Health And Human Services Ex-Cybersecurity Director Convicted Of Kiddy Porn

from the guarding-the-chicken-coop dept

There seems to be someone asleep at the wheel in the federal government's HR department, given how many questionable people have been put in high profile/high responsibility security positions. Kieth Alexander, uber-Patriot, locked his cyber-security expertise up with a patent. The White House's cyber-security guy can't wait to tell you how little he knows about his job. Homeland Security's former Inspector General was accused of a ridiculously long list of questionable behavior (in addition to having no qualifications for the job). And now, ex-director of cybersecurity for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been convicted on kiddy porn charges.

Timothy DeFoggi, 56, formerly of Germantown, Md., is the sixth individual to be convicted as part of an ongoing investigation targeting three child pornography websites, the Justice Department said. He faces sentencing on Nov. 7 based on the findings Tuesday that he engaged in a child-exploitation enterprise, conspired to advertise and distribute child pornography, and accessed a computer with intent to view child pornography in connection with his membership in a child-pornography website.

Oh, well that's just great. The head cyber-security guy for a government organization that includes divisions for preventing child abuse and child support enforcement was a pedophile at best. Let's be clear: according to the evidence presented by prosecutors, DeFoggi is simply as bad as it gets.

"Through the website, DeFoggi accessed child pornography, solicited child pornography from other members, and exchanged private messages with other members where he expressed an interest in the violent rape and murder of children," prosecutors added. "DeFoggi even suggested meeting one member in person to fulfill their mutual fantasies to violently rape and murder children."

I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone reading this that the United States federal government has engaged in widespread surveillance on its own people. They're watching what you do, particularly online. They're intruding on our lives in ways Orwell couldn't have dreamed of. And they're doing it all under the notion that it's for our protection. If we must live with that kind of intrusion for the time being, is it too much to ask that the government manage to weed out violent child-rapists from their own ranks as some kind of accommodation?

Filed Under: child porn, cybersecurity, doj, health and human services, timothy defoggi

Prosecutors In 'Sexting' Case Apparently Obtained Search Warrant To Photograph Teen's Penis

from the combating-child-porn-by-creating-forced-child-porn dept

Julian Sanchez alerts us to a crazy story in the Washington Post (which, it should be noted, appears to be sourced from one side of the case, so recognize the potential bias), accusing prosecutors in a "sexting" child porn case of going so far as to get a search warrant to take a photograph of the defendant's "erect penis" in order to compare it to the one in a video he sent his girlfriend.

A Manassas City teenager accused of “sexting” a video to his girlfriend is now facing a search warrant in which Manassas City police and Prince William County prosecutors want to take a photo of his erect penis, possibly forcing the teen to become erect by taking him to a hospital and giving him an injection, the teen’s lawyers said

Like many other similar cases, this involves two teenagers sexting each other. We can all admit that this is a rather stupid thing to do, but it would be crazy not to recognize that this happens quite frequently with teens these days. It's already a pretty big stretch to try to twist those cases into "child porn" cases, but various prosecutors have been doing exactly that for years now. In this case, the 15-year-old girlfriend sent her 17-year-old boyfriend a photo of herself, and he sent back the video. The mother of the girl complained, and prosecutors went after the boy for "two felony charges, for possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography."

If that already seems fairly questionable, prosecutors apparently decided to take things to the next level when the boy refused to plead guilty:

The male teen was served with petitions from juvenile court in early February, and not arrested, but when the case went to trial in juvenile court in June, Foster said prosecutors forgot to certify that the teen was a juvenile. The case was dismissed, but police immediately obtained new charges and also a search warrant for his home. Police also arrested the teen and took him to juvenile jail, where Foster said they took photos of the teen’s genitals against his will.

The case was set for trial on July 1, where Foster said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Claiborne Richardson told her that her client must either plead guilty or police would obtain another search warrant “for pictures of his erect penis,” for comparison to the evidence from the teen’s cell phone. Foster asked how that would be accomplished and was told that “we just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures that we need.”

The teen declined to plead guilty. Foster said the prosecutor then requested a continuance so police could get a search warrant, which was granted by substitute Juvenile Court Judge Jan Roltsch-Anoll.

So, if you're keeping score at home, what we have is (1) two teens (stupidly, but not that surprisingly) sending each other revealing photos/videos of each other in a consenting manner that could be seen as "child porn" solely based on their age and (2) law enforcement forcing the boy to create more such "child porn" in an effort to pressure him into pleading guilty to two felony child porn charges. How does that make any sense at all? Can anyone actually claim that the "forced" photo by police and the followup search warrant, with the plan to "inject" him in a hospital to photograph his erect penis, is somehow less problematic than the original sexting video?

Filed Under: child porn, manassas city, prince william county, prosecutors, search warrant, sexting

Rhode Island Cops Now Using Dogs To Detect Hard Drives, Memory Cards And Other Electronics

from the all-in-the-name-of-the-'worst-of-the-worst' dept

There's good intentions behind it, but the implications are worrying. For years now, dogs have been trained to sniff out drugs by law enforcement agencies. (Well, in most cases, trained by third-party specialists before being turned over to law enforcement agencies.) The problem is that these dogs now ride around in cruisers and give the police "probable cause" to perform vehicle searches and, believe it or not, hours of rectal/vaginal searches, simply by "alerting" to an odor.

Dogs aren't infallible, but law enforcement would prefer us to believe they are. They are animals which are rewarded for performing certain actions. Drug-sniffing dogs have been known to react more to handler cues than actual odors. When this happens, police officers are in essence generating their own justification for a full-blown search. As Jacob Sullum at Reason memorably put it: "Drug Warriors Kidnap and Sexually Assault a Woman After Getting Permission From a Dog."

