Child sexual abuse material could be going undetected because of ‘false reports’
iwf.org.uk
iwf.org.uk
I wonder, with the rise of deep fakes and CGI, why a company hasn't come up with a business model offering professional rendered synthetic child pornography. It seems to me that there would be demand for it, and if an ethically un-encumbered product is indistinguishable from the real thing, much of the demand of child sexual abuse imagery would evaporate.
I suppose law enforcement could use it in sting operations. but if it proliferates wouldn't it still be illegal otherwise? seems legally and morally fishy to me.
And people who play Grand Theft Auto inevitably go out and run over hookers with their car or seek out videos where such things happen in real life. Oh wait...
So it's nothing at all like playing GTA.
Sure. If you take a sample of people with absolutely no interest and a sample with people who do have interest you would find the sample with interest would be more likely to attack someone.
Does the consumption of CP drive the desire or does the desire lead to the consumption and subsequent unwanted behavior in some people? Is punishing people for their desires and driving them underground really helpful? All to sate our sense of disgust? Is this even compatible with due process?
Ideally, you would advance technology such as to make artificial alternatives indistinguishable from reality and produce robots. Or whatever it takes. Disgusting? Sure. But, it is better than the alternative and it preserves the high standards we set for our liberal democracy.
You keep out of other people's business and they keep out of yours. No one tells you how to live your life, so long as you don't bother them.
I've also seen studies trying to show the opposite, or trying to show that there is no causation either way, so I don't think there is anything resembling a consensus on this issue at all.
It probably is at least somewhat. Violent video games have also been shown to increase feelings of aggression in lab settings and in some cases even foster sexist attitudes. I mentioned this to you in another comment, but Gary Young's The Gamer's Dilemma book is a very good book-length treatment on the issue of virtual violence vs "virtual pedophilia".
Not in the US it isn't.
Forgive me if I'm interpreting this incorrectly, but are you really saying that you'd vote for a law (which, usually means prison time) for people who 'exploit' non-real children? You need to go into more detail as to your definition of exploitation, or clarify what you mean by 'real or otherwise'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Ca...
Relevant:
Many filters censor all of it, regardless of legality and boast 99% abuse detection rates with a low false positive rate. Some filters only the more realistic content.
Realistic content does admittedly have a problem where it may become difficult for a human to differentiate it from unlawful content. Although in that particular case, it is hoped it would end up competing with unlawful content and drive demand for it down.
People with some degree of awareness to the children harmed to produce the content will not want to contribute to it when there are other avenues which are virtually indistinguishable. It may be possible to do outreach in legal outlets to raise awareness of harms or provide resources to prevent them from committing serious crime.
Alternatively, how many layers down do you have to go of NNs training other NNs before it's ethically okay? If your answer is "infinite" then that is the ethical equivalent of homeopathy where a solution of a bunch of random chemicals is diluted to the point that there is 0% of the original left in the sold product. Interesting question.
It's all fruit of a poisoned tree.
It's an difficult ethical dilemma. How are we categorizing the harm done to victims of child pornography? Is it based on how many different people see the same image or just the number of times the images was viewed in general? Obviously the victim isn't getting some sort of electric shock every time somebody sees the image.
Do we include it additional harm if the identifying features of the child in question are unavailable? What if the victim doesn't know they were part of the training model or that there are even images of them on the Internet? Would it be ethical if training data from children in non-pornographic situations was used? What if somebody had child pornography made of them but allow their image to be used (donated?) after they were 18?
I'm not claiming to know the answers.
The incident with YouTube was a sign that some people are a little disconnected from society. They went around random videos uploaded by children posting flirtatious comments and highlighting timestamps of them in compromising positions.
You could argue them viewing the videos alone was immoral. But their conduct was just atrocious. I don't know how it got into their heads that something like that is acceptable. I really hope we could teach them a thing or two about common sense, regardless of whether viewing images is moral or immoral.
