UK Child Welfare Charity Latest To Claim Encryption Does Nothing But Protect Criminals

from the recoil-in-terror-as-mustachioed-Mr.-Encryption-ties-another-child-to-the-train-t dept

Once again, it's time to end encryption... for the children. That's the message being put out by the UK's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). And that message is largely regurgitated word-for-word by Sky News:

In what it is calling the "biggest threat to children online", the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) says safeguards need to be introduced so police can access the data if needed.

"The proposals to extend end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms mean they are essentially putting a blindfold on itself" says Andy Burrows, head of the NSPCC's child safety online policy.

"No longer will the social network be able to identify child abuse images that are being shared on its site, or grooming that's taking place on its site.

"Because abusers know they will be able to operate with impunity, therefore it means that not only will current levels of abuse go largely undetected, but it's highly likely that we'll see more child abuse."

Is it the "biggest threat?" That doesn't seem likely, especially when others who are concerned about the welfare of children say encryption is actually good for kids.

Here's ConnectSafely, a nonprofit headed by Larry Magid, who is on the board National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which operates a clearinghouse for child porn images that helps law enforcement track down violators and rescue exploited children:

Some worry that encryption will make it harder for law enforcement to keep us safe, but I worry that a lack of encryption will make it harder for everyone, including children, to stay safe.

Phones and other digital devices can contain a great deal of personal information, including your current and previous locations, home address, your contacts, records of your calls and your texts, email messages and web searches. Such information, in the hands of a criminal, can not only lead to a violation of you or your child’s privacy, but safety as well. That’s why it’s important to have a strong passcode on your phone as well as a strong password on any cloud backup services… But even devices with strong passwords aren’t necessarily hacker proof, which is why it’s important that they be encrypted.

And here's UNICEF, which has long been involved with protecting children around the world:

There is no equivocating that child sexual abuse can and is facilitated by the internet and that endto-end encryption of digital communication platforms appears to have significant drawbacks for the global effort to end the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. This includes making it more difficult to identify, investigate and prosecute such offences. Children have a right to be protected from sexual abuse and exploitation wherever it occurs, including online, and states have a duty to take steps to ensure effective protection and an effective response, including support to recover and justice.

At the same time, end-to-end encryption by default on Facebook Messenger and other digital communication platforms means that every single person, whether child or adult, will be provided with a technological shield against violations of their right to privacy and freedom of expression.

Despite this being far more nuanced than the NSPCC is willing to admit, it's helping push legislation in the UK which would result in less child safety, rather than more. The Online Safety Bill would place burdens on communication services to prove they're making every effort to prevent child exploitation. And "everything" means stripping all users of end-to-end encryption because this protective measure means no one but the sender and receiver can see their communications.

The bill would make tech companies responsible for "failing" to police child porn -- with "failure" determined by "aggravating factors" like, you guessed it, offering end-to-end encrypted communications.

The following questions will help ascertain key risk aggravating factors (this is not an exhaustive list). Do your services:

• allow users to create, share, promote, repost or share sentiment on any type of content?

• offer private messaging spaces (both in access-controlled groups and as 1-to-1 messages)?

• offer ephemeral, encrypted or self-deleting content?

• use end-to-end encryption to place user content out of reach of provider moderation systems?

• offer features that enable exchange of rich media including video (stored and livestreamed), audio, images, link sharing (including via URL shortening services), virtual reality, location sharing and contact details on other platforms or services?

• offer user profiles that facilitate adults finding and contacting children and that may enable real-world identification of vulnerable people, including children?

This legislation -- and the cheerleading from entities like the NSPCC -- doesn't really do anything but turn tech companies into handy villains that are far easier (and far more lucrative) to punish. There's not going to be an influx of child porn just because communications are now encrypted. As critics of encryption have pointed out again and again, Facebook reports thousands of illegal images a year. So, a lack of encryption wasn't preventing the distribution of illicit images. Adding encryption to the mix is unlikely to change anything but how much is reported by Facebook.

We all use encryption. (I mean, hopefully.) Having access to encrypted communications hasn't nudged most people into engaging in criminal activity. That the same tech that protects innocent people is utilized by criminals doesn't make the tech inherently evil. It's the people that are evil.

As for law enforcement, it will still have plenty of options. Plenty of images will still be detected because lots of people are lazy or ignorant and use whatever's convenient, rather than what's actually secure. Encryption won't exponentially increase the amount of illicit content circulating the internet. If the FBI (and others) can successfully seize and operate dark web child porn sites, it's safe to say law enforcement will still find ways to arrest suspects and rescue children, even if encryption may make it slightly more difficult to do so.

Filed Under: children's charity, encryption, going dark, think of the children, uk
Companies: nspcc

Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230

from the this-is-a-problem dept

It is now broadly recognized that Joe Biden doesn't like Section 230 and has repeatedly shown he doesn't understand what it does. Multiple people keep insisting to me, however, that once he becomes president, his actual tech policy experts will understand the law better, and move Biden away from his nonsensical claim that he wishes to "repeal" the law.

In a move that is not very encouraging, Biden's top tech policy advisor, Bruce Reed, along with Common Sense Media's Jim Steyer, have published a bizarre and misleading "but think of the children!" attack on Section 230 that misunderstands the law, misunderstands how it impacts kids, and which suggests incredibly dangerous changes to Section 230. If this is the kind of policy recommendations we're to expect over the next four years, the need to defend Section 230 is going to remain pretty much the same as it's been over the last few years.

Let's break down the piece and its myriad problems.

Mark Zuckerberg makes no apology for being one of the least-responsible chief executives of our time. Yet at the risk of defending the indefensible, as Zuckerberg is wont to do, we must concede that given the way federal courts have interpreted telecommunications law, some of Facebook's highest crimes are now considered legal.