So, if the targeted criminals are indisputably awful people, why does this news seem like another bad idea? (via slashdot)

The recent arrival of golden Labrador Thoreau makes Rhode Island the second state in the nation to have a police dog trained to sniff out hard drives, thumb drives and other technological gadgets that could contain child pornography.

Thoreau received 22 weeks of training in how to detect devices in exchange for food at the Connecticut State Police Training Academy.

The plus side is that, at least to this point, the dogs are only being used to assist with search warrants, rather than riding along with patrolmen and nosing around vehicles of drivers deemed too nervous to be guilty of nothing more than a traffic infraction.

But like drug dogs, the urge to generate positives is indulged.

Houston demonstrated the dog's skills last month. Houston walked the dog through a room in which he had hidden devices. A second pass went more slowly, with Houston coaxing the dog. "Show me. Show me."

Thoreau furiously sniffed shelves, desks, cabinets. The dog located a hard drive inside a Ziploc bag in the upper shelf of a desk. A flash drive and thumb drive were also found, with the dog zeroing in on their location down to the exact drawer. In exchange, Thoreau got food.

"This is how he eats every day," says Houston, who cares for the dog around the clock.

The stakes get higher when the dogs are deployed in the hunt for child pornography/pornographers. Training a dog to alert on devices makes any device it detects instantly suspect. And when it fails to find anything, the presumption will be adjusted to fit the lack of evidence. Rather than this being a sign of innocence, it will be an excuse to tear everything apart or collect additional warrants to search other locations. Because if the police have decided you're a suspect -- especially a possible child molester -- the searching won't stop until something is uncovered. Starting this chain of events by asking an animal inclined to please its handlers just makes the chain of unfortunate events unfold faster.

Beyond the question of whether police dogs should expand their range from drugs to electronics, there's the hysteria being irresponsibly delivered by law enforcement officials (and reprinted willingly and credulously by the local press -- because who would question someone who's arresting child molesters?) I sincerely hope the Rhode Island police are working with a more specific dataset than this:

Most child pornography offenders are white men with an average age of 41, U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics show. The majority graduated from high school and hold jobs.

No shit. Most men have graduated high school and are now employed. Quite frequently they reach the age of 41, often exceeding it by 30+ years before dying. Dumping an assertion like this into the public domain will only increase the number of people who view any man a certain distance away from children as suspicious. This doesn't help the public better discern who might be a concern while simultaneously expanding the pool of possible suspects to include all white males.

"These folks are out there trolling the Internet, trolling the streets, taking photos at the beach," [former DHS agent Eric] Caron says.

Now, the suspect pool expands to include males who go anywhere near the internet, beach or public streets. Anyone with a camera spotted in these areas is doubly suspect. The DHS has always been suspicious of photographers, and this statement turns any male with a camera (or cell phone) into one of two things: a terrorist or a child molester.

Spreading hysteria isn't going to make the job any easier. It's just going to increase the number of dead end "leads" police officers will be forced to run down. Adding dogs to the mix may make search warrants more productive, but it does carry with it the added baggage of pretending animals are impartial witnesses, rather than entities whose motivations roughly align with law enforcement's.

Filed Under: blank media, child porn, dogs, rhode island, sniffing

Hollywood Studios Tried To Add File Sharing Sites To New Zealand's Child Porn Blacklist

from the the-audacity-of-egotistical-self-interest dept

We just wrote about the UK's filtering systems blocking access to 20% of the world's top 100,000 sites, even though only about 4% of those host the porn Prime Minister David Cameron seems so obsessed with blocking. Also noted in that story was the fact that many "pirate sites" are being blocked at ISP level via secret court orders.

MPAA head Chris Dodd absolutely loves web filters, proclaiming them to be the best tool the industry can (ab)use to thwart piracy.

Speaking recently at the IP Summit in London, Former Senator turned MPAA boss Chris Dodd pronounced his love for forcing ISPs to block and filter websites accused of aiding copyright infringement. Despite the fact filters can be easily bypassed by anyone with a modicum of technical knowledge and often filter legitimate content (a report this week suggests a massive swath of legitimate websites are blocked by UK filters), Dodd believes filters are the "most effective tools anywhere in the world" at fighting piracy.

It appears the studios agree as well, going so far as to attempt to equate the act of piracy with the act of distributing child porn.

The UK’s Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) maintains a blocklist of URLs that point to sexual child abuse and criminally obscene adult content. Over in New Zealand the Department of Internal Affairs maintains DCEFS, the Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System. Both are run in cooperation with the countries’ ISPs with the sole aim of keeping the most objectionable material away from public eyes…

According to a RadioLIVE report, in order to prevent copyright infringement the studios requested access to the DCEFS child abuse filtering system.

After obtaining government permission, Hollywood hoped to add their own list of sites to DCEFS so that by default subscribers to New Zealand’s main ISPs would be prohibited from accessing torrent and other file-sharing type sites.

So, in hopes of protecting their business model, studios tried to add file sharing sites to a list of child pornography sites. Not one of them seemed to realize how wrong it was to equate their companies' profitability with the sexual abuse of children. Whatever level of entitlement these companies have risen to in the past, they've vastly exceeded it with this maneuver. Studios may secretly believe copyright infringement is (very subjectively) as damaging as child pornography, but they've never made it this explicitly clear.

Fortunately, ISPs and the Kiwi government pushed back, unwilling to be complicit in the studios' most insensitive act of self-preservation yet. Unfortunately for Dodd and his charges, the studios will have to make do with secret court orders and default web filters that still allow end users to flip the "hide file sharing sites" switch to "off."

The studios believe they should have root access to government-ordained web blocking. In the interest of not making the situation worse than it already is, this should never be granted. Various governments have already included protection for the copyright industries in some of their web-targeted "for the children" legislation. Giving studios the go-ahead to tamper with child porn blacklists would just stretch the definition of "children" to include major Hollywood studios -- entities full of full-grown adults with enough power and money to protect them from anything.