Training models is complicated. Whoever it is is going to want to have the rights to their likeness. This would be after they are of age. In theory, you may be able to teach an AI with many images how to produce a generic person.
They will never find out is a bad mindset. It is true in many cases they won't find out and they may be better off not knowing what someone is doing. But when and if they find out, it will happen in the worst possible way at the worst possible time and it will blow up really badly.
In the extreme, to produce better models, your business would eventually be incentivized to create new data... but if you limit yourself to the usage of data collected as a byproduct of stopping criminal activities, it's not clear to me what the morality case should be.
A historical example might be the nazi human experiments -- the experiments themselves were horrendous, but now that they've been done and we have the results, is it unethical to use that as the basis for further, ethical, research? That is, would it be unethical for me to read the outcomes?
It's a very complex issue. My read of the linked article is that, at a minimum, the victims whose likeness is used should consent to its use. Even given that, I'm not sure that our society would tolerate such an endeavor.
Assuming this is a course people would agree to take, would it faster to convince society to adopt a new mindset or would it be faster to create ethical alternatives?
depends on the jurisdiction. at least in the us they're not illegal per se.
> U.S. law distinguishes between pornographic images of an actual minor, realistic images that are not of an actual minor, and non-realistic images such as drawings. The latter two categories are legally protected unless found to be obscene, whereas the first does not require a finding of obscenity.
States have obscenity laws that restrict sale and advertisement of this content, but possession cannot be banned by obscenity laws. Think about the mess that would be enforcing this law. You can't objectively determine the age of a fake character, unlike a real person.
It is certainly a mess, but that doesn't stop jurisdictions outside the United States from prosecuting it.
Also, who in their right mind would build, QA, or market such a soul crushing product.
Some Taboos will remain Taboos despite “hurting no one”.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.h...
As such, this paper does dispute the argument that porn leads to higher rates of sexual assault. It does not provide evidence for porn being an outlet that prevents crimes. The distinction is important.
Some people have an OCD which makes them obsess over children but they're not interested in them per say.
Some people insert themselves as children. This could happen due to abuse and neglect in their childhood or other factors. Some people are into certain aesthetics and media like cartoons and are not so interested in actual children.
There are two proper types. Exclusive and non-exclusive.
One is the exclusive who are alien in thinking. Instead of thinking of adults as romantic or sexual partners, they're wired to think of children. Without adequate socialization, they may even think of it as harmless to do. Education is vital.
They will be very lonely and depressed throughout their lives as it is impossible for anyone to allow them to do such a thing. I can't imagine someone going their entire life without ever fantasizing or looking at some sort of porn. Even as an escape. It isn't healthy not to do so either. It would only serve to make them more frustrated and to adopt an antagonistic relationship with society.
The non-exclusive aren't just attracted to children.
You can have schizophrenia that is well controlled and work a job - or be on disability, for example.
You can have thoughts and not act on them, though. If someone realizes that their attraction is to children, yet understands that it is something that hurts them and therefore, doesn't act on it and doesn't view child porn because people are hurt in it... I'm not entirely sure they are doing anything wrong. Not only that, but I don't think we help this category of folks either.
It isn't that I agree at all, but not everyone with ill thoughts act on them. I'm not entirely convinced that fake porn is going to hurt anything. Sure, I find it absolutely disgusting, but no one asked me.
If you are going to dig into this, though, I fully suggest you go off on "barely legal teen" porn, a good amount of manga, and every image that makes young folks into sexual beings, though you are going to have issues around puberty since folks are becoming sexual beings themselves and it is generally good to have trial periods on things like clothing and makeup and hairstyles.
Repugnant or not, it’s a lot less repugnant than the underground crime circles that exploit and traffic real live human children. The demand is there regardless of how they get it, so it’s worth at least discussing if synthetic images would result in a reduction of real live children being involved in pornography and/or being trafficked.
I think your parent is asking the question: why is it repugnant?