Uh, wait. No. There's a very sketchy sleight-of-word right here in the opening, claiming that "Facebook's highest crimes are now considered legal." That is wrong. Any law that Facebook violates, it is still held liable for. The point of Section 230 is that Facebook (and any website) should not be held liable for any laws that its users violate. Reed and Steyer seek to elide this very important distinction in a pure "blame the messenger" way.

It may not have been against the law to livestream the massacre of 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand or the suicide of a 12-year-old girl in the state of Georgia. Courts have cleared the company of any legal responsibility for violent attacks spawned by Facebook accounts tied to Hamas. It's not illegal for Facebook posts to foment attacks on refugees in Europe or try to end democracy as we know it in America.

This is more of the same. The Hamas claim is particularly bogus. The lawsuit in that case involved some plaintiffs who were harmed by Hamas... and decided that the right legal remedy was to sue Facebook because some Hamas members used Facebook. There was no attempt to even show that the injuries the plaintiffs faced had anything to do with Hamas using Facebook. The cases were tossed because Section 230 did exactly the right thing: note that the legal liability should be on the parties actually responsible. We don't blame AT&T when a terrorist makes a phone call. We don't blame Ford because a terrorist drives a Ford car. We shouldn't blame Facebook just because a terrorist uses Facebook.

This is fairly basic stuff, and it is shameful for Reed and Steyer to misrepresent things in such a way that is designed to obfuscate the actual details of the legal issues at play, while purely pulling at heartstrings. But the heartstring-pulling was just beginning, because this whole piece shifts into the typical "but think of the children!" pandering quite quickly.

Since Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act was passed, it has been a get-out-of-jail-free card for companies like Facebook and executives like Zuckerberg. That 26-word provision hurts our kids and is doing possibly irreparable damage to our democracy. Unless we change it, the internet will become an even more dangerous place for young people, while Facebook and other tech platforms will reap ever-greater profits from the blanket immunity that their industry enjoys.

Of course, it hasn't been a get out of jail card for any of those companies. The law has never barred federal criminal prosecutions, as federal crimes are exempt from the statute. Almost every Section 230 case has been about civil disputes. It's also shameful that Reed and Steyer seem to mix-up the differences between civil and criminal law.

Also, I'd contest the argument that it's Section 230 that has made the internet a dangerous place for kids or democracy. Section 230 has enabled many, many forums and spaces for young people to congregate and communicate -- many of which have been incredibly important. It's where many LGBTQ+ kids have found like minded people to discover they're not alone. It's where kids who are interested in niche areas or specific communities have found others with similar views. All of that is possible because of Section 230.

Yes, there is bullying online, and that's a problem, but Section 230 has also enabled tremendous variation and competition in how different websites respond to that, with many creating quite clever ideas in how to deal with the downsides of purely open communication. Changing Section 230 will likely remove that freedom of experimentation.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. According to former California Rep. Chris Cox, who wrote Section 230 with Oregon's Sen. Ron Wyden, "The original purpose of this law was to help clean up the internet, not to facilitate people doing bad things on the internet." In the 1990s, after a New York court ruled that the online service provider Prodigy could be held liable in the same way as a newspaper publisher because it had established standards for allowable content, Cox and Wyden wrote Section 230 to protect "Good Samaritan" companies like Prodigy that tried to do the right thing by removing content that violated their guidelines.

But through subsequent court rulings, the provision has turned into a bulletproof shield for social media platforms that do little or nothing to enforce established standards.

This is just flat out wrong, and it's embarrassing that Reed and Steyer are repeating this out and out myth. You will find no sites out there, least of all Facebook (the main bogeyman named in this article) "that do little or nothing to enforce established standards." Facebook employs tens of thousands of content moderators, and has a truly elaborate system for reviewing and modifying its ever changing standards, which it tries to enforce.

We can agree that the companies may fail to catch everything, but that's not because they're not trying. It's because it's impossible. That was the very basis of 230: recognizing that an open platform is literally impossible to fully police, and 230 would enable sites to try different systems for policing it. What Reed and Steyer are really saying is that they don't like how Facebook has chosen to police its platform. Which is a reasonable argument to make, but it's not because of 230. It seems to be because Steyer and Reed are ignorant of what Facebook has actually done.

Facebook and other platforms have saved countless billions thanks to this free pass. But kids and society are paying the price. Silicon Valley has succeeded in turning the internet into an online Wild West — nasty, brutal, and lawless — where the innocent are most at risk.

Bullshit. Again, Facebook employs tens of thousands of moderators and actually takes a fairly heavy hand in its moderation practices. To say that this is a "Wild West" is to express near total ignorance about how content moderation actually works at Facebook. Facebook spends more on moderation that Twitter makes in revenue. To say that it's "saving billions" thanks to this "free pass" is to basically say that you don't know what you're talking about.

The smartphone and the internet are revolutionary inventions, but in the absence of rules and responsibilities, they threaten the greatest invention of the modern world: a protected childhood.

This is "but think of the children" moral panicking. Yes, we should be concerned about how children use social media, but Facebook, like most other sites doesn't allow users to have accounts if they're under 13-years old, and the problem being discussed is not about 230, but rather about teaching children how to be more discerning digital citizens when they're online. And this is important, because it's a skill they'll need to learn. Trying to shield them from absolutely everything -- rather than giving them the skills to navigate it -- is a dangerous approach that will leave kids unprepared for life on the internet.

