EU Debates Installing a Black Box On Your Computer 459
bs0d3 writes "EU MEP Tiziano Motti (Italy), wants everything you do online to be logged and saved, for the sake of the children. Like a black box installed on every computer. He proposes an early warning system of criminal activity, specifically whenever an image of sexually abused children is detected, an alarm, goes to the authorities to be able to see who uploaded it. Tiziano Motti was a politician who just over a year ago managed to get a majority of European Members of Parliament to support the proposal to expand the data storage directive to Google searches. The purpose was to protect children from pedophiles — the same excuse he is using now. His proposal involves a technology called Logbox. And just as with an aircraft's black box, Logbox is installed on computers, laptops, smartphones, and e-readers because yes, all that can be connected to the internet."
Mr Motti: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Second that!
You'd think that Italian MEPs would have better things to worry about right now, like not being able to borrow money if it wasn't for ECB and possibly not being able to pay their debts.
But no, that c.nt wants to have a way to let the government to spy on everyone.
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Most plans if this kind can be covered by the saying "Anything is easy if you don't know what you are talking about."
E-Mail to Motti: tiziano.motti@europarl.europa.eu (Score:3, Insightful)
I just mailed this to tiziano.motti@europarl.europa.eu:
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Re:Mr Motti: (Score:4, Insightful)
That’s rude. I’m Italian and I hate the situation.
And yes, I hate this fool’s proposal too.
I wonder what country you herald from? What’s your country’s worst historical figure? How about I compare you to that person?
Re:Mr Motti: (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what country you herald from? Whatâ(TM)s your countryâ(TM)s worst historical figure? How about I compare you to that person?
I'm Canadian, and I think we've already apologised enough for Celine Dion.
Fuck you Italy (Score:3)
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Would someone from Italy like to explain why you voted this authoritarian cunt into the EU. Go on! I'd love to hear it!
Wouldnt know about the italian angle, but as a dutch guy, one of the reasons to vote for someone to get into the EU stuff is to get him out of local politics, perhaps the italians were just fed up with this idiot so much they decided to "promote him away"
Also, fuck that guy.
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Re:Fuck you Italy (Score:5, Funny)
Such a contradiction in terms. Christianity is not democratic. When was the last time God ran for election?
Re:Fuck you Italy (Score:5, Funny)
Such a contradiction in terms. Christianity is not democratic. When was the last time God ran for election?
Is that you Lucifer?
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> When was the last time God ran for election?
You could say, he (God/Jesus) were elected to their currently held positions in A.D. 325 at the First Council of Nicaea, where Jesus got promoted from just being a human to exclusive God privileges by a, albeit tight, vote by those present at the council. By extension, his now official Father (sorry, Joseph!) got simultaneously a vote of confidence (of existence and supreme rule).
Re:Fuck you Italy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Fuck you Italy (Score:4, Insightful)
Is voting for Berlusconi really less stupid than voting for Bush? I hate Bush as much as the next guy, but I have my doubts in this case. Berlusconi was re-elected several times, even after it was abundantly clear that he was completely and irredeemably corrupt. Bush was an idiot, lied and instigated war, but Berlusconi appears to be an avatar of Satan himself. He was good buddies with Khadafi and Putin, likes calling German politicians nazi camp guards, has wild sex parties with barely legal prostitutes, controls most Italian media, partially as leader of the government, partially because of his own private media imperium. And he keeps introducing new laws to protect himself from criminal prosecution for all the cases of corruption he's been involved in.
Opposite Effect (Score:4, Insightful)
Studies have shown a negative correlation between the availability of porn and rape cases. IIRC this is also the case specifically with CP and child rape. If anything, this will make it worse for the children.
Not to mention the problems with a software based solution. The software will, of course, only run on certain operating systems, who is the government to mandate I purchase a particular operating system/or agree to a contract (e.g. the GPL)? Anyone who knows what they are doing can get around this anyway. Even if it calls home, it could be faked by using a VM.
Salem (Score:2)
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Wait, you are putting pedophiles in the same category as pagans, Jews, witches, anarchists, gays and communists. Terrorists, Christians and Muslims though...
Re:Salem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Opposite Effect (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Most of the computers in the world are not involved in distribution of indecent images of minors.
b) Most of the incidents of sexual indecency with a minor are by members of the family, or close family friends.
Therefore, to have a greater chance of saving more children from sexual predators, we should ignore computers and break up all families. (Liberal use of the "~" marker here, folks).
Child exploitation, of all sorts, is very serious. However, this kind of outright idiocy on the part of policy makers is starting to make me physically ill. There are so many reason why this is an awful, awful idea, and I know I don't need to spell them out.
Why can't we have politicians who can think rationally?
Re:Opposite Effect (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Opposite Effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't we have politicians who can think rationally?
