Spanish Chatbot Hunts For Pedophiles 186
cylonlover writes "For a number of years now, police forces around the world have enlisted officers to pose as kids in online chat rooms, in an attempt to draw out pedophiles and track them down. Researchers at Spain's University of Deusto are now hoping to free those cops up for other duties, and to catch more offenders, via a chatbot that they've created. Its name is Negobot, and it plays the part of a 14 year-old girl."
(Read the original source, in Spanish).
wonderful idea! (Score:4, Funny)
What could possibly go wrong?
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What happens if two chatbots start chatting each other up? Do they both get arrested?
Re:wonderful idea! (Score:5, Funny)
What happens if two chatbots start chatting each other up? Do they both get arrested?
Only if they send each other photos of their source code.
Re:wonderful idea! (Score:5, Funny)
What happens if two chatbots start chatting each other up? Do they both get arrested?
Only if they send each other photos of their source code.
Uncommented source code.
Re:wonderful idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
GOTO statements make me wet.
Re:wonderful idea! (Score:4, Funny)
GOTO statements make me wet.
Seize the opportunity, reprogram your sprinkler system in Haskell!
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Giggity!
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"It's the taboo, isn't it?"
I just love to feel the vibrations from Dykstra whirling in his grave.
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One of my favorite "bots" was a reverse bot. It would troll on AIM, pretending to be a 16 yr old girl, usually very quickly getting a horny teen male. Then it would it a second time, netting a second horny teen male. Then it would pair them up, both assuming they're talking to a girl.. Then after some awkward teen male sexting (before it was a term) it wasn't too long until "FAGGGGG" was shouted and heterosexuality challeng
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Someone posted AOLiza in the comments of the article. You can thank the Internet Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010223222122/http://fury.com/aoliza/ [archive.org]
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What happens if two chatbots start chatting each other up?
Probably something like two Siris conversing [youtube.com], a.k.a. That howling void of thoughtlessness beneath [upenn.edu].
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that is trainwreck tragic.
Re:wonderful idea! (Score:4, Funny)
What could possibly go wrong?
Are such questions on your mind often?
Re:wonderful idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
Should they start exhibiting “suspicious behavior,” such as not caring about the girl’s age or asking her for personal information
"Suspicious behaviour" is defined as either: (A) Asking a girls' age or (B) not asking a girl's age.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
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QED.
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Oops. Guess I should have posted anonymously.
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No, the answer is don't try to pick up underage girls.
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No, the answer is don't try to pick up underage girls.
How do you know they are underage? If you ask, you are a suspicious person. If you don't ask, you are a suspicious person.
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Yeah, if you consider a person's age personal information. Which depends on the chat room.
It's been a long time since I last used IRC, but I do remember those channels where asking "asl please" was widely considered proper etiquette. Some chat rooms even expected you give your "asl" as you entered.
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Pedantic point - It's HAL 9000.
HAL 9000 was driven mad by the contradictory instructions from its management. There is a lesson for us all in there.
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And SAL 9000 back at Urbana was so upset by the news, she was willing to undergo significant risk to herself in order to help Dr. Chandra revive him.
Yet, we are offtopic further still. Where will it end?
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And SAL 9000 back at Urbana was so upset by the news, she was willing to undergo significant risk to herself in order to help Dr. Chandra revive him.
Yet, we are offtopic further still. Where will it end?
In 3001 with Frank Poole.
3 laws (Score:1)
If you are a robot you have to tell me...
Re: Liar! (Score:2)
Unless doing so would harm you, or cause harm to come to you.
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Or you're in the Time of Eve cafe and everyone is ordered to act human and treat everyone as human.
Hey, great.... finally an AI... (Score:4)
...which passes the Turing test.
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LOL, a Turing test designed to persecute people for expressing their socially unacceptable sexuality? Alan would have a fit.
Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI... (Score:5, Funny)
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Not to mention the fact that a 14 year old girl would have absolutely no chance of passing the Turing test.
The problem though is that pedophiles are experienced and know how to evade traps. They're like cochroaches -- for every one you find, there's fifty more you don't. And considering that western society likes to lock these people up and let them be raped and murdered, instead of studying what the glitch in their wetware is to devise a treatment, or treating their prisoners with compassion... there is a major incentive to not come forward if you're one of the afflicted... and being so afflicted... still more
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Technically, they're trying to prosecute people living out their socially unacceptable sexuality. Though, instead of wasting resources doing that, why not just market the damn thing to lonely pedophiles instead, they can chat up 14 year old digital girls, and our kids won't have to be bothered by it, win-win.
