Picture: Sacramento at night, my picture, Sept. 2018
Friday, December 27, 2019
California law requiring therapists disclose patients admitted downloads of c.p. now can be challenged in court
The California state supreme court, voting 4-3, has allowed
to go forward litigation of a 2014 law that requires therapists to report
patients who admit to downloading child pornography even though they did not disseminate
it.
Therapists argue, reasonably, that this would stop people from
seeking therapy.
Maura Dolan has a detailed article in the Los Angeles Times
(paywall) Dec 26.
I recall there had been some controversy about the law at
the time and I recall hearing about the proposal in 2013.
But the issue also reminds me of the “confessions” that
James Holmes in Colorado made to his therapist before the violent theater
rampage in 2012, and that the therapist thought she had a serious ethical dilemma.
Picture: Sacramento at night, my picture, Sept. 2018
Monday, December 23, 2019
New York Times reports major c.p. busts of hosted sites based on the detective work of Canadian non-profits
Gabriel J. X. Dance has a long and detailed and heavily formatted front-page article (“Fighting the Good Fight”) in the New York Times today about hosted
sites (as opposed to social media platforms) serving child pornography. Most of these are hosted overseas, surprisingly
in Europe (such as the Netherlands) where everyone thinks censorship and illegal
content laws are stricter.
The article makes it appear that Cloudflare hides these
sites from law enforcement, a claim that the CEO will surely challenge.
A number of non-profits, formed by victims, have hunted
these sites down. Some of the non-profits are in Canada, with one of the
largest in Winnipeg, Manitoba (north of Minnesota and socially and culturally similar)
and it uses a detection program called Arachnid.
The busts will add to the count of watermarked images that
NCMEC can check against.
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Another look at Tumblr's porn ban a year ago
Recently, there have been some conversations where people
remember Tumblr’s porn ban of Dec 17, 2018 (about a year ago), TOS document here.
Apparently the reason was related to Apple’s pulling an
iPhone app after child pornography was detected. This was quite damaging to the company.
There are other possible reasons. Banks are getting skittish about doing
business with companies with high risk exposure, and porn poses that kind of
risk. Bostwiki had explained this in a
video a few days ago.
And during 2019 there has been at least one major
international bust, which will add more watermarks to NCMEC’s database for
companies to check against, for uploads, email attachments, or even conceivably
cloud storage.
I included a Wochit video about this in yesterday’s GLBT blog
posting that talked about several quirky topics.
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Parents need to be careful about kids' video game playing (NYTimes series this week)
Nellie Bowles and Michael H. Keller have a detailed and disturbing
series starting in the Sunday New York Times on December 8, 2019, “While they
play online, children may be the prey”.
The series is called “Exploited: virtual ‘hunting grounds’”.
The article starts online with chat samples, and describes intrusions
into kids playing video games, often those “made for kids”, sometimes from
Discord servers, as discovered by some alert parents.
The story reminds me of a New York Times article by Kurt
Eichenwald about Justin Berry in 2005.
The video above by Chubbyemu describes how a young man dropped
dead after playing video games for 73 hours unstopped. He died of acute pulmonary
embolism. In South Korea people are
treated for gaming addiction.
Tuesday, December 03, 2019
Reminder: submit comments to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) this week if you're a YouTube content creator or have other concerns about COPPA
I have just made a formal comment to the FTC regarding the
implementation of its new settlement with YouTube on January 1, 2020 and the
potential impact on YouTube creators. I
have a writeup of it here. You can use
this link to make your own comment, not later than Dec. 9, 2019.
Essentially, I acknowledge that even non-monetized videos indirectly
depend on behavioral ads and their visitors could be targeted later with
advertising even for visiting me, and that my own videos are normally intended
for access through blogs, where the audience is likely to be adult and likely academic
or professional. I use some train videos
in a metaphorical manner.
I also suggested that the FTC exempt video channel owners
who accept YouTube’s own ratings as MFK or not, and that YouTube consider age-gates. These may not save the income of many
creators with youth-oriented content.