Filed Under: censorship, child porn, chris dodd, copyright, file sharing, filters, new zealand

Canadian Cyberbullying Bill Expands Scope, Targets Open WiFi Over Terrorism, Child Porn Fears

from the every-cyber-bill-a-Frankenstein's-monster dept

The drawn-out process in which a bill becomes a law lends itself to harmful things, like mission creep and bloating. Canada's new cyberbullying legislation, problematic in its "purest" form, is now becoming even worse as legislators have begun hanging language aimed at other issues (child porn, terrorism, cable theft [?]) on the bill's framework.

As was noted earlier, language aimed at punishing revenge porn had already been attached to the bill. But the urge to target as much as possible with a broadly written bill is too much for Canada's politicians to resist. Michael Geist notes that Bob Dechert (Secretary to the Minister of Justice) took a moment during the debate to speculate about the "dangers" of "stolen" cable.

With respect to the cable, I would like the member to consider if his cable were being tapped into by someone who was transmitting child pornography over the Internet, or if his home Wi-Fi was being tapped into by someone who was using it to cyberbully another child, he would want to know about that and he would want that to stop. The modernization of those provisions is simply to bring them up to date.

The amendments proposed on those long-standing offences of stealing cable are already in the Criminal Code in section 327. They simply update the telecommunication language to expand the conduct, to make it consistent with other offences…

However, I would like him to think about the potential for someone who is doing cyberbullying, transmitting child sexual images, or perhaps planning a terrorist act, doing it by tapping into some law-abiding citizen's cable or Wi-Fi Internet access.

The code Dechert refers to deals with theft of services. What Dechert is hoping to do is turn a targeted law into something that can be used to pursue vagaries. By throwing cyberbullying, child porn and terrorism into the mix, Dechert is hoping to limit opposition to this "update" of the language.

Geist doesn't think much of Dechert's statement.

In other words, Dechert is suggesting that accessing a neighbour's cable or wireless Internet access might somehow be linked to planning a terrorist attack, sending child pornography, or engaging in cyberbullying. I would happy to think about the potential for cable theft to play a role in terrorist plots. In fact, I think most would agree that there is no likelihood whatsoever and that the government should stop trying link provisions in their "cyberbullying bill" that have nothing to do with cyberbullying.

The odds, as Geist points out, are almost nonexistent. But very slim odds are a legislator's best friend. No one wants to be caught out by the unexpected, especially when they had a chance to head it off back when the bill was being written. So, a lot of "just in case" rhetoric is deployed, accompanied by fearful projections.

If this line of reasoning is allowed to proceed, Canadians could be looking at the possibility of legal penalties for running unsecured WiFi connections. It seems implausible, but this has been witnessed before. Back in 2010, a German court stated that those running open WiFi connections could be fined for not securing their networks (thus "enabling" illegal activity). Copyright maximalists have made the argument several times that an open WiFi connection is "negligent." When the realization sinks in that it's easier to target the listed subscriber rather than find out who exactly was performing criminal activities on an open WiFi connection, you can be sure that the solution will be routed along the path of least resistance: holding the subscriber responsible for the actions of others.

And, as Geist points out, the mission creep in this bill is astounding. What was meant to target cyberbullies has instead become a playground for legislators. A nearly non-existent threat is being used to beef up the penalties for cable theft, as though that part of the equation were the greatest deterrent to illegal activities. It's also concerning that the additional powers being granted to law enforcement outside of the cyberbullying scope were omitted from the government's official "introduction" to the bill (posted without the bill's text). This omission seems to indicate that the crowd-pleasing "cyberbullying" angle will allow legislators to copy-and-paste whole sections from a previously unsuccessful "lawful access" bill, itself defended with cries of "child pornography."

Filed Under: bob dechert, canada, child porn, cyberbullying, mission creep, open wifi, politics, terrorism

Google Announces More Child Porn Blocking Efforts While David Cameron Offers To Throw The GCHQ At The Problem

from the a-worthy-cause-backed-by-terrible-ideas-and-legislation dept

Over the weekend, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote an editorial touting the search engine's "new" efforts to battle child porn. It appeared in, of all places, the Daily Mail, presumably so the paper could write a self-congratulatory piece declaring its victory over Google (and child pornographers, too, I guess…)

What Schmidt details in his op-ed isn't really news at all, for the most part. Google has proactively blocked illegal images from appearing in search results for years now. It has also used human beings to help its algorithms filter illegal content, something which has an undeniable deleterious effect on those willing to do this horrific job. In fact, Schmidt points out as much.

That's why internet companies like Google and Microsoft have been working with law enforcement for years to stop paedophiles sharing illegal pictures on the web.

We actively remove child sexual abuse imagery from our services and immediately report abuse to the authorities. This evidence is regularly used to prosecute and convict criminals.

The pressure to do something "more" has stemmed from UK Prime Minister David Cameron's assault on the internet in general. Cameron has successfully pushed through a plan that forces ISPs to filter porn out by default and, thanks to a couple of high profile child murders, has decided that search engines just aren't doing enough to keep child pornography away from those looking to view it. Google has always been the name thrown around, even though Google has been actively working with child protection agencies to filter results by keywords and turn over information to local law enforcement agencies. So, a majority of Schmidt's op-ed is given over to explaining processes and tactics Google has had deployed for quite some time.

One thing Cameron asked for specifically is now being implemented by Google.

We're now showing warnings – from both Google and charities – at the top of our search results for more than 13,000 queries. These alerts make clear that child sexual abuse is illegal and offer advice on where to get help.

