BT Blocks 10,000 Child-Porn Site Visits A Day 503
jb.hl.com writes "The BBC is reporting that British Telecom, the predominant telecommunications company in the UK, is blocking 10,000 attempts to access child pornography a day. In the first three weeks of the system being operational, BT allegedly blocked 250,000 attempts to view such pages. They apparently have no idea how many of these hits were accidental, or caused by malware. The block affects 2.5m of BT's customers. Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, said with regards to privacy concerns that "we don't know their motives or who does it and honestly we don't want to know"." onion2k reminds us that we first mentioned the block in June.
How do they know what's child porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they have staff consisting of "smut surfers", that surfs the web and makes note of URL with unwanted content?
Although I'm of the opinion that free spech doesn't nescessarily secure the rights of spreading child porn, I always get a little suspicious when I read about these things. I always think "what can or will they block next".
Think of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do the newspapers and others think of the internet as only www?
All the fools who think that 'disturbing' pictures are blocked now, amazing!
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like it'd be no big deal to actually find out if these people are doing it intentionally, but looking beyond it, the implications of usage monitoring is just looming ahead.
Shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
250,000 attempts is one attempt for every ten subscribers. Does that sound realistic? Hell, if you're a BT broadband paedo are you going to continually hammer on the sites, or consider that a firewall is in place and either give up or go elsewhere?
Who thinks that the BT marketing arm is inflating those figures? After all, what sites are they counting? How are they counting? Are they looking for malware? I somehow doubt even 10% of those numbers are really from the sex offender types.
This type of reporting is dangerous. People think that these type of people are more prevalant than they are, they react by denying kids a normal childhood in the name of safety. Meanwhile 'child porn' becomes a convenient black brush to daub all over anything, or anyone, someone wants to attack.
If child porn really is this prevalant, why is no one asking why?
Re:How do they know what's child porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact they're not sharing their blacklist with the public, and that blacklisted sites simply get 404d shows that even they're not convinced as to its quality. If a blacklisted site was marked as such inappropriately, it's be a lot easier to complain about it rather than just assuming the website is down.
And lets be honest: This is going to save no kids from child pervs. Cleanfeed gives the impression of a safe internet, when it does nothing about usenet or p2p (which i'd assume have far more kiddie porn than the web), and simply serves to put kids in more danger by letting parents think they don't need to supervise their kids use of the internet. It's simply a warm fuzzy feeling for lazy parents. Great.
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
It's better to say "You can't prosecute the people who we're blocking because we don't know if they really wanted the page or just got tricked into loading it not knowing what it was." because then there's no need for them to bother with a log that they'd have to turn over.
FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt this will lead to actions taken by people who don't even understand what the internet is or what's going on here.
From an earlier slashdot article, a comedian got a member of parliment to say, in all seriousness, "Using an area of the Internet the size of Ireland, pedophiles can make your keyboard release toxic vapors that can make you more suggestible." [slashdot.org]
Re:Scary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that every 10th BT user is making one attempt. It's that the 1/10000th or so customers who are malware victims are making hundreds...
Internet Watch Foundation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Their definition of child pornography is...? And I trust this organization because...?
Unless 1/5 internet users on BT are attracted to children, I think Internet Watch Foundation is using overly broad definition of child pornography.
Re:FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, you're on the money about the "pedophiles are more common than they really are" thing. The UK media, BBC included, is locked in a perpetual state of moral panic, in which paedophiles lurk in every chat room, on every street corner and in every cereal box. A TV programme [wikipedia.org] caused major (and I mean MAJOR-questions were asked in Parliament, tabloid newspapers went berserk-anybody who knows the Daily Mail knows what that means) outrage after it questioned the seemingly unfounded moral panic. I personally thought it was one of the funniest things ever made, but people were very offended, despite never having actually watched it.
So there you have it. We have a media which is currently in the middle of a massive deviancy amplification spiral [wikipedia.org], and this frankly fucking stupid move by BT is just an upshot of that.
I'm sure other Brits will back me up on this: it's all a load of crap.
Re:Motivation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents have an extremely hard time coming to terms with the fact that their little boy/girl/hermaphrodite is growing up and becoming a sexual creature, and so there's all sorts of FUD about the subject.
16 is an arbitrary limit set by the Victorians when there was an outcry about the number of child prostitutes working in London at the time.