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Because they want pictures of under aged girls or to have sexual contact with underage girls. Just chatting with girls and boys in that fashion is creepy, but not generally illegal.
At least that's how it is in the US, I would presume that's somewhat similar in Spain.
Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI... (Score:5, Informative)
I knew I'd read somewhere about Spain's age of consent being 12.
It turns out they raised it to 16 just a few weeks ago: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/10089339/Spain-to-raise-age-of-consent-from-13-to-16.html [telegraph.co.uk]
Hopefully they'll be more careful about the law than is the case in the UK -- where the age of consent is 16, but the official guidance to the police is not to worry about consensual relationships between similarly-aged teenagers below that. It's better to have that in the law, like in Germany (where, AIUI, lower ages are permitted so long as there's not too much age difference).
Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI... (Score:4, Informative)
It's still 13 legally. What you are refering is a proposal to change it.
If aproved, it can show up curious situations when you can legallyl get married at the age of 12 and you won't be able to have sex until you are 16? (in case you married an older and adult partner)
Re:Hey, great.... finally an AI... (Score:5, Insightful)
This making it even more bizarre that this bot would pretend to be above Spain's legal age of consent. What am I missing?
Everything about this story is wrong:
I mean, this whole concept borders on the same level of s**t-for-brains stupid as those people who troll boards trying to stir people up to become terrorists and then put them in jail under the premise that if law enforcement could get them into that state, so could real terrorists. But the thing is, unless those real terrorists had a high probability of doing so, you're really just putting people in jail for being gullible, not for actually harboring any terrorist tendencies.
At this point, our world is rapidly verging on jailing people for thoughtcrime—crimethink, if you will. Are we really to the point where the goal is to lock up everyone who isn't of above-average intelligence with near-godlike self control? Is that actually supposed to make our kids safer in some bizarro universe? Could someone please explain to me why the people who came up with this bot should not be jailed themselves as an example to others who would abuse their power?
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It's actually not that great. It just says 'OMG' and then like 15 emoji.
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...which passes the Turing test.
Maybe for the purposes of these bots it should be referred to as the "Cruising" test.
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It drives cars back and forth over Tom Cruise?
Oh great... (Score:1)
Man.. this bot is going to get laid more than I do, and it's specifically designed to NOT get laid..
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Great work, but... (Score:1)
unfortunately, in Spain the "undercover agent" is illegal. So, either this bot created at Deusto University (my university, btw) or Flu Ad are great projects that can not be used by Spanish police.
Flu AD is an open source Trojan software designed to infect computers used by pedophiles. It succeeded at least in one case in South America (I don't have the details) and have been studied by Spanish police.
More on Flu AD:
- http://www.slideshare.net/rootedcon/juan-a-calles-y-pablo-gonzlez-metasploit-fluad-avoidin
14 years would be legal age in Germany.... (Score:5, Informative)
14 year old? (Score:5, Insightful)
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thanks for mentioning this - there are too many evil and stupid people crying out "think of the children" and throwing around 'paedophilia'... when it's totally wrong.
for those who have missed it, paedophilia is being sexually attracted to prepubescent humans. for example, that's small girls who haven't even show a sign of breasts appearing (not sure about boys... boy choirs might fit, as they want boys with "undamaged" voices).
so 14 is at least a couple of years too late in most cases...
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thanks for mentioning that, hadn't spotted it.
but... that's so wrong. lumping interest in prepubescent children in the same group as interest in 17 year old girls ? that must be a mental illness of it's own...
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hebephiles
Every time I see that word I think of Shemp.
Spain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Age of consent in Spain is 13 though they plan to raise it [telegraph.co.uk]. Seems like a 14 year old is an odd choice to emulate for that reason.
That said, an AI capable of simulating a 14 year old girl? Hard to imagine they could even simulate a 5 year old successfully. This doesn't seem like a good use of a universities resources.
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That said, an AI capable of simulating a 14 year old girl? Hard to imagine they could even simulate a 5 year old successfully. This doesn't seem like a good use of a universities resources.
Yes, a 14 year old girl at what time of day and what day of the week and which week of the month? If you can show me a 14 year old girl that acts the same for more than 20 minutes, then I might believe they could come up with an AI for one.
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part of adolescence is about learning to make decisions and accept the consequences themselves.
