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'Sweetie', a computer-generated girl, lures sex predators
- rosser 13y agoThis is a nice counterpoint to the article yesterday about a pentest team using a fake woman to spearphish their way into a US government agency that was posted here yesterday. [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6664572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6664572
- anigbrowl 13y agoThis is the future of law enforcement in this field, and possibly others. The marginal cost of setting up virtual honeypots is now so low that the obvious strategy is to simply swamp the market with them.
- ExpiredLink 13y agoBrave new world. An online world full of agent provocateurs that detect all crimes before they are actually committed.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- runn1ng 13y agoAt a risk of being downvoted: I am not sure "webcam sex" hurts anybody. The girl is not physically harmed in any way.
- kbar13 13y agowhat about emotional/psychological damage? I would imagine that physical rape is also mostly an emotional/psychological thing. disclaimer: I'm not a girl, I have not been raped, I have not known of anyone close to me who has been raped, nor am I a psychologist.
- brianlweiner 13y agoA child (who does not legally have a capacity to consent) 'performing' for strangers? You're going on a bit of a limb to suggest there's no possibility for physical harm here.
- anigbrowl 13y agoWell, there's a strong possibility that kids are beaten or otherwise abused if they decline to participate in such activity, which is one reason to undermine the market and make it unprofitable. Also, you're overlooking the possibility of significant psychological damage. Being a stripper doesn't seem like a healthy occupation for a ten year old.
- richbradshaw 13y agoThe quote from their director was "Our worst scenario is that the same thing will happen with this as has happened with child pornography that is now a multibillion dollar industry in the hands of criminal gangs." Also there was an article about cam girls the other day showing some/many are poorly paid in studios in 3rd world countries. Where there is demand, there is always someone there to make money – in this case it's clear that attempting to curtail demand will stop commercialisation of this sort of thing.
- IbJacked 13y agoThe article mentions that the "webcam sex" involves people paying to watch, via webcam, actual sex. Very different situation.
- DanBC 13y agoThere are examples of people actually killing themselves after webcam sex. Some of those people are blackmailed and asked to pay money in order to prevent release if the images. Some people just have the images released anyway, and are bullied to death.
- jsymolon 13y agoRight. But are those the group that selects to go into web cam or the group that is showing off to a significant other/on a lark ?
- DanBC 13y agoBoth. Some people are lured by fake contacts into sexual explicit photography or videography. They are then blackmailed into providing money. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20698106 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20698106 > The pair often pretended to be someone the children already knew on social networking and instant messaging applications, > They would trick victims into giving them their online passwords using a link, before threatening them into "engaging in sexual activities via webcam," Ceop said. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23141414 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23141414 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-23712000 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-23... > It is thought Daniel Perry had become involved in a scam where victims are befriended and tricked into making explicit webcam recordings. > These are then used for blackmail. See also Amanda Todd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd
- melling 13y agoSo, if you had a daughter, it would be ok if she made a little extra money on the side? It's kind of strange that anyone would have to explain why this is a problem. Wonder what just happened to your Google, Facebook, and NSA social graph profile? :-)
- britta 13y ago(I imagine you mean "young daughter" - this is about the problem that children under the age of consent are involved, not about women in general.)
- wetmore 13y agoI was unaware the only way someone can be harmed is physically.
- cvshepherd 13y agoTerre des Hommes has for years worked to combat child prostitution in Southeast Asia and staff members noticed in recent years that young prostitutes were disappearing from their usual haunts: cafes, restaurants and hotels frequented by sex tourists. after reading this part, i too was asking myself if cracking down on 'webcam-sex' is the best idea, because if this phenomenon contributes to less girls and women being on the streets, that means that less people are going to be victims of related violence, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
- spikels 13y agoFinally the the Turing Test has been passed! This does not seem as impressive as when imagined decades ago. Fooling perverts, even to the point of sending money, seems to be much, much easier than creating more generally useful artificial intelligence. But I guess it is a step forward... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test EDIT: As pointed out below only the video feed was artificial. The chat was with a live human. Impressive but very different than the classic Turing Test.
- anigbrowl 13y agoI thought that this was just a virtual face for a human researcher who was conducting the actual conversation - at least that was how the demonstration in the article was done. If they were entirely virtual I'm not sure they'd need 10 weeks to accumulate sufficient hits.
- spikels 13y agoYou are correct it was just a virtual video feed. I misread the article. I wonder how successful they could be with current AI technology. It seems that in this narrow situation and very "motivated" opponent it could be very successful.
- anigbrowl 13y agoAgreed, but for these purposes it's probably better to have it human-driven to avoid the possibility of entrapment (where the criminal perpetrator is actively encouraged to commit a crime, rather than passively presented with the opportunity to do so). Having said that I'd say it's only 10 years before there's a trade in AI-driven virtual sex partners, which opens up a whole other box of ethical questions.