But Reed and Steyer are full in on the "think of the children" moral panic... so much that they (and I only wish I was joking) compare children using social media... to child labor and child trafficking:

Since the 19th century, economic and technological progress enabled societies to ban child labor and child trafficking, eliminate deadly and debilitating childhood diseases, guarantee universal education and better safeguard young children from exposure to violence and other damaging behaviors. Technology has tremendous potential to continue that progress. But through shrewd use of the irresponsibility cloak of Section 230, some in Big Tech have turned the social media revolution into a decidedly mixed blessing.

Oh come on. Those things are not the same. This entire piece is a masterclass in extrapolating a few worst case scenarios and insisting that they're happening much more frequently than they really are. Eventually the piece finally gets to its suggestion on "what to do about it." And the answer is... destroy Section 230 in a way that won't actually help.

But treating platforms as publishers doesn't undermine the First Amendment. On the contrary, publishers have flourished under the First Amendment. They have centuries of experience in moderating content, and the free press was doing just fine until Facebook came along.

That... completely misses the point. Publishers handle things because they review every bit of content that goes out in their publication. The reason why we have 230 treat sites that host 3rd party content different than publishers who are publishing their own content is because the two things are not the same. And if websites had to review every bit of user content, like publishers do, then... we'd have many fewer spaces online where people can communicate. It would stifle speech online massively.

The tech industry's right to do whatever it wants without consequence is its soft underbelly, not its secret sauce.

But it's NOT a "right to do whatever it wants without consequence." Not even remotely. The sites themselves cannot break the law. The sites have very, very strong motivations to moderate -- including pressure from their own users (because if they don't do the right thing, their users will go elsewhere), the press, and (especially) from advertisers. We've seen just in the past few months that advertisers pulling their ads from Facebook has been an effective tool in getting Facebook to rethink its policies.

The idea that because 230 is there, Facebook and other sites do nothing is a myth. It's a myth that Reed and Steyer are exploiting to make you think that you have to "save the children." It's bullshit and they should be ashamed to peddle myths. But they lean hard into these myths:

Instead of acknowledging Facebook's role in the 2016 election debacle, he slow-walked and covered it up. Instead of putting up real guardrails against hate speech, violence, and conspiracy videos, he has hired low-wage content moderators by the thousands as human crash dummies to monitor the flow. Without that all-purpose Section 230 shield, Facebook and other platforms would have to take responsibility for the havoc they unleash and learn to fix things, not just break them.

This is... not an accurate portrayal of anything. It's true that Zuckerberg was initially reluctant to believe that it had a role in 2016 (and there are still legitimate questions as to how much of an impact Facebook actually had or whether it was just a convenient scapegoat for a poorly-run Hillary Clinton campaign). But by 2017, Facebook had found religion and completely revamped its moderation processes regarding election content. Yes, it did hire thousands of content moderators. But it's bizarre that Reed and Steyer finally admit this way down in the article after paragraphs upon paragraphs insisting that Facebook does no moderation, doesn't care, and doesn't need to do anything.

But more to the point, if they don't want Facebook to hire all those content moderators, but do want Facebook to stop all the bad stuff online... how the hell do they think Facebook can do that? The answer to them is the same as "wave a magic wand." They say to take away Facebook's 230 protections, like that will magically solve stuff. It won't.

It would mean much greater taking down of content, including content from marginalized voices. It would mean Facebook would likely have to hire many more of those content moderators to review much more content. And, most importantly, it means that no competitor could ever be built to compete with Facebook because it would be the only company that could afford to take on such compliance costs.

And, the article gets worse. Reed and Steyer point to FOSTA as an example of how to reform 230. Really.

o the simplest way to address unlimited liability is to start limiting it. In 2018, Congress took a small step in that direction by passing the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. Those laws amended Section 230 to take away safe harbor protection from providers that knowingly facilitated sex trafficking.

Right, and what was the result? It certainly didn't do what the people promoting it expected. Craigslist shut down its dating section, clearing the field for Facebook to launch its own dating site. In other words, it gave more power to Facebook.

More importantly, it has been used to harm sex workers putting many lives at risk, and shutting down places where adults could discuss sex, all while making it harder for police to find sex traffickers. The end result has actually been an increase rather than a decrease in ads for sex online.

In other words, citing FOSTA as a "good example" of how to amend Section 230 suggests whoever is citing it doesn't know what they're talking about.

Congress could continue to chip away by denying platform immunity for other specific wrongs like revenge porn. Better yet, it could make platform responsibility a prerequisite for any limits on liability. Boston University law professor Danielle Citron and Brookings Institution scholar Benjamin Wittes have proposed conditioning immunity on whether a platform has taken reasonable efforts to moderate content.

We've debunked this silly, silly proposal before. There are almost no sites that don't do moderation. They all have "taken reasonable efforts" to moderate, except for perhaps the most extreme. Yet this whole article was about Facebook and YouTube -- both of which could easily show that they've "taken reasonable efforts" to moderate content online.

So, if this is their suggestion... it would literally do nothing to help the "problems" they insisted were there for YouTube and Facebook. And, instead, what would happen is smaller sites would never get a chance to exist, because Facebook and YouTube would set the "standard" for how you deal with content moderation -- just like how the EU has now set YouTube's expensive ContentID as "the standard" for any site dealing with copyright-covered content.

So this proposal does nothing to change Facebook or YouTube's policies, but locks them in as the dominant players. How is that a good idea?

But Reed and Steyer suggest maybe going further:

Washington would be better off throwing out Section 230 and starting over. The Wild West wasn't tamed by hiring a sheriff and gathering a posse. The internet won't be either. It will take a sweeping change in ethics and culture, enforced by providers and regulators. Instead of defaulting to shield those who most profit, the United States should shield those most vulnerable to harm, starting with kids. The "polluter pays" principle that we use to mitigate environmental damage can help achieve the same in the online environment. Simply put, platforms should be held accountable for any content that generates revenue. If they sell ads that run alongside harmful content, they should be considered complicit in the harm. Likewise, if their algorithms promote harmful content, they should be held accountable for helping redress the harm. In the long run, the only real way to moderate content is to moderate the business model.

