If viewing an image of child abuse is wrong. Isn't viewing an image of ISIS beheading someone also wrong? In both cases the crimes were committed and the images produced to satisfy an audience. But one is illegal because it's perverted while the other is legal because presumably far more people have blood-lust than a minority sexuality.
In Australia it's especially bad, with somebody being convicted for possessing hand-drawn Simpsons porn. There might be a copyright case there, but it's hard to make the connection between that activity and actual harm to any children. The defense argued that they weren't humans because they had 4 fingers and misshapen faces. This kind of case is what happens when the "evil pedophile" mindset overwhelms people.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/simpsons-cartoon-ripoff-is-ch...
You could go a step further and ask what's the difference between a parent taking photos of their naked child playing in the bath, and somebody doing the same thing but then having a wank with the photo later? I think the difference is that one is "normal" and the other is "perverted", so we make one legal and the other illegal. I probably appear in some baby bath photos and I certainly wasn't scarred by it. If they got onto the internet and people got some pleasure from them, is that really going to scar me for life, assuming I even know about it?
However I have never been able to avoid the counter argument that by allowing (implied consent) a market for cp imagery you may increase demand which will increase the incidence of child abuse in order to satisfy. The bath photo is simply one end of a spectrum.
This is one justification used to stop a paedophile from working with all children even if their particular interest is strictly not all children. If the paedophile is only interested in boys under 11 you still need to be careful when he's working with girls over 13 because he can use his access to those girls to get photographs which he then uses to get access to photographs of his target group.
This point is oftentimes overlooked. Also, the word "pedophile" is oftentimes conflated with "child molester", which makes it impossible to distinguish the individuals who are pedophiles but have not (and have no intentions to) act on those desires.
I found this article to be a worthwhile read on the latter situation: https://medium.com/matter/youre-16-youre-a-pedophile-you-don...
Except of course for teenage sexting. Where the legal system has ruined lives for no reason. Or the weird edge cases it introduces. Such as a theoretical case where someone wearing Go Pro comes across a pedophile actively abusing a child out in the wild. The good samaritan Go Pro wearer is now guilty of both production and possession of child pornography. The laws do not leave any room.
Oh well!
A friend of mine, her boyfriend is a trucker. He had pulled over to urinate along the side of the highway late at night, in the shadow cover of his truck. A state trooper had pulled over a speeding vehicle, a distance behind him along the road. The trooper proceeded to then pull in behind the trucker, and threatened to put him on the sex offender's registry for public urination; the trooper spent 10 minutes reaming him out for it before letting him go.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/us/teenagers-jailing-bring...
We don't have a war on pedophilia. We have a war on "child pornography". I put "child pornography" in scare quotes because it's abundantly clear that many of the laws that aim to target child pornography really only use it as a bogeyman to obscure some other agenda.
Also, as for "safer", whatever we're doing now is clearly putting children at risk. In many countries (including the US), pedophilia is exempt from typical confidentiality laws regarding mental illnesses[0]. This makes pedophiles less likely to seek professional help, and I can only imagine that this means that they are more likely to harm or abuse a child.
[0] https://medium.com/matter/youre-16-youre-a-pedophile-you-don...
They found a young man who selfidenties as a pedophile, who was actually willing to go on camera and talk about his desires and urges. It was quite fascinating, and I do see many parellels not just to the war on drugs but to homosexuality as well.
We aren't treating these people in a humane way, and IMO we are making the problem worse by perpetuating a Wich Hunt.
[0] http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/the...
[1] Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO4yfvc9THs
No, what they do is threaten you with some hypothetical 30 year term if they were to charge you will all the broad interpretations of the law. This fear of hard time is then used as a carrot to get you to plead guilty to lesser charges that you may not have even done.
They get around the "judges" by the minimum sentencing laws: "sorry, my hands are tied, I have to lock you up for ____ years because I have to follow federal sentencing guidelines."
Furthermore, there is a huge incentive to prosecute "sex crimes" because that's a gold star for the prosecutor/judge. At the end of the year, or at election time they can say "We locked up N sex offenders this year for a combined total of X years".
This meme is repeated a lot about posession of child pornography, and is absoluely incorrect. Perhaps this is because in the UK the law had to be amended to include an exception, so that deliberately 'making' otherwise illegal images solely for the purpose of law enforcement was allowed as a defence. But (again, in the UK, but true for most other common law jurisdictions) there is still a 'mens rea' (that is, guilty mind, or intent) requirement, as with any crime.
EDIT: Also, there are no 'edge cases' in regard to sexting, at least in the UK at present, as the law allows the obvious defence that the images are of ones partner.
Even if there is no crime involved, and there won't ever be. I blame the media for misusing the word "pedophile" to mean child molester.
People don't know what the prevalence of paedophilia is, or the ratios of paedophiles that never act on that vs paedophiles who do act on it.
