>Yesterday i got raided for someone sharing child pornography over one of my Tor exits.
Reason #1 why I will never run a tor exit node. I don't want to make it easier for child predators to get off nor do I want the legal issues they bring.
Reason #1 why I will never run a tor exit node. I don't want to make it easier for child predators to get off nor do I want the legal issues they bring.
I mean, yeah, don't run a TOR exit node because of the legal risk - that makes sense. Or because you're afraid it makes it easier to hurt kids... well, I don't know if it really does, but at least your heart is in the right place. But what business is it of anyone else who gets off?
Furthermore, the reason you hear of child porn rings is because those are what form - people share it with each other in a tit-for-tat sort of way. It absolutely incentivizes the production of more, which means more abused kids.
God damnit HN, I should have known a thread on a Tor node being shut down would bring out all the child porn apologists. Funny how that happens, eh?
> Are you seriously defending child pornography right now?
Please don't do that. There's rarely hard and fast boundaries between what is X and what isn't X (e.g. what about someone who looks like a child, but is a perfectly normal adult in all other respects), so one must be able to discuss issues without it escalating into every party involved proposing tougher and harder punishments for more and more borderline cases. http://lesswrong.com/lw/ls/when_none_dare_urge_restraint/
> Pedophilia is a paraphilia. The desire grows as it is fed.
[Citation needed.]
[citation needed]
"Furthermore, the reason you hear of child porn rings is because those are what form - people share it with each other in a tit-for-tat sort of way. It absolutely incentivizes the production of more, which means more abused kids."
You believe in driving pedophiles in corners, and are then surprised that they group together in said corners you just drove them into. I'm not sure how that was an unexpected result?
"God damnit HN, I should have known a thread on a Tor node being shut down would bring out all the child porn apologists. Funny how that happens, eh?"
I should have known a thread on a TOR node being shut down would bring out all the irrational witch hunters. Funny how that happens, eh?
This does not make sense. A video of a crime != crime. And no, I am not defending pedophiles - but I am defending the stance that you should not be sent to prison for any kind of video you might have in your possession, as long as its not a video of you committing a crime,in which case, well, it's just an evidence against you.
I'd imagine it's like any other prohibited material or substance; drugs, counterfeit goods, pirated works, etc. Of those implicated, a small minority are involved in production, while the vast majority are simply consumers.
I assume you are willing to at least acknowledge the existence of the latter group; people who simply consume child pornography and play no part in the production, or any sexual abuse of children for that matter.
Do you really think it is appropriate to ruin these peoples' lives — splash their names across the newspapers, lock them in jail, destroy their career, their relationships, make them a social pariah — for mere possession of child pornography? For having a certain sequence of 0s and 1s on their computer?
Their demand of it CAUSES IT TO BE MADE.
Jesus, I've never seen so much bending overbackwards over CP. Hey guys, we still have the first amendment and SCOTUS always rule sensibly on speech issues. No one is going to start a police state over CP enforcement. The slippery slope doesn't always happen, in fact, its rare that it does.
Same applies to indecent exposure laws, I guess. At what point did we decide the human form is indecent in its unclothed state, and people should be deprived of their freedom for exposing their natural form in public?
At what point did we decide people should be deprived of their freedom simply for looking at images of children in their natural, unclothed state?
But when we're talking about images and video depicting child abuse, that's a different situation altogether.
I mean, you can shout it in all caps, but I don't know if we can really say that's established as fact.
But it's pretty disingenuous to claim that people in this thread are defending CP. The issue is far more nuanced than that, but we all agree that people taking pictures/video of themselves hurting children is terrible. It's just that from there the discussion moves into pragmatism and how we should actually be dealing with it as a society. Pedophiles are a fact of life, and it's better for everyone if we can find ways for them to satisfy their urges without hurting anybody, instead of waiting for them to do something horrible so that we can punish them for it.