Um. That would kill the open internet. Completely. Dead. And it's a stupid fucking suggestion. The "pollution" they are discussing here is 1st Amendment protected speech. This is why thinking of it as analogous to pollution is so dangerous. They are advocating for government rules that will stifle free speech. Massively. And, again, the few companies that can do something are the biggest ones already. It would destroy smaller sites. And it would destroy the ability for you or me to talk online.

There's more in the article, but it's all bad. That this is coming from Biden's top tech advisor is downright scary. It is as destructive as it is ignorant.

Filed Under: bruce reed, content moderation, intermediary liability, jim steyer, joe biden, liability, moral panic, responsibility, section 230, think of the children
Companies: facebook, youtube

Senators Hawley & Feinstein Join Graham & Blumenthal In Announcing Bill To Undermine Both Encryption And Section 230

from the for-the-children dept

In late January, we had an analysis of an absolutely dreadful bill proposed by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal -- both with a long history of attacking the internet -- called the EARN IT Act. The crux of the bill was that, in the name of "protecting the children," the bill would drastically change Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, making companies liable for "recklessly" failing to magically stop "child sexual abuse material" -- opening them up to civil lawsuits for any such failures. Even worse, it would enable the Attorney General -- who has made it quite clear that he hates encryption -- to effectively force companies to build in security-destroying backdoors.

On Thurdsay, the EARN IT Act (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act) was officially introduced with two additional awful Senators: from the Republican side there's tech hating Josh Hawley, and on the Democratic side, there's encryption hating Dianne Feinstein.

This version of the bill has a few changes from the draft version that made the rounds before, but in effect it is trying to accomplish the same basic things: forcing companies to backdoor encryption or lose Section 230 protections, while at the same time opening up platforms to a wide range of lawsuits (a la what we're seeing with FOSTA suits) from ambulance chasing tort lawyers trying to shake down internet platforms for money, while claiming to do so in the name of "protecting the children."

Senator Ron Wyden, who authored Section 230 decades ago, had the most succinct explanation of why the EARN IT Act is bad on multiple levels:

After the federal government spent years ignoring the law and millions of reports of the most heinous crimes against children, William Barr, Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal are offering a deeply flawed and counterproductive bill in response.

This terrible legislation is a Trojan horse to give Attorney General Barr and Donald Trump the power to control online speech and require government access to every aspect of Americans' lives. It is a desperate attempt to distract from the Justice Department's failure to request the manpower, funding and resources to combat this scourge, despite clear direction from Congress more than a decade ago.

While Section 230 does nothing to stop the federal government from prosecuting crimes, these senators claim that making it easier to sue websites is somehow going to stop pedophiles.

This bill is a transparent and deeply cynical effort by a few well-connect corporations and the Trump administration to use child sexual abuse to their political advantage, the impact to free speech and the security and privacy of every single American be damned.

There are a number of key points on this, starting with the fact that Barr's DOJ has consistently failed to do what it's mandated by Congress to do in fighting against child sexual exploitation. Any news story that fails to mention this key point is failing you in not explaining the context. Barr is looking for someone to blame for his own failures, and he's picked on the politically convenient internet industry -- while simultaneously getting to undermine the encryption he hates.

Another key point in the Wyden statement is that much of the EARN IT Act is dubious and cynical, but as Berin Szoka pointed out, this is likely to make stopping actual sexual exploitation that much more difficult:

“Perversely, the EARN IT Act makes it easier to sue websites than people who actually create and disseminate CSAM,” explained Szóka. “Facing potentially staggering civil liability means website providers will have no choice but to comply with the Commission’s nominally voluntary ‘best practices.’”

In that same link, Berin highlights another Constitutional problem with the Act, which could make it much more difficult for law enforcement to track down those actually responsible for child porn -- a perverse end result, which is not unlike what we've already seen happen with sex trafficking in response to FOSTA, where police have been saying that the law has made it more difficult for them to investigate trafficking.

This is a bad bill, put forth for cynical reasons, wrapped in a insincere "protect the children" blanket -- pushed for by a crew of companies who failed to innovate on the internet, and sponsored by Senators who have a long history of making it clear that they will beat up on civil liberties and innovation at any opportunity.

Filed Under: cda 230, csam, dianne feinstein, earn it act, encryption, intermediary liability, josh hawley, lindsey graham, richard blumenthal, section 230, think of the children, william barr

Academic Consensus Growing: Phones And Social Media Aren't Damaging Your Kids

from the another-techno-panic dept

We've pointed out for a while now that every generation seems to have some sort of moral panic over whatever is popular among kids. You're probably aware of more recent examples, from rock music to comic books to Dungeons and Dragons to pinball machines (really). Of course, in previous generations there were other things, like chess and the waltz. Given all that, for years we've urged people not to immediately jump on the bandwagon of assuming new technology must also be bad for kids. And, yet, so many people insist they are. Senator Josh Hawley has practically trademarked his claim that social media is bad for kids. Senator Lindsey Graham held a full hearing all of which was evidence free, moral panicking about social media and the children -- and because of that he's preparing a new law to completely upend Section 230 in the name of "protecting the children" from social media.

Not that it's likely to stop grandstanding politicians, but over in academia, where they actually study these things, there's a growing consensus that social media and smart phones aren't actually bad for kids. While some academics made claims about potential harm a decade or so ago, none of their predictions have proven accurate, and even some of those academics have revised their earlier research, and in one case even admitting that they caused an unnecessary panic:

The debate about screen time and mental health goes back to the early days of the iPhone. In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a widely cited paper that warned doctors about “Facebook depression.”

