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by zethraeus 5082 days ago
The Mashable article seems to be sources from a Reuters article. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/12/us-usa-internet-pr... The program does appear to focus on sexual predators.

Mashable quotes Facebook as stating “where appropriate and to the extent required by law to ensure the safety of the people who use Facebook"

Can anyone speak to whether or not proactive scanning could possible be required by law? It seems entirely unlikely, but IANAL.
1 comments
joering2 5082 days ago
the problem lays within who decide who is a "sexual predator", who is not. I can assure you if this is left without governance, it will be very easy to slip in you and me and label as as predators as well. For example, you hold a hand of your 6-year old nephew when walking back from school when picking him up, per your sister request. In Facebook standards, you may already be a "sexual predator".

I hope you see where I am going with this...

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Jach 5082 days ago
When everyone's a sexual predator, no one is.
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joering2 5082 days ago
When everyone's sexual predator, EXCEPT the elite that decided on who's sexual predator, then everyone EXCEPT elite goes to jail.
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Jach 5082 days ago
Some sex offenders have avoided jail time. Florida has an interesting comparison of the terms[1]. How large is the pool of "elite" you're talking about? I don't think a size of over 10,000 deserves the term (so about 0.0033... percent of the US population if we limit to there) and I'd lean more toward a max of 500 (0.000166...%). It's at least a fun thought-experiment: how low can you go before the economy collapses and/or those in charge can't keep the prisoners or slaves in line or fed? Even back in the days of US slavery, only two states had slightly more slaves than non-slaves[2].

[1] http://sheriff.org/faqs/displayfaq.cfm?id=54934ef5-c69b-4771...

[2] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_ratio_for_slaves_to_s...

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