Google is also lending its technical expertise to the Internet Watch Foundation and the US Center for Missing and Exploited Children in order to help them find victims and prosecute offenders.

All of these are generally good ideas, although the Mail's hurry to take credit for steps Google has implemented for years is rather unseemly. The key here is "generally." There's nothing wrong with what Google's doing other than a) child porn mostly travels below the "surface" and b) what little is there that's discoverable by Google's crawlers will now join the rest of it "underground." This may separate the truly stupid from illegal images but it will have little to no effect on the purveyors of child porn, who have stayed under the Google radar for years. If anything, it eliminates the "low hanging fruit," making law enforcement's efforts that much tougher.

David Cameron seems to think this is a major victory as well -- a triumph of political muscle over internet architecture. He starts off with this unverifiable claim.

'Google and Microsoft have come a long way,' Mr Cameron added. 'A recent deterrence campaign from Google led to a 20 per cent drop off in people trying to find illegal content, so we know this sort of action will make a difference.

'Both companies have made clear to me that they share my commitment to stop child abuse content from being available not only in the UK but across the world.

A 20% drop off means 20% of people seeking child porn are now using methods other than Google/Bing searches. That's about all that means without an accompanying percentage increase in arrests and convictions. Blocking doesn't keep people from wanting the blocked content. It only pushes them to use other tactics.

Then Cameron makes this ridiculous/frightening statement.

'If the search engines are unable to deliver on their commitment to prevent child abuse material being returned from search terms used by paedophiles, I will bring forward legislation that will ensure it happens…

I believe we are heading in right direction but no-one should be in doubt that there is a red line: if more isn't done to stop illegal content or pathways being found when you use a child abuse search term, we will do what is necessary to protect our children.'

Cameron still wants to be the one to ultimately decide whether search engines are doing "enough" to block illegal images. No effort along these lines will ever be able to completely block illegal images, so this legislation is all but inevitable. The fallacy here is that Cameron thinks legislation can do what search engines can't: provide 100% blocking. This falls in line with his thinking on "regular" porn blocking at the ISP level: an impossibility made "possible" by government intervention.

Cameron chased this with more bad news. He's planning on bringing GCHQ (the UK's NSA) on board to dig through the "dark net" for child pornographers.

"There's been a lot in the news recently about the techniques, ability and brilliance of the people involved in the intelligence community, in GCHQ and the NSA in America. That expertise is going to be brought to bear to go after these revolting people sharing these images [of child abuse] on the dark net, and making them available more widely," the prime minister said.

"You use technology which is able to get into the dark internet, that is able to decrypt encrypted files, and that is able to find out what is going on. Like all these things if you put in the resources and the effort, if you use the best brains – the brains that are, as it were, the inheritors to the people that decrypted the Enigma code in the second world war – if you take those brains, and apply it to the problem of tackling child abuse online, you'll get results.

"I'm confident, having sat in the cabinet room, listening to the internet service providers, and having listened to the national crime agency, having talked to the team that are going to be negotiating with the Americans to work out how we best bring our joint expertise to bear on this, I'm confident that we can make some real progress."

One would assume that's what the FBI and Scotland Yard are for. To call for the GHCQ and NSA to be given even more unfettered access to internet communications is very disturbing, especially considering this exceeds both agencies' "national security" directives. Putting two agencies with incredible capabilities and little oversight on the trail of other criminals hidden in the "dark net" is a bad idea. Anyone who thinks the GCHQ/NSA troll for child pornographers will start and end with just those criminals is delusional.

Once they're in there, it's a free-for-all. Suspects will be brought to trial only to find out the evidence against them can't be revealed for "security" reasons, leaving them under-equipped to mount a credible defense. This would also play into the agencies' mindset that those utilizing privacy protections and encryption are "criminals/terrorists" because using either means they've got "something to hide." Giving these agencies the go-ahead to pursue something other than threats to national security is a terrible idea.

When asked about the potential for privacy violations that may occur if the GCHQ is allowed to run wild in the "dark net," Cameron responded with this non sequitur.

"[P]eople understand that a crime is a crime whether it's committed on the street or the internet".

I'm not really sure what Cameron's asserting here, other than the potential to uncover criminal activity outweighs any privacy concerns, whether on the the internet or in the street. This mentality explains the massive amount of cameras the UK government has deployed over the past decade. The NSA (and GCHQ) has made the same argument in terms of national security -- privacy violations are just the price citizens have to pay to be protected from terrorism. Here we see it being deployed (slightly reworded) to justify the expansion of the GCHQ's purview.

Google may be taking the "lead" in blocking child porn, but that's only because it's already been active in that area for years. Judging from the PM's past, it's hard to believe these latest efforts will ultimately satisfy Cameron. We can probably expect a legislated "solution" within the next few years, especially if the world provides a tragedy or two to capitalize on.

Filed Under: child porn, david cameron, eric schmidt, filters, gchq, search, uk
Companies: google

IP Arrow's DMCA Takedown Notices Claim UFC And Lynda.com Hold The Rights To Child Porn

from the beyond-bogus-into-potentially-damaging dept

Here's another one of those famous "anomalies": a DMCA takedown request that takes down tons of content that doesn't belong to the named rights holders. This DMCA request is almost all anomaly.

IP Arrow claims to represent Zuffa Inc., better known as the parent company of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship.) We know algorithms are flawed but whatever software IP Arrow is deploying seems to randomly collect links and dump them in a DMCA notice. (Second theory: an IP Arrow employee's personal searches are somehow making their way onto the submitted forms.)