But by 2016, as more research came out, the academy revised that statement, deleting any mention of Facebook depression and emphasizing the conflicting evidence and the potential positive benefits of using social media.

Megan Moreno, one of the lead authors of the revised statement, said the original statement had been a problem “because it created panic without a strong basis of evidence.”

A few different "studies of studies" are showing that there's little to no evidence to support harm from these popular technologies.

The latest research, published on Friday by two psychology professors, combs through about 40 studies that have examined the link between social media use and both depression and anxiety among adolescents. That link, according to the professors, is small and inconsistent.

“There doesn’t seem to be an evidence base that would explain the level of panic and consternation around these issues,” said Candice L. Odgers, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the lead author of the paper, which was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

There's a lot more in that NY Times article, or you can read through pretty much all of the recent academic research on the topic.

Of course, the real question is just how silly will Senators Hawley, Graham and others look as they continue to insist that social media and phones are harming the children?

Filed Under: democracy, kids, moral panic, social media, techno panic, think of the children

Senator Hawley Responds To Techdirt With A Bunch Of Nonsense And Lies About His Own Bill That He Doesn't Seem To Understand

from the you-did-the-what-for-the-who-now? dept

Hoo boy. We've criticized a bunch of Senator Josh Hawley's nonsense over the past few months. After all, he's the elite cosmopolitan "get big government out of business" Senator who is railing against elite cosmopolitans, while demanding that government get deeply involved in regulating companies. Well, not all companies. Just tech companies. It's almost as if Hawley is deliberately picking on companies that he thinks don't like his insane brand of politics. Anyway, while Hawley has introduced a slew of nonsensical bills targeting internet companies, the most laughable was the one that literally lays out what features certain websites can and cannot use. As we wrote in our post about it, Hawley seems to want to appoint himself the product manager of the internet.

Saagar Enjeti, a reporter for The Hill, recently sat down with Hawley, and Enjeti has posted some highlights from the interview. It's kind of scary that this guy is a sitting US Senator, as almost everything he talks about, he demonstrates an astounding, almost comical, level of ignorance or a clearly superficial understanding. But, hilariously, Enjeti actually asks him specifically to respond to my criticism that he's trying to appoint himself the product manager for the internet. Hawley's response is... not good.

Let's write out the transcript here, because it is unbelievable. It's so unbelievable that I don't even think Hawley understands what his own bill says, and I'm almost wondering if he's commenting about a different bill, introduced in the other part of Congress.

Enjeti: So I also want to talk about your SMART Act. It's probably the most criticized foray of yours within the Big Tech debate. Among other things, you've proposed banning infinite scroll, autoplay, limiting users to 30 minutes a day. A Techdirt columnist said you want to appoint yourself "product manager of the internet." What would your counter to that be?

Hawley: My counter is that parents ought to be in control of raising their children, not big tech. So parents ought to have tools and options and support. So take the thing limiting 30 minutes for apps usage. I mean parents can change that. It's a default setting. But it gives control to parents to say, "look, these tech companies whose entire business model is focused on getting my kids addicted and then stealing, essentially, their information, and then turning around and selling it, it's time to stop that."

It's time to give parents control. To say, look, if I'm comfortable with my kids online, fine, that's the parents' choice, and the kids' choice. But it shouldn't be big tech's choice. Big tech shouldn't be raising our children. Infinite scroll and autoplay. These are technologies, quote unquote, that Big Tech has developed, in concert with psychologists, to try to get us -- and, again, especially kids and teenagers -- addicted to their platforms. Why should they be able to do that without scrutiny? Why shouldn't we give parents the ability to say "no"? It ought to be a choice, but the choice and the power of the choice ought to be in the hands of the family. Not in the hands of some Google executive.

First of all, none of this makes any sense at all. Parents already have that control. Not tech companies. Parents can block their kids from using certain services or apps or can use any number of the fairly long list of third party services to help control how much their kids use these services or their devices. Isn't that the free market at work, Senator Hawley? Second, Hawley's bill doesn't actually do anything that he suggests above.

The word "parent" doesn't even appear in the bill at all. Regarding the 30 minute limit, the bill says nothing about parents, but does say that any social media platform has to default to a limit of 30 minutes per day for all users, and while it does allow those users to alter the limit, it resets every month, and Hawley's bill requires the services to continue to nag users. It doesn't say that the ability to change the limit should be for parents changing things for their kids. Indeed, how hard would it be for kids to change the settings?

The same is true of the ban on autoplay and infinite scroll. Those are listed as "prohibited practices" -- not "tools for parents to help their kids." Yes, it does say that services can offer a way for users to "opt-in" to both, but says this can be accomplished by "pushing a button." Does Senator Hawley think that kids can't push buttons?

Also, we won't even get into how wrong he is to argue these companies are either "stealing their information" or "turning around and selling it" (though, Senator Hawley, if they're selling it, can you tell us where to buy it? Because it's not actually happening. But, damn, you could really prove your point if you went out and bought that "stolen" information that you insist is for sale), but it seems worth pointing out that Hawley exempts autoplay ads from his autoplay ban. If he were really concerned about the privacy implications and the data implications of these services, then, um, wouldn't that include ads? But, nope, Hawley's all happy to let these companies continue autoplay if it's for making money.

And, while I'd normally say this goes without saying, it appears to need saying based on Hawley's own confused comments: how the hell is a bill that has the government "make choices" for you an example of "giving more choices" to parents?