I also suggested that industry consider the idea of router
age-gates, which would involve FCC approval (not FTC) and startup development
and funding.
There is a discussion of whether YouTube’s restricted mode
is an age-gate here.
Obviously, what would actually work deserves discussion and
I expect to find a lot more material on this soon.
John Fish has some programmatic (“lexical”) ideas in this
mid 2018 video (well before the settlement) that seem to point to some clues as
to how an effective gate might be developed.
I see some videos about the CCPA (California) popping up on
YouTube and will look into these soon.
Thursday, November 21, 2019
Michigan law firm proposed a technical solution that YouTube and all social media companies should implement (a new kind of age-gate) to prevent COPPA problems
Hoeg
Law has made some videos explaining in detail the relationship between content
creators and YouTube and the obligations of both under a literal reading of the
COPPA statute. He has a technical suggestion on how YouTube could help
content creators and recommends also that Facebook and other social media sites
do the same. (It's conceivable that this would apply to Blogger and WordPress
also.) I urge the Minds community (Subverse, Mythinformed, etc) watch some of
his videos and become familiar with this problem.
He has at least two other preceding videos where he discusses
the controversy over content creator liability for what the “allow YouTube” to
do with the information from cookies accessed from visitors to creator videos.
His suggestions would apply to Blogger (in connection
with Adsense) and Google should consider implementing them. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. would all
benefit from implementing his suggestions to prevent possibly exposing their users
to subtle legal risks from COPPA.
(His videos are not personalized legal advice. They are suggestions especially for tech companies to adopt to reduce risk and believes users should pressure these companies to do so.)
Picture: Houghton and Hancock on the Michigan UP. I was there Sept. 30.
Picture: Houghton and Hancock on the Michigan UP. I was there Sept. 30.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
YouTube issues instructions to content creators on how to comply with the new "made for kids" rules
YouTube has an important video for content creators which
the speaker says are necessary for compliance with a legal settlement it
recently made the FTC.
Content creators must mark their videos as “made for kids”
or “not made for kids”. There is a
provision in advanced settings in YouTube studio to do this globally, to apply
one setting for all videos, which is certainly necessary for those with many
videos.
A “kid” in the U.S. is someone under 13.
A “kid” in the U.S. is someone under 13.
Many features are disabled for “made for kids” videos,
including comments. But the fact that a video is suitable for kids does not mean it was intended primarily for kids.
Update: Nov. 19
Many in the YouTube community are concerned that the FTC will override YouTube's "made for kids" settings whether made by YT or the channel, and fine the channels. There is more discussion here (the business site for my books) on Wordpress, and more videos and info. This is a developing story.
Update: Nov. 19
Many in the YouTube community are concerned that the FTC will override YouTube's "made for kids" settings whether made by YT or the channel, and fine the channels. There is more discussion here (the business site for my books) on Wordpress, and more videos and info. This is a developing story.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
NYTimes now shows that tech companies could be in a legal bind if they try proactively to find and remove c.p. content
Gabriel J. X. Dance and Michael H. Keller have continued
their investigation for the New York Times about the persistence of child sex
abuse images on videos online, underground, this week. On Nov. 9, they published, “If these were pictures of you, you’d understand”
Two sisters are still traumatized by images of events that
happened over a decade ago.
On Tuesday, Nov. 13, the NYTimes Business Page published
another followup, “Legal Tightrope in spotting child sex abuse imagery”.
The article explains that the draconian
nature of the laws can actually make it harder to detect, and make it more
difficult for tech companies, if they intend to help, to actually process images
or videos or ship them to authorities. So tech companies could be caught in a
moral dilemma on this (see Nov 10 post) with no clear answer.