The UFC is notorious for aggressively pursuing infringement of its PPV events. Apparently, there's plenty of pre-recorded stuff floating around the net and the UFC wants that gone, too. Unfortunately for the UFC, it gave this job to IP Arrow. In return, IP Arrow has filed a DMCA request claiming (remember, this request is a sworn statement) that the UFC is the rights holder for (possible) child porn. I'll go ahead and make the bold statement that these photos of naked teenagers are not Zuffa/UFC's "work." I can't (or rather won't) attempt to verify whether these photos are actual child porn. But that's not really the issue. The fact is that IP Arrow is issuing takedown links to files that appear to be child porn while making the claim that Zuffa/UFC hold the copyright to these photos.

This isn't the only issue with the DMCA request, but it's by far the most damaging one. The rest of the notice contains some links to UFC content, but those links are the minority. This isn't a case of a few inadvertent links being swept up because of similar keywords or file names. This is a nearly-random link dump that requests takedowns of a wide variety of content completely unrelated to the UFC.

http://www.vertor.com/download/Bigcutie+Kennedy
http://torrentcrazy.com/s/ps2-killzone-2
http://torrentcrazy.com/s/teen-truth-or-dare-xxx
http://rapidlibrary.com/files/nika-tsereteli-mamuka-berika-post-white-reggae-mp3_ulzwwzqrfvi89on.html
http://allsoftmac.com/movies/129370-hammer-of-the-gods-2013-limited-720p-brrip-x264-ac3-crewsade.html
http://allsoftmac.com/tv-shows/128962-pbs-secrets-of-the-dead-the-man-who-saved-the-world-2012-hdtv-720p-aac-x264-mvgroup.html
http://allsoftmac.com/tv-shows/129006-true-blood-s06e09-life-matters-web-dl-720p-dd51-h264-ntb.html
http://allmacsoft.com/e-books/129323-pannovation-and-the-gatefree-space-decentralized-innovation-is-a-game-changing-force.html
http://allmacsoft.com/software/129454-os-x-mavericks-109-developer-preview-4-macosx-dmg.html
http://torrentjo.com/Indian+Telly+Awards+-+25th+May+2013+-+Full+Episode-page8.html
http://rapidshare.zoozle.net/suche.php?q=blue+oyster+cult+the+ultimate
http://torrentcrazy.ee/torrent/2362056/xxx-comic-dragonball-z-extra-milk

That's just a sampling of what's claimed to be UFC's copyrighted content by IP Arrow.

According to Google's transparency report, IP Arrow is new to the anti-piracy game, having first showed up on August 5th. Since then, it has been very busy, firing off 61 takedown requests for 47,000 links in just over two weeks. Its other requests haven't been much better in terms of targeting only infringement of its clients' work. (Other clients are Lynda.com and Lionsgate Films.)

A takedown request on behalf of Zuffa/UFC sent August 5th asks for the removal of (among several other things) episodes of Big Bang Theory, a version of Nero Burning ROM and an album by the Handsome Furs. Here's an unedited chunk of one request, which shows the range of content IP Arrow is attempting to take down. Yes. IP Arrow is even asking to have the entire results of a search for the term ".rar" taken down.

Its work for Lynda.com shows the same amount of incompetence. Lynda.com offers video courses on "business, software and creative skills" for $25/month. Here's what IP Arrow is taking down supposedly on Lynda's behalf. Yes. That's right. According to IP Arrow, Lynda.com has produced a variety of pornographic videos, including "icest rape porn." Much like Zuffa/UFC above, I'm sure Lynda.com appreciates having its name associated with potentially illegal material.

Attempting to discover anything about IP Arrow's methodology is a dead end. Its website [which is down at the moment - cache link] is barely more than a placeholder (with a rather long TOS), sporting bold icons against a 1970s wood panel backdrop. It makes a few broad statements about how "different" its service is but contains no actual information as to how it performs this "different" work.

Judging from the quality of the DMCA notices it's issued, IP Arrow either has no idea what it's doing or just doesn't care. What's worse is that its submitted links have been taken down nearly 100% of the time, despite the fact that its DMCA notices are loaded with content its clients don't own. Its work for Lionsgate seems to be slightly more accurate than its takedowns for Lynda and Zuffa, but even those have a number of errors as well. Here it is attempting to take down infringing copies of one of the worst titled sequels ever, "The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia." Once again, a legitimate company is also a distributor of teen porn according to IP Arrow.

I've contacted the companies IP Arrow is currently issuing takedowns for (along with IP Arrow itself -- whose site is now mysteriously down) and will update if I receive any replies. While I appreciate the fact that these companies are seeking to protect their copyrighted material, I think they should be concerned that the agent representing them is now linking their names with very questionable porn. They should also be concerned that these sworn statements are also claiming they "own" copyrighted content belonging to others, but I would imagine things like "incest porn" and "15 year old vaginas" appearing on takedown requests in their names will be more troubling to them than the serialized false statements IP Arrow is issuing.

Filed Under: automated, child porn, dmca, dmca takedown, ufc, ultimate fighting championship
Companies: ip arrow, lionsgate, lynda.com, zuffa

Prime Minister David Cameron: Google, Bing and Yahoo! 'Enable' Child Porn

from the look-how-furrowed-my-brow-is,-dammit! dept

"I'm going to try to regulate [insert concept or technology here] because I really have no idea how it works," said no politician ever. "Bad things are happening and we're going to do something about it!" said too many government officials to count.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is at it again, fretting about child porn and saying grumbly things about holding search engines responsible for the actions of others. This is one of Cameron's favorite hobby horses: porn on the internet, both legal and otherwise. He's pushed for mandatory porn filtering on every new computer and insisted any business offering open wi-fi block access to the nasty stuff.

Child porn is the new focus, thanks to the recent high profile trial (and conviction) of Mark Bridger for the kidnapping and killing of a 5-year-old girl. Bridger's computer showed he had viewed pictures of child sexual abuse shortly before the kidnapping.

Despite the efforts already being made by search engines and ISPs (including Google's new child porn database that it's sharing with competitors and law enforcement), Cameron is insisting these just don't go far enough.

