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rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 20321 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
 Posted: 31-05-2013 20:37 Post subject: |
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April Jones: The challenge to catch online child abusers
By Dave Lee, Technology reporter, BBC News
Mark Bridger's conviction for the murder of five-year-old April Jones has once more brought the issue of online child abuse to the fore. Many are in agreement that more needs to be done by web companies to block and remove such content. But what exactly is being done now, and how effective is it?
It was on the 10 February 2012, that the net finally closed in on Darren Leggett.
He was arrested at his parents' home in Kent. Police found a rucksack containing cable ties, a knife and 13 pairs of boys' pants.
His mobile phone showed he had earlier sent a text. It read: "I'm working on a plan to take one soon to rape and kill and eat."
He had been using the internet to both find and distribute content with other like-minded criminals.
But it was that same internet that directly led to his imprisonment a year ago next month.
An anonymous internet user had discovered the images and tipped off the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based organisation that works closely with the internet industry, police and government.
Beyond simply ensuring the images were removed, that single report set in motion a sting operation led by Kent Police in which officers posed as men wanting to pay to sexually abuse a child.
Leggett was jailed indefinitely last June on 31 counts of child sexual abuse, ending a horrific campaign that had lasted more than seven years.
The case has similarities to that of Mark Bridger, who tragically evaded detection for his online activities before carrying out his crime.
Then, as now, debates over unlawful content online surfaced. How was it that people like Leggett and Bridger were able to access and share such shocking content online, for so long, without being noticed?
Why were there not measures in place to prevent material so obviously of child abuse ever getting online?
The message today from internet firms is that they are doing what they can - but that more help, investment and co-operation is needed.
The IWF estimates that, in the year to March, about 1.5 million people in the UK accidentally came into contact with child abuse images online. 
Yet the number of reports they receive are in the low thousands - a sign many are either unaware or unwilling to raise their voices.
"Last year we received just under 40,000 reports. There's a major difference there," said Emma Lowther, IWF's spokeswoman.
"The fact is, we all have a responsibility to tackle this. We don't claim our methods are foolproof but ultimately we need really, really good reports from the public to the IWF so that we can take action."
The IWF has a number of processes it says are effective in tackling the problem.
Reports made about content hosted in the UK are typically dealt with within 60 minutes. Internationally it is a more complex picture - but a global database of reports, known as INHOPE, acts as a communication tool between organisations like the IWF and similar organisations and governments in other countries.
Hosting companies, whose servers may have been used for storing illegal content without their knowledge, are also contacted.
Behind the scenes, efforts are made, in co-operation with the banks, to disrupt the payment channels criminals use to profit from such materials.
But many argue that such images should never even be viewable online.
They say companies that allow us to connect, browse and search the internet should step up their efforts to block out illegal content.
Specifically, Google has come under renewed pressure to improve its systems.
"Google's moral leadership is essential here," government technology adviser John Carr said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"They are the biggest player in this space in the world."
In recent years, the search giant has implemented a system which allows search results directing users to child abuse to be removed quickly.
The search engine is a joint-funder of the IWF, and says it has a "zero tolerance" policy over such images.
Richard Cox, chief information officer of Spamhaus, an organisation that primarily works to block spam, but also aids in monitoring and preventing criminal activity, said Google - a Spamhaus client - had greatly improved what it does in the area.
"They've improved their response time, so that when you get a report to them it's down pretty quickly," he told the BBC.
"In the old days it was a day or so - if it takes a day or so every time, it's pretty ineffectual."
However, he stressed that getting Google to deal with the issue was only a short-term, and arguably fruitless, fix.
"If Google block it, there's Yahoo, there's Bing, there are Russian and Chinese services."
Mr Cox also praised ISPs such as BT - the UK's largest - which has rolled out a system known as Cleanfeed to its customers.
It draws on databases and research run by the likes of the IWF and Interpol to block known troublesome websites from even reaching the user's home.
The system mostly relies on knowing the URL - web address - of the illegal content. While effective in many cases, it falls short of complete protection.
"It's not a solution - if you want to get hold of this material, this won't stop you," argues Christian Berg, chief executive of Netclean, a provider of technical tools designed to prevent the spread of child abuse imagery.
"Blocking is often more a preventative tool for people who are looking for adult pornography but accidentally find underage content."
His firm's technology is able to scan an image and cross-reference it with a database of known abuse images. If there is a match, action can be taken.
"We don't block the image for the user. They don't know they're being caught, because then they may try and destroy the hard drive or computer.
"It's important to block the content - but it's also important to find this person before they turn to real physical abuse."
