Here's what's a little worrisome. Bear in mind that we're trying to report child pornography. So why is the default option set to just block the user and not report it to Facebook?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Reporting Defaults
Most of the Facebook users interested in child pornography take it somewhere else or use private groups. However, one will occasionally post some horrendous stuff to an open wall where anyone can see it. Recently, I came across this and reported it to Facebook. Here's what the reporting interface looks like. We select the "nudity or pornography" category.
Here's what's a little worrisome. Bear in mind that we're trying to report child pornography. So why is the default option set to just block the user and not report it to Facebook?
Here's what's a little worrisome. Bear in mind that we're trying to report child pornography. So why is the default option set to just block the user and not report it to Facebook?
Friday, March 25, 2011
Sukk Midic
"Sukk Midic" isn't a subtle kind of guy. He's had a number of accounts with screen names like "Nude Foru." So perhaps it's unsurprising that he's also open about his interest in "little ones." The screenshot has been redacted since a couple of the profile photos depicted parts of his body that we'd rather not see.
His friend "Milly Luvlittlewon" has similar interests.
"Ineed Hotvideo" hides his wall and profile information, but manages to communicate his interests with his screen name and the photo of a prepubescent girl in a bikini. The screenshot below has been redacted to hide her face.
His friend "Milly Luvlittlewon" has similar interests.
"Ineed Hotvideo" hides his wall and profile information, but manages to communicate his interests with his screen name and the photo of a prepubescent girl in a bikini. The screenshot below has been redacted to hide her face.
RIP Trolls for Fun and Profit
"R.I.P. trolls" on Facebook are the unusually mean-spirited people who get a kick out of posting upsetting comments and images on memorial pages. They tend to get mass-reported and shut down pretty quickly, but usually reappear quickly with new accounts. One of the worst, an Australian named Bradley Paul Hampson, was recently sentenced to jail time for posting sexually explicit photos and comments on Facebook pages memorializing dead children. Below is an excerpt from the SMH story:
A man who vandalised Facebook tribute sites for two dead children has been jailed.
Self-confessed "troll" Bradley Paul Hampson, 29, of Tarragindi in Brisbane's south, posted pictures of penises and wrote offensive messages on the two sites in February last year.
On one Facebook tribute site for the 12-year-old boy, he wrote "woot I'm dead" across an image of the dead child.
He also morphed a photo of the boy's face inside a woodchipper and made it appear blood was coming from the machine.
On another, he wrote sexually explicit comments implying he was responsible for raping and killing the eight-year-old girl.
"My definition of pleasure ... listening to her ribs crack," he wrote. "I got mad ... so I murdered her."In the U.S., there are a group of real-life R.I.P. trolls known as the Westboro Baptist Church. Instead of posting foul things on memorial pages, they show up at funerals and picket. Judging by the results that come back when you search Facebook for "Westboro Baptist", they're also widely hated. However, some people have suggested that Westboro Baptist Church may be a scam organization that provokes people and then uses lawsuits to generate revenue. Since they call themselves a "church," they may also be able to avoid paying taxes.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Shane Ispedo
The user previously known as "Shane Ispedo" is currently facing over 50 charges related to possession, distribution, and production of child pornography. Shane Dale Pattison is a 21-year-old former student from Marshall, Saskatchewan who sometimes used the name "Pokedod." I believe that this is his DeviantArt site: http://pokedod.deviantart.com/ . It's strikingly ordinary.
When I was in high school, many of us envisioned pedophiles as dirty old men. A number of Catholic priests had been charged, including two who had been pastors in the local Catholic Church. Years later, it's difficult to wrap my head around the idea of people younger than I am now being arrested for sex offenses. "What made them that way?" I wonder sometimes. A number of causes have been suggested, e.g., experiencing sexual abuse, exposure to pornography, genetics, and personal choice. But nobody really knows.
Police in Australia Criticize Facebook
According to a TNW story at http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/03/24/australia-police-claims-facebook-hinders-child-abuse-probe/ , Australian police have expressed frustration at the mutual assistance treaty and Facebook's response.
The situation may also be fraught in terms of politics and public relations. The ground truth seems to be that there's a lot of child pornography floating around and nobody's really figured out a surefire way to detect it. Even if it is detected and reported to law enforcement, some countries are more responsive than others. But a social network can't go on record saying that child pornography is a hard and frustrating problem; it's more palatable to say that their sophisticated technology is keeping things under control. As an obscure blogger, I can comment about seeing a lot of users from certain countries who seem to be interested in child pornography. If a Facebook spokesman said that, people would probably accuse them of being bigots and they'd be forced to apologize.
Australian Federal Police’s high-tech collection and capability manager, Grant Edwards, expressed that the mutual legal assistance treaty with the US is outdated and not designed to allow for a rapid response to online crime. And that Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, hasn’t been helpful with the push.