People mature at different rates - some people aren't ready for sexual experiences till they're 18-20. Some a lot longer before. Until society has a way of looking at the situation on a case-by-case basis we have to work with an arbitrary number which means that 90-95% of those over it are "ready".
And instead of villifying those labelled as paedophiles, we should be trying to work out what has gone so badly wrong in their sexuality that they are attracted to a person who hasn't developed sexual characteristics yet, and see if they could be cured.
"Kids messing about"...I know somebody who was told that was all that happened to her. She still wakes up crying sometimes, 10 years later. No simple rule will suffice to adjudicate all cases.
Re:Think of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funnily enough, the article has a screenshot showing "...ictures.erotica.teen...", clearly a Usnet binaries group; but I doubt these are blocked -- no mention of NNTP.
Also was flabbergasted by the statement: ... told the Today programme: "Every image of a child that appears on the internet is an image of a child that's abused." -- WTF??? I really hope that he was misquoted, or is this the same mentality that bans parents taking photos at school pantomimes because it might excite paedophiles?
Home Office minister Paul Goggins
And it's rather disturbing that "anyone trying to access such a site would be presented with a message reading 'Website not found'." Why not be honest about it -- "this website blocked as illegal to view under blah blah blah. If you believe this is in error, please fill out this form anonymously if you wish it to be reviewed."
Re:Why block child pr0n ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that its illegal and not moral to watch, but still it seems like sertain people have an urge for it.
Those sites are blocked because it's contents is illegal, duh.
In order to produce this crap children (who are by definition not able to consent) are abused and based on societal consensus this is not acceptable, period.
In the days of yore... (Score:3, Insightful)
The contractor came back and said that they could save 60% of their disk space, but since he also analyzed their NNTP logs he told them that porn was also their major source of revenue.
They're still around. Guess which path they chose.
Re:Motivation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh wait, that's what people want most of the time. Silly me.
Re:Think of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the perpetual moral panic that is Britain. On your left, you'll find the latest bullshit paedophile scare which has no grounding in reality. On your right, you'll find out how nobody wants sexually active kids to have safe(r) sex because they shouldn't be active in the first place, leading to an increase in teen pregnancy rates which forms the other moral panic just ahead of you.
Any wonder why I want to move to Canada?
Isn't this police matter? (Score:1, Insightful)
Just filtering it is no good.
Good beginnings != good endings? (Score:5, Insightful)
2004/ child pornogaphy is blocked
2005/ pornography is blocked
2006/ anti-bush websites are blocked
2007/ all weblogs are taken offline
1984/ freedom is slavery
this may be a little bit extreme, sure, but it's axiomatic that freedoms are lost in tiny increments.
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Although almost no one can agree precisely on just what child pornography is, since even the concept of "child" is highly amorphous. ("Honey, I'd really like to just take your picture, but that might be a crime, so why don't we just fuck. That's black letter legal.")
A friend of mine has come up with the only working definition that seems to apply. Child pornography is whatever gives a particular judge in a particular case a hardon.
In practice that means that one is only convicted of child pornography by someone who could be legally classified as a paedophile.
KFG
Another reason fro all those hits (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How do they know what's child porn? (Score:3, Insightful)
KFG
Looking the other way? (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't look like useful information (Score:3, Insightful)
Which would be typical of pop media sociological reporting. One of my old soc profs wrote a book called Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists. His favorite quote was "Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled". Which, of course, meant that if a kid did, in fact, get gunned down in 1950, we must have hit a billion child gun deaths by 1980.
Re:Small Minority? (Score:4, Insightful)
What you said: Is that why: "one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of sixteen"
The reference [coolnurse.com] you quote, lists the definition of abuse, as:
...and continues: (My highlights) "Of course, this list goes on. Sexual abuse involves forcing, tricking, threatening, or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse occurs when an older or more knowledgeable child or an adult uses a child for sexual pleasure.
The problems with statistics like this is definition of the sexual abuse. There is a huge difference in the listed items (rape vs. "peeping into bedrooms") - especially to the child. I personally don't consider peeping into the bedroom of my child a sexual offence, but rather that I care about my child.
In the "offender"-part, there is also a big difference if it is an adult, or an equally aged child that does it. Childen below 15 ARE interested in sexual affairs, and often explore these things with their friends - primarily verbally or through imagery. Stating that this is sexual abuse is IMO problematic.