Honestly, so much of Hawley's description of his own bill actually sounds like he's talking about an entirely different (but still dumb) bill, the one that was introduced by Rep. Goasar in the House, and which would require companies to offer content moderation tools for end users. That one, you could credibly argue, is about putting more control in the hands of end users (parents or not...).

But, really, all we're left with here is a Senator who doesn't seem to understand how technology works, what his own bill says or does, what it means for "big government" to meddle in private businesses, or, really, anything. How is this guy in a position of power?

Filed Under: big tech, choice, infinite scroll, josh hawley, parents, product manager, think of the children
Companies: amazon, facebook, google

Senator Graham Spreads A Bunch Of Nonsense About 'Protecting Digital Innocence' Online

from the moral-panics dept

We warned last week that Senator Lindsey Graham was holding a "but think of the children online" moral panic hearing. Indeed, it happened. You can watch the whole 2 hours, but... I wouldn't recommend it (I did it for you, though). Most of it is the usual moral panic, technologically illiterate nonsense we've all come to expect from Congress. Indeed, in a bit of good timing, the Pessimist's Archive just tweeted out a clip of a 1993 Senate hearing in which then Senator Joe Lieberman flipped out about evil video games. Think about this, but two hours, and a wider array of nonsense:

It starts out with a prosecutor from South Carolina, Duffie Stone, moral panicking about basically everything. Encryption is evil. Children are being sex trafficked online. And, um, gangs are recruiting members with (gasp) music videos. Later he complains that some of those kids (gasp!) mock law enforcement in their videos. Something must be done! The second speaker, a law professor, Angela Campell, claims that we need more laws "for the children!" She also goes further and says that the FTC should go after Google and others for not magically stopping scammy companies from existing. Then there was this guy, Christopher McKenna, from an organization ("Protect Young Eyes!") dedicated to moral panics, telling all sorts of unbelievable anecdotes about evil predators stalking young people on Instagram and "grooming" them. Remember, that actual data on this kind of activity shows that it's actually quite rare (not zero, and that's not excusing it when it does happen, but the speaker makes it sound like every young girl on Instagram is likely to be at risk of sex trafficking). He also asks the government to require an MPAA/ESRB-style "rating" system for apps -- apparently unaware that laws attempting to require such ratings have been struck down as unconstitutional, and the MPAA/ESRB ratings only exist through voluntary agreements.

There's also... um... this:

It's the app where every kid, regardless of age, has access to the Discover News section, where they are taught how to engage in risky sexual behavior, such as hookup, group, anal, or torture sex, how to sell drugs, and how to hide internet activity from parents using "incognito mode."

He's describing Snapchat. I've used Snapchat for years and, uh, I've never come across any of that. Also, the complaint about incognito mode is... pretty messed up, considering how that's a tool for protecting privacy. This is all straight from the standard moral panic playbook. Also, he claims that Twitter has "hardcore porn and prostitution was everywhere" -- which is also news to me (and I use Twitter a lot). He also whines that VPNs are too easy to get -- and then later whines that it's "too hard" to protect our privacy. Um, hiding VPNs will harm our privacy. It's like a hodge podge of true nonsense.

There was also John Clark from NCMEC -- the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. NCMEC actually does good work in helping platforms screen out and spot child porn. However, Clark contributes to the scare-mongering about just how awful the internet is. He also flat out lies. At one point during the panel, Senator Ted Cruz asks Clark about FOSTA and what it's done so far. Clark flat out lies and says that FOSTA took down Backpage. This is false. Backpage was taken down and its founders arrested before FOSTA was even signed into law.

The only semi-reasonable panelist was the last one, Stephen Balkam, from the Family Online Safety Institute. While McKenna mocks the idea that "parents have a role" by pointing out that parents can't watch over their kids every hour of every day (duh), Balkam points out that what we should be doing is not watching over our kids all the time, but rather training them and educating them to know how to be good digital citizens online and to avoid trouble. But that kind of message was basically ignored by the Senators, because what fun is actually respecting our kids and teaching them how to be smart internet users. Instead, most of panel focuses on crazy anecdotes and salacious claims about internet services that make them sounds a hell of lot more insane than any of those platforms actually are.

Later, Senator John Kennedy asks the guy from "Protect Young Eyes" if Apple can build a filter that will magically help parents block kids from ever seeing sexually explicit material. McKenna stumbles and admits he has no idea, leading Balkam to finally have to jump into the conversation (he's the only panelist that no Senator had called on throughout the entire ordeal) to point out that all platforms have some forms of parental controls. But Kennedy cuts him off and says "but can it be done?" Balkam stutters a "yes," which is not accurate -- since Kennedy is asking for something impossible. But then Kennedy suggests that Congress write a law that requires companies like Apple and Google to install filters (something that's already been ruled unconstitutional).

Kennedy's idea is... nutty. He includes the obligatory "I don't know how any of this is done" comment before suggesting a bunch of impossible ideas.

Could Apple, for example, design a program that a parent could opt into, and the instructions to Apple would be "design a program that will filter all information that my daughter or son may see that would be sexually exploitative"? Maybe "filter all pictures or written references to human genitalia." Can that be done? ... Isn't that the short way home here?

[....]

So could we write legislation, or promulgate a rule, that says "here's the thing that a reasonable parent would do to protect his or her child from seeing this stuff." And we do that in conjunction with somebody that has the obvious expertise. And you filter everything. I don't know how to do it. I can't write software. Maybe it's to prevent any pictures of human genitalia. Or prohibit any reference to sexual activity. I don't know. The kids aren't gonna like it, but that's not who we're trying to please here. Why couldn't that be done?

