Child Wise’s Bernadette McMenamin on Internet filtering

Computerworld has an article up in which Bernadette McMenamin explicitly distances herself from the kind of filter system that Senators Conroy and Fielding are proposing:

Child Wise CEO calls for government re-think on ISP filtering

Bernadette says:

“If filtering of child pornography cannot work then why is there so much anger, fear and resentment to any attempt to block child pornography and other illegal sites?”

Urrrrrrrrrrr, because we would prefer to spend the money somewhere that would actually help prevent kids becoming the victims of child abuse. You know, as opposed to wasting it on a filter that will NOT reduce the amount of child pornography available or reduce it’s production.

You see we don’t want to waste money and pretend we are helping kids when we actually COULD BE HELPING KIDS. You know by funding health services and the police. A bloody filter won’t reduce how many kids are being exploited.

I think that’s why your article copped so much heat Bernadette and your continued lack of knowledge only means you’ll cop a lot more.

I responded to some of Bernadette’s other comments from CW today at http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/child-wise-ceo-wants-gov-to-re-think-isp-filtering/

Kind regards,
Mike

“If filtering of child pornography cannot work then why is there so much anger, fear and resentment to any attempt to block child pornography and other illegal sites? This is what I don’t understand.”

We are not angry because of the possibility that child porn might be blocked, no matter how unlikely.

We are angry that the Government is building an all-pervasive and necessarily opaque censorship mechanism. We are angry because the Government clearly has intentions to block more than just child porn (if not, why the opt-out option?). We are angry because this decision paints every responsible Australian adult as potential sex offender with the mental age of a child.

We are angry because, as responsible adults, we expect our Government to respect us to use our freedoms responsibly. That’s why they call us responsible, um, adults. This is why we call ourselves a democracy. Only Governments with totalitarian paranoia distrust their populations.

As long as people such a McMenamin and Stephen Conroy insist on equating free speech with advocacy of child pornography they will continue to be thoroughly deluded about what we are upset about. Until they recognize that freedom of speech and the entitlement to simple, dignified respect have intrinsic value, they will continue to misunderstand our anger.

In a recent post I asked , somewhat tounge in cheek, if proponents of censorship would be willing to trade their right to privacy if this helped in the battle against child pornography. If they are not prepared to do this, what right do they have to ask that we live in a state that has the mechanisms to censor content at will?

It doesn’t matter if they censor content that I am interested in. The only thing that matters is that they have assumed the right do it if they choose. That’s what ticks us off, and until they understand that, they will continue to be deluded.

Honestly, I think Bernadette’s intentions are commendable. She wants to wipe out child pornography. We all do. It’s just unfortunate that someone in her position, with influence in the media and with politicians, is wasting time on something like filtering. Filtering will not protect children or reduce the amount of child pornography available or produced.

I hope you understand soon Bernadette why the majority of people with technical know how, especially those with internet knowledge, disagree with mandatory filtering. It’s simply a bad idea that benefits no one except moral crusaders and politicians. Children certainly aren’t helped.

- Michael

“If filtering of child pornography cannot work then why is there so much anger, fear and resentment to any attempt to block child pornography and other illegal sites?”

Because there is a general rule of thumb that can be applied to doing things that don’t work… it’s stupid.

Hitting my car with a hammer to make it run faster doesn’t work, therefore hitting my car with a hammer in an attempt to make it run faster is a stupid thing to do. Attempting to block child pornography by running automated filterbots over everyone’s internet connection doesn’t work, therefore running automated filterbots over everyone’s internet connection in an attempt to block child pornography is a stupid thing to do.

The difference between those who support this plan and those who don’t is simply a matter of who understands the technology and who doesn’t – in the same way that various “flat-tax” plans seem to garner support among those who don’t have much of an idea about economics and hostility among those who do. Fortunately for the economy, the number of people who understand how a flat tax is a bad idea comfortably outweighs the number who don’t. Unfortunately for the country’s IT&T sector, that ratio is rather more precariously balanced when it comes to understanding filtering.

Filtering traffic against a known black-list of illegal sites is one thing. What the government is proposing is some sort of automated technology it believes will automatically be able to differentiate between legal and illegal content ‘on-the-fly’ (as it is being requested by and delivered to a consumer). Even limiting such technology to filtering words (leaving aside pictures and videos for the moment) is not overly effective. It has almost become a cliched argument in anti-filtering circles that if you try and screen out the word “breast” then you run a very real risk of denying people access to information regarding mammograms or how best to grill chicken.

The English language has a finite (large, but finite) list of words, only a few of which are ‘naughty’ enough to warrant ending up on any reasonable person’s filter list. Running a query across a page of text to check for naughty words or phrases is a fairly simple process. However, even aside from the ‘false positive’ example of the innocuous use of words like ‘breast’ there is an almost certain chance of acquiring ‘false negative’ results. A false negative is where the filter gives the page a clean bill of health even though it ought – by the principles of the filter – to have been blocked. Blocking words like “cock” and “cunt” won’t pick up euphemistic phrases such as “skin flute” or “bearded clam”.

