| HN Mirror

> What is disturbing you? the mere topic?

The fact that you seem to consider the act of looking at the resulting pictures to be the primary crime even though that is more or less victim-less, rather than the sexual abuse that children are subjected to in order to produce the pictures, which very obviously is not a "cyber" anything, while you at the same time put murder into the category of "meatspace crime", if, following the same logic, it would also belong into the "cyber crime" category, because there can also exist pictures of the act of killing a person that people could look at.

This seems to be an expression of the focus on the vilification of a sexual orientation that people have no control over, namely pedophilia, while almost ignoring the thing that actually hurts other people, namely the actual sexual abuse of children.

Yes I see what you mean, but that was never the intended message, note the ellipsis!

So just to be clear, I think it is obvious you, me and nearly everybody regards the making of childporn as a crime, without making any statement on how we regard the crimeness of watching child porn.

Well, I believe you that you didn't intend that message. But I think the way you put it still reveals how you think/thought about it, and you are almost certainly not alone with that, that seems to be an expression of a sort-of societal consensus--which is actually why I found it disturbing. Noone would ever even get the idea of putting murder into the "cyber crime" category, but somehow that seems to be a natural thing to do for sexual child abuse for many people.

The real proble is that I classified subjects, instead of counts of crimes:

It should read:

* meatspace (a count of murder, a count of rape, ...)

* cyberspace (a count of distributing murder films, a count of distributing rape films, ...)

The reason nobody thinks of "actual" snuff murder films in cybercrime category, is because we are heavily bombarded with images of people dying: soldiers getting shot in the news are not considered snuff, cops and robbers shooting each other in movies are not considered snuff. But naked children are not that regular in news or movies (perhaps french/european movies, but thats just nudity in general not specifically children).

Nah, that's just another effect of the same underlying cause:

Sexuality is something that religions have very restrictive rules about, and anything that doesn't fit within the bounds of those rules is considered immoral. Which is why homosexuals were and still are oppressed, and which is also why pedophiles are oppressed essentially just like homosexuals once were. Being a pedophile is widely considered to be a moral failing, just like homosexuality once was (and by some still is). This taboo leads to people not rationally looking at the actual facts of the situation, not considering the actual consequences of what is happening, instead anything that is in any way associated with pedophilia is seen as equally objectionable, which in turn leads to a general lack of distinction.

"Child porn" is just a generic label for "terrible immoral stuff done by immoral people involving the idea of sexual practices involving children" in the public discourse, and a terrible label at that, given that it either tries to use a negative view of pornography to evoke an emotional reaction to an essentially unrelated topic, or trivializes the experience of abuse victims whose agony is documented by suggesting that it's in some way similar to consenting adults producing erotic works for the pleasure of other consenting adults to look at. It's a bit like using the label "child horror movies" for snuff videos depicting children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc

EDIT:

Really, I don't think it's sensible to even frame it that way.

Should she have the right to control where this picture of her naked is being used? Yes.

Is the picture evidence of sexual abuse? No.

Is the picture evidence of other human right abuses? Yes.

Why should it matter whether it "is child porn"?

"Should she have the right to control where this picture of her naked is being used? Yes."

This is the hard question, I argue the group should not give her the right to censor this image.

Imagine she had the power to censor that image, then she might be bribed into censoring it. I think taxpayers have a right to know what happens with their money.

I think the next generations have the right to know what happened, and learn from the mistakes of the generations before.

Imagine such an image of a person abusing a child, encrypted and signed by community cameras and later decrypted to apprehend the perpetrator. I still think a lot of valuable information (for prevention) can be found: did the perpetrator make some kind of promises? or use fear? how exactly do they lure a child into that situation? how can we prepare children better to recognize such situations? etc...

Then there is also political activism, to the extent that conspiracies or power abuses arise, if the only way to politically imprison a person undetected is to prevent the "evidence" to be presented to the public, then we provide them with this loophole of censorship...

Imagine we could all simply watch who how and when the double spy & daughter in Britain were possibly poisoned if so.

If they were, we can try to catch them if they are still on soil, or else publicly verifiably convince people elsewhere of what happened, and then continue with higher priorities like Grenfell Tower and how to prevent such events (where many more actually died, and never even worked for the Russians, never consented to the higher risk job of being a spy)

If it didn't happen, we can again focus on our real problems.

It would also generate unity within the community of citizens, instead of this constant contrarianism and doubt.

