Administration Says Child Porn Provides A 'Model' For Hunting Terrorists Online
from the it-could-not-be-more-wrong dept
The administration is trying to draft tech companies into the War on Terror. Encryption -- despite being given an unofficial "hands-off" by President Obama -- is still being debated, with FBI Director James Comey and a few law enforcement officials leading the charge up the hill they apparently want to die on.
One of the aspects discussed was how to deter online communications involving terrorists. Trying to deputize tech companies is a non-starter, considering the potential for collateral damage. But that's not stopping the administration from trying to do exactly that, and it's willing to deploy the most terrible participant in its parade of horrors.
“I do have a lot of confidence that those companies that are run by patriotic Americans are not interested in seeing their tools or their technology used by terrorists to harm innocent Americans,” [White House press secretary Josh] Earnest told reporters in Washington before the meeting occurred. “That’s certainly not what they were designed for.”Earnest makes two implications here, both of them disingenuous. The first is that any reluctance expressed by tech companies should be viewed as evidence these companies just don't love America enough. The second is that an unwillingness to intervene on the US government's behalf is hypocritical, considering the voluntary efforts these companies undertake to identify and remove child pornography.
[...]
“There is a precedent for us to confront this kind of problem,” Earnest said. “We know that there are some people who try to make money based on the selling and trafficking of child pornography and they are using websites to do that. And we have been able to work effectively with the tech community to counter those efforts.”
The problem is that alleged terroristic content and child pornography aren't comparable -- at least not to the extent that the administration portrays it. For one, child pornography -- for the most part -- is difficult to mistake for protected speech. One of the few exceptions to the First Amendment deals specifically with this content. In addition, most identified files have unique hashes which can readily be identified when they pop up elsewhere on the web.
The other problem is that even if files associated with terrorism or potential acts of terrorism are uniquely identifiable via hashes, that doesn't immediately elevate possession of these files to a criminal act. Jonathan Zittrain at Just Security points out that this makes all the difference in the world.
To be sure, child pornography filtering — and reporting — may be a place to draw a clear line. Not only is child pornography near-universally reviled and banned, but the matching algorithm for previously-identified images boasts no false positives, and, perhaps most important, possession of the file is not only clear evidence of the crime, but quite typically the crime itself. A terrorist to-do list is primarily only evidence, not itself a crime.The hypothetical situation proposed in Zittrain's post -- that Google, et al begin to treat terrorist content like child pornography -- is a potential ground zero for all sorts of collateral damage. Google already scans email for child porn (as well as for potential advertising keywords), but adding terrorism to this short list would put dissidents, journalists, researchers and activists in the government's crosshairs. Possession of terrorist-related materials isn't a criminal act, but that wouldn't prevent unwarranted (in the original sense, not the Fourth Amendment sense [although that wouldn't be far behind…]) surveillance of citizens who aren't terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
And once Google has expanded its dragnet to include terrorist material, it wouldn't take long for other aggrieved parties to jump on the proxy surveillance bandwagon. After all, a criminal offense is a criminal offense -- whether it's the circulation of terrorist-related content or anything else certain entities feel needs more policing on the Wild West Web.
If a search for contraband documents expands beyond the comparatively well-bounded area of child pornography, there could be little stopping it from progressing incrementally to an Orwellian level of invasiveness. For example, to prevent claimed copyright infringement, we could see services compelled to scan private communications for musical tracks or videos, or links to that content. Facebook has at times done just that for its private messaging service. Whatever one’s views on copyright, the upside of applying the search technique there is surely lower than that of catching murderers, though the logic underlying the search may ultimately prove powerful enough to make it common.Add to that the fact that the government -- once it has persuaded Google, etc. to look for certain content -- will continue to add to the list of things tech companies should look for. Child porn is Patient Zero. Terrorism seems to be the next step. After that, mission creep is inevitable.
Zittrain does provide reasons why Google should scan for terrorist material, and they sound exactly like the reasons the government would state when pressuring tech companies to engage in further pro bono web policing: the additional searches would be minimally intrusive and could conceivably save lives. But the problem remains unaddressed by the "positives" of these tactics. Child porn possession is a crime. Possession of a circulated plan for a terrorist attack is not. It may be suspicious but it is not, in and of itself, a criminal act.
Finally, even with a tailored search for files with unique hash values, the search itself is still a general search. It would be an automated dragnet encompassing not only users of whatever service deployed it, but also those sending email/messages/etc. to users of that service. That's a "general search" -- the kind the Fourth Amendment is supposed to deter -- no matter how the government spins it. And it will spin it, if it gets a chance. That's why the pressure is being applied towards voluntary actions rather than legislated "fixes." If the government can talk Google and its competitors into performing its general searches for it, it can avoid dealing with the constitutional issues that would certainly arise if it chose to perform this on its own.
