UK official involved in national porn filter arrested for child porn

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/top-uk-official-involved-in-national-porn-filter-arrested-for-child-porn/

by rjzzleep • 12 years ago

113 73 12 years ago

arstechnica.com

zimpenfish• 12 years ago

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

Justsignedup2• 12 years ago

Remember that anti-gay republican who was caught having sex with a male prostitute in an airport bathroom?

Haters gonna hate (themselves).

christoph2• 12 years ago

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...

Communications director resigns after phone hacking scandal http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jan/21/andy-coulson-re...

gadders5• 12 years ago

Labour ex-ministers support paedophile pressure group? http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dail...

DanHulton• 12 years ago

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.

CrazyIvan• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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

j7512• 12 years ago

Oh how ironic...

Justsignedup2• 12 years ago

... 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."

dspillett2• 12 years ago

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.

taybin2• 12 years ago

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

dspillett2• 12 years ago

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).

clarry2• 12 years ago

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_2• 12 years ago

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.

e40• 12 years ago

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.

Or maybe there's evidence that looking at any type of pornography decreases illegal behavior and the people making the laws don't give a crap about real data?[1]

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/04/porn-and-rape-the-debate-...

slashdotaccount• 12 years ago

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.

tomp3• 12 years ago

What's worse, it doesn't actually need to be child pornography. Even computer-generated/digitally modified images/videos where actors resemble children, and even drawings that can be interpreted as children having sex, are illegal!

astrodust3• 12 years ago

There need to be prohibitions that don't discriminate on the basis of age. If someone's being abused, against their will, that's the same thing. It doesn't matter if they've crossed the magical line where they're an adult.

If you're going to make a stand, at least make a principled one ("We're trying to prevent abuse") and not one on emotional basis ("Think of the children!")

rainer89• 12 years ago

So if u are an anime fan you are so fuck in UK

__alexs• 12 years ago

Our complete inability to even suggest trying to think rationally about these issues is much worse than that.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/4949555/Harr...

rjzzleep• 12 years ago

similar things just happened in germany.

Edathy announced his resignation from parliament "for health reasons" on February 7, 2014. Just two days after his resignation went public, his home and offices were searched by authorities; media outlets asserted that the searches were made on allegations of possession of child pornography.[] 14 February 2014, Hans-Peter Friedrich, resigned from the ruling CDU–SPD grand coalition government reacting to imminent legal investigations into incidents during his tenure as Federal Minister of the Interior. Friedrich was accused of betraying state secrets about legal investigations to SPD party heads during the coalition negotiations after the federal elections in 2013 about information showing Edathy's link to a globally-operating child pornography syndicate and plans to take up an investigation against Edathy on suspicion of possessing such material. "The SPD's top leaders, who received the intelligence information from Friedrich, said they have not given any tip-off to Edathy and they kept the information secret."[] They are Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is also Merkel's deputy; Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier; and the party's parliamentary leader, Thomas Oppermann.

what i didn't know until recently was that edathy was overseeing an investigation on the verfassungschutz (a german intelligence gathering institution to fight threats concerning democratic order etc.) [2]

essentially a few police informants essentially ran a terrorism cell targeted at immigrants. when investigations happened a lot of the official records were destroyed. [3]

according to the news edathy bought pictures of naked children. he might have, but who knows.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Edathy

[2] http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Bundesamt+f%c3%bcr...

[3] http://www.news.ch/Behoerde+vernichtet+Akten+von+Zwickauer+T...

aegiso• 12 years ago

It's less incredible once you come to terms with the fact that like so much "zero-tolerance" emotionally charged legislation its role is to be a political gun that doesn't require the ammunition of justice or reason to function. "But he's a child molester!" is all you need, logic and facts be damned. What's worse, is it's impossible to get rid of these laws because anyone who tries can easily be branded as a <insert evil demographic> sympathizer.

As unsurprising as it is that these laws exist and continue to do so, it's still utterly horrifying when you realize it's combined with indiscriminate data hoovering for later use.

I don't think there's any solution but to stop reacting emotionally to terms like "child-molester", "murderer" and "terrorist" and instead think critically about the deeper reasons behind why people do what they do. I'm doing my part and I encourage anyone reading this to do the same.

DaleHarries1• 12 years ago

I view the way paedophiles are treated today as the way gay men were treated roughly 50 - 100 years ago.

Think about it in chronological order:

1. Gay people are not mentioned and thrown in jail if discovered. 2. Decriminalised, society begins to learn what they are, huge public backlash, declared mental illness. 3. Science catches up, stops declaring it a mental issue. 4. Society catches up. 5. Law catches up. 6. Gay people == Straight people

Now, of course paedophiles bring their own set of problems but think about this timetable:

1. Paedophiles not mentioned and thrown in jail. 2. Society begins to learn what they are, huge backlash, declared mental illness. 3. Science catches up, discovers why paedophiles are the way they are and comes up with treatments. 4. Society catches up, focus on treatment and feels pity rather than contempt. 5. Law catches up. 6. Paedophiles == Normal people (Obviously in need of treatment though)

I have this feeling that in 100 years we will look back and think "Jesus Christ did we do that to these poor people, they needed treatment not throwing in jail". That's even before you ask questions about the current systems ability to protect children. (I don't believe it does at all)

Of course if you made this statement outside of an intelligent forum like hacker news you would be accused of being Gary Giltter's pimp! IMHO that just shows how emotionally unintelligent we are to deal with this issue. Give it 20 - 30 years and we'll be in a far more advanced place.

austerity• 12 years ago

True. However this specific person being part of the problem makes me have a lot less sympathy for them.

peizo• 12 years ago

Smells like a set up.

chrisdevereux4• 12 years ago

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...

BgSpnnrs• 12 years ago

The DM broke this story too. Defo an interesting timeline of events.

chrisdevereux4• 12 years ago

That's interesting. Check out how far down the front page it is, though!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

gadders5• 12 years ago

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."

chrisdevereux4• 12 years ago

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.

sandwell• 12 years ago

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...

tomp3• 12 years ago

Why is that irony?

Ntrails• 12 years ago

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

timw6n• 12 years ago

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.

sailfast• 12 years ago

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.

izzydata• 12 years ago

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?

doreo4• 12 years ago

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.

argumentum3• 12 years ago

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/

jseliger• 12 years ago

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?

Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond all reject the Ring; Gandalf says that "I do not trust myself in this, and I refused this thing, even as a freely given gift." Those who most want power over the thoughts of others are the worst keepers of such power.

gadders5• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

nate_meurer3• 12 years ago

How about describing it in words? Or merely thinking about it? Should those be crimes too? How about cartoon or CG depictions? And who gets to decide which of these things sends you to prison?

I'm not trying to be a smartass, and I actually upvoted your comment, but you do seem to have completely missed the point of Hitchens' speech.

pimentel• 12 years ago

Check http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-mus... to think a bit more about the other side of the matter.

hackerboos• 12 years ago

Working video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY#t=20m40s

taybin2• 12 years ago

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.

iamwithnail2• 12 years ago

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