They rationally play on people's irrational fears. Don't assume all politicians are drooling idiots, being a successful politician and a successful manipulator share many of the same traits.
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Never mind that, here's some statistics! a) Most of the computers in the world are not involved in distribution of indecent images of minors. b) Most of the incidents of sexual indecency with a minor are by members of the family, or close family friends.
Shhhhh. This guy will want a black box in every house if you tell him that
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I doubt anyone can code an algorithm sophisticated enough to tell whether is person is legally a child or not, let alone whether that person is being abused or not... even if these people decide it would be good to go ahead with such an idea, when they discover that what they want to do is actually impossible, the whole thing will disappear back into the void from whence it came anyway, just like every other time somebody who doesn't understand computers thinks they can be simply made to do things that are
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i.e., we should build a shitty wall, and hope no mongowians show up.
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Why can't we have politicians who can think rationally?
Because most of us don't enjoy arguing all day long which is pretty much what politicians do. Unlike the court room where they may be jurist or jury who is somewhat interested in facts to convince, these people win or lose principally on whether they can last longer than the other guys.
You must have strong opinions to prevail in that system. The type of person attracted to that job is fundamentally not the type let facts get in the way of their opinions.
BTW I am not a psychologist, sociologi
Re:Opposite Effect (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Opposite Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
They just hate internet. It is the #2 media behind TV and is still gaining importance. They want to be able to control it. They want to be able to shut down websites. They need to tackle protests.
The plan is simple : first, put a mechanism to fight against pedophilia. Then extend it to fight terrorism. Then, using the vague definitions of terrorism, use these tools to squash any kind of protest, because disturbing traffic is akin to terrorism.
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Stop thinking that the promoters of such laws care at all about pedophilia and fighting it. If they really cared, they would listen to the policemen and non-profits fighting it that censorship would be counter-productive.
You are making a fundamental mistake of logic here. Not all of the promoters of such laws are self serving, corrupt liars, a few of them are just stupid.
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You need to provide more specific sources than "studies have shown" for that statement. It is true that the availability of porn has exploded since the 90's when internet became widely available to the public. The number of sex abuse cases has not increased anywhere near as much as it would have if t
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Studies have shown a negative correlation between the availability of porn and rape cases.
Citation please. And not because I doubt you. I've heard about this before, even remember reading it somewhere once. But googling "rape" and "porn" mysteriously doesn't seem to get me to any of those studies...
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Google it.
http://classic.the-scientist.com/article/display/57169/ [the-scientist.com] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.htm [sciencedaily.com]
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Getting it in for one claim, using it for another (Score:2)
They'll try to get it in "for the children", but would rather use it to preempt people that want to release unsavory information about a politician.
It'd be a black box that precedes a black-out or disappearance.
uh, what can I say ? (Score:2)
Don't Worry (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA:
If it were China, North Korea or Saudi Arabia who had proposed this, what would we say then? It's scary in a democratic Europe to even hear a politician suggest such a thing. It is so absurd that I really hope we never have to discuss it seriously in Parliament.
-MEP Lars Christian Engstrom (Sweden)
The proposal claims to be based on users' rights and claims they are protected, that they should feel safe. He writes at the beginning that he did not want to create a new Big Brother Society. But then the whole document is about just that.
-Former Piratbyran founder and current telecomix hactivist Marcin de Kaminski
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Nothing will ever come of this. One crackpot idea from an idiot who knows nothing about technology does not constitute a reasonable proposal.
...Unless the people responsible for voting the proposal in or out are equally ignorant of technology.
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Not Gonna Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
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The fact that someone at that level can fly a kite like that, and get away with it, is worrisome enough to me.
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Yep. Why isn't he instantly being replaced with somebody who's got useful things on their mind?
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You imply that he should be punished for his opinions? I fundamentally disagree. Parliament, of all places, should be a forum for any and all views, whether or not they're popular. The proper way to deal with people who put forward views you do not agree with is to vote them down, not to use fear to silence them.
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> some of them have skeletons in their hard drives
Not if they play the Chinese Version of World of Warcraft...
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Like Members of Congress in the USA, EU MEPs come in all shapes, sizes, and states of sanity. This guy's just flying a kite, but any such law would apply the the MEPs too, and you can assume some of them have skeletons in their hard drives. Fuhgeddabouttit.
You can be sure that politicians would be exempt from a law like this. Just because they can.
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Like Members of Congress in the USA, EU MEPs come in all shapes, sizes, and states of sanity.
You mean that there are some normal sane ones??!!
I bet.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I bet.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Very true - half of the stupid proposals are just because mp's want to get their name out in the press and say 'look I did something this year'..
Sometimes they either hardly know anything about the technology, or they are just so narrow minded that they don't consider it can apply to much more than they think of.