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Filed Under: child porn, fbi, filtering, james comey, monitoring, terrorism, white house
Reader Comments
The First Word
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1) Terrorism
2) Child porn
3) File-sharing
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I keep wondering how long it will take for it to occur to defense lawyers/judges that hackers, business/personal rivals, and law enforcement itself all have the technical means available to them to place child pornography (or whatever other incriminating evidence they like) onto just about anyone's computer/server and then erase any trace of them ever having been there. And unless one has the financial/technical resources to prove their innocence, they're basically eff'd for life.
It's so common it almost sounds cliché when we hear about law enforcement planting drugs on some hapless citizen to secure a conviction. It's beyond me why the digital equivalent goes relatively unconsidered.
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That would be that daycare center in California where perfectly decent child care workers were terrorized by LEOs and child protection over pretty much non-existent evidence. Last I heard, the prosecutors and cops still believed, "They was robbed!" We wound up with a bunch of draconian laws on the books despite there being no substance to the accusations.
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Like the Bill of Rights, Constitution, & rule of law that the political machine have chewed up and shat out.
Perhaps using CP as the gold standard is a bad idea... didn't they just bust a trading ring by keeping the server online and facilitating the trade & production of the material?
Is the suggestion that perhaps to get the really bad terrorists we should allow a few people to be injured or die in a plot so you can get information and get more terrorists?
Oh and perhaps we distrust working with you because when faced with people unwilling to violate the rule of law you still snuck in taps and spying (even on those who DID cooperate)... and you seem to enjoy spying harder on people who dare speak out against the regime and the security theater that is being run to get people to accept the unacceptable trampling of our alleged freedoms in the name of being safe from manufactured plots started by your own agencies... featuring wild hollywood style plots allegedly thought up be people without the intelligence or means to carry them off being supplied with the best materials our tax dollars can provide the plotters you roped in and radicalized.
This isn't about terrorism, this is about gathering more intel that WILL be used to accomplish all sorts of things that do nothing to keep citizens safer but protect the dystopian future you want us all to live in.
For all of your total awareness, how does one miss your own agents stealing & abusing the system? Perhaps thinking the cogs of the system are immune from committing bad acts is stupid.
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You did read about Boston right? All those "terrorists" were killed on sight while the victims were used as bait for catching more terrorists.
Hint, in the last (two) decade(s) during each terror attack in the western world there has been a training exercise at the exact moment with the exact same parameters. Poison gas in an underground? check! Planes crashing in a major building? check! And that is stuff you can google which means I'm only wearing my tinfoil hat for style reasons at that time and of course... aliens... gotta watch out for those.
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Cross Contamination
Either that or this is another vector in their approach to dismantling the Constitution in...well, their own interest.
Power rocks and absolute power rocks absolutely.
Therefore it absolutely tracks to attribute this motivation to those that propose government activities, or rules, or legislation, or partners that have the potential to controvert the Constitution.
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One moment please
But even given that the US hosts most of the worlds cp I don't get why this has anything to do with terrorism other than "think of the children" FUD. I guess selling oil is more profitable than that kind of shit ("shit" protected by the 1rst). And the price of oil is showing that them terris do sell a whole lot of oil for quite some time now. So if you mention CP as a way for terris to make money then imho you should be sent to a shrink for evaluation because either thinking that the world wide CP marked is even close to the oil market is crazy or you consume way too much (aka any) CP to make you think that way.
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Now it's happening.
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And i will give odds on that the list of certain content to look for will be copyrighted files once Hollywood has finished with telling the government that they will be getting no more election campaign funds until they add copyrighted files to the list and the government will add to the list of content to look for.
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hello cory doctorow
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TOO much straw?
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How the hell should we know?!? You should be asking that nutcase inside your skull. Gahd, people!?!
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Appeal to Authority fallacy is alive and well within the GOP, their current candidates and those who support them. No independent thought is allowed and you had better tow the line.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet-predators-idUSBRE86B05G20120712
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Let me guess ... anything you do not like - amirite?
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I'd say it means advocating illegal violence.
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I disagree in the strongest possible terms.
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I don't think anyone should be prosecuted for saying "Child porn is awesome, everyone should make some!", but it's reasonable to prosecute people who actually make it.
I don't think anyone should be prosecuted for daying "Terrorism is awesome, everyone should go do some!", but it's reasonable to prosecute people who actually do it.
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A better comparison is "if someone who did not create the bomb, was in possession of a bomb, or passed it along, should they be prosecuted?".
Let's compare apples to apples here.
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Bombs vs Illuminated Dots
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What The Fuck? Spelled Out For You
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