David Cameron will tell internet companies including Google they have a "moral duty" to do more to tackle child abuse images found by using their websites.

In a major speech on Monday he will call for search engines to block any results being displayed for a blacklist of terms compiled by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

Strange. I would have thought the "moral duty" lay with those creating and viewing the exploitative material, not the inadvertent go-between whose job it is to index web content. Complying with a blacklist seems like a good idea, but there are two problems with that idea: determined people will get around the blacklist and blacklists tend to inadvertently block legitimate searches.

Why these search engines need to comply with the blacklist in Britain is a mystery, considering every major UK ISP already filters the web using this list, according to the head of the CEOP.

Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), said the blacklist currently used to filter the vast majority of UK internet connections had been a "fabulous success".

At that point (2009), only small "boutique" ISPs had yet to adopt CEOP's filtering and the Home Office estimated roughly 95% of internet users were covered. But Cameron insists that more needs to be done, even as ISPs voluntarily comply with most government recommendations -- like "splash pages" that warn users they are attempting to view illegal material.

[T]he prime minister will call on firms to go further, with splash screens warning of consequences "such as losing their job, their family, even access to their children" as a result of viewing the content.

Everything already in place just isn't good enough. Apparently, it all needs to be bigger and bolder and subject to brand new laws created in the climate of panic and paranoia that usually follows high profile criminal activity. Cameron won't be satisfied until he tames the Wild West.

"I'm concerned as a politician and as a parent about this issue, and I think all of us have been a bit guilty of saying: well it's the internet, it's lawless, there's nothing you can do about it.

"And that's wrong. I mean just because it's the internet doesn't mean there shouldn't be laws and rules, and also responsible behaviour."

But, when Cameron says "responsibility," he means it in the governmental sense, which has nothing to do with personal responsibility and everything to do with the government acting as a national conscience and finding someone to hold responsible for the child porn problem. It won't be child pornographers or their audience, however.

"There is this problem ... that some people are putting simply appalling terms into the internet in order to find illegal images of child abuse.

[W]e need to have very, very strong conversations with those companies about saying no, you shouldn't provide results for some terms that are so depraved and disgusting...and that, I think, there's going to be a big argument there, and if we don't get what we need we'll have to look at legislation."

Do it or we'll make you do it.

"So it's about companies wanting to act responsibly. If you think about it, there's really a triangle here. There are the people uploading the images. We've got to go after them. There are the people looking at the images. We've got to go after them. But there is also in this triangle the companies that are enabling it to happen, and they do need to do more to help us with this."

Hi, I'm a seach engine. I index the web and bring you the results you ask for. I don't create child porn, nor do I consume child porn, but please, hold me responsible for the actions of others. The legal team at Google, Bing or any other search engine is always easier to locate than a child pornographer. It's the path of least resistance and taking on "tech giants" on "behalf" of the people makes government officials feel big. Win-win.

Cameron wants the search engines to return no results in response to CEOP's blacklisted terms. It seems like such a little thing to ask, and Cameron is certainly pitching it that way. They just need to "do more to help us." But what happens when law enforcement, intelligence agencies or the government itself decides other search terms are a problem, perhaps coming from an angle of "combating terrorism" or "preventing hate crime?" Almost everyone agrees those are "bad," but do they really want their search results censored and filtered and sorted according to secret blacklists? Probably not, but it likely won't matter. Agreeing to this allows the government to get a foot in the door.

On top of the collateral damage, there's the fact that filtering search engine results is going to make a lot of headlines but do very little to curb the trafficking of child pornography. Jim Gamble of CEOP feels we've already maxed out the effectiveness of web and search filters -- something he pointed out back in 2009.

At the frontline, web filtering is now viewed as a peripheral issue. Gamble agreed with the charities that filtering is useful, but added it was ineffective against "hardcore predators" who swap material over peer to peer networks and for whom "the internet has moved on".

"I believe filtering is good to avoid inadvertent access that will disturb or damage a young person, or deliberate novice access," Gamble said.

The pros don't bother with public web sites and search engines. They go P2P and circumvent every filter put into place by government intervention. Gamble realizes this and has already shifted the agency's focus to peer-to-peer networks. Unlike Cameron, Gamble doesn't waste time constructing stupid "triangles of responsibility" in order to pin the blame on the biggest, easiest target.

Gamble, a former intelligence chief in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, was however keen to head off accusations of an attack on peer to peer technology itself. "We can't blame technology - it's people," he said.

"Peer to peer is a valuable resource for the online community. Our focus is on child protection."

Maybe Cameron should spend a little time actually discussing his plans with CEOP before using the agency's name in vain in order to attack search engines for being search engines. CEOP seems to have a handle on the problem -- the real problem. It's too bad Cameron's more interested in publicly displaying how deeply concerned he is than making actual progress against child pornographers.

Filed Under: blocking, child porn, david cameron, filters, search, search engines, secondary liability, uk
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo

Contrary To The Claims Of Grandstanding Politicians, Child Porn Is Very Difficult To Stumble Onto Accidentally

from the so-omnipresent-hardly-anyone-ever-sees-it dept

Google has decided to be even more "proactive" in fighting child pornography, crafting a database of flagged images that will be made available to law enforcement, investigators and even its own competitors. Somehow the company plans to make it searchable while simultaneously deleting the offending items from the web.

There's no reason for Google to be doing this other than as a response to the UK government's consensus that Google = Internet, and is therefore responsible for policing everything it crawls. Unfortunately, many offending images will remain beyond the reach of Google. Additionally, turning a hunt for child porn into an algorithmic search will lead to false positives and deletions, as anyone familiar with ContentID and YouTube can readily attest.

