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>The authorities really think every predator will just give up and stop abusing just because of that? What a joke. Yes, the framing is disingenuous, but so is

>The authorities really think every predator will just give up and stop abusing just because of that? What a joke. Yes, the framing is disingenuous, but so is yours. You're seriously suggesting that any policy that doesn't 100% eliminate a problem is a joke?

like_any_other 1y ago
Well, what is "the problem"? Is it children being abused, or is it the distribution of CSAM? And if you say both - how would you rate the relative severity of the two problems? Specifically, if you had to pick between preventing the rape of a child, and preventing N acts of CSAM distribution, how big would N have to be to make it worth choosing the latter?
- jimbo808 1y ago
  I don't think they care what N is, they are just scapegoating a vile group they know will have no defenders, and they can use it to silence the critics by associating them with that group.
  - mystraline 1y ago
    Bingo. Today its the pedophiles and 15-17-philes (those are this fake group adolescent, which are also tried as adults when convenient). Tomorrow, its the adult sex workers. Then its the fringe group's topics that is on the outs with the majority. Then they come for you, and nobody is able to speak up because they banned protests. ... To paraphrase Martin Niemoller.
- jMyles 1y ago
  > Well, what is "the problem"? Is it children being abused, or is it the distribution of CSAM? It seems obvious that it is entirely the former and not at all the latter. In other words, N is positive infinity. Am I missing something? I only care about kids being hurt. And I think this view is close to consensus.
  - thfuran 1y ago
    Ask anyone you know who has been sexually assaulted or raped what they think of the idea of pictures or recordings of that being both kept by the perpetrator and widely disseminated. I think you'll find very few who'd say that's totally fine. But given that there can be no CSAM without child abuse, the direct physical abuse is clearly the primary problem.
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  What do you think it would be for you? What's worse for you? Being raped as a child. Or, having people sexually gratify themselves looking at images of you being abused; using those images to groom other children, or to trade and encourage the rape of other children? You might as well ask someone which eye they prefer to have gouged out with a blunt screw. Let's do both: try to stop child sexual abuse and try to stop images of abused children being used by abusers.
amarant 1y ago
If the cost of the proposal is "let's throw democracy under the bus" as it is in this case, it better be damn close to 100% effective to be worth it! I have a hard time imagining this will be more than 10% effective. This proposal is a joke
- palata 1y ago
  A few decades ago, all communications were unencrypted. Would you say that democracies did not exist then?
  - buildbot 1y ago
    This is completely untrue! Important communications have always been enciphered since language has been created I’d wager, whether that cipher is specific terms (grog means attack that person in 10 seconds!) or a book cipher, e.i. The first letter of a bible verse than the second letter of the next verse etc. Humans have been encrypting communication since communication was possible. It is now only recently possible to dragnet in mass many communications, store, and analyze them. The past decades have brought new threats to privacy democracy through breaking encryption at the state scale.
    - palata 1y ago
      > Humans have been encrypting communication since communication was possible. Were most people encrypting their handwritten letters? Were most people encrypting their messages before sending them by SMS or with WhatsApp? Really?
      - thfuran 1y ago
        Not most but some.
      - Levitz 1y ago
        No, because there was an expectation of privacy. That expectation is no longer there.
jMyles 1y ago
> You're seriously suggesting that any policy that doesn't 100% eliminate a problem is a joke? I think a more charitable reading is that any policy that doesn't 100% _target_ a problem is a joke. This policy doesn't have a plausible way that it will protect children from being victimized, so I think it's reasonable to remove the "think of the children" cloak it's wearing and assess it on the merits of whether encryption is beneficial for the social discourse of a society.
- palata 1y ago
  > This policy doesn't have a plausible way that it will protect children from being victimized Of course it does. "It will detect and report messages from predators to children, therefore preventing the child to get to the point where they send revealing pictures or meet the predator in person". Done.
  - jMyles 1y ago
    Well, maybe the word "plausible" is doing too much work in my statement. Most abuse happens from people known to the child, and of that portion, most are family members. It seems like there is sufficient opportunity in-person comms to route around this limitation. Moreover, even the communications that do happen online can still easily happen through encrypted media; presumably the perpetrators will simply move to other ways of communicating. And kids, at least kids over 10 or so, don't seem like a demographic particularly likely to follow this law anyhow. There's another nuance worth considering: by and large, parents _want_ their kids to have access to encrypted communications. I'll happily assist my kiddo in maintaining good opsec - that's much more important to me than some silly and uninformed policy decision being made far away by people I've never met. https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryption/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucy... So, the kids are still going to be where the encrypted comms are. I still think it's reasonable to say that the protections offered to kids by criminalizing encryption are implausible.
    - palata 1y ago

like_any_other 1y ago

Well, what is "the problem"? Is it children being abused, or is it the distribution of CSAM? And if you say both - how would you rate the relative severity of the two problems? Specifically, if you had to pick between preventing the rape of a child, and preventing N acts of CSAM distribution, how big would N have to be to make it worth choosing the latter?