That is true, but in this case, the consequences are pretty heavily borne out by the parents who told them to abstain from sexual relations, as well as the society that told them to do the same thing. If we were to completely leave the entire responsibility for their actions upon the youths, then certainly we would have no place to tell them what to do. Since we pay the cost, we get to make the rules.
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a/s/l? (Score:5, Funny)
version/language/repository?
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Assembler/Script/Language?
Ok, it's not funny but I tried.
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About/Settings/LAN?
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1.03rc1/Brainfuck/RCS
Only usable in some jurisdictions (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortunately, entrapment is illegal in a lot of countries. And "intent" is not always what counts. I read that that in The Netherlands someone who was having sexually oriented chats with a police officer posing as a child was cleared in court. The judge said that because the police officer was over 18 he did nothing illegal, and that he may have intended something illegal didn't make it so.
To make the car comparison: if I intend to drive too fast and believe I do so dus to a defective meter but in fact I am driving at a legal speed I can't get a ticket.
Re:Only usable in some jurisdictions (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what I was wondering, doesn't this sort of thing risk giving real criminals an excuse too?
If intent is relevant then with the prevalence of police officers posing in this manner and now bots, couldn't a real criminal just claim "I assumed nowadays that they were all just chatbots or above age of consent officers" if caught chatting to someone who is underage?
It seems to be a dangerous precedent to set. If the police have to prove intent how can they prove he didn't now believe it was a bot or an officer and hence not illegal?
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It depends on the type of law. Driving offences are generally "Strict liability" crimes, requiring only the act (actus reus.) But many offences also require intent (mens rea), usually defined in the original law. Ie, robbery might be defined as "taking property with intent to deprive the rightful owner", and both act and intent must be proved.
Of course, in practice...
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That's actually the way it works. If for example you drive off from a petrol station without paying the police would have to prove you did so intentionally and that it wasn't just an honest mistake.
This is to prevent people's lives being ruined for nothing more than a moment of forgetfulness.
It's also to avoid entrapment situations, i.e. neighbour A Lends neighbour B his lawnmower than tells the police that neighbour B stole it. The police have to prove he never intended to give it back which they could do
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Whilst in the past I'd agree, I don't think that's true anymore, in fact here in some of the UK some of the laws specifically require intent and intent is in the very title of the charge when charged.
"Intending to incite racial hatred" for example.
If the crime is in itself a crime of intention then the onus on the police is to prove intent.
Of course it makes more sense to just remove such laws full stop, but there you go.
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I know this was probably posted sarcastically, but it's a difficult path to walk. On one side you have rape-culture feminists saying "don't tell me how to dress, teach your sons not to rape" and on the other side you have the police and others trying to give advice on risk minimisation such as "don't dress like a slut".
I think the answer is somewhere in between.
A friend of mine recently blogged how she trained in martial arts, dresses conservatively if out at night and engages in other risk minimisation beh
This story is full of LOL (Score:2)
Just wait until these slut-bots start falling to buffer overflows, SQL or shell injection attacks, or whatever.
Should of called it "Joshua"! (Score:3)
Shall we play a game?
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Shall we play a game?
"What a strange game, the only winning move is not to play." - Or something like that, it's been a while since I saw that film.
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website name (Score:2)
Spanish Police APB (Score:3)
Spanish police have an APB out for suspects named 'Eliza', 'Perry', and 'A.L.I.C.E.'
13 year olds are not chatbots? (Score:2)
Maybe I am a bit jaded from recent experience but...
After spending some time this weekend trying to play an online video game with a relative of that age, I have trouble seeing the problem. Trying to explain to him how what he was doing in game was ruining the fun for my wife and I reminded me quite a bit of talking to a
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Yes seriously lol. Ok so my wife and I started playing Terreria, and he saw us on and wanted to join, so he came in, gave us a bunch of end game level equipment and was like "lets go fight bosses".
I was unable to impress upon him how, while running around with powerful end game equipment was fun for a bit, it wasn't really what we wanted to do.... its not really an adventure if the story starts with some character swooping in and handing the hero everything he needs; including the dragons head on a platter.
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Well after spending the past few weeks playing Dwarf Fortress, I trust you can understand why terreria looked fun :)
If it's posing as a 14 year old, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What does "porque cae agua jaja" mean? (Score:4, Funny)
http://translate.google.com/ [google.com]
Let me present you this new technology. It's called "The Internet". You can use it to look for answers to all your questions*.