The politicians crusading for a child porn-free internet will be satiated. Google's new offensive plays to their strengths, namely:

1. Proclaiming something must be done.
2. Allowing someone else to do that "something."

The UK's current porn-blocking efforts (of regular, legal porn) are a comedy of errors. "Child safety" filtering on mobile networks has already resulted in the mistaken blocking of YouTube, Orange, and The Jargon File. With these filters becoming mandatory next year, more and more sites will find themselves cut off from their users due to the general ineptness of blocking software crafted at the behest of hand-wringing bureaucrats.

Child porn, however, remains the true enemy, especially in Britain, where its profile is heightened due to recent events. In the oft-echoed call for someone (namely, Google) to do something about child porn, a rather startling statistic was quoted. According to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF -- an industry-funded group that compiles lists of keywords and illegal abuse sites for subsequent banning by Google, et al), "more than 1.5 million internet users in the UK mistakenly viewed child abuse images last year." (Only 40,000 were reported to the IWF, a point which is left open to speculation.)

It's a rather alarming number. But is it accurate? UK website Ministry of Truth went digging into the math behind this "statistic." The "1.5 million" quote above was pulled from an IWF press release that offered no citations. Perusing the IWF's site itself, MoT found another press release that applied a bit of hedging to the claim.

New study reveals child sexual abuse content as top online concern and potentially 1.5m adults have stumbled upon it.

Note that one word that changes everything.

Hang on a second, we’ve just gone from “1.5 million adults have stumbled across” child porn to “potentially 1.5 million adults have stumbled upon it”, which rather starts to suggest that the IWF’s “study” might not be quite what they’re making it out to be and, sure enough, a little further down the page we hit paydirt:

The ComRes poll conducted among a representative sample of 2058 British adults for the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) shows the vast majority of people in Britain think that child sexual abuse content (“child pornography”) (91%) and computer generated images or cartoons of child sexual abuse (85%) should be removed from the internet.

Riiiiight… so it’s not actually a study, it’s an opinion poll; a grade of evidence that generally sits just above the story you heard from a bloke down the pub who swears blind that his cousin’s boyfriend knows a bloke who knows the bloke that it actually happened to.

Long story short (although the long story is a very interesting read), the poll used skewed demographics (weighted heavily towards the 55-and-older set) to produce this meaningless percentage:

"- 3% have seen/encountered 'Child pornography'"

According to the 2011 Census the adult population of Great Britain is just over 48.1 million and 3% of that is a little under 1.43 million people, which the IWF has rounded up to 1.5 million (ignoring the usual rules on rounding) for its press releases.

The problem with accepting this at face value (and then attaching it to multiple press releases) are numerous. For starters, as many as 1 in 7 UK citizens have never used a computer, much less have internet access. For another, one person's "child porn" is another person's "adult film starring consenting, paid adults." One needs look no further than the Daily Mail's disastrous attempt to show how easy it was to find child porn simply by using the same search terms as those found on a convicted child killer's internet history.

The Mail's Amanda Platell claimed to have taken a journey to the "hell known as internet child porn." Unfortunately, her only souvenir from the trip was a misidentified clip from a 13-year-old (adult) porn film. True, the content of the film would be repulsive to many (simulated sexual assault), but the film was made and distributed legally.

Not only are the number of "potential" child porn viewers lower than the IWF claims, but the number of readily accessible pages containing child porn images on the internet is more "rounding error" than panic-worthy.

Here are the numbers the IWF came up with in its 2012 report.

In total, the IWF found 9,550 web pages that hosted child sexual abuse content spread across 1,561 internet domains in 38 different countries. 60% of the child sexual abuse content identified by the IWF was found on ‘one click hosting website’, i.e. a file hosting service/cyberlocker which, for reasons known only to itself, the IWF insists on referring to as a ‘web locker’ despite the fact that no else else seems to use that particular phrase.

A brief glance at that total should readily tell you the percentage is insignificant. And this is a number compiled by a group tasked with hunting down child pornography, an entity that would have a much higher hit rate than the average person browsing the web. Here's how it stacks up to the whole of the internet.

Out of an estimated 14,8 billion indexed web pages, the British public reported just 9,696 web pages (0.000065%) containing child pornography to the IWF in the whole of 2012.

In that same year, just 1561 internet domains (0.001%) were reported to the IWF that were found to contain child pornography out of a minimum of 145.5 million registered domains (and that’s just for five gTLDs and one country specific domain).

In fact, on a single ordinary day in May 2013, 92 times as many new domains were registered across just the six TLDs we have figures for, than were reported and found to be hosting child porn by members of the UK general public in the whole of 2012.

How hard would it be to access child porn if you weren't looking for it specifically? The Ministry of Truth puts your odds at 1 in 2.6 million searches. (MoT points out the odds will fluctuate depending on search terms used, but for the most part, it's not the sort of thing someone unwittingly stumbles upon.)

All those demanding Google do more to block child porn fail to realize there's not much more it can do. The UK already has an underlying blocking system filtering out illegal images at the ISP level, and Google itself runs its own blocker as well.

The above calculations should put the child porn "epidemic" in perspective. As far as the web that Google actively "controls," it's doing about as much as it can to keep child porn and internet users separated. There are millions of pages Google can't or doesn't index and those actively looking for this material will still be able to find it. Google (and most other "internet companies") can't really do more than they're already doing already. But every time a child pornography-related, high profile crime hits the courtroom (either in the UK or the US), the politicians instantly begin pointing fingers at ISPs and search engines, claiming they're not doing "enough" to clean up the internet, something that explicitly isn't in their job description. And yet, they do more in an attempt to satiate the ignorant hunger of opportunistic legislators.

If Google is "the face of the internet" as so many finger pointers claim, than the "internet" it "patrols" is well over 99% free of illegal images, according to a respected watchdog group. But accepting that fact means appearing unwilling to "do something," an unacceptable option for most politicians.

