6 ms·

A bit less than 25 years ago, I was IT director at a small tech company. The MD approached me and asked about how we stop people looking at pr0n on the company'

A bit less than 25 years ago, I was IT director at a small tech company. The MD approached me and asked about how we stop people looking at pr0n on the company's internet. I looked into it, and worked out how much we'd need to restrict and monitor everyone's internet activity. And then realised that this wasn't a tech problem at all. If someone is looking at pr0n instead of doing their job, then that's a line management problem. Exactly the same as if they were reading a copy of Playboy at their desk. Preventing child abuse is, similarly, not a tech problem. It's a human problem. The internet did not cause this problem, and if we monitor every single byte sent over a wire, the problem will still remain.

phowat 3y ago
Why not just write "porn" ? Is there some sort of filter here on hn I'm not aware of ?
- KirillPanov 3y ago
  Yes, quite a few in fact. That's why you'll see a lot of intentional mis-spellings like "virtual signaling".
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Do you mean virtue signaling is filtered? It is not.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  Not so much these days. But back in the day one of the crude efforts to control access to porn on the internet was filtering for the word "porn", which lead to a standard mis-spelling of it as "pr0n". Which became so ingrained that I now spell it that way by default. I was mostly referencing that rather than trying to avoid an actual filter now.
  - abdusco 3y ago
    Any filter worth its salt would also include "pr0n" along with "porn"
    - lozf 3y ago
      Just write "pom" and pretend it's a keming issue ;)
- jstarfish 3y ago
  "Child pornography" is very specifically-defined in terms of strictly-photorealistic content. Notice that the topic discussed here is chat control. What does this have to do with photorealistic content? The "CSAM" moniker is a broad net that drags other forms of media into scope. Sharing a fictional story about raping a child isn't child pornography (there's no victim)...but it is CSAM. Same with manga/comics, sharing elaborate fantasies, AI images and any other fictional products. As CSAM, all of it becomes fair game for indictment.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Groups pushing to call child pornography CSAM push to ban fictional media also. But people were prosecuted for virtual child pornography before. The groups justify the new term saying all child pornography depicts child sexual abuse. And people talk about virtual CSAM.
arp242 3y ago
You can apply this argument against pretty much anything: theft, murder, sexual assault, general twatery, etc. because in the end almost every crime or other undesirable behaviour is a "human problem". Almost no one would disagree that removing all instances of CSAM from the internet would be a good thing, whether it's a "human problem" or not. That's not really the issue. Things like "how much we'd need to restrict and monitor everyone's internet activity" is the problem: it's all very complex and probably not worth the cost.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > You can apply this argument against pretty much anything: theft, murder, sexual assault, general twatery, etc. because in the end almost every crime or other undesirable behaviour is a "human problem". Exactly? None of them are tech problems, they all predate the tech and so do the solutions. The police do ordinary policework, arrest the criminals and they're convicted of their crimes. Mass surveillance is a dangerous power grab regardless of the purported rationale.
  - arp242 3y ago
    The argument is "it's not worth the trade-off, because the downsides are [X]". This is a profoundly different argument than "we should never under any circumstances use any technology to prevent anything because 'it's not a tech a tech problem' and/or 'it predates tech'". Merely "X predates Y" is a worthless argument that can be applied to almost everything (accidents predate cars, murder predates guns, war predates ICBMs, etc. etc.)
    - marcus_holmes 3y ago
      The point is not that we're using tech to prevent something. The internet does not prevent pr0n, after all. But that you can't treat a human problem as if it was a tech problem merely because the tech allows it to happen easier. My point was that the underlying problem is that some people want to look at porn instead of work. That's the problem we have to solve. The internet is just a symptom, it allows those people to pretend to be working while actually looking at porn. The solution is not to cripple everyone's internet access. The solution is to either change the people, or change those people's attitudes, so they don't want to watch porn at work. It's a human problem so it can only be solved in human ways. With CSAM, the problem is not that there's child porn on the internet. The problem is that some people like to abuse children. We need to solve that problem. Monitoring every byte sent over the internet is not going to solve that problem. It's a human problem. We need to work out ways of detecting these people sooner in life and either help them over it, or remove their access to children. I'm not a social worker so I don't know how we'd solve that problem.
npteljes 3y ago
Break-ins are also not a technological problem, but even a simple lock helps - a lock that can trivially be picked. Setting up the perimeter, a technological thing, sends the psychological message that there's a barrier, the insides are for people with access only. It doesn't prevent break-ins, but the frequency is reduced significantly.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  Interesting point. So you're saying that censoring everyone's speech and permanently breaking E2E encryption is like a lock? That it sends a psychological message that CSAM is not allowed on the internet? I don't think I agree. I think that would be more like having to hand the police a copy of the key for every lock you install.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    I don't agree with the backdooring proposals at all, but neither do I agree with the counter argument of "this is a people problem, so technology won't solve it". Getting back to the locks example, in reality, the police can and do open any door they please. The locks are simply weak, and if the locks aren't, the constructions are. So they have no problem with people locking up, because they can override it whenever. I don't think there's an appropriate technological solution to people abusing secrecy. But people opting into surveillance can be seen as a social solution to counter such abuse. It's basically the "I have nothing to hide" argument, but not as an argument, but a practical application. In this scenario, opting in to surveillance would be a social signal that one is not an abuser, and so, this would make resisting surveillance a signal to side with the abusers. If this would gain traction somehow, it would be like Japan and its porn censorship law. I don't think any politician there seriously thinks that the measly censorship does anything, but they also don't want to be the pervert politician who goes against the moral law.
    - marcus_holmes 3y ago
      > I don't think there's an appropriate technological solution to people abusing secrecy. That's not the problem. The problem is people abusing children. We keep losing sight of this when discussing the issue. People sharing bad photos is not a problem. The problem is that those images are depictions of horrific actual abuse of innocent children. If we stop people taking photos of the abuse, it doesn't stop the abuse. And it's the abuse that we need to stop. Your point about surveillance doesn't solve the problem. An abuser can put their hand up to have every byte they send on the internet monitored, and then abuse their daughter where there aren't any cameras. The abuse is the problem, not the images. If we stop the abuse, then the images go away automatically. If we stop the images, the abuse continues. Again, this is not a technological problem: if we censor every byte on the internet then children will continue to be abused.
renegat0x0 3y ago
When you try to remove a bug from code, sometimes you make the bug to be more nuanced and hidden from plain sight. I am not sure if you can remove crimes with surveillance. Maybe people will just hide deeper. The government will receive 'new powers', but crimes will not be solved. But maybe after all that is the end goal. To win the "Crypto wars". Not to solve crimes. How many cases where solved because of Patriot Act?
barrysteve 3y ago
Computer security used as an adult babysitting tool, is ripe for abuse.

