> However, the phrase “child pornography” is almost too sterile and generic to properly exemplify the horrors of what is being created. That is why many advocates, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), believe this phrase to be outdated.
> NCMEC refers to these kinds of material as Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), in order to “most accurately reflect what is depicted- the sexual abuse and exploitation of children”.
> As a result, many organizations and advocates now refer to this material by the new term rather than "child pornography" because it explicitly ties the material to the source of the problem; the abuse that is being perpetuated to create it. Furthermore, children are re-victimized every time a file is shared, sustaining the abuse in a continuous loop.
I realized child beauty pagents and other sexual exploitation of children would be considered Child Sexual Abuse Material in some cases. People, even those with good intentions, are not going to like where this is going.
'Child pornography' is already too long to say repeatedly in a sentence so it is often shortened to "child porn." CSAM has far too many syllables so it too is shortened to two syllables in the form of the spoken acronym "CSAM" and so we're back to square one.
With that said this is a fascinating display someone pressing the reverse button on the euphemism treadmill. I don't think I've ever seen that before.
I don't think the number of syllables is the important thing here. Rather that the term "porn" doesn't—by itself!—impute any moral judgement. It's just a thing. Some people think it's all bad, others think some is okay while some isn't, and some think anything with consenting performers is fair game.
But children are incapable of being consenting performers. That's what separates abuse material from porn. So to make damn sure there isn't any overlap in the Venn diagram of media that depicts sexual acts, they'd rather not associate "child porn" with anything else that exists in the universe of "porn".
It's a completely separate category, not some "bad" end of a spectrum.
That's the reasoning I've heard before, anyway.
And I agree with you on the reverse treadmill thing. It's interesting. On a related tangent: I've always hated how journalists use the term "sexual assault" to refer to a wide range of offenses, from forcible rape to a passing grope. Although those are both bad things, it's clear that one is tremendously more harmful than the other. We should use language to clarify that.
The number of syllables matter if the goal is to prevent a term from feeling too sterile. If a term is too long and unwieldy then people will naturally shorten it to an acronym. And once they're using an acronym then we're back to square one because acronyms are devoid of the meaning that words have.
I've wondered if there is an intent to distinguish between child pornography that teenagers are producing on their own to share with each other and the kind child pornography that pedophiles and child rapists create forcibly against the will of the children in the content.
Maybe that's the actual difference between CP and CSAM.
Maybe both are a subset of CP.
I think saying “child porn” is clearer. That term is horrific as it is. If anyone sees that in a sentence they’ll be rightly revulsed and know what’s being talked about right away.
I had to have someone explain the CSAM acronym. How many people are going to skip over that because they assume its something benign and unrelated?
You ever notice when cops bust a prostitution ring they never call it that? It's been renamed human trafficking. Law enforcement is all in on the marketing game.
Using scarier words will get the public to trade liberty for security every time.
Last year Sam Harris interviewed Gabriel J.X. Dance, the deputy investigations editor at The New York Times [0]. They speak to this. It's a tough episode to listen to - they cover many uncomfortable topics along this theme.
From what I recall of the episode, porn (rightly or wrongly) is seen as opt-in for the participants. But if children are involved it cannot be opt-in and is more appropriately described as rape or sexual abuse. Thus CSAM is the preferred term.
That's the CSAM part. The iMessages part uses a neural network to detect explicit photos through machine learning.
What happens when Apple, or the government, mandate an expansion of CSAM into detecting new material? Apple already has built a neural network to detect new explicit material...
Also, what happens when the USG mandates that Top Secret classified material must also be added to the database? Or when Russia mandates that homosexual pornography must be added to the database?
> Also, what happens when the USG mandates that Top Secret classified material must also be added to the database?
That doesn't appear to have happened in the 10+ years this kind of scanning has already been happening at various cloud providers - what specifically about Apple moving it down to the phone from iCloud Photos makes this more likely now?
