“Violence on the streets is a pressing issue – but we have the ability to stop it in our spare time,” says someone who should know better in the Guardian yesterday.

Let me explain…In my neighbourhood we all have pets, and can often be seen of a night, walking with the dog. It occurred to me that, while we were out like this, in our leisure time more or less, if we saw anyone creating trouble, or littering, or picking his nose, or sizing up joints for a little burglary… well we could all jump him, and in next to no time, our streets would be safe again.

OK, you can switch off the irony detector now. Sounds ridiculous? Dangerous, even? But that is basically what this article in the Guardian is proposing…

Let’s investigate…

First a short introduction and preliminary points. Those who know me in real life, know that I am a father of three [all girls] and my first reaction—probably not the wisest one, I’ll admit—were anyone to get nasty on one of my girls would involve extremely violent thoughts. The same applies if someone get fresh with other kids that I know. I’m a big softy like that.

The article in the Guardian is written by one Dave Birch, with a Guardian by-line. It is not a letters’ page, it is not a feedback page. It appears to be Guardian-sanctioned content by a regular columnist.

But not only what this guy is proposing unethical—as my intro seeks to point out, it is dangerous in implying that bad and simplistic propositions could provide help to a serious problem.

This isn’t helped by that fact that Child Porn is also a very red-rag-to-a-bull subject. So let’s start by exploring the edges…

Porn is legal in most Western countries. Porn, that is, images [film, text, etc.] portraying consenting adults engaged in acts of a sexual nature. You can call this porn, or erotica, or filth; it all depends on your beliefs. That doesn’t change the fact that the creation and possession of such material is generally either tolerated, or legal, depending on the country where you live.

By definition, Child Porn cannot be legal, as, by its nature, it does not involve consenting adults. Nor should anything be tolerated that encourages or supports child abuse.

Fierce words.

The age of sexual consent varies widely, from about 14 to 18, depending on the country. Some countries— like France for example, where I live—accept that a minor may have sexual realtionships, but try to avoid minor/adult relations through specific legislation. This can lead to problems when a 17 year old is dating an 18 year old, and the younger one’s parents object. Technically, if they do have sexual relations, this is an offence and the police can [and do] become involved. But two 16 years olds, for example, will be left alone. At least by the law.

Please note, I don’t give a fig about the gender of the people in these examples, that is a private matter for the people involved, and irrelevant for the arguments. But it does make for heavy-handed phrases.

Point one: if a sixteen year old takes a lewd photograph of a similarly-aged sexual partner and leaves that picture, with the other person’s consent, on a computer or website, is that trading in child porn? In the States, probably, as the age of sexual consent is generally 18. In France, probably not. I’d agree that it is probably not a wise thing to do, but at 16 people do do dumb things. And that’s not the question. Is age the only concern? In that case, my parents have plenty of photos of me, pre-adolescent and nude. Lots of family albums do. Yet, because of the red-rag effect, communities now often protest and soemtimes block exhibitions and shows that might portray naked children. In most cases, this is ridiculous hysteria.

Point two: having child porn found on one’s computer is the 21st century equivalent of leprosy. And most people would agree that only severely repressive sentencing is enough to punish offenders. Others will talk about chemical castration, even physical castration as not being good enough… Yet, everyone has heard of how easy it is to attack a person, almost any person, through the Internet, through phishing attacks, or browser exploits. Most reasonable people should have already stopped using Internet Explorer and Outlook because of that… but even so it is child’s play to place incriminating images on another person’s machine… [I have image-loading turned off in my mail client, and view only text, but there again, I’m not writing a technology column in the Guardian…]
Here goes. Craft an HTML mail in the Mozilla/Netscape mail application, or in Thunderbird. Place an image in that mail, something easy to identify like a big red cross on a black background. Now, make that image 1 pixel by 1 pixel. Slip it in as a full stop… Mail it to a friend. Chances are that image will be downloaded and placed in the cache used by your friend’s mail client. An image scan of that computer would find it. Try using the new Google Desktop, for example. Of course, your friend didn’t knowingly download the picture, but it was found on her computer, after all. Now think how easy it is to replace the red cross with something more vicious. And how easy it is to spam ‘x’ million people on the ‘net.