Just to be very specific because people love to misinterpret me on this point: legalizing CP is not a solution that I am advocating. A benign outlet" will, by definition, have to be something that does not harm children.
>Hey guys, we still have the first amendment and SCOTUS always rule sensibly on speech issues.
Seriously?
So what happens if a spammer sends millions of CP images to inboxes? What do you think of a situation that instantly makes millions of people felons? Is that a reasonable law?
Here is my, I believe, moderately informed opinion.
As http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pd... makes clear, evidence that we now have says that widespread availability to porn has coincided with a massive decrease in rapes. Caused? Very hard to prove (as with most social statistics). But definitely coincided and there likely is some causal effect.
If that happens with regular porn, the natural expectation is that it is likely to happen with specific kinds of porn as well. If so, even though we don't have proof (and proof will be very hard to come to), we should be inclined to believe that the "harmless outlet" concept is likely valid.
Moving on, let's address your "paraphelia" comment. My opinion is that paraphelias are sexual orientations that we dislike for fairly good reasons. However all evidence that I'm aware of says that sexual orientations exist, have poorly understood causes, and are permanent. Penalizing homosexuality did not stop it, nor did allowing it create more. When we didn't have operations to allow transgendered people to become their mental gender, they still wanted it just as much. And so on and so forth.
Pedophilia is just another sexual orientation. (Actually many subdivisions exist, some are interested in girls, some in boys, some in both, some also are attracted to adult women, etc.) You aren't attracted to men or women, you're attracted to children. As with homosexuality, it isn't likely to ever be cured. Unlike homosexuality, there can be no possible consent, and expressing it is fundamentally against our moral values. Unfortunately sex is a very strong urge, and denying tends to fail in the long run.
There is no evidence that any sexual orientation is affected by availability of stimulating materials. Therefore it is unlikely that child porn contributes to the existence of pedophilia. As for incentivizing - anyone who thinks that sexual beings need to be incentivized to try to do what they are wired to do doesn't understand sexual drives. Full stop.
I give it better than even odds that if you get to this point, you'll think that I'm a "child porn apologist". You'd be wrong about that.
Why?
Because, as I said, child porn is interesting to pedophiles. Evidence that I've seen says that pedophiles actually will abuse children. Repeatedly. If you can track them down through child porn, and book them for that, you're probably doing the world a service.
It is kind of like going after Al Capone for tax invasion. It is not exactly what we didn't like him for, but it was what we could get him on.
Incidentally my opinion on whether child porn should be criminalized will change very quickly if I ever run into evidence that some combination of therapy and availability of child porn can allow pedophiles to remain in society and abuse at an acceptably low rate. (The idea of an "acceptable" risk of child abuse is revolting to many, but public policy accepts the idea of an "acceptably low" risk of all sorts of things, like death, dismemberment, etc. And, honestly, we're implicitly accepting that there is an acceptable risk of abuse every time we underfund programs to find and help people who are at risk...)
Glancing up I caught the phrase "just another sexual orientation." There's no point in arguing with this crap.
You people need to get out of this virtual bubble where child pornography is somehow a divisive issue and into the real world, where real children suffer real abuse at the hands of real people so they can get their rocks off. The lack of empathy is just stunning.
Pedosexual acts are forbidden because there is no possibility of free, informed, consent. There is an asymmetric power relationship between an adult and a child that the adult is probably not aware of. For this reason, and this reason alone, pedosexual acts are forbidden.
It's entirely reasonable to believe an adult and a child could have a healthy sexual relationship and some people will testify they had such relationships as children. The crucial point is that it is never possible to ascertain this was actually the case and is ever actually the case. If you are a pedophile in a sexual relationship with a child, it is entirely unreasonable to believe your relationship is a healthy one. To be on the safe side and because we cannot possibly differentiate, there is a blanket ban on such relationships.
