I'm all for stopping child exploitation, but I am extremely creeped out about the prospect of my ISP scanning all images that I download to my computer for CONTENT.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/0 ... index.html

Internet providers to combat child porn

Wednesday, June 28, 2006; Posted: 11:47 a.m. EDT (15:47 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Five leading online service providers will jointly build a database of child-pornography images and develop other tools to help network operators and law enforcement better prevent distribution of the images.

The companies pledged $1 million among them Tuesday to set up a technology coalition as part of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They aim to create the database by year's end, though many details remain unsettled.

The participating companies are Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., EarthLink Inc. and United Online Inc., the company behind NetZero and Juno. AOL and CNN.com are both owned by Time Warner Inc.

Ernie Allen, the chief executive of the missing children's center, noted that the Internet companies already possess many technologies to help protect users from threats such as viruses and e-mail "phishing" scams. "There's nothing more insidious and inappropriate" than child pornography, he said.

The announcement comes as the U.S. government is pressuring service providers to do more to help combat child pornography. Top law enforcement officials have told Internet companies they must retain customer records longer to help in such cases and have suggested seeking legislation to require it.

AOL chief counsel John Ryan said the coalition was partly a response to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales' April speech identifying increases in child-porn cases and chiding the Internet industry for not doing more about them.

The creation of the technology coalition does not directly address the preservation of records but could demonstrate the industry's willingness to cooperate.

Plans call for the missing children's center to collect known child-porn images and create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula. Each participating company would scan its users' images for matches.

AOL, for instance, plans to check e-mail attachments that are already being scanned for viruses. If child porn is detected, AOL would refer the case to the missing-children's center for further investigation, as service providers are required to do under federal law.

Each company will set its own procedures on how it uses the database, but executives say the partnership will let companies exchange their best ideas -- ultimately developing tools for preventing child-porn distribution instead of simply catching violations.

"When we pool together all our collective know-how and technical tools, we hope to come up with something more comprehensive along the lines of preventative" measures, said Tim Cranton, Microsoft's director of Internet safety enforcement programs.

Ryan said that although AOL will initially focus on scanning e-mail attachments, the goal is to ultimately develop techniques for checking other distribution techniques as well, such as instant messaging or Web uploads.

Representatives will begin meeting next month to evaluate their technologies, determining, for instance, whether cropping an image would change its signature and hinder comparisons. Also to be discussed are ways to ensure that customers' privacy is protected. Authorities still would need subpoenas to get identifying information on violators.

The companies involved said they are talking with other service providers about joining. But companies that do not participate still are required by law to report any suspected child-porn images, and many already have their own techniques for monitoring and identifying them.

What exactly do they think this is going to stop? Random noise generation would destroy their plan. The RIAA tried this with mp3's and fell falt on their asses.

I don't think it says anywhere in here that they would scan your hard drive. Only messages you send outbound from your computer, e.g. email, IM, or web uploads seem to be covered here, as far as I can tell.

That's right. But they all go through that to get to my harddrive.

I believe that the rules are that while email is in-transit between your PC and the intarweb it belongs to the ISP. They are doing nothing illegal there. I just think they are asking for trouble and are going to embarass many innocent people (the same way the RIAA has done) with their bullshit technical plan.

so when i send random chicks pics of my p p, they are going to assume it is kiddie porn since its so small



FUCK

Use stretch and skew.

I never said it was illegal. Neither is the porn on my computer, but I don't want the world knowing what I whack to.

that was seriously golden.

If they already scan attachments for viruses, will it make much of a difference if they scan for child porn?? Either way, they're checking what comes through your e-mail.

edited for: just caught the boldface at the end of the article which reads:

Ryan said that although AOL will initially focus on scanning e-mail attachments, the goal is to ultimately develop techniques for checking other distribution techniques as well, such as instant messaging or Web uploads.



I don't need my ISP knowing all the content of my IM's. Fuck that.

I'd also think that any criminal worth his muster would encrypt anything illegal sent through the internet, be it text or images, so that no scanning software would be able to detect it. PGP, etc...

here's a good example of what can happen if you have child pornography on your computer:

A few months ago my sister was home by herself when the FBI smashed the front door down guns drawn. They came into her bedroom and told her to stay where she was while they searched the house. They took financial records and both of my dads computers. They staked out the house until my dad got home from work. He was arrested and interogated. Apparently they had been tracking the internet usage from my dads IP address. They hauled him to jail. Later that night my 14 year old brother got home from his basketball game. The FBI was still at the house. Upon interogation they discovered that my brother was the one downloading child porn. My brother says him and some friends stumbled across the site and didn't realize they were doing anything wrong. They returned my dad to his house, but not before telling the neighbors that a possible child predator was living on their street. Due to the harrasment of his asshole neighbors my dad recently sold his house and moved out of the town he was in....all because of a couple of curious young teenagers.

I get my porn directly from the kids.

B is living "off the grid".

Sometimes I give in to my curiosity and download kiddie porn.

The people who should be prosecuted in these cases are the people who actually create the kiddie porn. Or those that molest children. I do not understand why people like anal sex, I do not understand why people are sexually attracted to children, but I do realize that there is a chemical thing going on there, and that incilnation in itself should not be something that is prosecuted. It is the actual action that takes presidence. And being a pervert is not something you should spend years in jail for. And just to clarify I am not comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, I am just talking about how other peoples sexual inclinations are different from my own.

This is coming out horribly I know. What I am trying to say is that peoples sexual preference is innate in themselves. If for some reason you are attraced to people under the age of 12, that isn't a crime in itself, but if you act on that then you diserve hell and all of its minions.

First, they were tracking the usage. This means that (most likely) LOTS of kiddie porn had been downloaded, so hopefully your brother is in some kind of lock-down program now. Second, who the fuck doesn't know something is wrong with kiddie porn? Give me a fucking break.

If someone in my home were repeatedly downloading kiddie porn, or even more than once, I really wouldn't care that my door was broken down or that my computer was confiscated. I'd be thankful to know that someone in my home was sick, sick, sick, and then I'd have them in a home faster than a person's head could spin. As far as the neighbors, if your dad was cleared that quickly, why were they still assholes toward him? That seems odd to me.

Sorry if this seems harsh, but kiddie porn is disgusting, and obtaining it should be illegal imo. A person that actively seeks pictures of children being molested deserves a shitty life.

um.. if he's 14 downloading pics of naked 14 year old girls, its legally kiddie porn, but the intent isnt nearly as disturbing.

That's what I was going to say.