That sounds as effective as, oh, I don't know, the UN security council. Why not just argue against having the whole thing entirely?

This is the only compromise I would accept, otherwise I'm in favor of E2E with no backdoors. People who care about preventing CSAM and prosecuting pedophiles should consider this an improvement over the status quo.

I’m unsure what you’re saying here, can you clarify?

Is it that Baseline seems overly bureaucratic and will be ineffective, or that people should not support any CSAM lists at all?

The UN security council is hardly a non-entity. They aren't great at addressing certain kinds of geopolitically contentious problems, but UN peacekeepers have 12 active deployments. (https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/where-we-operate)

The UN security council is VERY effective at what it's actual purpose is, which is preventing all out nuclear war between the major super powers. That is why they are the ones with vetos.

Everything else is quite explicitly window dressing.

Mutually assured destruction does that. The security council has nothing to do with it. Also, at the time of its founding, the US was the only country with nukes, so that's not the logic behind who the permanent members are.

Ah, but not by many years. I guess it was more 'the global powers got nukes first', rather than 'the nuclear countries got the veto'. Interesting!

This does already exist somewhat as the INTERPOL Baseline list - https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Crimes-against-children/Bloc...

Does this meet your threshold?

If national legislation in Western governments provided that only signatures from this org could be included, then I'd support it. But I don't know anything about this INTERPOL list, does it actually require consensus by all of these countries? Or can one country influence what's included in practice? There has to be an effective veto by all the countries involved for anything to be included.

“To be included in the Baseline list, child abuse images and videos must be recognized as such by our specialist network of investigators, and meet specific criteria in terms of the severity of the image content, for example those believed to feature children aged 13 and under.

The strict criteria ensure that the Baseline list refers only to images and videos which would be considered as illegal in any country.”

INTERPOL has a very large membership, including Russia and China. The baseline list is reviewed so only media that is illegal in every country INTERPOL operates in is included.

I’m not sure how a veto system as you’re suggesting would work practically, but this might be the closest thing.

The veto system would have to require that the equivalent of Russia and China's NCMEC agrees that the image/video's signature that's going to be included in the database is actually CSAM at a low level operational level. Without that consensus, it should be technically impossible for anyone to include a signature.

I think in a perfect world that would be great. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see how a system like that could ever be implemented within our lifetimes.

I personally think Baseline is a good pragmatic approach. It includes only known media, where they retain the originals for sense checking, and only includes things judged to be CSAM by trained experts. It’s probably the lightest touch possible solution that is still somewhat effective.

I don't see why it's impossible. It requires coordination and millions of dollars in funding by all the respective governments, but if the world thinks CSAM is a serious problem, then it's a drop in the bucket.

CSAM doesn't need to be added to the database in real-time. It can be done quarterly, giving each national agency time to deliberate on the content.

If you'll forgive this tangent, I am not sure it is a good idea to maintain a "worst of" list. I can already imagine pedos competing for first place.

The hyperbole around the issue of CSAM is starting to outweigh the threat itself. The crimes committed against a minority of the population isn't worth this much drama. We don't even pay this much attention to murdered children.

This isn't going to unite international rivals against it any more than an asteroid hurtling toward the planet. Only the western world gives a shit about it, which means it's easily weaponized by anybody outside of it.

Rather than backdooring every device on the planet, a more practical solution would be to just take away kids' phones and chain them to the radiator. To protect the children from CSAM, lock them up.

We don't like to admit it but face the facts: children are property as far as the State is concerned. Same as any other asset, livestock and firearms, they can be "taken" away from you and "given" to others for dividends (which, when you think about it, describes the act of trafficking itself).

You don't protect your home by unlocking everyone else's. That sort of "solution" makes you an actual menace to society.

> to just take away kids' phones

Absolutely. Just the first part, seriously. No need for chains and radiators. Let's ban kids under 16 from access to phones and the open Internet. It would MASSIVELY improve just about everything about childhood and mental health of the young.

There are plenty of technologies emerging with the density of memory and GPT type compression (that's what neural networks really do... compression) to facilitate "curated education in a box", and small network (family and friends) communication.

> It would MASSIVELY improve just about everything about childhood and mental health of the young.

Honestly it'd make the internet a lot better for adults too.

Sure. I was exaggerating to make my point-- in no context has "safety through disarmament" ever been a thing.

The Louvre doesn't respond to people stealing paintings by disabling all the security cameras. Prisons don't protect the public by being free-range. Nuclear disarmament is too complex to go into here, but hypocrisy abounds. Barring that one incident, the Mint doesn't protect the money supply by storing it in the middle of a Walmart parking lot (predictably, it got stolen).

Every time we seek to secure anything, we make the coveted object more inaccessible to pursuers. That's how Protection works.

Anyone telling you lowering your guard and becoming vulnerable will somehow increase anyone's safety is one distraction away from slipping a roofie into your drink. It's the sort of gaslighting one expects from a pervert or voyeur.

Not sure I understand you. Are you seeing smartphones as a weapon? Something that is empowering?

In some hands, empowering, in other hands, a weapon. It's less about smartphones specifically and more an abstraction for the internet itself. Take the internet away and it removes the metaphysical vector for exploitative outreach to children.

It would make it very difficult to produce new CSAM if you eliminate the encrypted channels over which children are discreetly coerced into running away or producing it themselves.

I lived through the 70s. Worked at the BBC for a while. Nonces (kiddy fiddlers) are a social psychiatric problem. Policing networks or endpoints is treating the symptoms.

Nonetheless I agree the utility that children get from access to the mainstream "Five Giant Enshitified Websites" doesn't really surmount the damage done. The main harm, in my opinion, is simply to general mental health and wellbeing. So that just adds to the case for an age restriction for smartphones. If that reduces potential contact with nonces then all-good, but the reality is that child abuse happens by people IRL, usually trusted family or neighbours.

Maybe the tide is turning and we're "getting there", and that's why I defended and supported many parts of the UK Online Safety Bill - even though other parts of it are trash. However this focus on CSAM to push unworkable restrictions is the usual dishonest politics and posturing.

We have more general problems with minors and the Internet, and most of them are "live rail" issues the media and politicians won't touch.