Pedophilia is not forbidden. Like homosexuality, it is a minority sexual preference. However, unlike in the case of homosexuality, society is unlikely to ever allow relationships in which the physical acts to which this preference leads can have a place. As such pedophiles need to learn to ignore their feelings. They need help in doing that and we should support every single one that acknowledges his problem and seeks help.
Pedophiles are not people that abuse children. People that abuse children are criminals. Usually they are also pedophiles, but that doesn't mean you may interpret it the other way around. Most thieves are heterosexuals.
Now as to the issue of the Tor exit node. The fact that this instance deals with child pornography is entirely irrelevant. It may as well have been illegal medicine sales, exchanging stolen information or other illegal activities.
Coincidentally, most of opinions here are being expressed with the help of the (optional) pseudo-anonymity allowed by Hacker News. Few would be willing to have such discussions with the same level of honesty offline or on Facebook given the public's level of hysteria. It would put a person in real physical danger.
I should also note that I have personal reasons for having investigated this topic. Details are private. But I would be moderately surprised if you, for all your righteous outrage, have as much relevant background on this topic...
It doesn't make that thing wrong.
A sexual orientation is simply, "This pattern sets off the circuits in my brain telling me to get turned on." You can have an orientation that results in normal heterosexual relationships. You can have one that results in unusual relationships that harm nobody. You can have one that results in a desire to do very, very bad things.
The outcomes of those orientations are very different. But, fundamentally, they are similar feedback loops. And therefore our expectations for what causes them, and how difficult they are to change, should be similar.
Before disagreeing, review my words and find where I've said anything indicating that I consider pedophiles a "victimized group". Please don't miss the part where I said that I personally am OK with criminalizing child porn because most of the people you find consuming that material are likely to be pedophiles, who probably have offended.
I personally view pedophilia as a mental disease, but beating the shit out of them or burning them on the steak isn't going to fix anything. If people didn't react like you do when it comes to pedophilia maybe we'd have an easier time working with them to isolate what goes wrong to create this and begin to work on a fix.
Evidence suggests that sexual attractions undergo changes throughout life. Different specific urges can strengthen or weaken or shift in focus, based on various inputs. People only rarely go from "attracted to men" to "not attracted to men", but it's pretty common to go from "primarily attracted to 12 year olds" (when you're 12) to "primarily attracted to adults" (when you're an adult).
There is some truth to the claim that "outlets" correlate to reduction in violent crime; there is also truth to the claim that "outlets" can increase desire for specific types of stimulus. As far as I know, there aren't any studies that explore the net effects of "outlets" on pedo/hebe/ephebo-philia or sexual abuse. So we don't really have evidence one way or another as to whether legalizing CP or other "outlets" would increase or decrease abuse. (Virtual CP could be considered a harmless outlet, but it's illegal in both the US and EU, and appears to be unstudied as a treatment option.)
One of the most unfortunate things is that possession of CP, even if it's virtual or fake, can result in larger penalties than actual abuse. While I understand nailing Capone for tax evasion, it would be inappropriate for tax evasion to be a more severe crime than multiple execution-style murders.
I also note that sometimes people only belatedly come to accept their attractions. For instance I know multiple lesbians who were able to live heterosexual lives well into adulthood before first experimenting. In the cases that I know, afterwards they claimed to have always had the attraction, but never followed up on it.
To me also there is a world of difference between "attraction to people with adult bodies" (even though young) and "attraction to sexually immature people". A grownup who strays with a 15 year old girl has committed a crime, and it likely should be a crime, but that's likely not a person who will commit crime after crime. But a person who has sex with a 10 year old boy, probably is going to be a serial criminal, and should be treated very differently in my opinion. However in US law the two are treated the same.
I would add that there's a world of difference between "attracted to" and "has sexual contact with", regardless of the level of development. This ties back to the question of whether there are ways to create safe outlets for those with strong attractions to young people -- can the attraction be indulged in a way that reduces abuse? Can the attraction be treated by harmlessly redirecting it away from real children?
