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Despicable. I'm still appalled at how hysterical the reaction is to this incredibly minor threat. Talking to a chatbot, it doesn't get more victimless a crime.

by kmm 13y ago

Despicable. I'm still appalled at how hysterical the reaction is to this incredibly minor threat. Talking to a chatbot, it doesn't get more victimless a crime. This is just plain entrapment for a harmless thoughtcrime. I once read that paedophiles have on average a lower IQ, I wonder if that is because they only catch the dumber ones. I know a chatbot wouldn't fool me. (And don't misquote me on this, I'm not admitting I'm a paedophile, you know what I mean.)

unoti 13y ago
Citizen! You yourself are perilously close to committing one or more Thoughtcrimes now,and don't think we're not watching!
bmelton 13y ago
I feel ridiculous having to claim this up front, but I am also not a pedophile... however, I would very much like to find this chatbot and have a very long conversation. In fact, I might even be inclined to write a reverse chat bot that actually initiated conversations to this chat bot from a myriad of IP addresses, just to illustrate the innocuousness of it all.
- freejack 13y ago
  I refuse to make any disclaimer. My question is, what is the crime if someone is "chatting" with a bot? Any crime I could imagine would require a bad actor to actually engage with a person - how is it a crime if there is no victim? Maybe I'm just naive or missing some apparent point but this really mystifies me.
  - mdda 13y ago
    Not to defend their approach, but... The chatbot could be used to harmlessly engage with people in chatrooms, and flag 'grooming behaviour'. Then, those conversations could be stepped into by an actual person - saving having actual people monitoring the chatroom full time. The police move in when the IRL meeting takes place, and the suspected paedophile arrives full of evil intentions - at which point, the police have plenty of profiling experience and the guy probably takes a plea. So the chatbot is more about whittling down the suspicious participant list, without soaking up police time.
notahacker 13y ago
It's not "victimless" when the same sexual predator engages with a real person and starts trying to obtain sexy pics and blackmail material with a view to meeting later down the line. I'm not a fan of the specific implementation of the bot described in the paper, but I'm quite happy with the basic principle that people trying to sexually corrupt algorithms should be in jail alongside people trying to hire imaginary hitmen or traffic imaginary slaves. Besides, if chatrooms were widely suspected of being full of anti-paedophile chatbots, it would be a pretty good deterrent from paedophile participation even if they were actually pretty ineffectual at catching people. From what I remember of chatrooms from when I actually was about 14 - not many of the human participants would have passed the Turing test - the standard of conversation in a room full of bots might actually improve...

by kmm 13y ago

unoti 13y ago

Citizen! You yourself are perilously close to committing one or more Thoughtcrimes now,and don't think we're not watching!

bmelton 13y ago

I feel ridiculous having to claim this up front, but I am also not a pedophile... however, I would very much like to find this chatbot and have a very long conversation. In fact, I might even be inclined to write a reverse chat bot that actually initiated conversations to this chat bot from a myriad of IP addresses, just to illustrate the innocuousness of it all.

freejack 13y ago
I refuse to make any disclaimer. My question is, what is the crime if someone is "chatting" with a bot? Any crime I could imagine would require a bad actor to actually engage with a person - how is it a crime if there is no victim? Maybe I'm just naive or missing some apparent point but this really mystifies me.
- mdda 13y ago
  Not to defend their approach, but... The chatbot could be used to harmlessly engage with people in chatrooms, and flag 'grooming behaviour'. Then, those conversations could be stepped into by an actual person - saving having actual people monitoring the chatroom full time. The police move in when the IRL meeting takes place, and the suspected paedophile arrives full of evil intentions - at which point, the police have plenty of profiling experience and the guy probably takes a plea. So the chatbot is more about whittling down the suspicious participant list, without soaking up police time.

notahacker 13y ago

It's not "victimless" when the same sexual predator engages with a real person and starts trying to obtain sexy pics and blackmail material with a view to meeting later down the line. I'm not a fan of the specific implementation of the bot described in the paper, but I'm quite happy with the basic principle that people trying to sexually corrupt algorithms should be in jail alongside people trying to hire imaginary hitmen or traffic imaginary slaves. Besides, if chatrooms were widely suspected of being full of anti-paedophile chatbots, it would be a pretty good deterrent from paedophile participation even if they were actually pretty ineffectual at catching people. From what I remember of chatrooms from when I actually was about 14 - not many of the human participants would have passed the Turing test - the standard of conversation in a room full of bots might actually improve...