Filed Under: child porn, grandstanding, politicians

British Politicians: There's Child Porn On The Internet And Google Needs To Do Something About It

from the politicians-seem-better-suited-for-'doing-something' dept

It's that time again. Something bad happens and someone thinks it's the "internet's" fault. Where do they turn? Google. If people are seeing and/or doing bad things, it must be Google's fault for not policing the internet thoroughly enough.

The latest call for internet service providers and "companies like Google" to be more "proactive" in preventing access to illegal material stems from the recent sentencing of former abattoir worker Mark Bridger, who received life in prison for the kidnapping and murder of 5-year-old April Jones. Apparently, Bridger had viewed a cartoon featuring a bound girl being sexually abused by an adult just hours before the kidnapping. He also had several other such images stored on his computer.

This horrific crime has resulted in a call for Google (and unnamed others) to step up efforts to remove or block child pornography on the web.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, has become the first cabinet minister to intervene over the "shocking" availability of illegal child abuse images online, urging Google to take more action to police explicit material.

Cable said internet companies should act quicker to "cover the anomalies" amid fears from child protection charities that the proliferation of indecent images online is putting more children at risk.

Cable's not completely unreasonable...

Cable admitted it was "very, very difficult" to police the internet, but added: "Mark Bridger appears to be influenced by watching child pornography on the internet. Ultimately, this has got to come from the public. If they see any evidence of this happening, of getting it to the police immediately."

… but that "difficulty" shouldn't stand in the way of "taking action."

"I think probably where there is some scope for taking action is getting the companies that host these sites, Google and the rest of it, to be more proactive in policing what is there."

Keith Vaz, chair of the Commons home affairs select committee, threw in his take on the issue as well.

"The Mark Bridger case has shown that we need to act to remove such content from the internet," he said. "The committee has in the past recommended that the government establish a code of conduct with internet service providers to remove material which breaches acceptable behaviour standards. I am very disappointed that although the government said it would engage with the industry on this issue, we are yet to see any action resulting from this."

Google and other internet service providers had to take action to tackle the issue, Vaz added. "Internet service providers, search engines and social media sites are far too laid back about what takes place on their watch. Industry giants such as Google need to accept their responsibility to monitor and intervene."

But "industry giants such as Google" already monitor and intervene (which isn't a search engine's "responsibility," by the way).

On Friday, a senior Google PR angrily denied it does not take appropriate action to remove illegal and extreme material from its search results, which act as a gateway to the web for many internet users around the world.

First of all, Google complies with a list of illegal search terms and sites provided by the Internet Watch Foundation. In addition, illegal images are already blocked (and reported) and have nothing to do with its SafeSearch filters. Scott Rubin, director of communications for Google's worldwide efforts, points out that illegal material like child pornography isn't being left in the hands of Google's algorithms.

"The SafeSearch filter, which is designed to prevent sexually explicit material of all kinds from showing up in your search results, should not be conflated or confused with our dedication to keeping illegal abuse imagery out of our products. We don't rely simply on filtering technology to block child abuse images; we go beyond that.

"We are very proactive and work with the right people, including the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the US and the IWF, to keep child abuse content off all of our sites. Any implication we aren't doing anything or we refuse to be part of removing this material is wrong."

In fact, Google relies on actual human beings to help filter and block objectionable material. A former Google contractor wrote a post for Buzzfeed last year that details the work performed by the human filters it employs.

Sitting in the sun at a tech company cafeteria, this former Google worker described a year spent immersed in some of the darkest content available on the Internet. His role at the tech company mainly consisted of reviewing things like bestiality, necrophilia, body mutilations (gore, shock, beheadings, suicides), explicit fetishes (like diaper porn) and child pornography found across all Google products — an experience that he found “scarring.”

Google has a constant stream of contractors shuffling in and out of the company, filtering (and reporting) the material politicians keep claiming it's not doing enough to control. This is what "proactive" means. Putting real people in the line of fire and subjecting them to 10-12 hours a day of humanity's worst moments. How "proactive" do they want Google to be? They make a lot of concerned noises, but I doubt any of these politicians would be willing to switch places with Google's human filters, no matter how much good they'd be doing. (The fact that Google cuts these contractors loose after one year, rather than hiring them, is a bit disturbing in its own right...)

Even with the best efforts of Google (and other, unnamed "internet companies" and "service providers"), stuff still manages to get through -- especially if the interested person knows where, and more importantly, how to look. But this latest call for internet companies to be more "proactive" isn't really about child pornography. It's about opportunism. Vince Cable himself seems to realize what he's asking is improbable, if not impossible.

Asked whether he believed the problem was impossible to police, Cable told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Very very difficult. That's the nature of the internet. It is something that governments don't and can't control. But we've got to try to deal with that problem. Now we've had an awful case of people being influenced in that way we've got to try to find ways of covering the anomalies."

Sure, the internet can't be controlled by any single government, at least not entirely. But many governments have attempted to set up little fiefdoms using the latest outrage/tragedy as justification for their actions. Cable may not have his eye on controlling the internet (although the same can't be said for Vaz), but he certainly knows better than to let a tragedy go by unexploited. Someone needs to do something about it, and that "someone" is unanimously Google.

Keith Vaz: "Industry giants such as Google need to accept their responsibility to monitor and intervene."

John Carr (adviser on internet safety and secretary of a children’s charities coalition): “Google can do more and should do more.”

These three, using the Mark Bridger trial to build their case against "internet companies" (although it's only Google that's named repeatedly), are using loud vagaries ("proactive," "should do more") to pursue "anomalies." Good luck with that.

Filed Under: april jones, blame, child porn, liability, mark bridger, uk, vince cable
Companies: google