Applying artificial intelligence will be very risky because
it could implicate legally innocent parties who, in a practical world that can become
polarized and hostile, would find their reputations sundered forever regardless
of legal innocence. Electronic Frontier Foundation would certainly respond to
this.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Tech companies may be prodded to check cloud storage of private data for illegality
The New York Times has a booklet-length front-page article,
by Michael H. Keller and Gabriel J.X. Dance, Sunday Nov. 10, “Child sex abusers
elude flimsy digital safeguards” with the subtitle “A living nightmare for the
victims as tech companies fail to stop the images”. Online the title is “Child abusers run rampant
as tech companies look the other way”, which is more likely to provoke a gut
reaction in the visitor.
The article notes that tech companies do check what is
uploaded to the web or to social media for watermarks, and Google checks images
attached to gmail for watermarked items identified by the NCMEC in Alexandria,
VA (there was a very visible arrest in Houston about four years ago). Recently, a major bust overseas added many
images. But cloud storage intended to be
private (like your iCloud) is not, and is often well protected by encryption
(EFF says not well enough).
Will tech companies be pressured to check cloud storage too? Could they check for other things, like copyright infringement? Think now about the CASE Act and connect the dots! (If you subscribe to a site, you should normally be able to save content from your site on your hard drive and let it back up as long as it is for your own use and not published online for others.)
The article also a sidebar story maintaining that images of
victims are still shared online.
Update:
NBC News has a story from Florida about a bust that is quite disturbing.
Update:
NBC News has a story from Florida about a bust that is quite disturbing.
Tuesday, November 05, 2019
CIA said to have recruited child abusers in McCarthy era for spying purposes (FBI vaults)
There is some evidence from FBI records that the CIA ("The Finders" front) abducted people, maybe minors, to use them as spies or as “Manchurian
candidates” back in the 1950s, at least in this vault reference.
“Stephen” (a musician and libertarian-oriented digital activist)
dug up this analysis and posted it in a long twitter thread.
This would have gone on during the McCarthy era.
Monday, November 04, 2019
Increase in street prostitution on the ground in trendy DC area (Logan Circle) attributed to FOSTA
“7 on your Side” investigates the increase in street
prostitution near Logan Circle in Washington DC, and reports on WJLA7. The increase is clearly because FOSTA (the “Backpage
law”) has forced sex workers off line and into the streets.
It’s interesting that WJLA belongs to Sinclair Broadcasting
in Baltimore, a supposedly “conservative” media company. The conservatives are waking up to the fact
that laws like FOSTA don’t work.
Ironically, Logan Circle is rather popular in the gay community, with Crew Club, and with Trade DC, a no-nonsense bar and small disco that has helped "replace" Town. There is also a popular steak and shake place in the area with a big sports bar video.
But the prostitution seems to be all heterosexual.
There is talk of legalizing prostitution in Washington
DC.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
US prosecutors charge major c.p. operator in South Korea and many of his "customers"; many more images will be catalogued for automatic detection
NBC reports, in a story by Cyrus Farivar and Andrew
Blankstein, that the United States attorneys have filed multiple charges
against an operator of a large child pornography underground site on the dark
web, apparently from South Korea, where the person is already jailed, story. The site has been shut down in March 2018.
300 suspects were arrested for possession in South Korea, as
well as other countries, as well as one person in Washington DC with an unprecedented
“collection”.
The site had told users not to upload “adult porn”, which would
seem to have a double meaning.
The NCMEC in Alexandria, VA reports that a large number of
new images will be catalogued and watermarked for automatic detection by
servers (as Google checks gmail attachments).
It would sound plausible in the future that cloud backups could be
checked. That’s a concern (that they
could be checked for a lot of things) raised in Edward Snowden’s new book “Permanent
Record” which I will review soon.
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
UK passes and starts enforcing its own version of COPA(!)
The UK (Britain) has passed a law similar to the United
States old and overturned (in 2007) Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which
was effective on Monday, July 15, 2019, according to this source called UKOM,
link.
Users must present some sort of identification before
signing on to “porn sites”. It is
unclear from the article what would define a site as adult, as we know from the
COPA trial that the ambiguities tore down the law.
The article goes on to examine the obvious differences between
male and female porn interests.