Extrapolating such difficulties out to filtering photographs presents challenges that are an order of magnitude greater than when dealling with text. Digitised photographs are represented as a two dimensional array of coloured dots. Unlike words, coloured dots impart absolutely no meaning whatsoever as to the content of the photograph. Depending on the lighting and angle of the shot, a gynaecological closeup could be represented by much the same array of coloured dots as a photograph of a person’s hand, or even a pig on a farm. Filtering software attempts to define ‘patterns of dots’ that – as a rule – depict things like “large expanse of flesh tones” – or even with cutting edge technology – “human face”. Expecting an automatic filter to examine a photograph and determine whether it depicted an innocent shot of dad on the beach, or a ‘model’ putting her ankles behind her ears is simply not within the realms of technological reality.

Bring the difference between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ down even further and the task being asked of a machine is beyond that which even the human brain is capable. As a society we use the magic number 18 as a yardstick for all sorts of things, including the age at which it is legal to appear in a pornographic photograph. At 216 months, a woman is deemed legally able to be photographed naked in exchange for money, at 215 months she is not. Picking people’s ages is not an easy task. I have a hard time picking young people’s ages at anywhere between 16 and 24 these days, I certainly wouldn’t be able to ascertain someone’s age to the month from simply looking at a photograph. It is easy to see how unrealistic the expectations that people have of filtering software are.

Even if we could engineer a software routine that could determine the age of the subject of a photograph to the level of granularity required to “just block child porn and not block anything that isn’t child porn”, the amount of processing time and effort required for such a routine to run would be immense. Consider that a digitised video is a series of digital images displayed one after the other at a rate of 30 images per second and we would have to run the same process (once for every frame of the video) nearly three thousand times just to cover a minute and a half of digitised video.

I would be very surprised if there was any true ‘hostility’ to the notion of eradicating child pornography from either the internet or the community at large. The percieved hostility is not directed toward the aim of making the world a safer place for children, it is directed at the wholesale ‘magic thinking’ that seems to have gripped people regarding the capabilities of filtering technology. There is simply no way, using contempory hardware and software, that the internet can be automatically filtered of child pornography. And there is certainly no way that it can be even attempted without impacting both the availability and speed of access of perfectly legal material.

I wrote:

It doesn’t matter if they censor content that I am interested in. The only thing that matters is that they have assumed the right do it if they choose. That’s what ticks us off, and until they understand that, they will continue to be deluded.

This would probably be better phrased as:

Whether or not they actually censor material we are likely to read is not the issue. The issue is that they are attempting to build a censorship mechanism at all. Viewing child pornography is already a crime, those wishing to view it can and will subvert any filter. The correct response to child pornography is and continues to be law enforcement. In the age of the Internet, any attempt at censorship is futile at best and most likely counter-productive since it simply encourages widespread adoption of covert channels.

As Gabriel notes, censorship is futile and dogged attempts to implement a futile idea are stupid. And as Michael notes, stupid attempts to implement futile ideas in the face of well-intentioned and well-informed criticism are enough to enrage even the mildest of (idealistic) geeks.

Again, as Michael says, I think we do owe it to the pro-censorship lobby to explain the inner workings of Tor hidden services so they understand how intensely futile censorship is. Sites that advertise their perverted wares via a Tor hidden service (or something equivalent) are completely invisible as far the rest of the Internet is concerned. A consumer of child pornography can download stuff from a Tor hidden service and not have a clue what the physical IP address of the server is and likewise the provider will not have a clue what the physical IP address of the client is. With technology like that available, you could block every single pornography site on the web and still not impede access to a child porn site one single iota. The only way to defeat Tor (and Tor-like services) is to physically unplug everyone’s DSL routers and smash their wireless routers. It really is that futile.

I’ve expanded on some of the futility arguments touched on above, here.

In particular, I offer a more extended explanation of why overlay networks such as those established by Tor make ISP-level filtering irrelevant and hence futile.

Obviously responding to Bernadette McMenamin here

Maybe we can give her a real world example that she can relate to.

For many years, we have been fighting the never ending flow of internet spam. Using filters and other means of trying to stop it at the isp and local levels. All have really failed.

Recently a major contributor of internet spam (and child pornography mind you) was shut down when the companies that supplied the internet to that organisation pulled the plug. Effectively reducing the amount of spam in the world by a third!!!

The proof is in the pudding, spending millions to try and stop it after it’s sent is a waste of time and money. Stopping it at it’s source is a much more effective and efficient method.

We can live in hope that wisdom comes with age and in Bernadettes case, I hope that comes quickly.

S.

Ms McMenamin was equally critical of the past weekend’s protests and the DLC’s plans for future action.

“Let the 300 people march on Canberra because it looks pathetic,” she said. “It looks pathetic and shameful because most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child pornography.”

This has got to be the most uneducated statement from a person i have EVER read in my life. Not only that but basically accusing anyone who opposes censorship as advocating child porn..

WHAT A CROCK!!! What is wrong with you Ms McMenamin.!! DONT you think for a second that the average joe is unable to make up their own minds when given the FACTS AS THEY STAND! If people like yourself and other politicians etc make altered statements and distort those facts, you feed people the wrong information only to serve YOURSELF and your own agenda.

Its unfortunate Ms McMenamin that you tried to take on a subject that you clearly have no idea about

She says that people aren’t fully aware of the facts, YOU madam are the one who is not aware, to assume that the general populous is unable to make a constructive argument of this based on VERY CLEAR facts is only making you the ass.

The ONLY PEOPLE ADVOCATING CHILD PORN IS THE PEDOS THEMSELVES…