phowat 3y ago

Why not just write "porn" ? Is there some sort of filter here on hn I'm not aware of ?

KirillPanov 3y ago
Yes, quite a few in fact. That's why you'll see a lot of intentional mis-spellings like "virtual signaling".
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Do you mean virtue signaling is filtered? It is not.
marcus_holmes 3y ago
Not so much these days. But back in the day one of the crude efforts to control access to porn on the internet was filtering for the word "porn", which lead to a standard mis-spelling of it as "pr0n". Which became so ingrained that I now spell it that way by default. I was mostly referencing that rather than trying to avoid an actual filter now.
- abdusco 3y ago
  Any filter worth its salt would also include "pr0n" along with "porn"
  - lozf 3y ago
    Just write "pom" and pretend it's a keming issue ;)
jstarfish 3y ago
"Child pornography" is very specifically-defined in terms of strictly-photorealistic content. Notice that the topic discussed here is chat control. What does this have to do with photorealistic content? The "CSAM" moniker is a broad net that drags other forms of media into scope. Sharing a fictional story about raping a child isn't child pornography (there's no victim)...but it is CSAM. Same with manga/comics, sharing elaborate fantasies, AI images and any other fictional products. As CSAM, all of it becomes fair game for indictment.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Groups pushing to call child pornography CSAM push to ban fictional media also. But people were prosecuted for virtual child pornography before. The groups justify the new term saying all child pornography depicts child sexual abuse. And people talk about virtual CSAM.

