EU Parliament plans Google-powered paedo detector Google looks set to gain a surprising ally in its battle against the European Commission to retain its search logs - the European Parliament. The dominant search firm has been under pressure from Brussels to erase personally identifiable information from its logs after six months. So far Google has agreed to some anonymisation …
So if you do a few searches for "the wifes anniversary present"*, followed by an online school uniform retailer because, well, the kids need new uniforms, then we will automatically get flagged as a potential paedo, and expect a visit from Her Majesty's Finest. Brilliant. Nice work there. No crime has actually been committed, however we must think of the children. Or not, as that will get us arrested too.
* We all know what he was actually searching for. Well covered that man, and you have given the rest of us a handy euphemism.
Sounds to me like classic thought crime.
Criminalise the thoughts, detect them, and deal with the thought criminals before they actually commit any criminal acts. The justification, of course, is that real crimes are prevented this way. Even though it involves criminalising people before they've actually committed the criminal acts themselves.
There is, of course, little room for the presumption of innocence here. After all, people are being criminalised not for what they've done, but for what they might go on to do, with no proof that they will go on to do such things. If we presumed these thought criminals innocent of criminal acts they haven't yet committed anyway, we couldn't then pre-emptively treat them as thought criminals, could we? For this much needed prevention of real abuse of real children to work, the right to presumption of innocence has to be set aside.
Not that it would be spelt out quite so explicitly. Probably more along the lines of: would you rather do nothing until it's too late? If we can take preventative action to protect children from harm, don't we have an obligation to do so? Etc, etc.
Perhaps, as with the cartoon porn law, they intend to criminalise harmless acts as an indirect way of criminalising thoughts in an effort to prevent "one thing leading on to another". A crime of suspicious behaviour?
Does the European Parliament really want to (re)create a Europe in which people can be convicted of falling under suspicion?
I'm pretty sure they're not stupid enough to think they can prosecute someone under child pornography offences for googling search terms that would reveal such information?
Working in said industry, it would be a ridiculous method of crime prevention. Journalists, researchers and I'm sure many other professions would be then assumed guilty for just searching for an inappropriate term?!
Based on the fact that I REALLY don't believe the EU are dumb enough to take the above line, there must be another reason for them wanting google to keep logs, and hiding behind some silly excuse in Apple-esque style (with the whole "we control apps because we dont want kids seeing porn" excuse)...
Lies lies lies....
"catching nascent paedophiles before they become a threat to children." What the fuck do you do then Mr Eurocrat?
Someone googles a few slightly dodgy things, but commits no crime, and you're going to do what?
Perhaps you ought to administer hormone treatment -- it worked so well on that queer fellow who used to break codes or something or other.
Or will you just ostracise them? Worked well for that McCarthy prick in the US.
I would also like to see the evidence that viewing paedophilic imagery actually causes paedophillia, or that someone who views the images necessarily has to enact them. I'm very concerned about the last part because it suggests that people who watch look at other forms of pornography enact them -- I hope to fuck I don't know anyone who has seen two girls one cup!
While it's an easy bandwagon for the directly elected EUs to jump on, in this case it's nice that the Commission won't have to bow to their pressure to introduce legislation, since they answer to corporate interests, and not anything as tawdry as voters.
Democracy is great, in moderation.
More f*ing data retention - Why can't everyone just piss off? I know it's a little naieve but I'd like to have -say- a month or so between one stupid scheme beiong crushed and the next one being trotted out.
Actually, I wonder if we could sue for "mental anguish" induced by all these ideas.
I love technology but sometimes I really wish nobody had explained what a database was capable of to politicians. Their continuous, inept, misguided attempts to log everything is incredibly irritating - Especially since paedophiles are now apparently as much of a threat as terrorists were (or is it more so now?)
Anybody got odds on who's going to be the next group to panic about? Personally I'm going with immigrants - it's about time that one got dragged up again. Or perhaps ice-cream vendors? They all look sinister and they drive about all the time! They must be afraid of staying in one spot and need closer scrutiny
Anon as I can already hear the helicopters
Oh dear,
Does that apply to Saudi Arabia as well, where 8-year-old brides aren't uncommon?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/10217619.stm
Perhaps someone should tell our Saudi ambassador to point out to them that their nation is a haven for depraved paedos. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn't. But it just goes to show that absolutes in morality are notoriously tricky things.
Made in Britain.
Just another of the wonderful Mr Blair's gifts to nation of his birth.
NB. *all* European citizens have an MEP for their area. Find out if your plank voted for this nonsense and tell *them* you disapprove.
Don't come off as a nut job. Calm. reasoned, short words (MEP's don't have to be native of the countries they represent) and remind them the NSF thought this sort of find-the-pattern,find-the-criminal was a pile of BS and their study was written by people who actually *know* something about pattern matching problems, statistics and resource growth patterns of search algorithms.
make it so that the law will explicitly forbid google from using *THIS* data internal for anything *BUT* this.
google won't be happy about it and will try to block the law since they can't make use of the data even though they will have to pay the expense of collecting it.
The problem is that anybody using google etc. to search for this sort of thing is the same sort of person that stores their picture collection in My Pictures before sending their computer into PC World for repair, leaves them on their mobile phone on the bus, or chats up schoolgirls on facebook. i.e. the idiots who are going to get caught anyway. It does nothing to catch the dangerous ones, who know how to hide their tracks, and nothing to catch those actually hurting the kids, whom presumably have no need to go finding it online.
Mind you, there are a lot of idiots about: According to another reg article, there are 116,000 searches for "child pornography" every day!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/03/the_internet_is_for_pron/
That'll include concerned parents, wanting to know more about that issue and how to keep their children safe.
If someone wants to find out more about this serious issue, what do you suggest they stick into Google? "Fish fingers"?
If I search for "oil rigs", that doesn't mean I want to buy some oil rigs. I might want to know more about the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
If I search for "pregnancy", that doesn't mean I'm pregnant, or that I want to get pregnant. I might be studying biology.
If I search for "terrorist WMD", that doesn't mean I'm a terrorist planning a spectacular terrorist outrage. I could be a journalist writing an article on Tony Blair.
Searching for "child pornography" isn't the same as searching for child pornography. I would have thought that would be obvious.
Why do so many people's brains stop working when it comes to this?
Maybe if the MEPs concerned themselves with curbing their excessive expenses and scams I would have more respect for them. In the meantime they should just F**k off. Hopefully we will pull out of the EU in the future. Once the Euro collapses, can the last one to leave turn out the lights. Tossers!
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