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I was able to see a presentation about this topic one time by ICE. It tragic in two senses: 1) The crimes themselves are absolutely intolerable to society. 2)
by bane 8y ago
I was able to see a presentation about this topic one time by ICE. It tragic in two senses:
1) The crimes themselves are absolutely intolerable to society.
2) The lack of serious resourcing the seriousness of this crime should warrant.
Part of the presentation was specifically on identifying the location a sequence of photos was taken in the hopes that it would narrow down the search radius for the offender. The team that did the work were members of the ICE HERO program -- one of the coolest veteran-to-civilian programs I've ever seen [1][2]. The folks literally spent weeks "driving" around likely areas in Google maps trying to identify the location. Because the photo was taken from an angle that the car wouldn't have seen, they weren't able to use any automation at all and it literally took a human's intuitive understanding of 3-D spaces to eventually figure it out.
However, what was really tough was that the HERO program only exists because it offers an internship that costs very little to DHS -- they simply can't afford a large group of full-time staff.
I urge anybody who can to petition to better fund anti-child abuse programs.
1 - https://www.ice.gov/hero https://www.ice.gov/hero
2 - http://www.herocorps.net/ http://www.herocorps.net/
- dennisgorelik 8y agoThese "presentations" are very vague. What crimes, specifically, do they try to prevent or prosecute? Why victims are not complaining about these crimes?
- botwriter 8y agowell because the victims are usually threatened, children.
- dennisgorelik 8y ago"Usually" does not mean "always". Giving threats is a crime in itself. Threatening victims does not guarantee victims' silence. If that crime is widespread then there still should be plenty of victims who, actually, report that crime.
- astrodust 8y agoIf they did who would listen? If they did what risks and repercussions do they face? This also presumes they're strong enough to speak up in the first place. If you're a victim of this kind of abuse you usually aren't.
- dennisgorelik 8y ago> If they did who would listen? Police. > If they did what risks and repercussions do they face? Based on my experience as a victim of a crime, complaint to police very quickly reduced my risk of repercussions -- as soon as perpetrators faced police. > this kind of abuse What kind of abuse?
- DanBC 8y ago> What kind of abuse? Child sexual exploitation is a well researched bit of criminology. Jessica Eaton has a lot of research focusing on female victims which covers all of this stuff.
- bane 8y agoI've been trying to figure out what dennisgorelik's angle is in his comments in this thread and can't quite figure it out. I've decided not to respond directly because they're obviously not coming from a rational person who's spent even a few moments thinking about what he's writing. Everything I've written as a response comes off as patronizing at best and incredibly rude at worst so I've decided to just not respond at all. It's kept me up half the night to be honest because his perniciously ignorant responses are so rage inducing.
- DanBC 8y agoI strongly agree with you, and it took me considerable effort to write the post I did as calmly as I did. And I'm going to take the advice to dis-engage.
- dennisgorelik 8y ago
- botwriter 8y agoIs there not a volunteer program people can help with in this situation. I'm a British citizen but looking at spending 2 or 3 months out in Cambodia working on coding projects an exploring a country I've never visited. Unfortunately, I know Cambodia has had problems with child abuse and child sex tourism in the past. Working on something like you've just described seems like a fantastic way to explore a country and also track down nonces
- botwriter 8y agoJust re-read that. I don't mean to view actual child abuse images but similar to the europol thing ie the actual victims deleted from the images.
- DanBC 8y agoYou can take photos of every hotel room you visit. These get uploaded to a database usable by law enforcement: https://traffickcam.com/ https://traffickcam.com/ Europol has a "trace this item" website: https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse
- botwriter 8y agoTraffickcam is a fantastic idea I'll certainly use that.
- toomuchtodo 8y agohttps://www.thorn.org/ https://www.thorn.org/ (non-profit) is working hard to provide tooling to law enforcement to address the issues you mention, and posts on HN's Who's Hiring threads (front end engineers) [1]. I don't know if they accept volunteers for code contributions, but I hope they consider it if they already don't. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19281914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19281914
- justasimpleman 8y agoHow does the effectiveness of tracking down individual cases in this way compare to e.g. improving the eoconomic incentives overall? Commercial child abuse is mostly a result of deprived economic circumstances, in which people see more benefit in selling their children rather than giving them the best future possible, if I'm not mistaken. I don't intend to spoil the enthusiasm here, but wouldn't supporting welfare hence be a more effective measure than investing in fancy tech? That latter only increases the deterrants which seem hard to increase any further to begin with.
- bane 8y agoOne of the things I learned in the presentation is that economic incentives are not typically the motivation for this kind of evil. The "currency" in the environment appears to very much be fresh photos and videos of kids being sexually abused. The trade in the material is unfortunately large. The descriptions of how the systems worked reminded me very much of the kinds of upload/download ratio systems you might find on software and movie/music piracy boards.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoEconomic incentives aren't going to encourage someone to not sell their child for deplorable purposes; if you don't emotionally care for your child, money isn't going to make you care. On the other hand, if you can use a non-profit to pay terrible/uncaring/abusive parents to hand over their children voluntarily (surrendering parental rights) and to get sterilized to prevent the harm of any more children, that is a cause I would write checks to all day long. Disclaimer: I am a parent, and have fostered neglected children.
- hopler 8y agoprojectprevention.org pays serial child neglecters to get birth control
- justasimpleman 8y ago> Disclaimer: I am a parent, and have fostered neglected children. And that makes you an expert in criminology?
- astrodust 8y agoHow about instead of rounding up all sorts of harmless non-white people and throwing them in cages that instead their efforts are focused on the abhorrent things like that?