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Apple should do nothing. Child pornography is a problem for law enforcement. It should not involve blanket and universal surveillance of personal devices. Toda
by mariodiana 5y ago
Apple should do nothing. Child pornography is a problem for law enforcement. It should not involve blanket and universal surveillance of personal devices.
Today it's child pornography. What about tomorrow? Let me make a case. First, let me make something clear at the outset. I am 100 percent against child pornography. For all I care, castrate all the adults involved, when you catch them.
Now, with that made clear, let's take a look at how bad, comparatively, pornographic photos of underage individuals on a person's phone is—and my apologies to those who cannot stomach the following discussion.
The photos have already been taken. The harm here is indirect. The harm is that possession of photos means that you have become part of the market for child pornography, and provide incentive for the production of future materials. The direct harm occurs when the materials are being produced, and the direct harm is categorically worse than dissemination and possession of the photos.
Compare that to something like terrorism. Recruiting terrorists and planning terrorist activities is, I would argue, a greater and more direct harm than mere possession of child pornography. (Leave aside the production.) So, how can someone accept that this is okay for child pornography and not terrorism? And once we've accepted it's okay for terrorism, who is the "potential" terrorist? What is terrorist contraband?
And now that we've accepted sniffing for terrorists, what's next? Election "manipulation" that "threatens" our democracy? Public health "misinformation"?
This is the Panopticon.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago> Today it's child pornography. What about tomorrow? Our latest Antipope.org post (discussed here yesterday), suggested we extend the child-pornography treatment to possession of unauthorized cryptocurrency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145918
- mariodiana 5y agoAh, thank you! Yes, I see. Users of cryptocurrency are monsters who, because of the carbon footprint of mining, threaten the very planet. Why, that goes beyond mere hatred for humanity—you have to include the entirety of the Five Kingdoms. https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/animal/animal_3.htm https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/animal/animal_3.htm How could anybody be against criminalizing it!
- heartbreak 5y ago> For all I care, castrate all the adults involved, when you catch them. Interesting. I’m not familiar with a criminal justice system with a false positive rate lower than NCMEC’s perceptual hashes.
- richardfey 5y ago> For all I care, castrate all the adults involved, when you catch them. I doubt it would suffice. Chemical castration, perhaps.
- OrbitalChampion 5y agoYou have to nuke them from orbit to make sure. Fuck paedophiles. What fucking asstards.
- danielschonfeld 5y agoI think this is the best comment I’ve seen to date on this topic. From beginning to end, word for word.
- lijogdfljk 5y ago> Apple should do nothing. Is this a viable option when governments are pushing them to do something? To give governments access, etc? Ie why should Apple fight governments here. They seem to have next to no incentive to do that, in the capitalist sense. Our society doesn't typically financially support moral stances, so is fighting the government, which "doing nothing" surely is, a realistic stance? It seems insanely hopeful to me.