> It would also generate unity within the community of citizens, instead of this constant contrarianism and doubt.

Yes, it would. Via oppression. Humanity has tried that lots of times. I doubt you would want to live in any of those societies.

DoctorOetker 2973 days ago

When has humanity ever used community cameras with treshold cryptography to make a provable society?

I do not propose to eliminate critical thought, I propose to eliminate the needles diversion of baseless claim and baseless counterclaim. Exactly such that critical thought is freed up to think about other problems!

We like to proud ourselves on having a system where everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but in practice innocent people are regularly convicted and guilty people regularly declared not guilty. There exists no correct a priori stance of being harsher or less harsh on false positives vs false negatives. The only way to eliminate both is relevance: gather more faithfull evidence. I believe decentralized mass surveillance to be the way out.

By removing the need to criticize questions of fact in the domain of meat space human interactions, we free up attention and critical thought to consult our feelings (ethics) about proposals and governance of our society!

I consider this the opposite of opppresion.

> This is the hard question, I argue the group should not give her the right to censor this image.

Sacrificing people's dignity for the supposed common good it very much not a road I am willing to go down. If we are willing to sacrifice an individual's dignity, there is nothing left worth sacrificing it for.

Mind you that this is distinct from limited use for the purposes of prosecution.

> Imagine she had the power to censor that image, then she might be bribed into censoring it.

Yeah, and then imagine I could strip you of your human rights because I value a common good higher than your human rights. Also, no matter what the law, you cannot completely prevent that people will try to put pressure on other people. The solution is not to disregard the individual's dignity, but to create incentives that counter attempts to silence those who suffer. Create an environment where people will come to the conclusion that allowing their picture to be used is the thing they should do, all things considered.

As for your idea of "democratized mass surveillance", I guess it's a nice thought experiment, but not something that could realistically be implemented in a way that would actually be fundamentally better than what we have today. For one, the checks and balances we have today are a sort-of implementation of the same fundamental idea of decentralizing power, but also, total democratization is not a guarantee for humanistic outcomes: Witch hunts, oppression of minorities, and genocides are in a way highly democratic. The problem with the oppression of homosexuals, say, was not that the abuses were a secret, but that the majority opinion was that it was the right thing to do, and such mass surveillance would only have helped with it.

DoctorOetker 2973 days ago

First, I wish to thank you for keeping this discussion alive, I really value the opinions of others on this idea (which is also the result of refining earlier formulations by the opinions of others)

"Sacrificing people's dignity for the supposed common good it very much not a road I am willing to go down."

I don't see how my system sacrifices a person's dignity? Could you describe how my proposals would destroy dignity in your view? Here are some definitions of dignity:

* The quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect.

* Inherent nobility and worth: the dignity of honest labor.

* Poise and self-respect.

Or are you talking about the dignity of people previously working in centralized law enforcement systems who would then appear superfluous/ineffective/archaic/unproductive/dangerous to citizens in my system? Like we view say slave-holders today?

"Yeah, and then imagine I could strip you of your human rights because I value a common good higher than your human rights."

I don't see how you could do that to me in my system. Or rather, you could, but you couldn't get away with it. Either you let me go at some point and I report the time and place of the events, so you get caught and do prison time. Or you don't let me go or kill me and my friends and family report me as missing, at which point I get tracked down and they find us alive, or me dead, and then later you get caught and do prison time.

"Also, no matter what the law, you cannot completely prevent that people will try to put pressure on other people."

I am not trying to prevent pressure in general, i.e. price communication is pressure too, I am specifically trying to design a system such that illegal pressure can be provably adressed. Say you hold a knife to my throat and pressure me to give my wallet, I can then report and prove that.

"For one, the checks and balances we have today are a sort-of implementation of the same fundamental idea of decentralizing power"

I totally disagree, my goal is a provably law enforcing society, not a trusted law enforcing society.

This provable/verifiable decentralized mass surveillance I proposee stands to the current trusted law enforcement systems in an analogous way as the concept of provable/verifiable cryptocurrencies stand to the current trusted financial system.

I also saw you used the phrase "democratized mass surveillance": note I systematically used the word decentralized, not democratized, there is a difference there, for example we don't directly vote on a trial, nor on wheither or not to decrypt imagery when something is reported, democracy is for the legislative branch, this proposal describes a decentralized executive branch or law enforcement (treshold crypto + cameras + client software + properly trained citizens in occasional police role)