[perfTerm]

I wonder how many of the people on that think of the children side were either affected as kids, had children who had some awful experience, or are of close relation to someone who was or had kids who did. Because I could easily see something like an awful event happening to a child really warping a persons world view in a strong way.

On the other hand, I wonder how many privacy advocates have never experienced anything awful in that sense.

I'm on the privacy side myself and it's true child touchers are just hearsay for me. I know they exist, I know it happens, but it's not generally at the forefront of my mind when thinking about much of anything really. And I really wonder what I'd think if everytime I thought about policy I also had poor Timmy's story echoing away for all eternity in my head.

And then I wonder for the motivations of the people for whom child touchers are hearsay but are really opposed to privacy. Their motives must include things like drug dealers, terrorists, a belief in their own clean slate, money. It's pretty interesting to think about what goes on behind the scenes of any argument that gains popular traction.

[pgeorgi]

I heard several survivors that were appalled of the "Think of the children" approach because it is too often used to push an agenda that doesn't help children at all.

For example, internet blocking of child abuse media (hot topic in Germany a couple of years ago) doesn't help children (who aren't abused 'over the internet' but in real life) because it routes resources away from public education on the matter (such as encouraging victims to speak up), social and health support (so victims that spoke up don't fall into a void) and regular police work (so that the perpetrator gets busted).

I guess child abuse on the internet is a popular topic with policy makers because "protecting children" is an easy way to score points in public and "on the internet" hides the fact that this abuse happens somewhere - and closer to any single person than they may be comfortable with. "internet" became a code word for "somewhere else".

That's a great platform to win an election.

Now, pick any company with > 10000 employees. Just by running the numbers it likely employs a child abuser. You work for such a company? It's likely that one of your coworkers, maybe even somebody you deal with every day, is a child abuser.

That's not a great platform to win an election.

[tedks]

> I wonder how many of the people on that think of the children side were either affected as kids, had children who had some awful experience, or are of close relation to someone who was or had kids who did. Because I could easily see something like an awful event happening to a child really warping a persons world view in a strong way.

I know more than a few people who were abused as children, but none of them have become think-of-the-children anti-privacy advocates. It's probable that it's a selection effect, since the prior for my knowing someone who disagrees with my politics so deeply well enough to know their abuse history is low. But at the same time, I'd expect to run into at least one person by now.

I think that most people with first-hand experience around child abuse are probably not anti-privacy advocates. At that level it becomes clear that the real problems are social conventions that adults can exploit (family and professional relationships with defined subordinate roles for children), enabling them to commit abuse. Having secure communications doesn't help with this much. In fact, if a child thought they could tell someone about abuse without their abuser knowing, it might be helpful.

I think that the anti-privacy activists are actually people who are rather far away from the societal evils they claim to oppose privacy to protect against. The people who have opinions about the NSA reading email or encrypted messaging tend not to be personally affected by social instability from terrorism, or the drug war, just by basic socioeconomics. Child molestation is probably a similar, far-off evil. It's enough for these people that these systems could hide evildoing, and because of that they clearly need to be compromised so that the state and legitimate community forces can hunt evildoers. I think the real motive is simply a naive belief in the goodwill of those community forces.

This in turn can be explained by a naive moral system, where it is moral to obey rules. This is the 3rd or 4th level of the Kohlberg moral development scale, and the level Kohlberg conjectured most people remain at during their lives. Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_o...

[bentcorner]

> And then I wonder for the motivations of the people for whom child touchers are hearsay but are really opposed to privacy. Their motives must include things like drug dealers, terrorists, a belief in their own clean slate, money. It's pretty interesting to think about what goes on behind the scenes of any argument that gains popular traction.

If I had an ulterior motive for arguing against a particular technology, spinning it as "think of the kids" would be something easy and safe to do. Anybody arguing against you could be painted as horrible horrible people who don't think of the kids.

[task_queue]

We can look at when, how and by whom the "think of the children" argument is trotted out to get your answer.