jimbo808 1y ago
I don't think they care what N is, they are just scapegoating a vile group they know will have no defenders, and they can use it to silence the critics by associating them with that group.
- mystraline 1y ago
  Bingo. Today its the pedophiles and 15-17-philes (those are this fake group adolescent, which are also tried as adults when convenient). Tomorrow, its the adult sex workers. Then its the fringe group's topics that is on the outs with the majority. Then they come for you, and nobody is able to speak up because they banned protests. ... To paraphrase Martin Niemoller.
jMyles 1y ago
> Well, what is "the problem"? Is it children being abused, or is it the distribution of CSAM? It seems obvious that it is entirely the former and not at all the latter. In other words, N is positive infinity. Am I missing something? I only care about kids being hurt. And I think this view is close to consensus.
- thfuran 1y ago
  Ask anyone you know who has been sexually assaulted or raped what they think of the idea of pictures or recordings of that being both kept by the perpetrator and widely disseminated. I think you'll find very few who'd say that's totally fine. But given that there can be no CSAM without child abuse, the direct physical abuse is clearly the primary problem.
pbhjpbhj 1y ago
What do you think it would be for you? What's worse for you? Being raped as a child. Or, having people sexually gratify themselves looking at images of you being abused; using those images to groom other children, or to trade and encourage the rape of other children? You might as well ask someone which eye they prefer to have gouged out with a blunt screw. Let's do both: try to stop child sexual abuse and try to stop images of abused children being used by abusers.

amarant 1y ago

If the cost of the proposal is "let's throw democracy under the bus" as it is in this case, it better be damn close to 100% effective to be worth it! I have a hard time imagining this will be more than 10% effective. This proposal is a joke

palata 1y ago
A few decades ago, all communications were unencrypted. Would you say that democracies did not exist then?
- buildbot 1y ago
  This is completely untrue! Important communications have always been enciphered since language has been created I’d wager, whether that cipher is specific terms (grog means attack that person in 10 seconds!) or a book cipher, e.i. The first letter of a bible verse than the second letter of the next verse etc. Humans have been encrypting communication since communication was possible. It is now only recently possible to dragnet in mass many communications, store, and analyze them. The past decades have brought new threats to privacy democracy through breaking encryption at the state scale.
  - palata 1y ago
    > Humans have been encrypting communication since communication was possible. Were most people encrypting their handwritten letters? Were most people encrypting their messages before sending them by SMS or with WhatsApp? Really?
    - thfuran 1y ago
      Not most but some.
    - Levitz 1y ago
      No, because there was an expectation of privacy. That expectation is no longer there.

jMyles 1y ago

> You're seriously suggesting that any policy that doesn't 100% eliminate a problem is a joke? I think a more charitable reading is that any policy that doesn't 100% _target_ a problem is a joke. This policy doesn't have a plausible way that it will protect children from being victimized, so I think it's reasonable to remove the "think of the children" cloak it's wearing and assess it on the merits of whether encryption is beneficial for the social discourse of a society.

palata 1y ago
> This policy doesn't have a plausible way that it will protect children from being victimized Of course it does. "It will detect and report messages from predators to children, therefore preventing the child to get to the point where they send revealing pictures or meet the predator in person". Done.
- jMyles 1y ago
  Well, maybe the word "plausible" is doing too much work in my statement. Most abuse happens from people known to the child, and of that portion, most are family members. It seems like there is sufficient opportunity in-person comms to route around this limitation. Moreover, even the communications that do happen online can still easily happen through encrypted media; presumably the perpetrators will simply move to other ways of communicating. And kids, at least kids over 10 or so, don't seem like a demographic particularly likely to follow this law anyhow. There's another nuance worth considering: by and large, parents _want_ their kids to have access to encrypted communications. I'll happily assist my kiddo in maintaining good opsec - that's much more important to me than some silly and uninformed policy decision being made far away by people I've never met. https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryption/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucy... So, the kids are still going to be where the encrypted comms are. I still think it's reasonable to say that the protections offered to kids by criminalizing encryption are implausible.
  - palata 1y ago