If someone commits multiple offences it's easier to catch them, so the statistics of convicted offenders are probably skewed towards frequent offenders. That may make paedophile offenders appear to be riskier.
It's important to remember that child abuse does cause very real, often severe life-limiting, harm. We've come a long way from the 1970s thinking of "making a fuss is what causes the harm" to recognising that it's the abuse that causes most of the harm.
I do dislike the OP's guilt by association and vigilantism though. There's a reason we have a proper justice system. Imagine if someone like this was mistaken about one of those email addresses. You could sue him to hell but the damage might be done.
The last time this came up on HN that I remember, someone linked to these posts by Rick Falkvinge:
https://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-mu...
https://falkvinge.net/2012/09/11/child-porn-laws-arent-as-ba...
That doesn't seem like a strong argument, because it applies to a lot of other things as well, like illegal drugs. (And if the court relies on witnesses to establish that drugs were possessed, they could technically do the same by cp.)
We might find the people watching child porn disgusting but they are after all only watching and not necessarily doing anything resembling rape porn.
They both fall under the same category but they are two very different things.
Also don't forget that a big part of the issue with pedophilia is actually society which because of the tabu and inability to distinguish between the different types of them ends up making the experience even worse and further adding to the problem.
And again I am not in any way defending this behavior, I have kids myself. I just believe that the very thorny subject requires more careful thinking than just calling evil.
Even discussing pedophilia calmly and reasonably opens one to the charge of being a pedophile or a "pedophile apologist." Taboos can reveal a lot about a society but I'll leave that discussion for another time.
I don't completely trust the motives of guys like the author of the linked article. Others have already pointed out technical errors in the article and questioned the soundness of his methodology. His irrationally labeling Tor as "the devil" is a bit odd too (and highly illogical), to say the least. He even admits he has an irrational hate-on for pedophiles.
What is this guy actually achieving with his "honeypot" other than wrestling with his own demons (more on this later)? He set out to entrap ostensible pedophiles and gather their IP addresses etc. Not child abusers or child pornographers but people that clicked on his link offering a "community of like minded individuals." He explains in detail the technical aspects of his operation and what he learned about the people he interacted with and draws some very dubious conclusions. (Such as "Many visitors to the site were active pedophile predators." Maybe this is the case, but he offers no compelling evidence other than a few lines of a chat room transcript. Not once does he mention even contemplating contacting the FBI or his local PD or any other LEA. Rather, this seems to be mostly about him.
There have been a few high-profile cases over the years where crusaders dedicated to fighting things they found morally reprehensible (e.g. prostitution, narcotics, pornography, homosexuality, child pornography) were outed as being voracious consumers and/or practitioners of that which they vehemently opposed in public at every opportunity. One of them was a DA who made a name for himself with his aggressive prosecution of alleged prostitutes and child pornographers. There is a term for this in psychology which I can't recall at the moment. Basically, there are some people who deal with the cognitive dissonance and the associated shame and guilt of being attracted to something society or their religion condemns morally by venting against it publicly while indulging in it privately. A guy who has an anti-porn website, say, and publishes anti-porn literature for distribution in schools who travels the country speaking out against porn and attending and organizing anti-porn conferences while fapping himself raw to internet porn every night after work.
I am *not saying I think the guy in the article is a pedophile or harms children. I am saying that I don't think his prime motive for doing this project is empathy or compassion for victims of child abusers and predators. He sets up a "honeypot" that serves no practical purpose. No suspected child abusers were investigated, no children saved from harm, police and LE don't even get a mention. Nothing new and useful was brought the table.
Yet based on his two-week escapade "Tor is the devil." That seems like a very odd statement, especially coming from an engineer. Is his computer the devil's sidekick? He does admit that he is motivated by personal reasons and it very much shows. After reading his piece I don't know what the take away is supposed to be. Pedophiles use the internet? Tor is used for illegal activities? Anyway, it's late and this is going in circles. I mean no disrespect to the author but I am left feeling very puzzled.
The up/down voting system on here is toxic as it disappears posts for no good reason whatsoever.
As for LE, I mentioned in the article that I contacted them, as a courtesy, twice during the project. The last time was a few days before the hidden services were shut down. I let them know that I had a pedo honeypot running and was about to take it offline, giving them the opportunity to take over the VM or scrape the data gathered.
As for personal demons - we all have them and I won't argue that I may have more than most - it's all a part of life experiences. I've dealt with LE and CPS on child abuse issues for years and it has certainly tainted my view. Then again, I have a vantage point that most do not have - a much closer, clear view of the problem.
Who wants dirty water? Who wants to create second-class citizens? Who likes pedophilia?
As humans we love these issues where you'd be either an idiot or extremely asocial to oppose. We like slogans. We like to feel superior. We do not like nuance, or having to think a lot about things.