In terms of whether it is a crime, I am inclined to agree. But then we get into thorny issues such as whether people who are mentally retarded can ever consent.
In terms of biology and mental wiring, the level of physical development matters a lot. I personally cannot be attracted to a woman without breasts. I separately could not stomach the idea of a relationship with a 15 year old, but I can notice that one is attractive. My mental block for, "Never have any hint of a sexual response," is missing.
Complicating everything is that youthfulness is strongly associated with attractiveness, particularly in women. Most men would prefer a 25 year old woman who looked 18 to a 25 year old woman who looked 32. This may be biological and might have important consequences on our history. For example read http://www.davidbrin.com/neoteny1.html (go on to parts 2 and 3 as well) for some reasonable speculation on this.
I should also note that there is a huge disconnect between what I'd cite as facts, and emotional reactions. And emotional reactions vary a lot by person. For instance I personally am disturbed that so many men want women to not have pubic hair - a characteristic that only naturally occurs in prepubescent females. To me that is uncomfortably close to pedophilia. However I believe that most of the American public does not see this desire as particularly grotesque.
I would add that there's a world of difference between "attracted to" and "has sexual contact with", regardless of the level of development. This ties back to the question of whether there are ways to create safe outlets for those with strong attractions to young people -- can the attraction be indulged in a way that reduces abuse? Can the attraction be treated by harmlessly redirecting it away from real children?
I have heard of no efforts into redirection. (Not that I would have.) But we definitely do try to reduce opportunity. This is the point of the existence of laws forcing convicted sex offenders to be in a public register, not work with children, and to live away from schools. Unfortunately "convicted sex offender" and "pedophile" are two different things. Also we wind up with problems like the only legal place for sex offenders to live being under a bridge. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle_Causeway_sex_offen... for confirmation of that.)
There is a well-known saying among lawyers that difficult cases make for bad law. Unfortunately everything about this topic is rife with difficult cases, and the law that has sprung up reflects this. :-(
I personally cannot be attracted to men. I think dudes are icky. But I don't think this gives me a valid claim to say that nobody else should be, or that those who are have something wrong with them (indeed, I'm glad my wife does not share my aversion to males.) As you say, emotional reactions vary a lot by person. They don't form a very solid basis for law or morality.
Some people are attracted to children. Regardless of how gross that seems, it is reality. And the major problem with this reality isn't that the attraction is gross, but that it places children in danger. So how do we best prevent abuse? Certainly reducing opportunity is a part of it, both through (better) sex-offender laws and through policies that make it hard for adults to be alone with single children (many schools, scouts, etc. have strong policies to this effect.) Having strong legal punishments for such abuse might also be valuable. It seems important to also identify and treat those with such sexual attractions, and there are a few options [0][1], but it appears they're not terribly successful. At least one prominent researcher thinks there could be greater success if the medical community put more resources into it [2]. But society has been trying to "cure" other types of sexual attraction for quite some time with limited success, so I'm a bit dubious.
The end result is that we have a fairly bad set of laws, and little in the way of effective treatment, for something that tragically affects far too many children. So I must agree with your final statement -- :-(
[0] http://whyfiles.org/154pedophile/2.html
[1] http://www.minddisorders.com/Ob-Ps/Pedophilia.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Limitations_of_treat...
No, it is a mental illness. I claim that there are zero pedophiles who were not subject to heavy abuse as children, and that this abuse was almost certainly sexual.
(I'm talking about attraction to young children in particular; there's a world of difference between 2 and 16 years old.)
Yet it is true that pedophiles often come in families with a history of pedophilia.
[citation needed]
Where did I defend child pornography? I advocated finding harmless sexual outlets for pedophiles. Not the same thing.
Here's a really good rule of thumb you can use when examining your own reasoning: if you find yourself attacking a point because you think it could serve as a premise in an argument for a conclusion you don't like, then your objectivity has been compromised. Arguments must be judged on the merits of their premises, never the other way around.