The law was good for dealers in arcade machines/pinball machines who could suddenly get some good deals in Greece.. (you still can btw, just got a mail with someone from Greece offering me pinball machines for sale :-)
Again? (Score:2)
Someone really has to tell these guys about live CDs and Tor. It's impossible to monitor absolutely everything on the internet.
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Yes, yes, yes. But you neglect to consider whether or not the MP has shares in the software provider company.
When it is easier to molest for real than download (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if this were not grossly misused(which would surely happen), with this in place the child molesters will figure out that actually molesting children is less likely to get them caught than child porn. Making an incentive to do it for real instead of looking at it...
Misleading title !! (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, this is Slashdot but 1 MEP suggests something, and it becomes "EU Debates Installing a Black Box On Your Computer". No one is debating anything !! (Unless TFA says more: it is currently Slashdotted.)
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OK, this is Slashdot but 1 MEP suggests something, and it becomes "EU Debates Installing a Black Box On Your Computer". No one is debating anything !! (Unless TFA says more: it is currently Slashdotted.)
Its only takes one stupid idea to get a big enough following, especially with the "Think of the children" crowd and then boom its LAW!
Re:Misleading title !! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Misleading title !! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it isn't "one ignorant guy". It's at least two ignorant MEPs: from Italy and [europa.eu]Anna Záborská [europa.eu] from Slovakia. They co-authored the Written Declaration 29 [smile29.eu], where they state quite bluntly that they want every european citizen being constantly monitored by the police to avoid putting some hypothetical nasty criminal "on the same footing as honest citizens and making it difficult for the authorities to trace them".
More on this in:
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Correction: along with the two ignorant MEPs who authored Written Declaration 29, currently 371 MEPs have signed this proposition [europa.eu]. Here is a list of all signatories [europa.eu].
This would help stop terrorists, too. (Score:2)
Along with installing cameras in every home and spying on phone calls, we need to let the government log everyone's online activity, too. That'll stop those factually evil terrorists!
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Sure. (Score:2)
So if someone wants to research on the subject of child porn (not search for it, but search for information about it), and therefore enters that term into Google, he will cause an alarm at the police. Yeah, that makes perfectly sense. And of course they have the perfect algorithm to detect whether a photo shows an abused child. So it will never trigger if you e.g. send a holiday photo of your child at the beach to a friend.
And of course, that box will never be used for any other purpose. Well, OK, they'll p
In other news (Score:2)
"It's totaly not like the Stasi, we value freedom and privacy." commented one Italian MEP.
Bribed by Murdoch (Score:2)
He surely must be taking back-handers from Murdoch. The only half-sane reason to suggest these "black boxes" would be so The Sun can run the headline "Barmy Brussels Big Brother Bill".
Seriously.. (Score:2)
I'm sure we all know this... (Score:2)
Also - the LogBox linked to in the article appears to be for a ColdFusion logging library - I suspect this is either lazy journalism or politician luditism.
Won't someone think of the adults? (Score:3)
I find it ironic (Score:2)
that Berlusconi's men are worrying about pedophiles.
The title is BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Both this Slashdot story and TFA have a very misleading title. ONE MEP is thinking about this insane idea. It is not even in Parliament for discussion. Another MEP already vehemently spoke against it.
Come on, ideas like these pop up and fizz out all the time. I bet there are other MEPs thinking about imprisoning gay people, reinstating a theocracy, establishing re-education centers, idolizing Hitler and Stalin, and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean any of these wacky ideas come through. There are no indications that this one will.
Plus, it is not technically feasible, even with deep packet inspection. To connect the dots, to know who uploaded what where, is far from trivial, especially if the bad scary pedophile uses non-standard ways of transmitting this data. For example, what if he uses zip files? Also, there is encryption, which totally defeats this "logbox".
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Plus, it is not technically feasible, even with deep packet inspection. To connect the dots, to know who uploaded what where, is far from trivial, especially if the bad scary pedophile uses non-standard ways of transmitting this data. For example, what if he uses zip files? Also, there is encryption, which totally defeats this "logbox".
The same can be said about data retention, but that didn't deter them from making it a directive.
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Plus, it is not technically feasible, even with deep packet inspection...
That's not the point. You do think the whole point is about the abused children issue?
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I don't believe that's the case. According to this report [googleusercontent.com], "So far, 324 MPs have signed the proposal, or the written declaration that it called on European languages". It also mentions that "When more than half, ie 369 members signed up, it can be adopted and thus becomes its official position, but are not legislative in themselves."
So, although it isn't quite the same thing as signing a law, it is in fact a bit more than "one MEP thinking about this insane idea", even when including the fact hat Writte
Logbox? (Score:2)
One crazy MP does not change the laws of the EU (Score:2)
One MP having a crazy idea does not mean the law will get changed over the whole of the EU. There are many examples of MPs who have changed one law but failed to change other laws. Every country has their radical MPs who make grand statements to capture media attention, it doesn't mean that their ideas will become law (we have to be thankful that the craziest ideas of the craziest US representatives haven't become law in the USA over the last 50 years).