arp242 3y ago

You can apply this argument against pretty much anything: theft, murder, sexual assault, general twatery, etc. because in the end almost every crime or other undesirable behaviour is a "human problem". Almost no one would disagree that removing all instances of CSAM from the internet would be a good thing, whether it's a "human problem" or not. That's not really the issue. Things like "how much we'd need to restrict and monitor everyone's internet activity" is the problem: it's all very complex and probably not worth the cost.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> You can apply this argument against pretty much anything: theft, murder, sexual assault, general twatery, etc. because in the end almost every crime or other undesirable behaviour is a "human problem". Exactly? None of them are tech problems, they all predate the tech and so do the solutions. The police do ordinary policework, arrest the criminals and they're convicted of their crimes. Mass surveillance is a dangerous power grab regardless of the purported rationale.
- arp242 3y ago
  The argument is "it's not worth the trade-off, because the downsides are [X]". This is a profoundly different argument than "we should never under any circumstances use any technology to prevent anything because 'it's not a tech a tech problem' and/or 'it predates tech'". Merely "X predates Y" is a worthless argument that can be applied to almost everything (accidents predate cars, murder predates guns, war predates ICBMs, etc. etc.)
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    The point is not that we're using tech to prevent something. The internet does not prevent pr0n, after all. But that you can't treat a human problem as if it was a tech problem merely because the tech allows it to happen easier. My point was that the underlying problem is that some people want to look at porn instead of work. That's the problem we have to solve. The internet is just a symptom, it allows those people to pretend to be working while actually looking at porn. The solution is not to cripple everyone's internet access. The solution is to either change the people, or change those people's attitudes, so they don't want to watch porn at work. It's a human problem so it can only be solved in human ways. With CSAM, the problem is not that there's child porn on the internet. The problem is that some people like to abuse children. We need to solve that problem. Monitoring every byte sent over the internet is not going to solve that problem. It's a human problem. We need to work out ways of detecting these people sooner in life and either help them over it, or remove their access to children. I'm not a social worker so I don't know how we'd solve that problem.

npteljes 3y ago

Break-ins are also not a technological problem, but even a simple lock helps - a lock that can trivially be picked. Setting up the perimeter, a technological thing, sends the psychological message that there's a barrier, the insides are for people with access only. It doesn't prevent break-ins, but the frequency is reduced significantly.

marcus_holmes 3y ago
Interesting point. So you're saying that censoring everyone's speech and permanently breaking E2E encryption is like a lock? That it sends a psychological message that CSAM is not allowed on the internet? I don't think I agree. I think that would be more like having to hand the police a copy of the key for every lock you install.
- npteljes 3y ago
  I don't agree with the backdooring proposals at all, but neither do I agree with the counter argument of "this is a people problem, so technology won't solve it". Getting back to the locks example, in reality, the police can and do open any door they please. The locks are simply weak, and if the locks aren't, the constructions are. So they have no problem with people locking up, because they can override it whenever. I don't think there's an appropriate technological solution to people abusing secrecy. But people opting into surveillance can be seen as a social solution to counter such abuse. It's basically the "I have nothing to hide" argument, but not as an argument, but a practical application. In this scenario, opting in to surveillance would be a social signal that one is not an abuser, and so, this would make resisting surveillance a signal to side with the abusers. If this would gain traction somehow, it would be like Japan and its porn censorship law. I don't think any politician there seriously thinks that the measly censorship does anything, but they also don't want to be the pervert politician who goes against the moral law.
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    > I don't think there's an appropriate technological solution to people abusing secrecy. That's not the problem. The problem is people abusing children. We keep losing sight of this when discussing the issue. People sharing bad photos is not a problem. The problem is that those images are depictions of horrific actual abuse of innocent children. If we stop people taking photos of the abuse, it doesn't stop the abuse. And it's the abuse that we need to stop. Your point about surveillance doesn't solve the problem. An abuser can put their hand up to have every byte they send on the internet monitored, and then abuse their daughter where there aren't any cameras. The abuse is the problem, not the images. If we stop the abuse, then the images go away automatically. If we stop the images, the abuse continues. Again, this is not a technological problem: if we censor every byte on the internet then children will continue to be abused.

renegat0x0 3y ago

When you try to remove a bug from code, sometimes you make the bug to be more nuanced and hidden from plain sight. I am not sure if you can remove crimes with surveillance. Maybe people will just hide deeper. The government will receive 'new powers', but crimes will not be solved. But maybe after all that is the end goal. To win the "Crypto wars". Not to solve crimes. How many cases where solved because of Patriot Act?

barrysteve 3y ago

Computer security used as an adult babysitting tool, is ripe for abuse.