Well, the Constitution is why it can't be done Senator. Also, basic understanding of technology. Or the limits on filter technology. Block all mention of sexual activity? Sure, then kids will use slang. Good luck keeping up with that. Block all pictures of genitalia -- then say good buy to biology texts online. Or pages about breast cancer. This is all stuff that lots of people have studied for decades and Kennedy is displaying his ignorance about the Constitution, the law, the internet, the technology, and just about everything else as well. Including kids.

Balkam points out that there are lots of private companies already making such filters, but Kennedy keeps saying "can we write a law" and "can we require every device have these filters" and Balkam looks panic'd noting he has no idea about whether or not they can write such a law (answer: they cannot, at least not if they want it to pass Constitutional muster).

Senator Blackburn... brings up Jeffrey Epstein. Who, as far as we know... didn't use the internet to prey on girls. But according to Blackburn, Epstein proves the problems of the internet. Because. Senator Hawley then completely makes up a claim that YouTube is deliberately pushing kids to pedophiles and refuses to do anything about it. He claims -- incorrectly -- that Google admitted that it knows it sends videos of kids to pedophiles (and, he claims, allows the pedophiles to contact the kids) and that it deliberately has decided not to stop this. This misrepresents... basically everything once again.

Senator Thom Tillis then grandstands that it's all the parents' fault -- and if a kid gets a mobile phone and lies about his age, we should be... blaming the parents for "giving the kids a lethal device." No hyperbole and grandstanding there, huh? He's also really focused on "lethality." He later claims that the internet content itself is "lethal."

Towards the end, the Senators all gang up on Section 230. Senator Cruz asks his FOSTA question (leading NCMEC's Clark to falsely state that it was necessary to take down Backpage), and then Blumenthal calls 230 "the elephant in the room" and suggests that there needs to be a "duty of care" to get companies to do anything. It seems like Hawley is already gone by this time, but no one seems to point out that any such duty of care would likely lead to much greater censorship on these platforms, in direct contrast with his demand that the companies censor less.

Nevertheless, Senator Graham closes the hearing by saying that he thinks the companies need to "earn" their CDA 230 protections (which is part of Hawley's nonsense bill). Graham suggests that Congress needs to come up with "best business practices" and platforms should only get 230 protections if they "meet those best business practices."

Who knew the Republican Party was all about dictating business standards. What happened to the party of getting government out of business?

Who knows what will actually come out of this hearing, but it was mostly a bunch of ill-informed or mis-informed, technologically illiterate grandstanding, moral panic nonsense. In other words, standard operating procedure for most of Congress.

Filed Under: angela campbell, christopher mckenna, duffie stone, john clark, john kennedy, josh hawley, lindsey graham, moral panic, stephen balkam, ted cruz, think of the children
Companies: facebook, google, ncmec, snapchat

Senator Lindsey Graham To Host Special 'But Think Of The Children Online!' Moral Panic Hearing

from the oh-come-on dept

Senator Lindsey Graham is not exactly the most tech savvy of politicians -- and he demonstrates this is the most predictable of ways: falling for bogus tropes about the internet, while always (always) kowtowing to the surveillance state. He's not sure that bloggers should be protected by the 1st Amendment, and he thinks that the law requires internet platforms to be neutral (it does not). Of course, one thing he likes about the internet is the fact that it allows the intelligence community to sweep up all your data.

But his latest is that next week he'll be hosting a hearing with the most ridiculous of moral panic titles around: "Protecting Innocence in a Digital World." There's no more information about what the panel is officially about or who will be speaking, but from the name alone you can assume it's going to be full on moral panics about the evils of the internet and how "something must be done" to "protect the children." Of course, given his earlier comments on why Section 230 of the CDA is no good, there's a decent likelihood that this, too, will be attacked during the hearing -- even though CDA 230 was literally written to enable platforms to create "family friendly" spaces -- and amending it would likely take away those incentives.

Similarly, this is coming at the same exact time that his colleague, Senator Josh Hawley, is demanding that companies stop moderating altogether, because he's upset by the myth that internet companies are silencing conservatives (reality: they're just saying they don't want to host trolls and Nazis and sometimes they make mistakes because when you're dealing with that much content mistakes will be made).

So I'm a bit confused as to how Senator Graham and the Judiciary Committee expect internet platforms to magically stop "bad stuff" online at the same time that another Senator is demanding that they stop moderating altogether.

Filed Under: grandstanding, innocence, internet, lindsey graham, protecting innocence, section 230, think of the children

University Professor: Candy Crush Is Turning Children Into Obsessive Gamblers

from the think-of-the-royal-flushes! dept

Here is a brief list of all the definitive information we have about the effects of video games on children. Violent video games make children more violent. Violent video games do not make children more violent. Video games make children less sympathetic to their fellow humans. Video games make children more sympathetic to their fellow humans. Video games cause severe health problems in children. Video games have health benefits for children. And, above all else, we know that parents in the United States are so certain that video games are a problem for their children that they brilliantly ignore the tools at their disposal to help them act like, you know, parents.

Whoo. Sort of takes your breath away, doesn't it? Well, we aren't done yet, apparently, now that another study supposedly shows that (sigh) video games are turning our precious youth into wannabe Doyle Brunsons and the only remedy is attentive parents the ever-effective school systems to educate kids about gambling games.

Prof Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit, based at Nottingham Trent University, said large numbers of under-16s were becoming hooked on games often accessed through social media websites. Many sites provide opportunities to play online poker with virtual money or give users a free introductory session to cash-gambling games with no age restrictions.

Free versions of poker and gambling sites are turning children into gambling addicts. Got it. How are they doing this, professor?

Speaking to the Times Educational Supplement, he said these games introduced young people to the excitement and rewards of gambling even when they are not playing for real money, adding: “It’s a bit like the old drug-dealing analogy of giving a bit for free and hooking them in.”