Another related question would be how a user who views a
porn video made outside the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or other western
countries, would know that the actors were over 18 when the video was
made (because the image might exist in a cache on his computer). There is also an interesting question
that since, recently, acting agencies don’t want to see ages on resumes
(because of age discrimination), how they comply with US law on age
verification for adult content. That refers to the Child Protection and EnforcementAct of 1988 and the 2257 record-keeping regulations, apparently still in force.
This issue may be looked at in further
posts.
Monday, September 02, 2019
YouTube gets fined for violation of children's privacy. COPPA, a slap on the wrist
Media sources report that Google has been forced to pay a
civil fine of $150M to $200M to settle claims that it had illegally collected
children’s data, in violation of the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection
Act.
The FTC voted 3-2 alone party lines, similar as for removing
formal network neutrality.
Democrats thought that this was a slap on the hands.
Wednesday, August 07, 2019
Lawsuit against Boy Scouts of America shows hypocrisy of past decades over "moral" policies
A lawsuit was filed this week against the Boy Scouts of
America claiming hundreds of boys were abused over the decades, despite pretense
of straight morality. Cara Kelly et al
have a story in USA Today Wednesday.
The BSA have long had membership controversies. The BSA defended a lawsuit by James Dale in
2000 when the Supreme Court defended their anti-gay ban on the theory they were
a private organization. Despite private pressure, they doubled down somewhat in
2004, and did not adopt more inclusive policies for members and leaders until 2013-2015,
as explained in Wikipedia.
The BSA was a major employer in the Dallas-FW area (even employing computer programmers) when I
lived there in the 80s, with headquarters I think in Irving near highway 183.
However, this litigation seems to refer to problems that
occurred years and decades before their more inclusive policies were adopted.
The BSA has also been in legal disputes with the Girl Scouts.
The BSA has also been in legal disputes with the Girl Scouts.
A roommate at William and Mary in the fall of 1961 told me he
had witnessed abuse at a summer camp in Virginia in 1960.
Tuesday, August 06, 2019
Could tech companies replicate s.o. registry laws with their own "social credit" blacklists, given current uproar over right wing extremism?
I haven’t talked much about the idea of keeping convicted
sex offenders from having Internet access after they serve their sentences (as
part of registration), but the Los Angeles Times offered an editorial on June 23,
2017 about the matter, link here.
This concerned the Supreme Court’s striking down a North
Carolina law which led to the re-arrest of a previously convicted offender for
using Facebook.
The Court had argued that persons should be able to use the
Internet for more mundane uses, like job searches.
But there is another angle.
Given all the pressure on tech companies to cut down on extremism
(especially from the alt-right) and also new liabilities imposed on them by
developments in Europe, we may have a day when tech companies have their own
requirements of “social credit” to have an account at all.
Monday, July 08, 2019
Epstein's case proves that billionaires can wind up held in jail for a long time; does FOSTA matter here?
The arrest of Jeffrey Epstein shows that billionaires can go
to jail and probably be denied bail as flight risks, if there is probable cause
that “they” participated in sex trafficking or child pornography (they often go
together). In Epstein’s case, it seems
that most of this was going on in Florida, but his homes in NYC also contained
plenty of “illegal” material. Here is
the Daily Beast story by Harry Siegel et al.
I guess you can be in the privileged set at Mar a Lago and
wind up in jail.
It is fair to say that this prosecution would probably work
even if the FOSTA law had not been passed. But the fallout may include more
suspicion online of some websites or video channels.
Although probably not at issue here, another possibility is that someone can be framed.
Wednesday, July 03, 2019
Ars Technica writer caught in a sting; he had advocated legalizing c.p.; OANN reports
On June 12, One America News with Jack Posobiec (himself
controversial because of supposed right wing connections) reported the arrest in
NYC of Ars Technica journalist Peter Bright, caught in a sting similar to NBC’s
“to catch a predator”.
The video shows Bright’s advocacy of lowering age of consent
and making child pornography legal (which it may well be in Russia).
His page is still up on Ars Technica.