So getting an overview over the amount of offences isn't easy, as it is very hard to get good information about it. I think the information provided in the article, as well as your reference is bad statistics, because the definitions are way too broad to be of any use.
Re:Motivation? (Score:3, Insightful)
On a purely physical level the sheer size difference causes trauma that leads to scarring and in females fertility problems in later life.
Our instinct towards the next generation should be to protect and nurture, not use them for gratification of desires. We are not apes. We go on and on about how we're better than animals, yet people use animal behaviour to justify the worst excess of human behaviour.
Ducks have been known to have sex with the corpses of dead ducks. Many animals kill each other. By your argument that means you don't mind if I beat your brains in and repeatedly rape your corpse.
Re:Think of... (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost anyone who uses Usenet, especially binaries, subscribes to a "premium" news server. And aside from these, there are many companies that run their own news servers to provide support (such as Opera, news://news.opera.no/, Corel, news://cnews.corel.com/, etc). And as for selectively blocking groups, that just spreads the problem, as people just start using random groups to exchange porn, etc.
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
it's not that i agree with censoring any webpage, but let's not make BT look more "big brother like" than they really are.
now, my personal view is that *nothing* should be blocked, but people should be educated instead. type in "child porn" or "kiddie porn" in google, and you will find a plethora of sites saying it is a bad thing and how you can fight it (no i didn't use 'safe search'
information is freedom. but people need to know what to do with freedom... and there lies the challenge IMHO
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
I total agree
Yes everyone agrees that child porn is a bad thing so actions like generically blocking access to child porn is seen as a good thing and easy to get users to approve off, but keeping a database of every users surfing habits just because they happen to hit a child porn site once is a bit much to ask the users to accept.
For example I used to work at a university where we implement a porn monitoring system which would try to block access to sites "deemed" to be pornographic. That went over ok with the facility and stuff but once we mention that we keep a history of all the block sites (ONLY the block sites) they tried to visit all hell broke lose and the monitoring was switched off.
It is all really just a matter of where you draw the line I suppose.
Re:How do they know what's child porn? (Score:4, Insightful)
Scary? Scary that you make such an assumption? (Score:3, Insightful)
Britain isn't a paedophile-free society (Where is?) but assuming that all the access attempts are genuine, conscious attempts to access child pornography is very dangerous assumption to make.
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
In an ideal world this would be the case.
But ... People know child porn is wrong, and they look anyways. Educating them won't change their habits. Imposing very long term jail sentences won't change them. Pedophiles do not get rehabilitated, and surfing for child porn is something they can do in the safety of their own home (or so they think).
Re:How do they know what's child porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the scary bit. I'm not a child molestor or a paedophile, but I use the web a lot, and I'm not a stranger to the occasional bit of pr0n. We all know how easy it is to get redirected to a site, to download a deliberately mis-named file through P2P, to click a file in a newsgroup that isn't what you expected, or even to have your computer compromised and "evidence" placed on it.
The way I see it, if you get caught doing any of these things, the level of hysteria in this country, and the public pressure on the police to "stop these monsters" means the burden of proof is on *you*. People are not prepared to believe anyone charged with these offences might be innocent. The file's on your computer, the ISP log says you were at the site, ergo you're fucked. Even if you are acquited, remember that "there's no smoke without fire".
So, you're probably going to prison (as a "nonce"), when you get out you're on the sex offenders list, and if the moral majority get their way, that list will be public. Anyone can go to the library, find out where you live, then come round and set fire to your house while you're asleep. (Look what happened when The Sun printed some names and addresses from said list.)
Even if you did it deliberately, five mintues looking at a couple of pics (which might very well disgust you anyway) really shouldn't be enough to destroy your life.
It's staggering that people will swallow the argument that some loser tugging over pics he found on USEnet in his spare room is what perpetuates child abuse. BUT THEY DO!
This government seems intent on making us all criminals. Preferably ones that are easy to catch and fine. It shows they're tough on crime, getting results, and keeping our children safe, and how could it be easier to catch criminals than to make up a few new web related offences, then sit back and watch those log files? That's where it's heading, and it's frightening.
