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This is why technologies such as these need to become widespread quickly, otherwise you get tools such as these where "50 percent of their users are pedophiles"

This is why technologies such as these need to become widespread quickly, otherwise you get tools such as these where "50 percent of their users are pedophiles" or whatever. Even though the technology itself has no fault of its own (the technology is neutral, I'd say even more so than say guns, which are meant to kill people, one way or the other), the government/public will say it's "evil technology" helping bad guys. I mean they even try to do that with HTTPS now. Imagine if HTTPS only came out now, and it could somehow be implemented in people's computers/browsers by individuals. Who would use it first? Probably the criminals, mostly. It would be too geeky for "regular people" to even want to do such a technical task. And they'd see no need for it. After all "who's going to read their email? Emails are private, right?" In such a case, law enforcement could quickly ramp up lobbying in Congress to warn about the "dangers of HTTPS encryption", which is used by mostly criminals. And it would probably get banned, before anyone at Google, Microsoft or Apple even gets a chance to look at it, and before it's used as a technology for e-commerce. It would get a "bad reputation" just like torrents and other stuff, before it gets a chance to develop a good one. This is also why I'm hoping Firefox adopts a "private mode" to replace its incognito mode, that's powered by Tor. When tens of millions of people use Tor for everyday stuff, I doubt it will be "just pedophiles" using it. Pedophiles exist whether there is technology to protect their (watching?) activities or not, and it's something they do because that's how their mind works. So I doubt we'll all turn into pedophiles once we all get Tor.

innguest 12y ago
You make an excellent point. I also want to mention that while it's awful that there are victims of pedophilia, there are hundreds of thousands of times more victims of spanking, which is child abuse just the same, but not a peep about it ever do I hear. So this pedophilia scare is blown out of proportion just so that abusive parents can think "hey at least I'm not abusing my kids". Like people say "I was spanked and turned out fine!". I'm sure between the mindset change from "f%ck anyone" to "only f%ck 18+" there were lots of people saying "I was abused when I was 14 and I turned out fine!". In other words, forget the 10 pedophiles in your area and focus on the 90% of families in your area that treat kids worse than animals. Most families are violently abusing children (making the criminals of tomorrow) and we need to deal with this now. It's easy to be against pedophilia but we must be against all child abuse.
- tedks 12y ago
  It's pathetic that this is downvoted. Child sex abuse is certainly underreported, but I would have a hard time believing that incidence is over half, whereas about half of parents spank their children. Corporal punishment is known to be counterproductive and harmful to basically the same extent child sexual abuse is known to be harmful to children. If you want to deny the hard science about the negative effects of corporal punishment, you might as well deny the hard science about the negative effects of child sexual abuse as well. In 23 out of 50 states it's legal to spank children in schools. Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly. Calling corporal punishment abuse isn't a misstatement. It isn't hyperbole. If you think you were spanked and "turned out fine," I'm sorry, but the science says otherwise. You don't know how you would have turned out if your parents hadn't hit you, and that's the simple fact of the matter, but the science says you'd be ~10 IQ points smarter and probably a hell of a lot more adjusted. But witch hunts are always easier and more popular than fixing systemic problems.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    10 IQ points is hardly significant. Not as significant as other problems that can be cured - inoculation, diet, safe water etc. A first-world problem to be sure.
  - sandworm 12y ago
    "Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly." Polls of parents as people with children, or people who have had children? Most every person I know with kids today is against such punishment. But their parents, those whose "kids" are now in their forties, have radically different views. And there are far more old people who have had kids than parents whose kids are currently under 18. Imho this issue is the quintessential generational device. That 67% will drop as the old people die off along with their antiquated notions of violence upon children.
    - tedks 12y ago
mike_hearn 12y ago
HTTPS most useful to criminals? Maybe .... but I'm not sure how. HTTPS clients are still connecting to a box whose ownership can normally be traced. If someone presents evidence of badness being hosted there, it's not so hard to prove who is behind it. WRT Tor, the issue that gets the project the bad press is hidden services, not anonymous browsing in general. Tor's regular / most popular mode of use mixes your traffic in with a lot of abuse which gets exit nodes blocked, but it doesn't seem to be in the same league of controversy as hidden services are. So Firefox doing Tor in incognito windows wouldn't help much (I think they looked at it already, actually).

innguest 12y ago

You make an excellent point. I also want to mention that while it's awful that there are victims of pedophilia, there are hundreds of thousands of times more victims of spanking, which is child abuse just the same, but not a peep about it ever do I hear. So this pedophilia scare is blown out of proportion just so that abusive parents can think "hey at least I'm not abusing my kids". Like people say "I was spanked and turned out fine!". I'm sure between the mindset change from "f%ck anyone" to "only f%ck 18+" there were lots of people saying "I was abused when I was 14 and I turned out fine!". In other words, forget the 10 pedophiles in your area and focus on the 90% of families in your area that treat kids worse than animals. Most families are violently abusing children (making the criminals of tomorrow) and we need to deal with this now. It's easy to be against pedophilia but we must be against all child abuse.

tedks 12y ago
It's pathetic that this is downvoted. Child sex abuse is certainly underreported, but I would have a hard time believing that incidence is over half, whereas about half of parents spank their children. Corporal punishment is known to be counterproductive and harmful to basically the same extent child sexual abuse is known to be harmful to children. If you want to deny the hard science about the negative effects of corporal punishment, you might as well deny the hard science about the negative effects of child sexual abuse as well. In 23 out of 50 states it's legal to spank children in schools. Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly. Calling corporal punishment abuse isn't a misstatement. It isn't hyperbole. If you think you were spanked and "turned out fine," I'm sorry, but the science says otherwise. You don't know how you would have turned out if your parents hadn't hit you, and that's the simple fact of the matter, but the science says you'd be ~10 IQ points smarter and probably a hell of a lot more adjusted. But witch hunts are always easier and more popular than fixing systemic problems.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  10 IQ points is hardly significant. Not as significant as other problems that can be cured - inoculation, diet, safe water etc. A first-world problem to be sure.
- sandworm 12y ago
  "Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly." Polls of parents as people with children, or people who have had children? Most every person I know with kids today is against such punishment. But their parents, those whose "kids" are now in their forties, have radically different views. And there are far more old people who have had kids than parents whose kids are currently under 18. Imho this issue is the quintessential generational device. That 67% will drop as the old people die off along with their antiquated notions of violence upon children.
  - tedks 12y ago

mike_hearn 12y ago

HTTPS most useful to criminals? Maybe .... but I'm not sure how. HTTPS clients are still connecting to a box whose ownership can normally be traced. If someone presents evidence of badness being hosted there, it's not so hard to prove who is behind it. WRT Tor, the issue that gets the project the bad press is hidden services, not anonymous browsing in general. Tor's regular / most popular mode of use mixes your traffic in with a lot of abuse which gets exit nodes blocked, but it doesn't seem to be in the same league of controversy as hidden services are. So Firefox doing Tor in incognito windows wouldn't help much (I think they looked at it already, actually).