The Daily Dot also has a story about the sting, as of June
7, which had taken place in April.
His Twitter account was still up as of July 3 but Twitter
flashes a warning about his account as under investigation. Does the name of his account refer to PizzaGate?
Friday, June 21, 2019
YouTube seems to have problems now with COPPA, again
YouTube keeps getting into trouble. Now the problem is COPPA, the Child Online
Privacy Protection Act of 1998.
Various offences, reported to the FCC, seem to occur when some
unscrupulous creators change kids’ content with spicy material to earn more ad
clicks, and others happen when kids are inadvertently shown autoplays of
regular videos and private information is collected.
YouTube may have to segregate the kids’ section completely,
and turn off autoplay, at least for the kids.
Here is a Think Progress summary.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Male student goes in drag in do-it-yourself undercover sting
A 20-year-old male student disguised himself as a 16 year
old girl, and used a Snapchat gender filter to entrap a California police
officer looking for an underage heterosexual partner. Inside Edition reports. This sounds like “To Catch a Predator” on
steroids.
It is really going the extra mile to go into drag, maybe
shave your body, to entrap someone.
This is not recommended.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
NYTimes doubles down, reporting YouTube as serially attracting pedophiles
As if the New York Time’s indulgent piece Sunday making
exaggerated claims about YouTube radicalization (and suggesting that some
persons were “alt-right” when they are not, all with "#Voxadpocalypse") were not enough, on June 3 Max
Fisher and Amanda Taub wrote, in a series called “The Interpreter”, a report “On
YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles”. This reminds me of the NBC busting of chatrooms
(“To Catch a Predator”) and the Times reports on Justin Berry a decade ago.
Nevertheless, I hear reports like this often.
One problem in the LGBT area is that some videos come from
overseas (outside of the larger democracies) where there may not be regulation
requiring actors to be 18+. The
algorithms may push more (foreign) videos at consumers, and it might
technically amount to possessing child pornography to even watch them.
Technology (outside of VPN’s at least) might in time be even able to catch watchers.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Smart phone sexting for minors gets prosecuted again, in Maryland; Canadian law doesn't need images for c.p. prosecution
Here’s another “sexting” case, reported in “The Lily”.
A teenage girl produces her own porn of an incident with a
boyfriend, and texts it to her friends. She
is the actor, so there is no victim.
Yet, she still could be charged with child pornography in
many states. This case occurred in Maryland.
I still wonder if all the gay YouTube videos, those from
overseas, are “legal”. In some countries
it’s probably not certain that the actors were checked for age 18.
And another thing, in many countries, narratives can be
considered child pornography even without images or videos (with or without
animation). This is true even in Canada.
Would the legal standard the description of explicit intimacy, or only intimacy
that could produce arousal in the writer?
Sunday, May 05, 2019
Youtuber sentenced for c.p. receipt after he tempts viewers
A somewhat popular YouTube star, Austin Jones, 26, was
sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of receiving
child pornography.
He had urged minor female to produce videos and send them to
him to prove he was their “biggest fan”.
Buzzfeed News (Stephanie Barr) reports.
The story might be interpreted as precautionary, not to
entice readers or viewers with content.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
COPA opinion (2007) still does bear on the "free content without gatekeepers" question
Given some debates going on concerning “free content” on the
Internet, where speakers want to be heard and are willing to let platforms make
profits from their work, I thought I would refer to the Pacer copy of the COPA
opinion again.
On page 11, at the bottom, there is mention of me as a
plaintiff for putting my first book online (with extra footnotes), which I did
on July 31, 1998 (I remember doing this from my cozy apartment in the Churchill
in Minneapolis well).
On page 51, for several pages, there is detailed narrative
of what would happen, given 2007 technology, if visitors had to offer age
verification through credit cards to visit most websites unless there were
filters. But the narrative becomes relevant were there ever a public policy
change eliminating “free content” as a public “hygiene” problem (to control
echo chambers, fake news, “stochastic threats” and the like). This is at least conceivable in the future,
given many other recent developments.