However, if they prove to be a danger to the kids, they have to be locked away or something. It's just because we don't know a better way to treat the issue.
Wouldn't that mean, that he is not only trying to catch pedophiles but actively curing pedophilia?
I think what is going on in the US with the public shaming of offenders in databases is wrong, but I am fine with honeypots to catch them. Legally he is in no position to do so, of course.
I find it all disgusting but these people need help not traps. They are humans not animals despite what we think of some of their actions.
Of course they need help, too. We need both prosecution and prevention.
See how that's silly?
There are people who watch animated child porn and they are ruled as criminals even though no actual child was directly harmed.
There are people who watch snuff films, where people actually are killed, and the viewers are not breaking the law in most states.
Perhaps you would argue that snuff film viewing should be illegal, or that watching Game of Thrones should be illegal because it portrays rape, violence, murder, etc.
To me, it's clear that there is a distinct difference between watching that content and in producing it. Sure, if you actively encourage it to be produced you're breaking the law (same as if you try to convince someone to make a snuff film, you're breaking the law).
It's really not that simple and the laws are not consistent here.
What you must understand is that it normalises the behaviour in that persons mind and then we're onto other barriers to be eroded - i.e. the person moves onto physical acts.
The blasé attitude on this thread is beyond belief.
The fact is that anyone who simply goes around arguing that something is morally good or bad better have solid reasons for doing so.
I could easily see it being the opposite: relieving sexual pressure could make people less likely to actually harm a child.
~Watching Game of Thrones leads to playing Grand Theft Auto, and doing that will make you a murderer. When you're sliding down the slippery slope, you have to hit every rock on the way down.~
The theory reverses the arrow of causality.
If the Army uses simulation and gaming as part of its psychological conditioning program to not only get its soldiers to fire their weapons, but also aim at and kill the enemy, that does not imply that those games or simulations, used in isolation, will necessarily result in desensitization to violence.
I seriously want to design a contagion that imparts to individuals an intuitive understanding of conditional probabilities, and how to reverse one.
If you know that 99% of child abusers viewed images of child abuse prior to engaging in that activity themselves, you only know P(A|B), where A is viewing photos, and B is taking action. You do not know P(B|A), which is the likelihood that someone that someone who has viewed photos has done abuse, unless you also know the unconditional probabilities for P(A) and P(B). You can probably infer those two from crime statistics and investigative activities like those described in the article. But given the existing legal prohibitions and resultant secretive behaviors, I doubt you could determine either with a great deal of precision.
If (hypothetically) P(A|B)=1.0, P(A)=0.001 and P(B)=0.0001, then P(B|A)=0.1 . That means that even if you know that everyone who did A also did B, you can't assume that everyone who has done B has necessarily done A.
We could more easily calculate for the Game of Thrones and murder hypothesis.
Let's say A is "committed murder in 2014" and B is "watched GoT in 2014". From crime statistics, I estimate that P(A)=0.000045 . From ratings estimates, P(B)=0.063 . Now, I'm not entirely certain how many new murderers in 2014 had watched GoT, but I'll guess that P(B|A) = 0.063 . That makes P(A|B)=0.000045 . Huh. It looks like I assumed they were independent events....
If you went and did an actual survey of 2014's murderers, and discovered that P(B|A) was actually 0.12, that's a great find, but it still only means that P(A|B)=0.000086 . That's not a convincing argument that watching GoT causes actual murder. It just means that 0.0086% of GoT watchers committed murder. That might be explained by GoT inducing violent behavior in its viewers, but from the numbers, it's not bloody likely.
I don't equate animated child porn with actual child porn, much in the same way I don't equate the beheadings in GoT with the beheadings of IS. But to insinuate that the poster above would extend their 'committing a crime,' in the case of actual child rape, to something that is acted out for TV is an injustice to what they actually said. In essence, you just threw up a strawman and attacked it as a way of validating your final point (which, by most accounts, I agree with).
No, you're watching fictional people pretend to kill each other.
You would have an argument if you used snuff films as an example. And yes, if watching a child being raped is illegal, than watching a real murder should be.
If the argument is that seeing murders causes someone to become a murderer, I'm not certain you can exempt fiction. If you outlaw depictions of murder on the presumption that it would lower the actual murder rate, you have to go whole hog.
_O \O/ ...meaning this ASCII art of
' |\+-@- one guy stabbing another guy
/ \ /| with a sword would be illegal.
So where are the televisions that shoot tiny darts of cocaine into its viewers whenever someone is killed on-screen? At least a violent video game provides some virtual reward for virtual murders, such as glowing green stacks of cash, or mission advancement, or some stupid little thing that produces a squirt of dopamine.