Point three: not too long ago, Pete Townshend, the Who’s composer and guitarist, was tarred with accusations of pedophilia after a credit card used on a child porn site was traced back to him. It is known that he has spoken in the past about being abused as a child, and it is theme present in some of his songs. So when he said, yes he did go there doing personal research, I’m inclined to believe him. And feel for him, not against him. Perhaps credit cards could be traced to other people retracing similar painful journeys, or to legitimate, and mandated, investigators. First impressions are not always what they seem…

I hope that you have realised by now that the points above are destined to show that not only is very difficult to define what is Child Porn—especially in borderline cases—, to define what is downloading, as well as to guess the motives of those visiting so-called sites. I have also managed not to mention Nabokov and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson…

This is a complex matter. The abuse and exploitation of anyone, anywhere, anyhow is bad [evil, in my books]. Children are under our collective responsibility, if that bad happens to them through our negligence, that makes things worse.

Child Porn, and Child Abuse are part of that. Along with violence [of which they are a form] they are probably the worst of what our world has to offer.

Nothing in Mr Birch’s comments would improve matters. In fact, public electronic lynchings—which is what he calling for—would make matters worse still. And by diverting attention to a bad solution, more children will be in danger as money and energy is spent where it shouldn’t be.

Now his article.

“A cursory search on any of the file-sharing networks reveals the IP addresses of servers distributing child pornography. These “sick servers” change frequently, but they are discoverable. That is obvious, otherwise the judges, teachers, policemen et al, convicted of downloading such material wouldn’t be able to find it.”

“But what to do about them? Knowing that a sick server in some far-flung former Soviet province is distributing child pornography is one thing, stopping it is another.”

I don’t use file-sharing networks. It is my personal belief that they encourage leeching from valid content creators, so I can’t yea or nay his claims here. However, by definition you must find a server, it doesn’t find you. Someone must go out, look for it and report back. This person has now—in France and probably in GB too—probably committed an offence by accessing the server and the images. Pornography exists only in a space between the object and the viewer/reader. A file is just a file until it is looked at or read, then it is harmless. Or not.

So how do you ‘discover’ these servers [on file-sharing networks, on UseNet, or on the Web] without committing an offence? And your motives in the matter do not give you prior clearance, you can possibly explain that to the Judge as a mitigating factor, but it does not give you ‘carte blanche’ to investigate. That is taking justice into your own hands.

Part of the social pact, this strange, abstract web that makes up the fabric of our societies, agrees that we delegate that power of investigation to agents who act on our behalf. If you stumble on something, fine you should avert those agents. When you go searching the only difference between you, and somebody who is ill-intentioned is that you want me to believe your intentions are clean… And the other one has bells on.

“The scale and distributed nature of this problem makes conventional policing impossible. There are simply not enough resources to track down every sick server, find the people behind them (even if you could), and then prosecute.”

I don’t believe you. Please prove what you are advancing.

Why don’t I believe you… Well, Microsoft, for example, are incapable of finding their own e-mails, but Google can index the net, which is slightly bigger that Microsoft’s mail servers [and they through everything useful away anyway] so, I can find what I’m looking for in a couple of seconds. Thanks Google. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Google has, as far as the web is concerned, already indexed those Child Porn sites. Without the need for humans to go and visit. A similar solution, of a Google-type crawler could perhaps trawl your file-sharing networks, working for our delegates—those we pay to do our dirty work, like policing—can search. And act. They have the authority to contact the server owner in “some far-flung former Soviet province”. And if the FBI have the power to seize Indymedia’s servers in GB—or not—they can send the black helicopters anywhere in the world. If they really want to.

“A more realistic goal may be to disrupt the servers. In many cases, the owners of the servers have no idea they are being used in this way. But if their servers go down, then the distribution of the material will be halted and the owners alerted to the problem. If a web-hosting company sees a server go down, I am sure they will do something about it.”

Again, we have another blanket statement with no backup. How does he know that “In many cases, the owners of the servers have no idea they are being used in this way”. They may not realise what is on their servers, but any one who has a fileserver knows that it serves files, duh…

But what he is proposing is called lynching. DDoS attacks should be a crime, if they are not already. As more and more economic and social life passes through the net, deliberately provoking massive failure of servers is irresponsible, and should be severely punished. It’s not pushing Child Porn I agree, but it is mob rule.