Is it repugnant because children were harmed in the manufacture of the images, or is it repugnant ipso facto?
And if it is repugnant ipso facto, is that worth having a strict liability crime on the books, when no people are actually being harmed (in the case of fake child porn)?
In other words, why should it be illegal to have fake porn of children, but not illegal to keep spiders as pets?
Lets try to put a number on it. How many children would you allow to be raped, to prevent someone from making or viewing fake child porn? Ten? A hundred? More?
A commenter linked https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.h..., in case you think this scenario is unlikely.
The case against filmed CP is straightforward: minors are harmed in the process. But what is being harmed in generated imagery? If nothing is harmed, what is the basis for it being immoral?
Once Pandora's Box of deep fakes is open, are we going to permit racists to generate genocidal imagery to slake their hatred for $ETHNICITY ?
I mean, as long as only fake Elbonians are dying unspeakably, it's OK, no?
Because the same people who just gotta have that stuff would never want to operationalize that ickniness, would they?
How about just "no"?
Umm... yes?
I could be mistaken but I’m pretty sure this Is currently perfectly legal in the United States.
I'm saying this sounds like folly.
I wouldn't be surprised if you knew a lot of pedophiles personally, you just don't know they are pedophiles because they never told you, don't engage in illegal activity, and are otherwise indistinguishable from the rest of society.
Most every study we have shows a decrease in real sexual activity linked to an increase in available pornography. We have no reason to believe child pornography would be any different. This was of course irrelevant as we had a duty to protect real people.
Now we are in a strange situation where effectively; 'virtue signaling' maybe causing child abuse.
It would not. Sexual crimes are not (only) about sex, they are about exercising power over a victim. Downloading real images of abuse is driven by exercising that power vicariously. If anything images like those you suggest would only fuel demand for the "real thing".
You don't stumble upon that many images of child sexual abuse in normal web browsing.
The law does not discriminate between someone pursuing images for their own usage or to report them. If it did, every criminal would be able to use reporting them as a defense in court and look at them for decades.
Possession / viewing / downloading is illegal because it is very difficult to get probable cause for distribution. Some of them encourage distributors as-well. If viewing was legal and it led to more reports and content being taken down, that would be positive but it could go the other way with it being harder to pursue.
They note: "Do report only once for each web address – or URL. Repeat reporting of the same URL isn’t needed and wastes analysts’ time."
Well, surely they could implement a filter to only allow reporting the same URL once.
Further they note: "non-criminal adult material from pornographic websites"
Surely, there could a be a whitelist for major legitimate porn sites with an automated response that those sites are legitimate businesses not hosting illegal material.
Pornhub is currently in hot water over allegations that they have been negligent in keeping child porn off the site. I don't know whether or not those allegations have merit, but it is certainly the case that child porn crops up on mainstream sites from time to time.
Here's one relevant article:
That probably only works for sites that are run by producers. They're already required to keep extensive documentation of the actors' ages. The content is also curated (i.e. it is only their own catalog).
That doesn't work for the YouTube style sites where videos are uploaded by random people, with (I'm guessing) no verification of age.
As an aside, I am curious how much of the CP they can actually check just from a URL. I know nothing of the practice, but I would have assumed most of it was locked behind private forums or the like where you need a username and password to actually see anything. Maybe CP opsec is just much worse than I imagined
I don't know why this is standard practice in the US but it rubbed me the wrong way. LE should be taking the lead on this.
Also this NYT story: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-...
IWF is the British hotline.
They exchange information with each other and pass information through to law enforcement after reviewing it.
Different hotlines may differ in what reports they're willing to take depending on what's banned locally. IWF is legally mandated to take reports on cartoons. NCMEC isn't in theory but they might take it and pass it onto the user's country due to lack of manpower.
As a comparison, CERT operate the same model: informing them of an attack can lead to them becoming bound into LEA activity which requires them not to disclose.
IWF was set up to allow ISPs to find and remove that content without being criminalised for taking action on it, and then to safe-guard the children who were in those images and videos.
