
UK official involved in national porn filter arrested for child porn - rjzzleep
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/top-uk-official-involved-in-national-porn-filter-arrested-for-child-porn/
======
dspillett
A lot of people who are rabidly fighting against the Internet being a free-
for-all are significantly damaged and assume the rest of the world is damaged
in the same way so need to be protected.

~~~
taybin
So if the internet were a free for all, there wouldn't be child pornography?
Your logic here doesn't follow.

~~~
dspillett
No, I neither said nor meant anything of the sort. I was meaning that people
who overreact and propose unworkable solutions tend to be those that have a
problem themselves. They assume we all need saving from ourselves in the same
way that they need help, they have trouble coping with the idea that their
thoughts/desires/reactions to such things are far different from everyone else
because in (almost) every other way they consider themselves normal.

Filtering the web will not make any real long-term difference to either those
distributing or those looking for CP, IMO. You are not going to just stumble
upon CP because a filter failed: people distributing that sort of material
don't want to be found that easily because they don't want the authorities to
stumble upon them. Likewise if someone really wants to find that sort of thing
then the sort of filters proposed with not stop them in the slightest. It is
one of those "people problems" that I very much doubt you can fix with
technical measures (how you could fix it I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure
that the proposed filters will be ineffective and will cause inconvenience
elsewhere while not actually doing their job).

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clarry
I still find it incredible that merely possessing some files is enough to get
you arrested and possibly end your career. Weirder still, it seems to be ok to
have just about all other sorts of horrific photos depicting, say, brutal
violence..

~~~
corin_
I could be wrong, but I think there's far less of a market for producing
photos of brutal violence than there is for producing photos of illegal
pornography - the law is really about trying to kill the market, rather than
it actually mattering that they are looking at the photos (really the only
reason to punish people for looking at them is that by stopping these people
you can help take away the incentive for people to produce them in the first
place).

Edit: In response to tomp's comment about how cartoon images can be illegal...
yeah, I don't understand that. Maybe there's scientific evidence that
paedophiles who look at cartoon images are more likely to become sex offenders
than those who avoid all pornography? Even then, not sure it's the right
approach... but who knows.

~~~
slashdotaccount
But how can be the market destroyed when there is a demand. We should
understand that there are those people who are being attracted to minors (we
call them pedophiles), call this a disease, or whatever, but these people
exist, and the vast majority of them are normal people in the real life. We,
normal people (or what is normal?), are attracted to other adult people, but
it doesn't make us rapers just because we imagine having sex with somebody.
And it doesn't make those people child-molesters if they are only imagining
it. And we are allowed to watch porn. If we want to kill the CP market (so the
criminals stop shooting new CP material) let's give those people the
possibility to watch it legally (because if not they are going to do it
illegally). Let's collect all those already made illegal materials and give it
to them for free (like the medical marijuana) so they can somewhat fulfill
their sexual desires without harming anybody.

~~~
clarry
And when there's demand, I just don't see how outlawing possession would end
that demand. Think guns. Does outlawing the possession of guns put and end to
the black market for illegal guns? On the contrary I think!

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chrisdevereux
The most interesting thing about this to me is that shortly after the advisor
was arrested, the rightwing Daily Mail started a smear campaign against senior
members of the opposition, effectively accusing them of having supported
paedophilia in the 1970s[1].

It dominated UK headlines for about a week, until the Ukraine crisis, at which
point the (much more serious and concrete) allegations against the government
advisor are revealed.

Nice work.

[1]:
[http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dail...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dailymail-
harrietharman)

~~~
gadders
And as that Guardian article concludes:

"But I'm with the Mail on this. On the basis of the paper's evidence, I think
Harman, Dromey and Hewitt do need to address this matter seriously.

It isn't good enough to say the world was different then (as some have been
suggesting in relation to the recent crop of historic sex abuse court cases)
because there has never been a time when it has been all right to advocate sex
with a child."

~~~
chrisdevereux
Yeah, I posted that article because it gave a good summary of the sequence of
events w/r/t the Mail's reporting. I don't really agree with that last point.

There's no evidence that any of the Labour politicians expressed sympathetic
attitudes towards paedophilia. Their argument at the time was about exactly
where criminality should begin --- arguing against a blanket ban on images of
nude children (because it might criminalise totally innocent parents) and sex
between underage children of a similar age (which is arguably more an issue
for education, youth services, etc. than the police and courts) --- y'know,
the sort of things you'd expect a civil liberties organisation to be concerned
with.

You might disagree with their position, but the Mail's reports really were
trying to cast them as having been sympathetic to child abuse ("LABOUR MP
ADVOCATES LOWERING OF AGE OF CONSENT TO 10", etc.), which clearly wasn't the
case. It's hard to see it as anything other than a smear campaign (or, at
best, extremely sensationalized journalism) given that.

------
argumentum
This is a longish, but awesome quote from my favorite Christopher Hitchens
speech that's quite relevant to this:

 _Every time you violate – or propose the violate – the right to free speech
of someone else, you in potentia you’re making a rod for your own back.
Because (…), to who do you reward the right to decide which speech is harmful,
or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful
consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To
whom would you give this job? To whom you’re going to award the task of being
the censor?

Isn’t the famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography,
in order to decide what is fit to be passed and what isn’t, is the man most
likely to become debauched?

Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could
read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the
responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?

Does anyone have a nominee? Hands up?

You mean there is no one who is good enough to decide what I can read? I had
no idea.. But there’s a law – or some pebbling sub section of a law – that
says there much be such a person. Well to hell with that law. It is inviting
you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently already know
already.

About this censorial instinct: we basically know already what we need to know,
and we’ve known it for a long time, it comes from an old story form again a
great Englishman (..) Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the first great
dictionary of English language. When it was complete he was waited upon by
various delegations of people to congratulate him, (..) also by a delegation
of respectable ladies of London (…). Dr Johnson, they said: “we are delighted
to find that you’ve not included any indecent or obscene words in your
dictionary.”

“Ladies, said dr Johnson, “I can congratulate you on being able to look them
up.”

Anyone who can understand that joke gets the point about censorship,
especially prior restraint as it is known in the US for it is banned by the
first amendment of the Constitution. It may not be determined in advance what
words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to
make that call and – more important – one has to suspect the motives of those
who do so. In particular those who are determined to be offended, those who
will go through a treasure house of English language (..) in search of filthy
words, to satisfy themselves, and some instinct about which I dare not
speculate…_ \- Christopher Hitchens

[http://howtoplayalone.wordpress.com/hitchens-on-free-
speech/](http://howtoplayalone.wordpress.com/hitchens-on-free-speech/)