The link is in the third paragraph of the March 22, 2007
post on this site. It's ironic that there is a discussion of free content on this opinion when the law was designed to target "commercial sites", but that paradigm is not a clean one today.
This issue is relevant for a Wordpress post I published
April 10, 2918, “What happens if platforms are treated as if they were publishersor movie studios, and not as utilities?”
Addendum: April 13
The First Amendment normally is interpreted to the narrow legal concept of "publication" (a statement to at least one person who understands it). You submit an LTE, magazine article or book manuscript to a traditional print publisher, it is under no obligation to publish it and generally does so based on its own best interests as a business (will the book sell?) The publisher shares the First Amendment right with you. With hosted and social media platforms, publication happens mostly under the user control. Technologically (starting in the late 1990s) this had been unprecedented. The platform has the right to curate the content with algorithms, as part of its own First Amendment right. It has the right to remove or censor content or users whom it deems as unacceptable under its own political ideology, But it would probably not have the right to collude with other businesses to get them to do so and hinder competition. Judge Reid's comments starting on p. 51 probably help support that idea. YouTuberLaw (Lior Leser) is working on a complaint with the FTC over collusive behaviors that have allegedly been taken against conservative speakers, especially in late 2018 (as with Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yiannopoulos and others).
Addendum: April 13
The First Amendment normally is interpreted to the narrow legal concept of "publication" (a statement to at least one person who understands it). You submit an LTE, magazine article or book manuscript to a traditional print publisher, it is under no obligation to publish it and generally does so based on its own best interests as a business (will the book sell?) The publisher shares the First Amendment right with you. With hosted and social media platforms, publication happens mostly under the user control. Technologically (starting in the late 1990s) this had been unprecedented. The platform has the right to curate the content with algorithms, as part of its own First Amendment right. It has the right to remove or censor content or users whom it deems as unacceptable under its own political ideology, But it would probably not have the right to collude with other businesses to get them to do so and hinder competition. Judge Reid's comments starting on p. 51 probably help support that idea. YouTuberLaw (Lior Leser) is working on a complaint with the FTC over collusive behaviors that have allegedly been taken against conservative speakers, especially in late 2018 (as with Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yiannopoulos and others).
Monday, March 25, 2019
New Zealand law compares the recent terrorist manifesto to child pornography (for all practical purposes -- mere possession gets you ten years in prison)
New Zealand, as a British Commonwealth country
temperamentally similar to Australia, has a “chief censor”, named David Shanks.
It has been widely reported that Shanks has himself banned
possession of not only the video of the March 15 massacre in Christchurch, but
also the 74-page manifesto.
According to the Washington Times (Andrew Blake) only
establishment academics or others approved by government can possess it. Bloggers, like myself, who might want to
possess it to ensure there was no possible reference to me in the document, may
not. This sounds like a bizarre
comparison to arguments surrounding the Second Amendment (as well as the First)
in the U.S.
The CTPost, in an article (AP) by Alexandra Ma, reports that
anyone in New Zealand found possessing the document could be sentenced to ten
years in prison, and up to fourteen years for attempting to share or upload it.
Make no mistake, I do live and work in the US. So far I have read the manifesto on my smartphone (iPhone) and one laptop. I saved the pdf for reference on the laptop, so it is backed up in the cloud but not published on the web. This is not against US law. But if I traveled to New Zealand, say in 2022 (this is a possibility) would I be arrested? Will their customs check my private document cloud?
While I was in New York City March 15 I discussed this with an Uber driver and he asked me if I would email it to him. I declined. But it would not have been illegal.
I’ve mentioned the name of the perpetrator on one or two
posts, and I don’t buy the idea that he gains by the notoriety. He will be in prison for the rest of his life
with no online access. How can he benefit?
I think New Zealand treats this content as if it were like child
pornography. But the document did not
need an actual victim to be produced. This
gets back to some similar problems in the past, with text only or drawn or animated images (or manga) with no
actual person as in Canada and Australia and probably New Zealand. The 1996
CPPA law in the U.S. was stuck down in 2002.
