have Facebook accounts. The ability to have a Facebook does not have anything to do with getting back into society - lots of people do it (abstain from Facebook) voluntarily. On the other hand, the access a predator would have to children is a very real danger and is presumably dangerous to someone who has problems with that.
That aside, at least in the US, you can end up a sex offender for life for things as innocuous as stopping on the side of a long stretch of highway to empty your bladder. There's also no unified worldwide or national database of sex offenders to check against, nor are their uniform standards between states and nations on what qualifies. This means it's both difficult for Facebook to enforce this rule at all and practically impossible to do so in a way which would only apply to people convicted of offenses we can agree qualify (molestation, rape, sexual assault).
Do you have any stats for this? This gets thrown up from time to time, but how many people are sex offenders cause they took a piss on the side of the highway?
This means it's both difficult for Facebook to enforce this rule at all and practically impossible to do so in a way which would only apply to people convicted of offenses we can agree qualify (molestation, rape, sexual assault).
This information is readily available. Presumably Facebook can run the same check the BBC did. If they've been unfairly convicted that's not Facebook's issue, it is the courts, but Facebook does a have a very simple qualifier in most places.
Sorry if I come off as a little aggressive...it is just that in many of these cases there are real victims here and it isn't the sex offenders, it is the innocent children (or other) whose lives they have destroyed. There are cases were people are accused unfairly, but most cases are not that way (it is a major charge that is taken seriously). Sometimes people do things which are destructive to others, and there's only so much empathy when rights are restricted as a result.
Just don't personally feel that sorry for a sex offender who can't get on Facebook. If they've been wrongly convicted, they've got bigger problems, if not, then it's a privilege not a right.
How do you feel about other criminals who have been convicted of a crime, then let out? Sure, Facebook isn't really the issue here, but why are they facing impediment to being included in society? Are murderers OK to do it? How about people who steal things?
Facebook's policy is clear; the question is whether it's a just policy, especially with their aim of building a 'global community' and the almost necessity of having a social life that has some online component nowadays in order to lead a happy life.
Facebook on its own is no big issue, but if other providers follow suit, I can't help but think it is unjust or at lesat unfair.
People lived for tens of thousands of years without the Internet and were happy doing so. I don't see why it is unfair that someone who has taken someone's innocence (and perhaps their ability to have a happy life) has certain privileges taken away.
They should have already been served the 'punishment' or retribution within prison, and hopefully have been reformed. Why do you still want to punish them? Do you not think the punishment is adequate?
One of the aims of the prison system is rehabilitation into society. You're actively trying to stop that out of revenge?
We're both adults and have been using Messenger to talk to each other every day for a few years now, but nope Facebook wouldn't relent. It even froze my ability to message her from my smartphone app for a short amount of time.
This amuses me more than it annoys me, because someone at Facebook decided that it's a good idea for a messaging product to censor private conversations between adults. What on Earth led them to believe that my messaging app should be my nanny?
EDIT: Here's a screenshot of the dialog: http://oi65.tinypic.com/33wt9br.jpg
FWIW though, it's also possible she unknowingly had some sort of anti-obscenity filter turned on in her settings.
Nope, pretty sure that wasn't the case. We aren't aware of any such setting. What's really funny is that the context wasn't sexual at all. It was a medical conversation with a family member. I'd gotten the HPV vaccine earlier in the day and we were talking about it.
The image in question was from an online medical resource, and it didn't flag the image itself as I ended up sharing it directly with her anyway. I think it got flagged because the string had the letters sex in it. Or, if someone else had flagged it for some reason elsewhere... Who knows?
>When provided with examples of the images, Facebook reported the BBC journalists involved to the police and cancelled plans for an interview.
It subsequently issued a statement: "It is against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation."
I much more expected Facebook to blame their AI - which, as Zuckerberg claimed, is going to clean up Facebook just you wait and see - rather than admit outright they should go to jail for hosting the content that the reporters found.
Between this and the terrible use of Facebook to exploit Marine Corps females, it's going to take a lot more gardening in South Dallas before I believe Zuckerberg is actually interested in ethical behavior more than perceived image. YMMV.
> "We also reported the child exploitation images that had been shared on our own platform. This matter is now in the hands of the authorities."
Distinction between sending links sending images + links makes no sense in this case. Both proves BBC downloaded CP.
It sounds like some of them were regular images of children, but with suggestive comments attached. Now, that's still against facebook's TOS, but not illegal.