Expansion into computer-generated imagery follows from changes in UK law that made computer generated images of child sexual exploitation, (and also images involving sex with corpses, realistic depictions of rape, and realistic depictions of acts that harm genitals) illegal.
> In 1996 the Metropolitan Police notified the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) that some newsgroup content being carried by UK internet service providers (ISPs) were indecent images of children. The police believed this may have constituted a publication offence under the Protection of Children Act 1978 (England and Wales) by the ISPs. Efforts were then made to find a way to combat the hosting of such content in the UK whilst protecting the internet industry from being held criminally liable for providing access to the content.
> Following discussions between the former Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police, some ISPs and the Safety Net Foundation (formed by the Dawe Charitable Trust) an R3 Safety Net Agreement regarding rating, reporting and responsibility was created by ISPA, the London Internet Exchange (LINX) and the Safety Net Foundation. A key outcome of the Agreement was the formation of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).
> The IWF was established to fulfil an independent role in receiving, assessing and tracing public complaints about child sexual abuse content on the internet and to support the development of website rating systems. Since we were set up in 1996 we have been operating a Hotline service for the public to report potentially criminal content and we have been issuing ‘takedown notices’ to UK ISPs in partnership with the police so they can remove the content.
> The Hotline was formally launched in December 1996 to combat child sexual abuse images and criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK. Since then we have been continually improving our practices and developing unique services for the internet industry to help them make their services safer for their users.
>We take reports on UK-hosted non-photographic images of child sexual abuse, such as computer-generated images. The images we can take action on must be of children, pornographic, grossly offensive, and focus on a child's genitals or depict sexual activity involving or in the presence of a child.
More detail here: https://www.iwf.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-assess-and-remove-c...
It's rich to complain about people wasting time that could be spent on "real abuse imagery" when this organization is also going after cartoons. Maybe they should sort that out first?
Also, the HN title is inaccurate. The article claims these reports are mistaken, but does not say they are fraudulent. In fact, I do not see fraudulent reports mentioned in the article at all.
There is a specific case of deliberately fraudulent reports mentioned in the article. Or highly likely to be such. An individual who makes thousands of false reports despite being repeatedly reminded not to do so.
I don't really mind it. I'm just clarifying my rationale for the previous one I chose. The new one is fine as it's closer to the original title of the article.
Are they devoting substantial resources to that? I can see an argument maybe for the law criminalising non-photographic images so someone can't argue images were computer generated when they are in reality probably real. It isn't exactly in line with the assume-innocent principle but people get angry about skirting child abuse so I can see the pendulum might be tilted a little the other way on this issue.
If they are actually going after cartoons that seems pretty stupid. There are real problems in the world they could be working on. Like, say, child abuse.
There are so many obvious ways to close that loophole that don't involve criminalizing provably-fake images (such as making an exception for when the images are obviously fake, or can be irrefutably proven as such), that I'm forced to conclude that criminalizing cartoons was the lawmakers intention.
It's the law that is the problem not the organization. Originally these laws where made to protect people. But over time the laws became a moral enforcement on people. For obvious reasons no politician did intervene and the people who made the law celebrated them self as the heroes who protect the most vulnerable. The same flaw in laws are made over and over again basically every time something is made illegal that does not actually hurt or put other people in danger. They just make whatever illegal and think its doing something good or even solves a problem. Whether its illegal images, videos, audio, books, games, substances or tools. Even descriptions on how to create "that illegal thing" are made illegal. On top of that the laws are sometimes conflicting like you are not allowed to store or transfer certain illegal data but at the same time you should hand it over to authorities. You may also not be allowed to delete it as it could be evidence of a crime. Or worse you may be the owner of something illegal that someone gifted to you. Sounds stupid but there are places where the content of your mailbox digital or not is considered your possession although anyone can drop in whatever they want. In the end such laws put people in danger rather than protecting people.
It’d be a great honey pot.