Tumbled Logic

Abuse

Fri, 31 May 2013 20:11:00 +0100

There is some utter twaddle being bandied today around about images of child abuse, and much more besides, on the Web.

First there is clear blue water between perfectly legal (whether you find it savoury or not) pornography and completely illegal images of child abuse (themselves depicting illegal activities). It’s difficult to see the conflation of the two as anything other than a disgusting attempt to further an agenda under the guise of solving a problem.

Second, despite some somewhat ill-informed statements to the contrary, images of child abuse are not a technical problem—they are a three-part problem of entirely human making: (a) abusing children, (b) capturing that abuse on camera, (c) distributing that abuse. In that order. There are people such as Mark Bridger who will seek out this material, and history has shown that they will almost certainly be successful if it is there.

Blocking it from search engines may help in a small way prevent the cases of “accidentally encountering it online”, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problems of its very existence, nor does it solve the cases which don’t involve “click on a link on Google and are immediately confronted by child abuse” (and I have a very strong suspicion they are very much in the minority). It doesn’t prevent people finding it if they’re sent direct links, find it through some intermediary service created specially to do this, or if the material isn’t itself on the Web in the first place (pro tip: the Web and the Internet are not the same thing).

Politicians, campaign groups and newspapers are very keen to apply pressure. Reportedly only 1% of sites hosting this material are within the UK; is there an international treaty governing the procedures for the removal of child abuse images (and following that, the tracing of the originators and bringing them to trial)? If not, why the fuck not?

People who know absolutely nothing about the way the Internet or the Web work (or, it’d seem, have never thought for more than a fraction of a second about human behaviour), would do well to stop trying to fundamentally redefine it because bad people use it to do bad things.

Instead concentrate on actually reaching consensus on dealing with the things we can all agree on: chiefly, that these images and the actions which precipitate them have no business existing in the first place.

Henry Wood on Flickr.

Wed, 29 May 2013 22:29:45 +0100

Henry Wood on Flickr.

FutureEverything: Digital Public Spaces

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:01:36 +0000

FutureEverything: Digital Public Spaces:

Very proud to have contributed to this.

Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:35:16 +0000

Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?:

(From 2007)

Intranets: DCMS doing it right

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:44:24 +0000

Intranets: DCMS doing it right

Video

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 09:09:07 +0000

Volvo Trucks - Emergency braking

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:54:38 +0000

Volvo Trucks - Emergency braking

Netflix cracks wallet to spur open source cloud development

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:51:35 +0000

Netflix cracks wallet to spur open source cloud development

Facebook users unwittingly revealing intimate secrets, study finds

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:50:39 +0000

Facebook users unwittingly revealing intimate secrets, study finds

Eminem’s Donkey Kong Ambitions

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:50:16 +0000

Eminem’s Donkey Kong Ambitions

BBC News Channel on the move

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:49:21 +0000

BBC News Channel on the move

The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:49:00 +0000

The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble

Super-early iPhone prototype had 5″x7″ screen, serial port

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:48:28 +0000

Super-early iPhone prototype had 5″x7″ screen, serial port

Jonathan Tweed: Telling stories

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:47:30 +0000

Jonathan Tweed: Telling stories

The British history new citizens must learn: no radicals, no homosexuals, no Holocaust

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:46:59 +0000

The British history new citizens must learn: no radicals, no homosexuals, no Holocaust

Weeknotes #6

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:32:54 +0000

It was my last week working in Television Centre. Next time I head down to London my department will be based on the third floor of DoSAC; sorry, BBC Media Centre.
Reached a significant milestone in Genome: the first phase of data import into the internal browsing interface is now complete. This means that all of the un-complied, un-corrected data about Radio Times issues from 1923 until the end of 2009 has now been imported. I’ve got a few tweaks to make, and then I can begin the process of getting the complied data in alongside it.
It was a fairly policy-heavy week, with lots of discussions about rights, metadata, and trying to balance a variety of competing interests (there are always a variety of competing interests) and come out with something everybody can be happy with in each case.
There’s also been a bit of discussion about the anniversary of the First World War and the sorts of things going on around the BBC (and beyond). It’s oddly fascinating how different parts of the organisation start to turn the wheels for a big event, especially one like this which spans all of the different genres and media but also has to have a certain level of sensitivity applied to it.
Meanwhile, I did more bits and pieces to Yawdle

Dynamic Linkage

For colleagues: Jon Jacob is looking for people to be in TVC on the 14th March
Browser stats from GDS (the most interesting aspect is the power of auto-update)
Amusing hyperbole from The Sun — apparently, if Scotland were independent, the UK wouldn’t react if there was a nuclear attack north of the border. I’ll believe it when I see it (though I hope I don’t)—and the same applies to Eire, and, for that matter, parts of France.
The amazing 200-year-old mechanical caterpillar
The Commonwealth Games’ Queen’s Baton Relay — it’s a little bit different to the Olympic Torch Relay.
Dinah Rose QC quits the Liberal Democrats
Opening product data
4 DAYS SINCE LAST KNOWN JAVA 0-DAY EXPLOIT — “Just Another Vulnerability Announcement”
xkcd takes on PGP
Google strikes deal with MPEG LA for its VP8 video codec — the devil’s in the detail, but it’s promising

Dinah Rose quits Liberal Democrats in protest at secret courts

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 23:08:33 +0000

Dinah Rose quits Liberal Democrats in protest at secret courts

French 'invasion force' lands at Gosport

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:13:02 +0000

French 'invasion force' lands at Gosport:

The French Navy is practising a major invasion on the British mainland

Oh, well that’s perfectly okay, then.

Opening Product Data for a more responsible world

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:10:03 +0000

Opening Product Data for a more responsible world

MakerBot announces 3D 'Digitizer' prototype to scan your world, then print it out

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:08:16 +0000

MakerBot announces 3D 'Digitizer' prototype to scan your world, then print it out