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:1, Insightful)
Many believe censorship in general is a slippery slope, and to quote comedian Dave Attell, what two women, a donkey, and midget do in front of a video camera is their own business, leave it alone!
Re:How do they know what's child porn? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Canada soon to be even worse (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is child porn illegal? (Score:2, Insightful)
An example: Ted Bundy publicly stated that he started his warped thinking with reading soft-porn detective novels. He then got into the girlie magazines, and eventually started reading S&M and got into violent sex videos. Once he got that taste, it didn't stop. He assulted many women and eventually started brutally killing them.
ANY pornography changes the way one thinks, whether you start looking at women in a different view, or you start to look to different ways to "satisfy" your sexual urges, it still has a profound impact on your reasoning.
I think the Pope said it best:
"(there is a) growing reluctance to acknowledge that all men and women receive their essential and common dignity from God and with it the capacity to move toward truth and goodness."
"Detached from this vision of fundamental unity and purpose of the whole human family, rights are at times reduced to self-centered demands: the growth of prostitution and pornography in the name of adult choice, the acceptance of abortion in the name of women's rights, the approval of same-sex unions in the name of homosexual rights"
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
Up to that point, i'm sure ISP's had been keeping tabs on how much bandwidth file sharing programs were taking up, but since they had the ability to track down specific people, they started turning over names. Yes they were stopped, but child porn isn't musc & there are some very strict laws floating around about child abuse/porn.
Unless it's established that they are not allowed to track/log specific information & tie it to users, it is essentially at their discretion. We'd need a British lawyer to straighten things out because I'm not sure how strong British privacy/protection laws are when a crime like paedophelia is involved.
Re:'Child' Pr0n (Score:2, Insightful)
Man is by nature a polygamist, but U.S. law makes that illegal, so we don't do it. The purpose of laws is to bring structure to society, and we cannot ignore them because it may be against our nature. These laws are not meant to keep mature men (and women) from viewing whatever they want. They are to keep members of society who we do not deem responsible to make mature decisions (people under 18) from making mistakes that may scar them for the rest of their lives and to keep people from taking advantage of that social immaturity.
I am wholly against the idea of indiscriminately blocking a whole group of websites for a whole group of people. It is the proverbial first step on that slippery slope. However, we should be angry about the censorship itself, not about what it is censoring.
Re:'Child' Pr0n (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only that, but from an evolutionary standpoint we've only been preventing sex with teenagers for maybe 50-100 years. Man has been around for at least 1,000,00 [bbc.co.uk] years. Do you think Caveman Joe was waiting around until she was 18 back when humans had 30 year lifespans? Hell it was probably acceptable in the 1800-1900 to marry a 15 or 16 year old. It still is in many parts of the world. It's just religious dogma and groupthink that perpetuates this trend of men being some kind of monsters while the media shoves images of over sexualized young women down our throats.
It's really stupid too, because it takes away from the real meaning of pedophillia. It's like when people call George W Bush Hitler. He maybe a right wing fanatic, but it takes away from the horror of the holocaust when you run around calling everyone Hitler. But hey, anything is alright as long as you are going along with the groupthink right?
Re:Why is child porn illegal? (Score:2, Insightful)
The major difference seems to be that in the case of child porn, the pictures are a large factor in the abuse happening in the first case. This is almost never a motivation in murder (snuff films being largely a myth).
So it is an attempt to stem demand. You won't stop it, but you may reduce it, and so reduce the abuse.
Then there is the victim's privacy. I really doubt they want people legally owning pitcures or film of them being abused, although you could certainly extend that argument to other crime victims (or their relatives).
While a murder scene photo may be legal, I'm not so sure about sex crimes. Is it ever legal to knowingly posses pictures (or film) of someone having sex who either hasn't or can't give constent (to both the act and recording it)?
I'm a work, so I'm not Googling for the answer to that one. Ultimately I guess its illegal because our society view sexual crimes and crimes against children as being particularly disturbing, and posessing pictures of them for the purpose of getting your jollies is considered unacceptable.
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
BT isn't the only ISP here, but it controls the network used by nearly all ADSL providers, and they are talking about applying the filter to other ADSL sellers "on a non-commercial basis." [bbc.co.uk] There are a few ISPs around that don't use BT, including cable companies NTL [ntlhome.com] and Telewest [telewest.co.uk], and companies that take over the phone lines from BT such as Bulldog [bulldogdsl.com].