A revised treaty, supported by the AFP, is necessary to speed up the actioning of the police’s right to obtain information about online crime using a warrant on Facebook, which is head-quartered in the United States. Currently, the AFP is still required to undergo a long, tedious legal process in order to use US law enforcement to force Facebook to respond.
The Australian government has made efforts to amend the assistance treaty in order to speed up the process of lawful data acquisitions. However, the changes would need to be ratified by the US to take effect. According to Edwards, Facebook hasn’t been as helpful as it could because the company is “brand-protecting.” Furthermore, he labeled the social networking site’s action to remove pedophile profiles that were needed as evidence by the AFP as "ignorance on Facebook’s behalf."Facebook has an automated system to detect and disable problem accounts. However, this system generally can't detect when a user should also be reported to law enforcement. Once an account is shut down, Facebook will retain the information for up to 90 days, and then it's gone. Automatically detecting child pornography is a hard problem. The most promising approach has been comparing images to hashes of known child pornography files, but that only works if there's a match.
The situation may also be fraught in terms of politics and public relations. The ground truth seems to be that there's a lot of child pornography floating around and nobody's really figured out a surefire way to detect it. Even if it is detected and reported to law enforcement, some countries are more responsive than others. But a social network can't go on record saying that child pornography is a hard and frustrating problem; it's more palatable to say that their sophisticated technology is keeping things under control. As an obscure blogger, I can comment about seeing a lot of users from certain countries who seem to be interested in child pornography. If a Facebook spokesman said that, people would probably accuse them of being bigots and they'd be forced to apologize.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Reflections and Expectations
In the few months since this blog started, a lot has changed. In November when it started, there were a number of users on Facebook blatantly advertising their interest in child pornography. Some would even post links and invitations to trade on open walls. Facebook has since gotten more aggressive about shutting those accounts down, though it may never be possible to completely block predatory users. A number of concerned citizens have gotten very upset about the situation, and some have even set up a website and sent postcards to Facebook.
There may be some conflict between expectations and reality. When I started this blog, most of my understanding of child pornography had come from news stories about people getting arrested. There weren't too many of them in my community, and I was inclined to assume that very few people were interested in child pornography and the ones who did got quickly arrested. So it was hard to understand why some of the people I saw weren't in jail.
Since then, I've learned that the sheer volume of child pornography on the Internet is staggering, and none of the major social networks are completely free of predators. There are a number of dedicated law enforcement professionals working hard to combat the problem, but the situation has been compared to drinking out of a fire hose.
Why can't Facebook and other social networks completely block pedophiles and child pornography from their sites? It turns out to be a much harder technical problem than many activists realize. It is often impossible for a system to recognize that an image is child pornography and when there are millions of accounts, it's not feasible for a human to manually review all images and videos that users post to a site. Child pornography traders generally try not to call attention to themselves and are less likely to get reported by other users than spammers or a malicious trolls. Even when someone who posts child pornography is detected and reported to law enforcement, their country may or may not take action.
A number of concerned citizens are currently demanding that Facebook eliminate child pornography from its site. It's easy to understand why people are upset and angry about child exploitation, but harder to accept that there's only so much Facebook or any other social network can do about it. The best case scenario may be that some people get arrested and most of the child pornography traders migrate elsewhere. But no matter how proactive the social networks are, child pornography is going to continue to be a hard problem.
There may be some conflict between expectations and reality. When I started this blog, most of my understanding of child pornography had come from news stories about people getting arrested. There weren't too many of them in my community, and I was inclined to assume that very few people were interested in child pornography and the ones who did got quickly arrested. So it was hard to understand why some of the people I saw weren't in jail.
Since then, I've learned that the sheer volume of child pornography on the Internet is staggering, and none of the major social networks are completely free of predators. There are a number of dedicated law enforcement professionals working hard to combat the problem, but the situation has been compared to drinking out of a fire hose.
Why can't Facebook and other social networks completely block pedophiles and child pornography from their sites? It turns out to be a much harder technical problem than many activists realize. It is often impossible for a system to recognize that an image is child pornography and when there are millions of accounts, it's not feasible for a human to manually review all images and videos that users post to a site. Child pornography traders generally try not to call attention to themselves and are less likely to get reported by other users than spammers or a malicious trolls. Even when someone who posts child pornography is detected and reported to law enforcement, their country may or may not take action.
A number of concerned citizens are currently demanding that Facebook eliminate child pornography from its site. It's easy to understand why people are upset and angry about child exploitation, but harder to accept that there's only so much Facebook or any other social network can do about it. The best case scenario may be that some people get arrested and most of the child pornography traders migrate elsewhere. But no matter how proactive the social networks are, child pornography is going to continue to be a hard problem.
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