

Google builds new system to eradicate child porn images from the web - nemo1618
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10122452/Google-builds-new-system-to-eradicate-child-porn-images-from-the-web.html

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lubujackson
This is great and all, but I've been noticing a trend of "go after child porn
first" since it's unquestionably evil, and then those same tools are later
used to strip away civil liberties (usually these are legal tools).

What happens when someone gets the idea to use this tool against any
copyrighted photo? Because it will be trivial to start doing that once a
consortium of companies are already flagging, reporting and blocking images.

I appreciate the intent, but these are the sort of consequences that need to
be considered when a company tries to dictate legal enforcement online.

~~~
mpyne
Those types of consequences should indeed be thought through, but your same
argument applies to essentially everything else that even a local city
government could possibly do.

E.g. police, what if someone gets the bright idea to use them to suppress
lawful, peaceful protesters or hackers just trying to change the world,
instead of just going after the unquestionably evil? The conclusion you might
reach would be that the government should not have any police, or military, or
taxes, or social welfare programs, etc.

Maybe someday we'll have an anarcho-utopian world where that not only works,
but is ideal; but for now I'd prefer to avoid living in a stateless wasteland
where the only real rule is that might makes right.

Does that mean this program to reduce child porn is worth the risk to civil
liberties? I don't know, I haven't really looked at it. But if we consider
_only_ whether what we do could possibly harm anyone else ever then there
won't be much we can do at all.

~~~
icebraining
Well yes, but this isn't an action by an elected government. The IWF is a
private organization, established by the Internet industry.

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anologwintermut
This would seem to not be very effective for child porn for a variety of
reasons including

    
    
        # NO PORN HERE CAPTAIN 
        User-agent: *
        Disallow: /
    

Of course, it would be useful for copyrighted images.

~~~
loceng
This is a fear people should have especially with cloud computing aiming
towards the norm of storage. What happens when government gives private
companies the power to send out delete requests to competitors, and for all of
them to delete specific images without a third-party review first.. I'm sure
businesses would love to be judge and jury.

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pjscott
Who, exactly, does this protect? There are plenty of ways of distributing
images that would be completely unaffected by the Great Hash Database.

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etiam
If David Cameron feels “sickened” by such material available online, wouldn't
it be simpler if he just refrains from looking at them? :)

Seriously though, preventing the abuse and human suffering associated with the
making of that stuff should obviously actually be a priority. Deleting the
pictures seems pretty secondary. I hope deleting the pictures doesn't turn out
a substitute for stopping the abuses. And I fully agree with the premonitions
of those who have pointed out that this could easily be subverted for
nefarious purposes such as undercutting civil liberties. Certainly not obvious
that this would be a good thing for the world to have in place.

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JackpotDen
> Google, the internet giant, is to create a global database of child abuse
> images

So they're going to hoard all the child porn in the world.

Brilliant idea.

Today is not a good day to be someone who effectively lives on the internet.
It's for the children.

LOOK AFTER YOUR OWN DAMN KIDS. Only by being a responsible parent can you stop
child abuse. None of this Draconian bullshit that affects other people, it
takes you, looking after your kids to solve these problems.

LEAVE THE INTERNET ALONE.

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lsiebert
So what sort of hash is this using? Because It seems to me like with only one
hash used, you could get false positives.

Or heck, depending on if an arbitrary file can be made to hash to a certain
value, you could potentially cause problems for people.

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alexforster
An awful lot of computer vision PhD's are going to have to spend an awful lot
of time looking at and watching child porn to develop this system.

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Canada
Too bad the anonymity network we have to build to avoid being spied on and
censored will also protect CP viewers.

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cabirum
So another NSA leak will just be flagged and globally wiped from the web.

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throwaway10001
_will allow child porn images which have already been “flagged” by child
protection organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to be
wiped from the web in one fell swoop._

Next will be those images that offend [insert religion or public figure here]
in some part of the world.