And where do we stop? Is the Co$ authorised to DDoS all sites that it doesn’t like because, it claims, they’re broadcasting what it claims are sacred scriptures. Personally, I think they’re all nuts, and some may even be dangerous nuts at that, but that doesn’t mean I’d condone DDoS attacks against them either. But someone might. And if I were a pornographer, what’s to stop me taking down the Guardian’s site because I feel your article is threatening my livelihood?

“One approach might be to capitalise on the internet dynamic of decentralised co-operation. Instead of internet users calling for someone else to police their environment, perhaps they should band together to tackle it themselves.”

No. This is not anarchy, this is chaos. This is lynching. This is mob rule. Those with the more powerful botnet and able to launch the strongest DDoS attacks rulz.

“Internet users already cooperate in a distributed, coordinated way to tackle other big problems. The canonical example is the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (Seti). Around the world, users have downloaded screensavers that crunch through the signals picked up from outer space, searching for patterns that could indicate unnatural sources. When they find one, as happened earlier this year, they report the signal to a central system for further investigation.”

You previously said that “There are simply not enough resources to track down every sick server,” and here—like my Google suggestion—you say that you can. You can’t. But you can try. And there is a vast difference between a robot trawling a network and indexing it, and someone connecting in to look.

“Suppose they were, instead, searching for sick servers? Instead of merely reporting the problem, they could launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.”

Now you have stepped over the line again. A useful suggestion would be to speak with a police technology department, and propose that groups of hackers program such a bot, but that results are forwarded to a technical police team. I think that they’d probably tell you, thanks, we’ll call you. But you never know. I’m pretty sure that they’d tell you that if you did take action in coodinating or launching a DDoS attack, you’d get to see them again. On the receiving end.

“Why not link the automated scouring of the internet for sick servers with the distributed power of screensavers and the DDoS? I am writing this on a plane: at home there are two G4s doing nothing. If I could download a screensaver that either searched for sick servers or obtained a list (from the Internet Watch Foundation) of servers to attack and then cooperated with thousands of other machines to launch DDoS attacks against those servers, I would be doing something to help.

The police could spend their time chasing the paedophile sources of the sick content rather than trying to put their fingers in the dyke. My screensaver might become a life saver.”

Why indeed? And not, you would be doing something to help. You would be just creating a new problem there where there wasn’t one before. This is where he finally slips over the edge into raving bonkers [altitude sickness?]. Who is to decide what is Child Porn without viewing? Who is to decide that so-and-so server must be taken down?

First you start with local vigilant groups, then you start imposing the beliefs and morals of a specific group on society at large. No thank you.

If you want to see the end of child abuse—in all its forms—there is not simple one-two punch to pull. Put simply, abuse breeds more abuse. And bad education and poverty don’t help either

If you really want to act now:

• demand urgent reforms of prison and sentencing:
  jail is not just a means to take people away from society at large, and in that removal punish them while protecting society. If it also doesn’t also have the finality of preparing offenders for re-integration then it is just barbaric. No person who has been abused, or has abused another, should leave a court or a prison without receiving help and treatment, even if this person is the offender.
• improve the wages, conditions and consideration of teachers and social workers:
  these are the people on the front line in helping your children—our children—grow up fit and well. If we expect 120% from them, they should get corresponding consideration. On all levels.
• get involved in after-school activities:
  some people don’t have a family life, and don’t get on well at school. If you want children to grow to find their place in society, and to stamp out all forms of abuse, then get involved in scouts, homework projects, whatever. Your community needs you.
• get involved in organisation that work to protect children here and abroad:
  I don’t know of any charity that would refuse help, be that time or money;
• prevent national social security schemes from being dismantled:
  these are the first line to ensure that all, especially the weakest members of society, those without a voice, get the ncessary care and attention to grow up strong and healthy in body and in mind.
• stop grumbling and stand up and say you want to pay more taxes:
  these things cost money, and money doesn’t grow on trees, it has to come from somewhere. Or give tax-deductible money to charities, then you pay less, and they can do more.

  Nope, none of this is as sexy as cyber-vigilantes with killer screensavers. And it’s old-fashioned, and it’s slow. But, unlike Dave Birch’s article, it works.