Not all efforts to combat child abuse online have been universally welcomed.
In the US, the FBI came under heavy criticism this month for continuing to run a website sharing child abuse images as a method of catching possible criminals.
An agent told a court in Nebraska that a site referred to as "Website A" was seized by authorities but was then kept online in order to identify more than 5,000 users.
The FBI has declined to discuss the issue further while the investigation continues.
Additionally, many internet users also fear that the implementation of systems which block web content at source could be used for censorship purposes of material which is not in fact illegal.
One recent example revealed how a system used by mobile operators to block adult content in fact blocked out sites featuring political commentaries, personal blogs and community news.
"We must understand this will never be perfect," says Mr Cox.
"Criminals will always be one step ahead of us."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22729787
More on Page:
If you come across images you believe to be depicting child abuse, you can report it by visiting the IWF's website at iwf.org.uk |
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| Anome_ Faceless Man
Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2002 Total posts: 5328 Location: Left, and to the back. Age: 44 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 31-05-2013 21:43 Post subject: |
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| OneWingedBird wrote: | | Quote: | | Both went from viewing indecent images straight to the worst class of offending. |
or did one of them go from watching violent rapes in horror movies to the worst class of offending?
maybe he went bowling the night before and that set him off?
much that I loathe anything to do with noncing, it doesn't actually prove the porn was causal. |
It's far more likely in this instance that the search was symptomatic.
It's not really in Google's interests to censor searches in this way. They want to be seen as impartial and just a carrier. If they start blocking and reporting searches on the term "child pornography", then whats to stop some government asking them to report searches on "homosexuality" or "Communism" or "National Socialism" or "Judaism" or "Islam"?
Doesn't it make more sense to use Google in a more direct way? Why not have child protection services or the police search on the term "child pornography" and arrest anyone who is posting illegal material online? I realise this may be just as open to abuse, but it's a simpler way of getting the people creating and sharing the offensive material. |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 20321 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 31-05-2013 22:36 Post subject: |
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| Anome_ wrote: | | It's not really in Google's interests to censor searches in this way. They want to be seen as impartial and just a carrier. |
No, [t]he search engine [Google] is a joint-funder of the IWF, and says it has a "zero tolerance" policy over such images.
From my post above.
The evil of child pornography is surely one which a large proportion of people would agree about, regardless of their race, religion, or sexual orientation. So if Google actively supports this, then kudos to them.
Doesn't mean they can't do more, however. |
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| liveinabin1 Great Old One Joined: 19 Oct 2001 Total posts: 2114 Location: insert witty comment here Gender: Female |
| Posted: 01-06-2013 23:52 Post subject: |
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What I don't understand is how people can come across images innocently.
I've been using the internet since 1996 and I have never yet had a random porn image pop up beyond the very basic nude lady type when doing an image search. If you are getting accidental child pornography you must have been looking for something nefarious.
And If I did I wouldn't report them as I would be too worried about getting arrested, which Is why I think many other people don't report them. |
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| Spudrick68 Great Old One Joined: 08 Jun 2008 Total posts: 1096 Location: sunny Morecambe Age: 45 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 02-06-2013 11:58 Post subject: |
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Thankfully I have never come across such images. But I do know someone who was studying for his dissertation and types in 'Clement Atlee' and accidently found a site with such images. He took a screen grab and informed the police.
Hopefully, neither I or anyone else will accidently do so. |
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| ChrisBoardman Great Old One Joined: 17 May 2011 Total posts: 516 Location: Alton, Hampshire Gender: Male |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5212 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 02-06-2013 23:28 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | What I don't understand is how people can come across images innocently.
I've been using the internet since 1996 and I have never yet had a random porn image pop up beyond the very basic nude lady type when doing an image search. If you are getting accidental child pornography you must have been looking for something nefarious.
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Yeah - I've been a pretty avid internet user since the early 90s and have never come across this stuff. I think it's pretty hard to stumble on. A friend of mine has a fairly senior role in the internet industry and he says that illegal images on the visible web are taken down extremely quickly nowadays and that people accessing dodgy stuff are generally looking pretty hard for it. I expect he would take the IWF figures with a pretty heftly pinch of salt.