Depends on the age of consent in both person’s jurisdiction and where they go with those pictures. My 16 year-old self got quite a lecture when my girlfriend and I took some pics of each other and my parents found them. (Age of consent was 13 where we lived, but it was 18 just up the road in another state).
I'm not well versed enough in the topic (or the law) to have answers. I do think the podcast episode I pointed to does give a lot of food for thought. For me it was an eye opener, as a software engineer trying to build a beautiful future with strong beliefs around e2e encryption, etc.
CSAM is not necessarily pornographic material, but merely material that becomes objectionable within context.
For example, parents' photos of kids in the bath isn't CP. However _someone else_ having a _quantity_ of bath photos is CSAM, if they have no reasonable reason for possessing them.
It’s very muddy, though. The number of pictures on one’s hard drive is irrelevant to the fact that a child has been abused or not. In your example, none of the children would have been abused. Also, who gets to define how much “a lot” is? We can’t say that it’s ok if it’s your children (or grand-children’s, or nephews, etc), because most of child abuse cases involve close family members or close friends.
We definitely should punish exploitation of children, including sexual, and we definitely should punish distributing images of this. But conflating exploiting, distributing, and viewing, and then putting a big taboo on this, is really not ideal. These things are different. Otherwise what we end up with is righteous frenzy when someone gets punished for sexting.
That is correct. The children within the images that are classified as CSAM don't necessarily have (though frequently are) to be abused.
For example, the NCMEC database contains hashes for Nirvana's Nevermind cover. Completely innocent to possess within it's original and intended context.
I have not said whether I agree with this, because I do see problems when automating the process.
However, the precedent for it being used as a flag for law enforcement has already happened. Having a collection of similar imagery is considered CSAM - and that is likely correct. A collection is probably not innocent. But having one or two images may happen incidentally without your awareness of it.
As to who decides what constitutes significance? That is where you'll hit the most problems, and reasonable discussion of it will be quickly shut down with the same arguments used for automating a flagging system. The conversation requires nuance, but those currently calling for such systems aren't interested in a good faith discussion.
> I have not said whether I agree with this, because I do see problems when automating the process.
The process will never be fully automated, regardless of what they say. Cases will need to be reviewed. Things will need to be checked at some point.
They are trying to play the cog in the machine, that mechanically transmits information to law enforcement. But if we’ve learnt anything the last decade is that cogs are not impartial and can be very dangerous, if only because of the scale at which they operate. I can see several ways a user can face a kafkaesque uphill battle to prove their innocence. In several countries, just a child pornography case can be a social death sentence. And even a fraction of a percent of mistakes will mean millions of people might be dragged in this (let’s not kid ourselves: this is never going to stay in the US).
Personally I think (what Apple is doing) is misguided and ripe for abuse. I am very disappointed that they, of all companies, are pushing this nightmare.
> As to who decides what constitutes significance? That is where you'll hit the most problems, and reasonable discussion of it will be quickly shut down with the same arguments used for automating a flagging system. The conversation requires nuance, but those currently calling for such systems aren't interested in a good faith discussion.
Ultimately, a tech company has no business making this sort of decisions. This is something that needs to be sorted out by law.
Unfortunately, a nuanced discussion is very unlikely these days. Anyone looking not agressive enough will be pilloried.
CSAM indicates you think the material, and the practice of making it, is abhorrent. "Child porn" is something some (severely deranged) people might actually want to see. The upshot of this is, if you put "ios child porn detection features" into Google, Google will see "child porn" and may think that's what you're searching for, put up warning banners reminding you that child porn is super illegal and that you should not be searching for it, and probably notify the FBI who will add you to a watchlist. If you put "ios csam detection feature" into Google, it helps Google know that you are not searching for child porn itself.
Social dynamics. The kind of person who calls CSAM CSAM is unlikely to favor it, let alone distribute it, so people interested in it are unlikely to search for it by that name.