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Comment by cousin_it | Hacker News Reader

Congratulations, now you understand who benefited when the media created the pedophilia scare.

I confess to being a total conspiracy theory nut on this topic, and go out of my way to defend "sex offenders" in any online discussion I come across. Sadly this is not enough. We're up against a monstrous evil machine made up of mostly good and well-intentioned humans and there's no apparent way to defeat it.

Think about it: who should we blame for the persecution and near ostracism of the article's author? The journalist who honestly warns the public about pedophiles? The media executives? The lawmakers? The police? The whole chain is structured to remove accountability, letting both idea creators and executives sleep peacefully with a clear conscience. The end result is the poor person facing a giant senseless Machine, thankful to be alive after narrowly avoiding its grinding gears. It doesn't have to be this way, people.

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This stopped being about the defense of the vulnerable long ago. Once the laws were put in place that make it illegal to show non-children as if they were children, it became thoughtcrime, the persecution of people because they think differently than the rest of society. If a photograph shows an adult dressed as a child, or is entirely computer generated, then sure it's yucky, but what's the harm?

So it seems like one place to break the cycle of hysteria is through lawmakers, to roll back the thoughtcrime laws to the level that they're only protecting the vulnerable rather than punishing people for having weird thoughts.

(Off topic: Of course, the same things can be said about the war on drugs, and the obvious damage that it has done, but lawmakers aren't exactly falling over each other to undo their damage in that area either)

I'd go a step further and say the yuckyness is in some cases purely subjective. You probably know about the guy who got into hot water over his manga collection. This is a clear example of a culture clash. For an american, or european, everything involving drawings of children in sexual contexts is at least distasteful. Strange as it may seem, there are cultures where "sexy" is closer to cute then to porn.

It's probably one of those things which 60 years after will sound _really_ weird, like blacks had separated restrooms or homosexuals liked to rape little boys.

You can not fight the materialization of thoughts without fighting these thoughts. If enough people think X, X will be normal sooner or later, even if it was illegal. It is normal that Women and minorities have equal rights with white men now (on paper at least), in contrast to 100 years ago. Think pedophiles won't be normal in 50 years? Sounds perfectly plausible to me.

if enough (democratically enough) people think that pedophilia is ok, why would it be wrong to legalize it? As a second counter argument, lot of people transiently have thoughts to kill, but its not legal even today.

If anyone hasn't seen it already...

(Brasseye: Paedogeddon)

Part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7jVnrfoZD8&feature=relat...

Part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcnQDYnGtS8&feature=relat...

Part3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA07Tw4iEFw&feature=relat...

I would definitely blame journalists and the government. They did NOT report the dangers of paedophiles honestly. They grossly exaggerated the level of risk and mislead people about the sources of risk ("stranger danger").

Where did the process screw up here? Regardless whether he was running a Tor server or not, you don't think that the link between his IP address and child pornography was enough to warrant a search?

I would think that the Police, or a judge in particular (who allows this warrant) would require at least one more piece of cooberating evidence before 'breaking someone's door down'.

Like what? The thing is, if he was a real paedophile they would have needed to act fast before other harm was done and before he would destroy any evidence. The part that sucks the most in this story is the period of time for which his computer was seized. It was absurd to seize his computer for 4 months.

> Like what? The thing is, if he was a real paedophile they would have needed to act fast before other harm was done and before he would destroy any evidence.

Why would police suspicion of an IP address trigger any knowlege by a miscreant who uses said IP address? (While miscreants who know that they're being watched may do something, surely police can know a potential suspect's IP address and gather additional evidence without tipping him off.)

But what "additional evidence"? They enough evidence to link the ip address to a serious felony. If you lend someone your car, and they try to drive it across the border with 20kg of cocaine, expect them to come crashing through your door.

The last time I looked, my car wasn't much like a computer connected to the internet. Since they're going to claim technical expertise in the warrant ....