I don't like the fact that blocked pages are replaced with a "Website not found" message rather than a message explaining why the page was blocked.
Re:How do they know what's child porn? (Score:1, Insightful)
Except this isn't true. Various posters within this thread have pointed out that kiddie porn is present in large quantities on P2P networks. It seems to me that the pervs are trading, rather than buying, this stuff, which makes BT's blocking fairly ineffective. You cannot stop any sort of cyber-crime the same way you stop real life crime. In this case, there is no supply and demand based economy (since data is replicable), so blocking the sites will have no impact on real world abuse (i.e. it will not reduce the amount of child porn being made).
RsG
Re:Why block child pr0n ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
If they really can't be rehabilitated, I suppose I'd rather have them surfing the web for child porn than actually wandering the streets looking for children.
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
Most 11 and 12-year old females are sexually mature. Do you honestly think you'd try to have sex with a 12-year old? Your post indicates you would. If that's the case, you're very twisted. I don't care how "mature" and how much "consent" a child that age gives, they're not a fair target for sex.
In addition, regardless of sexual maturity, our culture artificially keeps minors more mentally and emotionally immature than their physical age and intelligence could otherwise account for. Anyone aiming for minors is only out to satisfy their own sexual desires, not looking for an emotional or intellectual connection. I'm not saying there aren't mature minors, but any grown man aiming for them, as far as I'm concerned, is nothing but a self-serving danger to society, because there's nothing coming out of that kind of a relationship other than sex. If you're just in it for the sex, then you are the one that's wrong, not the rest of us, and you can't be in that kind of relationship for anything else.
Re:Stuff and nonsense (mostly nonsense) (Score:5, Insightful)
In my state the age of consent is 17. In the closest neighboring state it is 16. In a country just a 4 hour drive away from me it is 14. In the next closest country, one I have driven to, it is 12.
By black letter law.
You need to read up on the age of consent yourself.
. .
The age of universal agreement would seem to be under 12. Is that the age you had in mind for child pornography, or is there perhaps still some area of disagreement here? In any case the age of 18 is black letter law.
3)A pedophile is, legally, one who engages in acts with children which are prohibited.
You also need to read up on the current methods being used to test for paedophilia. They use a "dick polygraph" now, only unlike the regular kind it's even less accurate (assuming that's even possible) and have legally compelled people to be subjected to it, "for the children."
You're a troll, and you would appear revel in posting flame bait. Positively none of what you've said has any factual basis. .
4) And this is simply false, a troll and flamebait.
KFG
Re:Stuff and nonsense (mostly nonsense) (Score:2, Insightful)
What I was saying is that if you were 60 and had a 15 year old girlfriend in Canada and a 16 year old girlfriend in Vermont it would be perfectly legal to hit it, but not to take its picture.
The case where both partners are under the age of consent is uninteresting. It is the case where one partner is over the age of majority at 18 and the other under the age of majority (and thus not legal for pics) but over the age of consent (and thus legal for sex) where the philosophical interest lies.
KFG
Re:Offtopic (Score:2, Insightful)
I expect the/you Brits will be hearing from Ashcroft soon, if you haven't already (see the current brouhaha over copyright terms).
This doesn't mean that the issue is irrelevant to Americans, however, as the Justice Department under Ashcroft has now started prosecuting Americans for their legal behavior out of the country, thus it is concievable that Americans could be prosecuted for viewing images in Britain that are legal in Britain, but not in America.
KFG
Re:Accidental vs. Deliberate, Trend Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that the child porn exists indicates there are still children being abused to produce the porn. In addition, all that surfing is going to increase the demand for the material, and thus lead to an increase in the abuse itself.
IMO the surfing is not a safe activity. It is the activity partaken in lack of opportunity. Would you rather surf porn or have sex? The porn is a placeholder until the opportunity for the real thing presents. Why would that be any different for a pedophile? I don't know the "hunting" behavior of pedophiles, whether they actively seek or whether they're just opportunists -- but I can't beleive that feeding their desire with the porn is going to somehow make them docile.
Besides, as I already pointed out, producing the porn itself requires the very behavior we're trying to avoid. Even the faked child porn is unacceptable because according to what I've read, pedophiles often use these images to trick their targets into beleiving the behavior is acceptable or normal.