This sounds absolutely fine. (Score:2)
I'm more than happy to let them have this, just as long as we also have a black box on our politicians. All addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, financial information and physical location for all the politicians, publically available, all the time.
If they've nothing to hide, they've nothing to worry about.
PARENTS rape children, NOT strangers (Score:5, Insightful)
These laws are about removing people from society who don't have a "healthy" sexual attitude. That's why drawings are illegal in many places. Because it's not about reducing abuse, it's about people making themselves feel less uncomfortable about their own sexuality. In my own country, the people here are absolutely bat shit crazy when it comes to sexuality. They fear it, and they hate people who have a different attitude about it than they do. My generation is the first where simply being gay is not a crime. Hell at this point I can see things at the beach that would be illegal on my computer. There have even been people investigated for looking at porn of adults who are young looking. And if you let yourself get wrapped up in this paranoia you are helping no one and hurting everyone, including yourself.
And this needs to be said:
I would rather live in a world where occasional child abuse happens, than one where it never happens because we're all under constant surveillance.
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is the TPM chip not working? (Score:2)
mafia (Score:2)
Where is mafia when one needs it? Wait, this guy must be one of them.
I'm guessing (Score:2)
What's going on here? (Score:2)
For the children, catch all (Score:5, Interesting)
Forgive me for being a bit rude, but I woke up to this article. Mr. Motti, considering the reputation your PM has been gathering I must say screw you.
I am at the point I am no longer phased by the phrase "think of the children". All of this to protect kids? Dear god, at this point you might as well just take all the kids away from their parents in the hospital and raise them completely isolated from adults. Maybe even other kids so they don't even know what kids look like to be turned on by them.
An image of a child being abused? I mean, obviously this guy has no clue about technology. Still, he did not research prior censorship attempts first? The whole Green Dam (or was it River) of China's blocking a website for showing too much skin was horribly broken. Should Europeans expect their equivalent of SWAT Teams to start charging in if they look up pig farming?
And... and... *double face palms and sighs* Why the hell are politicians so apt to look at 1984 and like books as guides rather than warnings?
Not a chance (Score:2)
Unfortunately clueless politicians proposing illegal and amoral things are just as present in the EU everywhere else.
The EU can... (Score:2)
Shove it up their ass.
Suddenly old computers will become valuable, and if that is illegal, I'll gladly be a part of the criminal world.
Re:1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
1984 is not a manual for politicians.
Hitler is back, in Brussels,. But don't worry. What could possibly go wrong ?
One out of over seven hundred MEPs, one out of over seven hundred members of a body with very little real power within the EU, one man says something technologically illiterate and Slashdot runs for the hills for fear of Blackshirts and deathcamps?
Your post is absurd, absurd, hysterical and absurd. But thank you for keeping the world safe from totalitarianism. It's the thought (well, not thought, in this case... sentiment, perhaps) that counts....
P.S. Never, under any circumstances, watch C-SPAN. Your terror will know no bounds.
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Yes - you will, and Big Brother will be watching you.
Don't forget that this can easily be changed to also take care of political opinions and just about everything.
All while the criminals will find out that you can circumvent the filters one way or another.
Re:And who's gonna pay for that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. Somebody needs to ask him why there aren't video cameras in politician's houses/offices so we can watch them and prevent corruption.
Lead us by example!
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But what will we do when all the politicians [guardian.co.uk] are dead?
There will be much rejoicing.
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You make no distinction between the 19 year old who went out and had sex with a 17 year old girl, and the rapist who likes to grab little boys and anally rape them?
17? The age of consent where they're considering this black box, Italy, is 14 [wikipedia.org]
"The age of consent in Italy is 14 years, with a close-in-age exception that allows those aged 13 to engage in sexual activity with partners who are less than 3 years older. The age of consent rises to 16 if one of the participants has some kind of influence on the other (e.g. teacher, tutor, adoptive parent)."
Teachers can legally have sex with their 16 year old students. Wow, in the US you'd get 20 years for that.
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Mr. Motti official email address at the European Parliament: tiziano.motti@europarl.europa.eu Mr. Motti homepage: www.motti.eu
Now don't post him anything nasty. He could get in trouble if his black box shows he's opening up illegal images.
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This is by CHOICE, not by force. That's the nice part, Progressive insurance is not forced upon the world at gunpoint.
The watch what you do with your computer box, will be forced upon you by gunpoint. or more accurately threat of gunpoint and incarceration.
Or at least that is what the politicians like.
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Bet you $10,000 that RIAA and MPAA have their fingers in it as well and it will trigger on "stolen digital media"