In any event, I was addressing the assumption that quick action is required as soon as the police know an IP address. It isn't.

As to the additional evidence, some indication that it was actually received at the guy's computer. After all, I'm pretty sure that the police don't raid the post office.

That's the funny thing. About what harm exactly are we talking about? If it's downloading "illegal material", then the harm was done a long time before. If it's producing, then evidence should be abundant, and the best strategy would be to gather more evidence before alarming him.

But you see, he wasn't even told the offense. And neither have we. That's the magic of child porn - you'll never see a journalist trying to dig deeper into such cases.

This has always been inherent in "the process." It's just that child pornography is particularly easy to vilify, as it likely should be. But in the past, there have been similar scares using witches, communists, homosexuals. Now there are Nazis and child pornographers. (Heck, I've even seen people trying to vilify Nazi child pornographers!)

I think more attention should be placed on the broader issue of Human Trafficking. We know this is real, and child pornography constitutes some fraction of it. It's just a lot easier for the police to get ahold of an IP and break down somebody's door.

Right, but the 'scare' is an orthogonal issue to how law enforcement acted in this instance.I'd expect the same response whether it was human trafficking, stock fraud or racketeering.

Human trafficking is real (I was actually offered to buy someone once), but in child abuse cases it's usually a parent or somebody close to the family.

I wouldn't be surprised if it would be easier to identify them if distributing child porn would not be illegal. I cannot imagine somebody starting to abuse their child in order to post a video. But I can easily imagine somebody who's already been abusing the child taping it.

The problem with paedophilia is that it is extremely difficult to enforce. It is not as if a 5 year old kid will walk up to a police station and file a complaint. The internet made it near impossible to enforce paedophilia laws.

If the cops have to cause a mild inconvenience to 50 people to successfully prosecute one bad guy - then so be it.

From what people say, the police are remarkably unsuccessful at prosecuting CP producers and distributors. They're good at prosecuting consumers, but I think that's like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. (Of course, fighting crime is always like that...)

> think that's like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

The problem is this: either something is a crime and the police enforce it or something is illegal. Just because it is difficult to enforce a crime does not mean that the crime should not be enforced.

> If the cops have to cause a mild inconvenience to 50 people to successfully prosecute one bad guy - then so be it.

"mild inconvenience"?

If it's a "mild inconvenience", surely you won't mind paying for n instances, for non-trivial n. You've used 50 above, so let's start there.

Are you personally willing to pay for the "mild inconvenience" suffered by 50 innocent people?

What? You're not willing to pay? You're only willing for other people to pay?

> If it's a "mild inconvenience", surely you won't mind paying for n instances, for non-trivial n.

For all crimes there is a false search rate. A good example is a normal drug "bust" or a stolen property bust.

And yes - with the enforcement of most laws there is an inconvenience. A good example is a traffic stop - they check your license, check if the driver is drunk, check if the car is stolen, check for outstanding warrants of arrest and they may search the car.

What is the right number of car stops by police to enforce the law?

CP is more difficult because people can do this without going outside the home. That just means that the police should occasionally check inside the home.

I'm not questioning that it's an inconvenience or that there will be false positives.

I'm pointing out that "mild" is inaccurate.

In ducking my question of how many of these "mild inconveniences" you're willing to pay for, you concede that point.

Let me suggest that the more costly the inconvenience, the lower the acceptable false positive rate. And, if the inconvenience is serious enough, the folks inconvenienced should be compensated. (And, no, you don't get to bargain away the compensation by letting them off of something else that you wouldn't have found without the false positive.)

One benefit from compensating folks who are "inconvenienced" is that forces the relevant parties to do a better job in minimizing the total cost (which is proportional to the false positive rate multiplied by the cost of the inconvenience).

It's amazing how people's priorities depend on who's paying.

In most countries, if the police performs any raid on your premises all costs (e.g. fixing doors) are paid for by the state. I also doubt that the cost of doors is that high (compared to other expenses).

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