There is another conceptual issue that I have talked about elsewhere,
“gratuitous publication”, and “implicit content”, especially regarding content
that doesn’t seem to benefit the speaker other than to provoke another
otherwise aggrieved party into action.
The ideology in the manifesto has been widely reported. It is said to have some intentionally confusing
and distracting passages. It seems extremely
condemnatory of individualism and of people who aren’t loyal to their own “blood
and soil”. There is something very disturbing about trying to ban information from private citizens and letting them think for themselves.
Quartz has a major article by Tripti Lahiri on why New Zealand made mere possession a specific crime. The New Zealand government has an explanation classification document, the QA portion of which is surreal (is if reading the text would infect someone with a virus as in a horror film). But it is reasonable for a country to take exception to the naming of specific places or targets in a document like this. There may be a "problem in Canada", at least in Ontario; I'll check into this story further.
Quartz has a major article by Tripti Lahiri on why New Zealand made mere possession a specific crime. The New Zealand government has an explanation classification document, the QA portion of which is surreal (is if reading the text would infect someone with a virus as in a horror film). But it is reasonable for a country to take exception to the naming of specific places or targets in a document like this. There may be a "problem in Canada", at least in Ontario; I'll check into this story further.
Saturday, March 09, 2019
The possible dark side of over-zealous security scanning, from the viewpoint of a foreign enemy
The media doesn’t talk about this much because there haven’t been any obvious incidents. But it would appear, that since security companies scan sites for malware, they could easily scan for NCMEC watermarked images; and they could even scan people’s private cloud backups (which aren’t supposed to be online).
That could set up a temptation for a foreign enemy to smear someone or frame them for possession charges with hacking.
We have little reliable experience as to how law enforcement and prosecutors would react. Would hacking be an affirmative defense? Possession was, at one time, an absolute liability offence.
I suppose I can imagine a John Grisham novel based on this scenario. But it could set the stage for a personalized kind of “terrorism”.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
CDT amicus brief in appeal on FOSTA court dismissal gives the history of CDA and COPA
The Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington DC has submitted an amicus curiae brief to the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (federal circuit), for the appeal by Wodhull at all to a dismissal of their lawsuit which would seek to have FOSTA (the “Backpage law”) declared unconstitutional. The link is here.
What is striking is that the document gives a three page history, from pages 6-9, of the attempt to protect minors on the Internet with the original Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, much of which was struck down by the Supreme Court in June 1997. I actually attended the oral arguments on a snowy March day in March 1997 from the three-minute line and heard the government’s arguments (no cell phones in those days). It's important to note that Section 230 from that law did remain and that is very important today (in fact that is what FOSTA weakens).
It follows (on about page 7) with the history of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) itself, one dat of which I attended the trial of in Philadelphia in October 2006, via Amtrak, with a good Philly Cheesestake lunch with the lawyers that I still remember. The judge mentioned the concept of “implicit content” from the bench that day, and it’s unusual that it comes up.
The CDA SCOTUS opinion does compare user speech on the Internet to pamphleteering or leafleting in earlier periods of American history (a topic that came up in a speech at the CDT forum in Washington Dec. 7, 2018), in conjunction with how the post office and newspaper industries worked in these time. Yet I have wondered if there is a difference between protecting the content of speech, and protecting the right to self-distribute it.
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Inappropriate content can be defined by the eye of the beholder
There have been claims that YouTube has banned the monetization of children’s gymnastics, in connection with other statements by YouTube that inappropriate comments by users could get some posts demonetized.
I couldn’t verify the first claim. But it is understandable that some viewers could perceive what is intended as a legitimate and healthful physical activity as provocative and inappropriate, given the mindset of some viewers. This is a disturbing observation with possibly serious implications.
Monday, February 04, 2019
Maybe you do need VPN to protect yourself from unexpected government spying for the "context" of your browsing habits?
ThioJoe has a video on why you need a VPN (or else, his
title says).
