[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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