- abracar 13y agoThere's a Spanish initiative called Negobot that seems to rely on AI much more than Sweetie does — as its name suggests, it's a bot, not just a decoy. (Article in English: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/negobot-virtual-lolita-game-theory_n_3579716.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/negobot-virtual-lol... and paper: http://www.esi.uem.es/~jmgomez/papers/cisis12.pdf http://www.esi.uem.es/~jmgomez/papers/cisis12.pdf)
- brianlweiner 13y agoArticles like these always talk about how huge the child pornography business is, but the language always strikes me as similar to the scare stories from the 80s about satanist cults, etc. I guess I could be wrong, I don't know if there are reliable sources for that kind of information
- DanBC 13y agoThe reliable sources are the hundreds of thousands of images of child sexual abuse on the hard drives of people arrested and prosecuted for these offences. Checksums of these images are made and distributed (to help find other copies; to help filter these images) and some people attempt to identify the victim in order to arrest and prosecute the offender and to offer help to the victim. Satanist cults were always wing-nuts and piss-poor media reporting. Unfortunately, there's some awful reporting about images of child sexual abuse, and the perpetrators of child abuse, and the victims of sexual abuse. (Demonising sexual abusers is not helpful.)
- wyager 13y agoThe article claimed it was a "Multi-billion dollar industry". I don't think there's any compelling evidence that this is true.
- DanBC 13y ago> I don't think there's any compelling evidence that this is true. Have you looked for evidence, or is that a feeling that you have? I'm not snarking, just wondering. I guess it depends how you count the money. There has been a decline in the use of credit cards to access images of child sexual abuse. Most images of child sexual abuse are free, or traded for other images. But commercial trading exists. The best site for modern information is Europol https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/efc_strategic_assessment_-_public_version.pdf https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/efc_strate... You have people hosting images, and people paying for access to those images, and people paying to have those images made. You have people travelling to rape children. You have adults selling children into the sex trade. I dunno, that feels like it could be a couple of billion dollars. Some offenders have millions of images in their collections.[1] In 2005 there were about a million images online.[2] About 50,000 images are added yearly.[3] Sometimes children are raped "on demand", with the video being streamed by the rapist to some one who has ordered and paid for that rape to happen on video, and who is directing the abuse.[4] Parents sell their children into the trade of images of child sexual abuse.[5] Wired have some pricing information. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/16/child-abuse-images-entrepreneurs http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/16/child-abuse-i... > [previous para talks about decline in use of credit cards, and rise of free images of child sexual abuse] New material has also become a currency in itself, with value ascribed to the novelty of the images. So individual video clips might cost as little as $10 (£6.20) each, with subscriptions for $50 (£30) for three months. Although one video file of new material on demand can cost as much as $1,200 (£748). [1] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold-mum-dad-images-child-abuse http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold-mum... [2][3] http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/organized-crime-and-human-trafficking/global-alliance-against-child-abuse/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/org... [4] https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/new-cybercrime-report-examines-disturbing-trends-commercial-online-child-sex-abuse https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/new-cybercrime-report-... [5] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold-mum-dad-images-child-abuse http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/sold-mum...
- praseodym 13y agoLawyers here in The Netherlands are saying that those sex predators cannot be prosecuted because no actual girl was harmed. Furthermore this could be seen as incitement, which lowers chances of prosecution even more. So while this surely raises attention for the issue, I'm not at all sure if it's a lot more useful than that.
- redthrowaway 13y agoThis is my concern, too: there was no crime outside of thoughtcrime, and I'd rather we didn't start prosecuting that. That these men intended to engage in child exploitation doesn't alter the fact that they didn't.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- btown 13y agoHowever, this system could be used to identify people who would be willing to commit these crimes, and to justify investigation into other past crimes of the type that they may have committed. The line will probably be blurred in practice, but at least there is an ethical way to use this technology.
- wyager 13y agoYou really think it's ethical to entice people into thinking they're committing a crime, just to have an excuse to investigate them? That seems kind of shady to me.
- DanBC 13y agoA man that searches the Internet for vulnerable children, and then makes contact with a fake vulnerable child with the intent of abusing that child, does not appear to have been enticed that much.
- jlgreco 13y ago
- hfsktr 13y agoI am glad that they said the current laws are enough. It always seems like people use these issues to get more power. I want to say something about how that probably works for their cause but I can only imagine most people[1] 'thinking of the children' and adding as many laws as they can. [1]the public that elects officials
- anigbrowl 13y agoThis is the YouTube campaign page. Obviously NSFW in subject matter, though not explicit. https://www.youtube.com/sweetie https://www.youtube.com/sweetie One good thing is that they've started with the perception that pedophiliac behavior is a mental rather than solely moral problem. It's quite interesting, if you can put up with the awful 'dramatic' music.
- SilasX 13y agoSo the Perverted Justice/To Catch a Predator folks are spared from Baumol's Cost Disease? (i.e. the problem in which your costs increase as fast as general economic growth because you have to use a real human on a mission-critical path)
- Raphmedia 13y agoA grim as it sounds, I prefer to see online underage prostitution rather than real prostitution. I don't know. On one side, this behaviour is wrong and should stop. On the other, it let those young girl make money without the risk of getting sick, pregnant or abused. The worst that can happen is her getting scammed. But don't get me wrong. Child abuse should NEVER be encouraged.
- lcedp 13y agoI never understood this kind of field work when officers propose using prostitution/drugs/you-name-it services. It looks like a crime promotion: person might hesitate and never do a bad thing in years or they might do, but officers do help in it. It's almost like a prison for thoughtcrime. How do you know the crime would happen if the person weren't helped(sic!)