That part of our brains does not know the difference between reality, dreams, and Hollywood trickery. Certain mirror neurons in the brain will fire whether you are actually doing yoga, thinking about doing yoga, or watching a yoga instructor do yoga. Your reward center doesn't really care if the image is a product of good photography or good GPU rendering. It doesn't even care that it is a 2D image rather than 3D reality.
Fortunately, there appears to be no causal link provable flowing from watching something done to doing the depicted act yourself. Instead, it appears that those who are predisposed to do something, or have already decided to do it, will very often model, simulate, and practice that action--using whatever means they have at their disposal--before going on to do it. If any one tool or strategy becomes unavailable, another would be substituted.
Rather than direct chemical triggers that stimulate the brains reward system ("tiny darts of cocaine"), they typically use other triggers to the reward system, like music. Same effect, less additional machinery.
Sophie Turner is actually 19.
I do think their ought to be laws against the distribution of this kind of material (there probably are?), and there is no question that producing it is a criminal offence, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
On a different note: There is nothing wrong with regulating how footage of crimes can be shown to protect the victims and even the offenders. I know this argument is hard to make on HN, because free speech, but I think privacy is an important right, too.
Right! That's how it starts. In the end we have "there's nothing wrong with censoring 28 pages of a 9/11 report to protect the security of all Americans because it doesn't really matter who funded it, the government told us who the bad people are so we don't really need to keep the government on check on this".
That sort of thinking ends really well. /s
Remember, the citizens hire the government. They work for us. Would you allow your employees to censor some parts of your financial reports?
Grow some principles. If people are sick that they need to look at sick images then offer to help them. Enabling tyrants does not help keep children safe. Incidentally, not spanking them does. If you really care about protecting children, get off your bureaucrat high horse and start helping educate people on the impact of spanking.
If there were photos of me being raped as a kid I would want to see the rapist get punished and like-minded people forbidden to watch them. I do not think that it is moral to hurt people in concrete cases because of an abstract (debatable) threat to the values of a society. What do these values even mean if you do not have the mercy to grant victims this right?
You can still inform people about the crime without showing the victims face or the actual explicit imagery.
Let's say society makes a fund for people that were abused as kids (horribile dictu). Those funds are there only to benefit those people so we'd better be able to prove they were really victims of what they say there were, otherwise people can just say "yeah that happened to me" and collect the money without ever proving they were victims.
You may want to forbid people from seeing the evidence for your abuse but then you can't expect people to believe you. When we believe in tales of rape without proof we smear the name of the accused.
The justice system weights the crime of consuming child pornography by the number of images the defendent is in "possession" of. I guess laws vary, but at least in my jurisdiciton, you can be sentenced to years in prison per image. It would be easy for a single wank session to result in -- potentially -- life in prison.
The issue is confounded by widespread lack of techical acumen among judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and even the forensic "experts" who investigate and testify (on both sides). For example, would you consider it reasonable to charge someone with a separate crime for every copy of the exact same digial file present on a hard disk? For both an image file and an automatically-generated thumbnail image of that same file? Do you meaningfully posess a file in your browsers temporary cache? How about a file deleted from the filesystem, but still present in residual form on the disk? Some of the issues are nuanced, and it's difficult to even have an intelligent conversation about the evidence.
[source: computer nerd supporting attorneys]
Source? The handful of cases I've heard of don't seem to match that claim.
Evil is the opposite of good, so if we agree that actions to promote life, liberty and happiness are good, then actions that promote death, slavery and misery are evil. Simple as that.
So there's plenty of evil in nature.
All that matters in nature is whether something works or does not work, not whether it's good or evil.
Saying that, I have definitely met people with malicious intentions, who are definitely 'evil' (or lacking a severe amount of empathy for their fellow beings). I am not sure people with challenged sexual instincts are these people, however I am sure there are people with a combination of both behavioural traits.
Not a complete or concise definition but the general theme I notice when I think about what I personally consider "evil" is the elevation of your own desires over the safety or well-being of others. In a way, evil (for me) is based on what helps humanity/society or hurts it. It's based in our natural instincts for empathy and the ignoring of those "higher" motives in favor of more primitive drives to take, hurt, kill, rape, or enslave.
For me, good versus evil is not so much about religious or Hollywood ideas of light vs. dark or god vs. devil but the more familiar battle between our "animal" side and our "human" side.
Let there be no doubt. I have two kids and there is probably no limit to what I would do to someone who did anything to my kids. But it's not as simply as just condemning pedophiles for being that and I ultimately think there is something morally or ethically questionable about this approach.
It's fairly well established that many pedophiles where in fact victims of pedophilia in their childhood themselves and so I would like to see a less hysteric and more balanced response to the issue.
Just because he is helping catching the bad guys does not give him the moral upper hand as he seem to think he has. Too bad such a complex issue gets treated with such brushing generalizations.
Maybe I am reading too much into what he writes, but these honeypots to hit random people just feels wrong to me. Like snooping on someone else life.