Ah, it's so simple! If you offer something for free and reward the user, they'll become hopelessly hooked and think they can earn real rewards in real life! Like drug dealers do! And play-money gambling sites! And the way Farmville has spawned a bunch of kids now hopelessly trying to grow plants out of their concrete sidewalks! Or how that free NFL game where you run back kickoffs has somehow magically convinced zillions of kids that they're Devin Hester.

Sorry, not buying it. Kids, by and large, are far more intelligent than we give them credit for. But, hey, it's not like the professor is only picking on poker sites.

Prof Griffiths identified games such as Candy Crush Saga which has been downloaded more than 500m times and gives players the option of paying money to access higher levels. He said that these games had a “moreishness quality, a bit like chocolate”.

“You say you’ll just have one chunk and you end up having the whole lot,” he said. “So you say, ‘I’ll just play for 15 minutes’, and you end up still there four or five hours later.”

So...the game being fun and costing something is the problem? Look, I dislike micropayments as much as the next person, but deciding that Candy Crush has caused a need for gambling education in every school in the UK is a bit like saying that because kids read comic books they should have to take a lesson on some of the unfortunate squeeze-effects of wearing superhero tights. It's just a little overboard.

And, I ask, knowing that this will be laughed off by my children-having peers, why is there no mention of parenting anywhere in these recommendations? I played cards with my friends as a child. I played free online poker when I was in high school. All the education I needed to know that I wasn't Phil Helmuth was my father pulling up a picture of the Las Vegas strip and saying, "They didn't build those enormous buildings by letting people win." That, along with some attentive parenting, ought to be enough.

Filed Under: candy crush, children, gambling, games, think of the children

Latest 'Think Of The Children' Scaremongering: Pirated Films Might 'Disturb' Them

from the don't-look-now dept

Just last week we heard how Russia has extended its "think of the children" law to include copyright infringement. That was a classic case of function creep, but here's a more direct invocation of "the children" in order to attack unauthorized downloads of files, this time in the UK:

One in five young film fans (18%) admit they have been disturbed by the movies they have watched on pirate websites and two thirds (65%) wish they had checked the film's official age rating first.

While almost half of children and teens (42%) admit to being aware of rules in place at home designed to restrict what they can and can't look at on the internet, the research commissioned by The Industry Trust for IP Awareness, in partnership with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), shows a quarter (25%) download or stream movies from unofficial sources, which offer no guidance on age ratings.

Now, there are a heap of issues with this. For example, what exactly does "disturbed" mean in this context? Some films are deeply disturbing, but in a good sense ("Schinder's List", for example, rated "15"), because they bring new but troubling knowledge: does "disturbing" include those? Or only the "bad" ones -- in which case, how is "bad" defined? Unfortunately, I can't find the original research to explore that, or even to see how the questions were framed (always a critical issue for such surveys.)

But leaving aside all those methodological questions, there is a key flaw with this "for the children" argument, which is that we don't know what percentage of children who watch legal downloads and DVDs are "disturbed" by what they see. That's a key number, because it needs to be lower than the one pertaining to pirate sites if the latter is to have any relevance. It might be, for example, that children are more disturbed by their parents' cinematic library than by what they search out for themselves online; after all, such searches are likely to be based on recommendations from their friends, or on what children read on other sites -- in other words, an informed choice with plenty of context.

What's interesting here is how the currently-fashionable "think of the children" trope is being deployed as part of a campaign against piracy. As such, it's part of a long tradition of trying to frighten people away from unauthorized downloads by suggesting that they fund terrorism, are packed with malware or make your hair fall out (OK, I made up that last one.)

So here's a suggestion. Instead of resorting to scaremongering, which never works anyway, why doesn't the British film industry try offering a range of good online products at fair prices? After all, it seems to be working elsewhere....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: children, copyright, downloading, infringement, think of the children

The Inevitability Of Techno Moral Panics: But Think Of The Children

from the women-and-children-first dept

For years, we've been fascinated with the general phenomenon of technology moral panics, and how we see them all the time around new forms of technology. Video games destroying children's brains. The internet leading kids into a life of porn. These things go back many, many years. In the 15th century there was a technopanic about the printing press ("He who ceases from zeal for writing because of printing is no true lover of the Scriptures.") In the 19th century, people were told that traveling on trains above 20mph would asphyxiate passengers. A hundred years ago, movies and telephones were declared evil (movies: "This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood" and telephones: "Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?").

DannyB now points us to an interesting Wall Street Journal article that delves into the subject of technopanics, and how they almost always seem to target "women and children" first. It's the classic "for the children!" argument that we see all the time. In fact, the article highlights another techno moral panic we hadn't heard of before: around electricity:

If you electrify homes you will make women and children and vulnerable. Predators will be able to tell if they are home because the light will be on, and you will be able to see them. So electricity is going to make women vulnerable. Oh and children will be visible too and it will be predators, who seem to be lurking everywhere, who will attack.

The article focuses on the research of Genevieve Bell, who has a theory on these kinds of technopanics, saying that they need to have these three conditions to really bring out the fear mongering:

• It has to change your relationship to time.
• It has to change your relationship to space.
• It has to change your relationship to other people.

I'm not sure this always applies (think of the panics around video games, comic books... and chess -- yes, chess: "chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body"), but it does seem to apply in many cases.

Of course, for those of us who tend to be optimistic about new technology, and skeptical about the same old moral panics that almost never seem to have any evidence to back them up, there's not much to be done, other than to point out these historical similarities. Unfortunately, that rarely works for the new generation who always have something in their back pocket about why "this is different!" even though it almost never is.

Filed Under: children, moral panic, technopanic, think of the children, women