ISPs are pressed to become child porn cops

Exactly, and the real child porn mongers out there will just find ways around it. I mean, all the child porn could be just recoded, resampled, resized, etc. and the hash values will change.  Child porn hosting servers could automate that to take place daily so there would be no way for them to keep up. 

I think this software will catch some of the more idiotic child porn creeps early on but it won't affect the people that are distributing it (they are all overseas and therefore not subject to US law) or the more savvy/paranoid users.

Plus the fact todays sex offender laws still neesd to be reform. If you were caught urinating in public in California your still have to register as a sex offender. So now every single person who searches porn can potentiall have to register as a sex offender.

I remember a couple years back when they took a woman to court for downloading songs... turned out she had a wireless Router the neighbor was downloading

this is Dangerous 

The mathematical probability of two different files having the same hash value is around 1 out of 34 billion, billion, billion, billion. In other words, it is more than a billion times more likely for two individual people to have the same fingerprints.

Issue is, merely changing the color of one pixel of an image would remove it from the list.

What I'm really not happy about is the "trick" of tellling my computer to transmit a unencrypted & uncompressed version of my file. If I am bothering to encrypt something, it is probably of a real privacy concern (Not always criminal) to me. Plus, I spent the money for the encryption software which has been rendered useless by my ISP? -I'm not happy. 

Ever heard of Birthday Paradox? It is about the probability that two people in a group of 23 have the same birthday. The chance is >50%. In of group of 57 is ~99%. The chance of a specific file having an exact hash duplicate is indeed low. The probability of of two files having the same hash is close to 1. I would imagine there would be more then 10K files on that forbidden list. The chances of having a packet with the same hash as one of those is still small, but higher than you predicted. Especially considering the number of packets transferred on daily bases.

On the encryption issue: I completely agree, if the ISP can do that legally, it is just a step from doing more with this information, once a president is established. Also if that software is made readily available, the number of successful hacks would undoubtedly increase. Lets not make it easier for people to get at our information.

Yes, false positives.  

In medical transcription we have to look things up online several times a day.  We cannot look up anything that has to do with mammary glands, genital organs, sex because the filter at the hospital will block our access.  Our searches have to do with medicine, health care and we are blocked. 

In times before blocking, if you did look up some of those things, you were likely to call up some porn sites along the way.  

The perverts who produce teen and child porn should be prosecuted to the extent of the law.  But to screen all of our emails and searches is invasion of privacy.  

This is just opening a can of worms that  will lead to other things that will invade more of our privacy.  What's next?  Can't we see that government will get us used to this, then spring something else on us.  It is truly amazing to me the naivete of people about their governments and what they are capable of doing.  Does NY have an over-zealous attorney general who is possibly using this as a way of getting re-elected, or running for governor? Who in their right mind would condone child porn? Government has the means to prosecute in many other ways.  We must stand up and object!!

I agree we need more sex on the net, there is not enough. How dare they try to censor child porn. It's by far the best sex going sex sex I need more

Luce,

What is the birthday paradox percentage with two people?

I share the same birthday with my sister....exactly one year to the day.

CCdesign,

The probability is ~ 1/365.

This page have more

The most important thing is protecting the innocent. That doesn't just mean protecting children. The problem is, this system can result in innocent people going to jail just because two files, completely unrelated, can result in a indicator of that file being illegal (tagged as child porn). Like a guy said, my excel spreadsheet could result in me going to jail if it has a similar hashvalue to a known child porn file.

The system is flawed in its conception and is open to abuse. That, in itself, is grounds for it to be an unconstitutional abuse of power. Allowing this to be passed puts us one step closer to a police state. When we've sacrified our freedom for security, you can bet a lot more children are going to be hurt and exploited than they are now.

This is probably the greatest violation of the First Amendment I have ever seen. It may start with child porn, but with the tools in palce who can say when they start censoring other information. What will you do when they decide to censor the news, or things they consider, seditious.

Having such a naive and limited view of world affairs is far more dangerous than any number of exploited children. This system will only catch the surface data, that has been located and tagged by law enforcement. It will just make it go deeper underground, makign it harder for law enforcement to find more files. This will neither stop the exploitation of minors nor stem its proliferation. It will always exist, like the atomic bomb, it can never be unmade or fully erraticated.

Like it or not acts we have labeled as evil will always exist. It is foolish to believe that it could ever possibly change. Every person follows thier own path in life regardless of where it leads them. The only thing we can do about this problem is keep fighting it within the bounds of the law, as laid out by the Constitution. This means arresting offenders, indicting distributors, improving worldwide conditions, and educating our children and parents on how to protect themselves.

Just remember, when the state starts burning books, you'll be the type of person to blame for it.

Soon enough, you will get hackers who will obtain the lists of hash values, create non porn files with the same codes, and will send these spoof files to people unsolicited as a way to get even. 