Edit: title has been changed to reflect source title better.
> images of under-16s in highly sexualised poses, with obscene comments posted beside them
> groups with names such as "hot xxxx schoolgirls" containing stolen images of real children
> an image that appeared to be a still from a video of child abuse, with a request below it to share "child pornography"
That's what I thought. None of the above things are illegal (well, maybe the last one. IANAL). The 2nd one was common on Reddit's /r/jailbail subs before they shut them down.
They most likely do violate Facebook's terms of service, but with their massive userbase, I bet these pop up and get removed faster than their staff can deal with them.
This incident raises the question of how a company like Facebook should deal with people reporting content. There is no concept of community moderation in FB where specific users are moderators and can deal with reports of abuse. Maybe facebook should consider community led moderation efforts until the bots are ready to take over. Community led moderation efforts (not specifically dealing with reports of abuse) generally work very well for large communities where the company building the product does not have the bandwidth to deal with moderation. Some examples that come to mind : reddit, stackoverflow.
But what are those achievements going to be based on for a site where the number one use case is to keep up with friends and relatives? How many people shared your image? How many people reacted to it? Reddit and Stackoverflow have topics they discuss, and it's easy to know what's a contribution to that discussion. My baby picture might be a big contributor to the conversation between my relatives, it might be very distracting for my colleagues.
Except the BBC didn't "report" it (provide a link to it), they "distributed" it (spread the actual content). Online hosts/services have to report distribution or they are liable: 18 U.S.C. § 2258A / https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A
CP is radioactive / considered contraband. You cannot download or resend it to anyone under any circumstances. It sounds crazy but it breaks the law -- BBC should have sent links instead / used platform reporting. By downloading to their hard drive and emailing it, they engage in proliferation.
"But didn't their browser already download it? When they saw it?" Yeah. But they had to define sharing such images as being illegal, so...I don't know how laws work.
When you detect CP, AFAIK you must report it (...ironically sending this copy is OK though I'm not sure what the full mechanism looks like) and immediately delete it from your servers. You can keep an irreversible hash to do future detection.
Also fwiw our org has some special contractor who has to identify this stuff. None of eng has to look at it, thank heavens.
A while ago, a random guy friended my sister and started posting nonsense on her wall. I checked his profile and immediately found a dozen groups full of 5-10yos in swimming costumes interlaced with softcore and Photoshop'd merges of the two. Unpleasant, illegal and against the community rules. I reported it.
In another case a friend liked a video of a chap visibly getting a blowjob at the top of a mountain. Sure, why not... But that's hardcore content that's just started auto-playing at my workplace. Reported.
In both cases I got messages back saying the moderators actively disagreed with my reports and that the content would stay.
The problem seems to be that Facebook hired teenage boys and paedophiles to moderate.
Not shocked the BBC got the same results.
I wonder if we'll see the #PizzaGate tin foil hat people being vindicated the same way that Vault 7 has vindicated the "1984" people.
People always make out like this is an easy problem, it's not. The best we can do without false positives is probably hashes - something already done (there are databases of hases of known images, and I think I remember there being a hash collision that got tons of sites reported for some normal image at some point, so even that isn't foolproof), and those are trivial to work around by modifying images in tiny ways.
Human moderation has huge cost and means that you have to give humans eyes on private content, which can be abused in itself, so you have a catch-22 there.
This is something I don't understand... the NSA is listening to everything we do, watching everything we do, but when it comes time to find criminals we still struggle. Why? If they have all of our phone conversations and emails and social media profiles and the CIA owns Facebook and the FBI doesn't need warrants and all these doomsday scenarios about how the US is a police state, why do crimes even happen? And when they do, why does it take good old fashioned police work to solve them? And why do some still go unsolved?
If Facebook is tracking everything you do across the entire web, if they know who you are even if you don't have a profile, if they're invading your privacy that much, and if they're hosting illegal content, why can't they find the real names of these people? Why can't the FBI just issue a warrant for the data and Facebook hands over the people's names and home address?
Either law enforcement doesn't want to enforce the law, or the agencies don't actually have the capabilities we've been told they do. If they had the capability, you'd think they would actually use it. But when someone is threatening to shoot up a school on Twitter, it's not NSA wiretaps that catch him, it's users reporting him to Twitter and Twitter reporting it to the police. Where's the breakdown here? What happened to ECHELON?