*: For a fully immersive experience, all your questions should start with "nude pics of "
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*: For a fully incarcerated experience, all your questions should start with "nude pics of "
Given the topic, FTFY.
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Your "definition" completely excludes anything resembling pantheism, which basically means you "definiton" excludes most of the world's religion.
Obviously, pantyism revolvers around worshipping something completely else.
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Even Google Translate knows that "jaja" is "haha." I think we can safely assume that the phrase, taken out of context, is someone giving the punchline to a joke.
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"Because water falls haha"
I can't imagine what the question that prompted that answer was and given the topic I'm not sure I want to know.
The previous chat line just says "Know why it seems that way?"
Re:So they're breaking young boys hearts.. (Score:5, Funny)
...and the spanish girls will have to start being even more slutty to compete with the slutbots.
But your honor, I was NOT engaging in pedophile behavior! See, I am really into sex bots! I KNEW it was a script and I get off on them!'
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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No law was actually broken.
I know nothing about Spanish law, but if it is anything like American law, then there is no requirement that a real child, or even a second person, be involved. If, while alone in a locked room, you are turned on by a drawing of some stick-figures that could be perceived as under-age children, then you are breaking the law.
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Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
Pity only a small fraction of pedophiles are out looking on the internet. That and the fact that if the penalties are higher, people will do more to hide their crimes, like instead of threatening their victims, they'll lock them up in a basement, or fit them with some cement shoes for a quick dip in the local river.
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I think the pedo laws are completely out of hand, but the idea that severe penalties will cause molesters to kill their victims is bogus. The kind of person who murders is already sociopathic enough that any amount of penalty is going to be enough to justify murdering their victim. Even if there was absolutely no legal penalty they would still have to worry about parents going vigilante on them.
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Because he has a grasp of the English language that extends beyond calling every gun an "assault rifle", every worthless punk a "terrorist", every deadbeat a "victim of poor credit", and everyone who disagrees with him "faaaaaags"?
Going after 14YOs would make someone an ephebophile, not a pedo.
/ Read a book!
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Did someone watch Death Race last night?
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Or iCarly? Oops, wrong chat.
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This suffers from the usual problems. You need something like a balanced court process to be really sure the person you find really is guilty, and that means letting some 80% sure cases walk free. Also you can't make amends if you find out you killed the wrong person.
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I'm sure the reverse engineering effort will be under way shortly, filling up kiddy pron hangouts with lists of phrases to throw at the bots to verify that it's a bot. Compared to actual hackers, kiddy wankers seem to be alot more concious about their own security.
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If they make the bot good enough it'll become too hard to tell a kid from a bot with enough certainty for a pedo to be sure they're not walking into a police trap by meeting with the kid...in which case, mission accomplished.
mission self-defeating (Score:2)
"If they make the bot good enough it'll become too hard to tell a bot from a kid with enough certainty for a botophile to be sure they are not chatting with an actual 14 year old, in which case the poor botophile will be arrested for doing something he had no intention of doing, namely, chatting up an underaged human being."
There, fixed that for you.
Botophile: Someone who loves to get it on with bots.
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(Is it illegal to write a chatbot that simulates a 14 y.o?)
Some countries already have laws about animated stuff and written erotic fiction...
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So if we use the same tactics for prostitution...? (rather than an undercover cop acting as a hooker, put a robot)
You bet your ass it'll happen when they get cheap and realistic enough. Hey maybe when there are "fully-featured" fembots they'll actually let the john go through with the act and wait until he hands over the money to call in the raid so the case will be bulletproof.
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And then they decide to legalize prostitution with robots. Before you know it - since all the first bots were owned by the police, the police themselves are entrenched in the business of prostitution with no way out.
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And why would they need to do that? It's not like "prostitution" is defined in such a way as to include "sex with a machine".
Using a fembot as a prostitution sting is pointless, since it's not illegal to hand money to a robot after banging it. Any more than it is illegal to bang the robot in the first place.
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FYI, in Florida v. Jardines, the SCOTUS ruled that having a dog sniff around the outside of a house is an illegal search i.e. the dog's opinion cannot be treated as "probable cause" and cannot be used as evidence for the purpose of getting a search warrant.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/11-564 [cornell.edu]
Unfortunately, in Kentucky v. King they ruled that if the cops smell weed and, after announcing their presence, hear sounds of you "destroying evidence", they can kick down your door.