The last thing I want to do is open an e-mail I thought was from a friend, get a warning that I was trying to access porn, and then have the Feds come to my house, take away all of my computers, rip them apart, trash my house, have all of my personal files read, and get blacklisted as some child porn creap, all because some hacker was mad that I pwned them on an online game. 

How about if parents take a little more responsibility for their minor children, and teach them what is right and what is wrong?  What is wrong with this idea?  I hate it that we are abolishing more and more of people's rights under the guise of protecting children--or whichever the vulnerable "group du jour" may be.  Children ought to be protected by their parents.   If you are not willing to parent, please do not breed.  Having children isn't a right--it's a humongous responsibility, and it is about time that humans in general got that idea through their thick skulls.

And that's my soapbox comment for the day.  *grr!!*

I  agree  with  what  Lkessler  says,  with  some  reservations.  Teaching  children  right  and  wrong  is  absolutely  necessary ...  but  it's not  a panacea solution  to  this  problem we are  discussing - how not to harm innocent people and how to tell right from wrong!   First,  our  public  schools  and  secular  universities  have  a  different  morality  than  most  Christians  do.  This  creates  a colossal  dissonance between   what  children  learn  at  school  and  what  they  learn  at  home.  Secondly, as I  pointed  above, some  cultures  are oversensitive, inculcating in  children  to  report  every  look  by  strangers,  no  matter  how  pure! This  creates  injustice  and  antagonisms!  People  were  given  eyes  by  God  to  look at  beauty! And  thirdly, some  parents  are  simply  uneducated so  extremely,  that  they  mistake  wrong  for  right,  harming  children  and  society!  So, while  we  definitely must teach  right  from  wrong,  we  must  agree  on  some  common moral  principles,  or we  will  cause  more  harm  than  good!

I have 5 children.  My children are already on the road to hating me because I am stricter than the parents of thier friends, both in where they go, who they go with and what they watch on both television and on the internet.  The government is not in charge of my children, I am.  I am the parent.  It is my job to keep them safe.  I have had government agencies that have asked me questions about my special needs child and the suspician that someone has messed with her.  This is not the case and the gods mercy on whoever might even think of touching her in that way, because I will have none.  Child pornography is indeed something that must be addressed, but deep packet is not the solution, it is a problem.  I am a private person.  I would feel violated if someone came in and rifled my panty drawer.  Going through my email, my files or watching where I go on the net and then making it possible to report me as a pediphile because I looked something up and mistakenly go to the wrong site or get a spam email?  It is violating my rights to privacy and can make it where innocent people that are not computer savvy get accused of things they are not doing.  Some 10 years ago is when I first got on the net.  I was in love.  Billions of sources of information at my fingertips at speeds (which to me at the time) were incredible.  Then I looked up Bambi.  I love the movie by Disney.  What I found made my eyebrows hit my hairline. How would an innocent like me know that such sites existed?  Thats when I started getting the spam email with innocent names like, "Work at home. Legitimate online business." ( I was wanting a job I could do at home so I could help with our money situation and be a mom.)  The things in these emails were incredible.  I quit looking at my email when my kids were up.  Barnyard luv and all sorts of things showed up under simple email subject lines.  YUCK!!!  I'm a woman, not a guy.  Some of it would have appealed to most men, but not to me.  What if this system had been in place then?  I got spam from a couple of child porn sites of which I reported to AOL.  With this kind of system in place, would I be pegged as a pediphile, the police at my door and my children taken away and given to someone that doesnt care and wouldn't protect them like I do?  The likelyhood is very high.  Don't give up your constitutional rights.  They were put in our basic government by very wise men that wanted us to have FREEDOM.

There you go, perfectly said.  There is nothing more heinous than the sexual exploitation of children.  I think whatever works to stop this horrible crime, is worth it.  Only those who are guilty should be worried, then again I also think this sort of crime should be punishable by death.  But that's me.

 I think whatever works to stop this horrible crime, is worth it. 

Thankfully there are enough people out there who grasp what the implications of this movement are and "whatever works" isn't going to happen. 

No, but I'm sure that's on the liberal agenda

As a matter of fact, gun manufacturers have lost suits that related to unlawful use of their products after a legal sale.  So this is just a bit more of the same.

Incremental loss of rights continues.

For one, bartenders selling alcohol are required to shut off the tap when they suspect the patron is becoming impaired.

Not saying is rignt just giving you an example

....maybe if the providers showed more responsibility for their "products",  and less focus for the bottom line, and maybe then the world would be a safer place for our children.

Maybe porn should just be REMOVED from the Internet.....PERIOD! But then someone would not be making money. How unfair is that???? How dare we look out for our children.

Yeah, I know guns don't kill people, the people with the guns are doing the killing. What a gun does is ONLY one thing.......KILL! Look, hunting for food is one thing, but hunting for sport?? It sickens me to see beautiful animals killed because someone likes the thrill of killing and have have the gall to call it a sport.