~~~
gadders
I get the "slippery slope" arguments etc, but I can't help feeling that the
right to free speech shouldn't include the right to look at pictures of
children being raped.

~~~
com_kieffer
I've struggled with that for a long time but in the end how is an image of a
child being raped different from an image of a man being killed ? Both depict
equally heinous acts.

~~~
cgore
I don't think most people really care for snuff films either.

------
timw6n
Even more worrying is the fact that it appears that he was tipped off about
the police investigation by senior Downing Street figures.

He resigned from his post at the policy office several hours before the NCA
came to arrest him at his flat, which meant that he could potentially have had
the opportunity to destroy evidence.

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sailfast
I imagine it would be somewhat trivial to entrap / SWAT somebody with this
kind of imagery and then make an anonymous phone call, right? The tendency to
rush to judgment on these issues is what makes those kinds of tactics much
more powerful.

Not saying that is the case here, but it's something I try to keep in mind
whenever headlines like this hit the news. It is rare that we ever see the
follow-up verdict / judgment reach the same level of visibility.

------
zimpenfish
I wish I could be surprised by the ongoing hypocrisy of our UK politicians but
...

~~~
christoph
It's hilarious just how badly you can pick them...

Immigration minister resigns after hiring illegal immigrant cleaner
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/106261...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10626150/Mark-
Harper-resigns-after-hiring-illegal-immigrant.html)

Communications director resigns after phone hacking scandal
[http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jan/21/andy-coulson-
re...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jan/21/andy-coulson-resigns-
david-cameron)

~~~
DanHulton
I dunno, the Immigration minister there seems like he acted pretty well.

When he hired the cleaning lady, she showed proper documents and - if I'm
reading this correctly - insisted she continued to have the right to work even
when she didn't.

When he found out his mistake, he corrected it by letting her go and
resigning.

Maybe the article's being too generous, but that seems like pretty above-the-
board behaviour for what seems to be an honest mistake.

~~~
philbarr
If I remember this correctly, I think he had just been actively accusing
employers of not doing due diligence when hiring people and that ignorance was
no excuse.

Then it turns out that he was doing the exact same thing...

~~~
christoph
Yes. He was in the process of passing legislation that doubled the fine for
"lazy" employers that didn't fully check the immigration status of their
employees.

------
sandwell
In a double dose of irony it was the Daily Mail who originally broke the
story, the very same paper who are being petitioned to stop posting pictures
that sexualise under age girls.

[https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/daily-mail-
mailonline...](https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/daily-mail-mailonline-
stop-the-daily-mail-sexualising-children)

~~~
tomp
Why is that irony?

~~~
Ntrails
Because, you see, it's a lot like rain on your wedding day.

------
izzydata
Always wondered about these types of systems. If you are filtering certain
content then wouldn't you at some point have to of had the content yourselves
to hash it for checking against later?

~~~
doreo
This system doesn't involve hashing, just blocking a blacklist of URLs.
Digital forensics labs come across a lot of child porn in their daily work
though so it isn't much of an ethical challenge to build a hashlist of illegal
material.

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CrazyIvan
At first he didn't like it but then it grew on him. Damn you Internet! It is
all your fault! If only he could go back in time, implement filter and come
back nothing would have happened!

~~~
vrikis
This comment wins best comment of all time haha.. If only he could go back in
time...

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iamwithnail
He's not an official, he's a special adviser, there's a substantive
difference.

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peizo
Smells like a set up.

------
taybin
I'm seeing a lot of snarky comments, but the only reason this is being talked
about is for the irony. It neither proves nor disproves that a filter is
helpful or harmful for child pornography.

------
j7512
Oh how ironic...

~~~
Justsignedup
... without missing a beat, Patrick Rock went on record to say "As you can
see, this filter is very effective, it even caught me. Kudos for a well
implemented mechanism, I can only hope such sick, sick, basters like myself
will be caught and put away promptly."