Some of the discussion seems to be conflating child porn with pornography more generally - I'm not a huge fan of the latter either, but it strikes me as important that the distinction is not blurred. |
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| sherbetbizarre Great Old One Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Total posts: 1344 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 02-06-2013 23:38 Post subject: |
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| Quake42 wrote: | | Some of the discussion seems to be conflating child porn with pornography more generally - I'm not a huge fan of the latter either, but it strikes me as important that the distinction is not blurred. |
And I wouldn't trust The Mail or the Sun to make that distinction  |
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| paranoid420 Yeti Joined: 31 Aug 2009 Total posts: 57 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 08-06-2013 09:41 Post subject: |
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| Gwenar wrote: |
On a note related to the topic... An FBI agent who had worked on violent crime task forces said that when he was a beat cop in the 70's they used to laugh about peeping toms because they're just harmless pervs, right? He really regrets that today, because now they understand peeping toms to be people who have fantasized about rape and are now escalating - testing their field skills, I guess.
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Do you have any studies to link voyeurism with rape? There is no proof those people escalate, or fantasize about rape anymore than the general population at large.
Stick with whats bad, what they actually do. They violate a persons privacy, thats it. They arent serial killers in training, its not like a drug where they need more and more.
Exhibitionists aka flashers are also sex offenders who are probably less likely to rape than the general population. |
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| OneWingedBird Great Old One Joined: 19 Nov 2012 Total posts: 418 Location: Attice of blinkey lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 08-06-2013 13:20 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I think it's pretty hard to stumble on. |
I can't say i've ever stumbled upon any either, and nor would I report it if I did... I trust the plod to deal with that appropriately about as far as I can throw them.
Every once in a while i've come across an illustration that i've wondered whether it might meet the more warped end of the law's interpretation of what constitutes kiddie porn, but that's a whole other area of ambiguity. |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 20321 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 05-08-2013 07:30 Post subject: |
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This is very worrying:
Website's servers hacked to host child abuse images
By Jo Deahl, BBC 5Live
Dozens of businesses have been hacked and their computer servers used to host images of child sexual abuse, the Internet Watch Foundation has said.
The charity said legal pornographic sites had also been attacked to redirect users to the illegal material.
The offending material was sometimes accompanied by malware, it said.
The IWF told BBC Radio 5 live it had received 227 reports about the trend over the past six weeks. Some complaints involved the same examples.
Cambridge-based IWF described the images as showing "the worst of the worst" sexual abuse.
They included images of newborn babies and the rape and violent sexual abuse of very young children, it said.
The charity gave the example of one case in which a furniture business had had the servers it used breached.
It said the attackers had created an "orphan folder" on the computers and then uploaded hundreds of offending images to it - effectively creating a new section on the retailer's website which was not linked to any of its other pages.
The charity said the hackers then hijacked links on "adult" sites so that if a visitor clicked on one of the affected pornographic images or videos they would be directed to the offending material.
"We don't understand this entirely," said IWF chairman Sir Richard Tilt. "But some company websites have been hacked into and some of this appalling material has been placed there."
The charity said more than two dozen businesses across the world had had the servers they used compromised, in addition to the furniture seller.
Administrators of the sites involved might be unaware of the problem until someone complained, the charity said.
The IWF said it did not know what had motivated the perpetrators.
"We hadn't seen significant numbers of hacked websites for around two years, and then suddenly in June we started seeing this happening more and more," said the IWF's technical researcher, Sarah Smith.
"It shows how someone not looking for child sexual abuse images can stumble across it. The original adult content the internet user is viewing is far removed from anything related to young people or children.
"We've received reports from people distressed about what they've seen. Our reporters have been extremely diligent in explaining exactly what happened, enabling our analysts to retrace their steps and take action against the child sexual abuse images."
She added that the charity had passed on the information to the police and sister hotlines in other countries.
Children's charity the NSPCC urged anyone coming across abuse images to report them immediately, saying "something like 16% of men in particular" were failing to do so.
"We really encourage them to report it because potentially you'll then have a thumbnail of that image somewhere hidden in your computer system even if you only clicked on it for one second," said spokeswoman Claire Lilley.
The issue of online images showing the sexual abuse of children has made headlines in recent months after the convictions of Stuart Hazell and Mark Bridger for the murders of Tia Sharp and April Jones.
Both Hazell and Bridger were known to have sought out and viewed child abuse images online.
The IWF said the Hazell and Bridger cases had led to a 42% increase in the number of reports it had received in the past three months, compared with the same period last year.
In June, representatives of a number of internet companies, including Google, Microsoft and Twitter, were summoned to a meeting in Whitehall by Culture Secretary Maria Miller and urged to do more to clamp down on child abuse images on the web.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23551290 |
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| ChrisBoardman Great Old One Joined: 17 May 2011 Total posts: 516 Location: Alton, Hampshire Gender: Male |
| Posted: 05-08-2013 13:06 Post subject: |
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If people are doing this then you could come across it by accident.
There was a case recently where some was posted on facebook and seen by 20000 people. |
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