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Comment by 4ugSWklu | Hacker News Reader

This does already exist somewhat as the INTERPOL Baseline list - https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Crimes-against-children/Bloc...

Does this meet your threshold?

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If national legislation by Western governments provided that only signatures from this org could be included, then I'd support it. But I don't know anything about this INTERPOL list, does it actually require consensus by all of these countries? Or can one country influence what's included in practice? There has to be an effective veto by all the countries involved for anything to be included.

“To be included in the Baseline list, child abuse images and videos must be recognized as such by our specialist network of investigators, and meet specific criteria in terms of the severity of the image content, for example those believed to feature children aged 13 and under.

The strict criteria ensure that the Baseline list refers only to images and videos which would be considered as illegal in any country.”

INTERPOL has a very large membership, including Russia and China. The baseline list is reviewed so only media that is illegal in every country INTERPOL operates in is included.

I’m not sure how a veto system as you’re suggesting would work practically, but this might be the closest thing.

The veto system would have to require that the equivalent of Russia and China's NCMEC agrees that the image/video's signature that's going to be included in the database is actually CSAM at a low level operational level. Without that consensus, it should be technically impossible for anyone to include a signature.

I think in a perfect world that would be great. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see how a system like that could ever be implemented within our lifetimes.

I personally think Baseline is a good pragmatic approach. It includes only known media, where they retain the originals for sense checking, and only includes things judged to be CSAM by trained experts. It’s probably the lightest touch possible solution that is still somewhat effective.

I don't see why it's impossible. It requires coordination and millions of dollars in funding by all the respective governments, but if the world thinks CSAM is a serious problem, then it's a drop in the bucket.

CSAM doesn't need to be added to the database in real-time. It can be done quarterly, giving each national agency time to deliberate on the content.

If you'll forgive this tangent, I am not sure it is a good idea to maintain a "worst of" list. I can already imagine pedos competing for first place.

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