In any case, research (e.g. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-010-9696-y) suggests that legal possession of child pornography is linked to a decline in child sexual abuse rates. That does not imply that we should legalize the possession of child pornography, but it does strongly suggest that benign outlets for pedophiles are helpful in reducing child abuse.
In contrast, the only evidence available that such outlets would encourage child abuse is a number of longitudinal studies on convicted child molesters. Such studies are incapable of establishing a direction of causation, and it is extremely likely in this case that the relationship is spurious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_relationship). Both child molestation (A) and consumption of child pornography (B) are caused by the lurking variable of pedophilia (C).
But this is crucial: real child pornography is not a benign outlet, and I never suggested that it was. What I said was that the problem is children getting hurt, not pedophiles getting off.
Child pornagraphy is not an abstract concept. Child pornography isn't outlawed simply because it's obscene. Child pornography is outlawed because it is depraved, frequently violent imagery or videos of real children actually being violated. This is not speech. This is one of the most horrific, most sadistic acts that a human being is capable of perpetuating against another. It is worse than murder; these victims usually survive what happens to them. (There are a few situations where images are faked, i.e., by photoshopping children's faces on adult bodies, but this represents a drop in the bucket.) This idiot was dumb enough to run a anonymizing network that he knew could be involved in illegal activities. He ran several nodes despite this, knowing and accepting that the Tor network would shield the identities (for the most part) of the actual criminals using his systems as through-ways, leaving behind his IP address as the sole traceable link.
Will he be convicted of possessing and/or distributing child pornography?
Probably not. Tor is not as anonymous as people think it is; an FBI forensics team will probably be able to track down the real criminal. In such case, this idiot will probably be off the hook. But if they are unsuccessful in backtracing to the real criminal, he will be the sacrificial lamb offered up by the prosecutors for this crime. His conviction (and trust me, there will be a conviction if this goes to trial) will serve as a warning to others: if you want to use Tor, make damn well sure you aren't a pass-through for child porn.
Please reread my comment and tell me where I defended either of those things. You seem to be saying that you're a lawyer. I'd have thought that line of work would require a modicum of reading comprehension skills.
>It is worse than murder; these victims usually survive what happens to them.
Oh for fuck's sake. Do you know how incredibly demeaning and psychologically harmful it is to victims to tell them that they'd be better off dead?
>This idiot was dumb enough to run a anonymizing network that he knew could be involved in illegal activities. He ran several nodes despite this, knowing and accepting that the Tor network would shield the identities (for the most part) of the actual criminals using his systems as through-ways, leaving behind his IP address as the sole traceable link.
Yes, because there are obviously no legitimate and noble reasons to have anonymizing networks.
>if you want to use Tor, make damn well sure you aren't a pass-through for child porn
I'm not sure you understand how Tor works.
The book (and The World Tomorrow interviews at http://assange.rt.com/ from whence it spawned) go on to explain why these arguments are extremely bad for the internet. We have to protect the freedom of speech for everyone, or there is no freedom of speech.
[1] Kubricks Lolita could be illegal in germany now http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056193/
Possessing a certain sequence of 0s and 1s does not cause harm.
Making bad laws unenforceable is the point of anonymity. But you've got to take the end of good laws along with the bad.
The same way we've been catching criminals for years. Surveillance, warrants, legal due process, etc.
I really don't feel that some reasonable tools in the hands of law enforcement but also checked by the justice system need to encroach on anonymity, TOR or any existing technology. Because despite these technologies, it's remarkably easy for a person to get caught if law enforcement is determined to catch him if they use the same tools they’ve used for generations.
A knife can be used to cut a chicken, it can also be used to kill someone. You would not deny your neighbour when he asks to borrow a knife because "you could kill someone with it".
The risk that your neighbor will use your knife to kill someone is far lower by comparison. Additionally, the risk that there is a legal threat should they choose to do so is also quite low.
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html.en#WhatAboutC...