[Cryptography] Encryption and anonymity as top tools for images of child sexual abuse

Peter Fairbrother peter at tsto.co.uk
Tue Oct 1 11:41:49 EDT 2019


On 30/09/2019 21:44, Henry Baker wrote:
> At 12:28 AM 9/30/2019, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
[...]
>> [1] there are of course also the people with different agendas, such as policemen and other workers in the child-abuse field I wouldn't leave a child with; and peepers from the Government and elsewhere who (ab)use the child abuse issue to try to defeat encryption.
> 
> I'm sorry if I sound cynical, but perhaps I've lived too long and seen too much.
> 
> To a first approximation, politicians use "child pornography" as a boogey man to scare unsophisticated voters into supporting universal surveillance ("no place to hide"), aka "back-doored encryption".

I think I said that?

> Followers of Russ Roberts's excellent Econtalk podcast will quickly recognize the "Baptist & Bootlegger" unholy alliance going on here.  The Baptists wanted Prohibition, because they didn't want anyone to drink alcohol for religious reasons, while the bootleggers wanted Prohibition, because it expanded the market and drove up the prices for bootlegged whiskey.  Those against child pornography (most of us) team up with the bootleggers -- NSA/CIA/FBI/Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc. -- who want a modern Panopticon with no "ungoverned spaces" -- not even the spaces between our ears!


I found that a surprisingly large proportion of those who work in the 
anti-child-pornography field are sexually interested in children. It 
seems to attract them.

They come in two main types - the first are straightforward abusers who 
want to make it easier and/or safer for them to abuse children, to be 
inside the tent looking out.

The second type are those who think everybody else is a secret or 
potential abuser, in their thoughts if not yet in reality; because after 
all other people must really be like them, with a desire to abuse 
children; who tell themselves that they are really working to prevent 
abuse, and they would never ever give way to temptation ...

I am not sure which is worse.


Anyway, those are perhaps today's criminal bootleggers, and the 
NSA/CIA/FBI/Google/Facebook are more like the Baptists.

The analogy is not exact - when are they ever? - because the populus 
generally thought drinking alcohol was ok, whereas they generally think 
child abuse is not ok.



Peter Fairbrother



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