I agree that the internet is full of pornography and other offensive subjects, but what ever happened to PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY? Anyone ever heard of that? Why does ISP have to be responsible for what children can see or get involved in, when there are parents that PAY to have internet coming into their homes without supervising the use.

maybe then the world would be a safer place for our children.

Or maybe people should start raising THEIR children and not expecting everyone else to change simply for their benefit.

CCHUCK, If porn was removed from the internet, then the internet probably wouldn't exist in the way it does today.  It was porn that showed the world of the potential the internet had to market and make money.   If you don't like porn, don't view it, but what gives you the right to make that decision for everybody else?  I'm tired of my rights being slowly eroded all in the name of protecting children.   That is the role of parents, not the government.

CCHUCK, If porn was removed from the internet, then the internet probably wouldn't exist in the way it does today.  It was porn that showed the world of the potential the internet had to market and make money.   If you don't like porn, don't view it, but what gives you the right to make that decision for everybody else?  I'm tired of my rights being slowly eroded all in the name of protecting children.   That is the role of parents, not the government.

Or even worse, your medical records!  Always keep in mind that whenever we give government more power (new laws), it is the nature of government to expand the reach and authority of such well beyond the original intent, by continually amending or expanding upon semantic definitions within the statuatory text. 

The ability of this software to surrepticiously defeat encryption in such a clandestine manner is equivelent to breaking and entering without a warrant, probable cause, or exigent circumstance, into something you have secured with a padlock.   

Very well said

what you stick in a search engine is relatively private. what you choose to look at is private.....unless someone is tracking you or illegaly snooping on you. what about that concept do you fail to understand. yeah if you post something its out there for everyone to see. that doesn't mean it right for big brother to be spying on and tracking everything everyone looks at. people like you blow my mind.

magpie.  The worldwide telco network existed before the web, do you consider your telephone conversations to be not private also?   After all, like the internet, your telephone conversation with someone on another phone is still an electronic communication facilitated by a provider connected to a network.  Do you avoid telephone conversations with your doctor, lawyer, lover or stock broker because its not private?  We have strong laws governing the evesdropping on electronic communications, don't we?  Your use of the Postal System as a example truely illuminates your lack of understanding of the underlying principles here.  While true that the USPS has rules regarding what can and cannot pass through its infrastructure, they do not adopt a blanket policy of opening every piece of mail to inspect the contents, do they? 

nothing justifies intrusion on our freedoms. NOTHING. content getting blocked is not all that would happen. if they know what the content is they can block it before we get to it. people WILL start going to jail and chances are many will be innocent. then what comes next? they start tracking everyone in the name of national security? how can you not see that? i don't get it.

Barkeeps cut off an intoxicated patron because of the immediate threat to public safety such patron presents if he were to operate a motor vehicle AND the civil liabilty exposure the tavern faces if said intoxicated patron were to cause injury or death.    

Simple answer,  Money.  The way that I read this is that the software sold to the ISP allows it to check files/images/videos/etc against a "Master List" which remains the property of the software company.  Once the ISP has the software, the only way for the software company to make money is to charge for the use of it's "Master List".  For every file checked against the "Master List", or even for every file matched, the ISP will be charged a certain amount.  Can you say "False Positive"?

don't use the internet. don't turn on the tv. go use a public computer where porn is blocked. buy some software to block the porn for you. sounds to me like YOU had a problem with porn. not the internet or cable tv. you have a choice to click on the link. be a big boy.

This is everybody's problem

Uhhmmm....no, it's not.  It's a big issue that gets a lot of people hysterical about....people who are then perfectly willing to sacrifice everyone's freedoms just so they can feel better that "they" have done something...but that's about all it will accomplish.

the problem is not with what they plan to use it for fight now. the problem is with what they will use it for in the future. the government and corporations tend to take what is out there now and try to use it to suit their desires at a later time. so what is kiddie porn now, will become regular porn next, then anything considered obfectionable by one ore the other later. imagine when you can't get access to science or medical files, then eventually it could lead to religious materials, and art, all because someone decides it is wrong and gives the hash mark sequence to the isp's, who then tell the authorities that you are downloading kiddie porn and they come accuse you and that alone can get you fired from your job. since part of the program is to notify authorities about your downloading of the flagged files.

it is not the noble goal of getting child molesters that is the problem. it is how it will be used beyond that, that is the problem.it is the errors, and the potential use and abuse.

Perverts are innocent?

Thank you for responding as you did -You are proof of principle - Lets face facts these filters are more an attempt to stop all porn regardless of content. yes pervs are  innocent - they are not rapists, murderers or anything else the authorities want to blame them for. Just like most social drinkers aren't drunk drivers. Most men/women who enjoy adult sex are  innocent of any crime.

You make your point.  I was just making an observation. IMHO, I would have said innocent people instead of innocent perverts. To me pervert signifies immoral, that's all.