He gives a story from July 2017 when a teenager (younger
than 18) made a meme which imitates Trump getting in a fight, where the kid did
a brief “deepfake” on top of a CNN brief video.
CNN tracked down the user’s IP address and contacted the
teen and demanded an apology, and threatened to “dox” him.
What I wonder about is browsing. The post previous to this referred to a government’s
getting a search warrant for a user who alleged attempted to connect to a site or
address thought to have child pornography. There could be an ancillary followup. A prosecutor could then look at a pattern of
video watching, of images technically legal (or posted for special purposes in another context) but possible viewed for fantasy satisfaction,
which might become a legal problem. YouTube will sometimes warn viewers when they go directly to private videos embedded in web pages or blog posts.
Thio also talks about “deep packet inspection” as a possible
tool for law enforcement.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Merely linking to a URL with c.p. can result in a search of you home and computers
Electronic Frontier Foundation is arguing in Richmond at the
Fourth Circuit on January 31 a particularly disturbing case.
A search warrant was obtained for a user’s home and computer(s)
or device(s) when the user had connected to a URL for a file serving link that
apparently was closely associated with child pornography.
EFF argues that this is not probable cause.
All modern web hosting services have logs that enable
investigators to find all IP addresses that ever linked to any element on a
site. Google no longer allows search
arguments to be displayed (it had back in 2005). Theoretically, when a site is identified by NCMEC
or similar facility, all possible users who attempted to connect could be found
and investigated.
If an illegal image is loaded into a cache on the end user’s
computer and the user knows that this site has illegal material, a criminal violation
of possession is possible. (At one time,
some states like Arizona even had “strict liability” in these
circumstances.) This might be possible
when an email preview loads, which makes phishing at least a remote risk for
all users for being “framed”.
It would be possible to land on a site containing illegal
images but not on a specific element that has such and image, so an
investigation would show no illegal material.
In ambiguous cases, dangerous plea bargains could be possible, including agreeing to give up Internet use. So this situation sets up an invitation to frame and silence political enemies.
One possibility that I have wondered about contains YouTube videos
claiming “boys” or “teens” in sexual activity in the titles. YouTube has become stricter in recent months
on community guidelines (as have other services like Tumblr). Presumably an end user has a “right” to assume
that age 18 or 19 is possible and intended.
But some of these videos come from overseas and might be illegal to view
in the U.S. Could a prosecution happen
in these circumstances.
The law has to draw a line somewhere on age. In practice teens and young adults vary
enormously on maturity at any given age.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
"Consumers Base" offers parental controls on children's online access
Someone sent me a link to a product called “ConsumersBase”
for parents to use to protect their kids from inappropriate content online.
The product protects
against cyber bullying, malware, inappropriate content, phishing, sexual
predators, and what is most attention-getting, grooming.
This should not be confused with “consumer base exact data”.
Sunday, January 06, 2019
Vigilante groups with no law enforcement authority entrap people on the Internet for interest in minors and shame them publicly
Brandy Zadrozny writes for NBC a story about vigilante
groups that function much like Chris Hansen’s “To Catch a Predator” in the
2000s.
The groups are apparently particularly effective in
entrapping young gay men, if they answer dark web or even social media ads for
possibly minor gay men.
The result is often a public shaming online, although you
would think platforms would take these down.
But the groups do not have the authority of law enforcement
and might be guilty of impersonating law enforcement.
Wednesday, January 02, 2019
Washington Times starts 2019 with particularly graphic account of child pornography on the Dark Web
The Washington Times, admittedly a “conservative” daily
newspaper for the DC area, opens the first business day in 2019 with a front
page article by Jeff Mordock on the use of the “Darnket” or Dark Web and Tor
for child pornography
But the prosecutions and investigations described in this
article are particularly shocking, one even involving an unborn child. I’ll leave the details to the article.
Electronic Frontier Foundation and the libertarian community
as a whole has encouraged people to learn to use TOR, especially in
non-democratic countries.
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