Proposed Garda internet filtering

oldmantime

I don't know if this has been posted anywhere yet but the gardaí want to be able to unilaterally block websites without judicial oversight, it's starting with "child pornography" websites http://www.digitalrights.ie/2011/03/29/garda-plans-to-introduce-web-blocking-in-ireland/

dub45

Surely its also quite intimidating for the Gardai to write directly to a company like that?

Nollog

I bet they want to limit families to 1 child each too.

Mike 1972

Even if it was just limited to child pornography surely blocking sites in this manner would be rather counter productive in that it would simply prompt those using such sites to move to even more secure ways of accessing and distributing such material online making it more difficult to detect and identify these individuals

jay93

I think it would be better if they found out where the sites where hosted and take them down from the source and catch the criminals who set up these sites..

Blocking the site's in Ireland won't do much as people from other countries can still access the sites so its pretty pointless.??

IMO taking the website off the internet all together would be a better solution..
As long as no legit sites are blocked i don't really mind..
It states in the letter that the IP address of the user will be recorded and they will investigate..but what about people using mobile broadband
a few tousand people can have the same IP at a given time so how do they find the one person in the middle of all that pile that may be accessing these sick sites?

CiaranC

Thats a great idea except for one flaw.

Child pornography is not really distributed by websites.

jor el

O2 have been actively and randomly blocking websites for over a year now, and it does nothing. Lots of legitimate websites, including pix.ie, were blocked at various times. The block is easy to get around too. Burying our heads in the sand is not going to do anything to stop Internet kiddie porn either.

What CiaranC said is true too. Blocking websites is pointless, when the majority of highly illegal Internet activity (like child porn) is not done through websites.

amacachi

Never mind the economy, should this be enacted I'd support a revolution.

jay93

I've heard of that alright that O2 have been blocking a good lot of legit sites for a while now most people have got around it by changing their DNS settings.

Ah right i was under the impression that they were done through websites
so it would be pretty hard to catch these people then?
If this is the case then i think the Garda are going to be wasting their time doing this but i'm actually hoping that the people involved in these schemes are caught as its a terrible way to abuse technology and the internet

Makes me sick to think that people actually do this to kids its just disguisting

Shield

jay93 wrote: »

Makes me sick to think that people actually do this to kids its just disguisting

Forget your stereotypical old man in a trenchcoat too, crimes of this nature are committed by teenage minors, single men, single women, married couples, professionals, people in positions of trust, family members... the list is just endless.

The owner of this site will verify that I'm a police officer, and I'm going to stick my neck out and say that filtering will achieve absolutely nothing.

No offence to members of AGS, but you're at least 10 years behind the times in your thinking and strategies on this one.

amacachi

psni wrote: »

No offence to members of AGS, but you're at least 10 years behind the times in your thinking and strategies on this one.

Just on this one?

Shield

amacachi wrote: »

Just on this one?

Heh. I don't get to see their policing plan, so I can't comment on things I haven't had sight of.

murphthesmurf

psni wrote: »

Forget your stereotypical old man in a trenchcoat too, crimes of this nature are committed by teenage minors, single men, single women, married couples, professionals, people in positions of trust, family members... the list is just endless.QUOTE]

True, it used to be easy to spot peadophiles as they used to wear a priests outfit, but these days it could be literally anyone.
A tv show in America set out to trap peadophiles by using an actress to pretend to be a 13yr old girl. She did actually look 13 too. The people that came to meat her ranged from a 21yr old marine, to a 45yr old doctor. People from all walks of life, most of whom you'd never believe be capable of this kind of evil.
Back on topic, blocking these sites is completely the wrong way to go about it. Legally its difficult but, monitoring them and using them to trap people would be much more effective. Leave them running then catch every single Irish person who visits them. If you block them you drive it deaper underground. These people will find other, better, more difficult to track ways of getting what they want.

jay93

psni wrote: »

Forget your stereotypical old man in a trenchcoat too, crimes of this nature are committed by teenage minors, single men, single women, married couples, professionals, people in positions of trust, family members... the list is just endless

I know what you mean alright i don't just see it as it's always older men that are involved in this,alot of people of all ages do be involved in this activity as the stories on the news in recent years has shown this.

What has this world come to some seriously evil people around
wouldn't know who to trust anymore to be honest.

dub45

jay93 wrote: »

I know what you mean alright i don't just see it as it's always older men that are involved in this,alot of people of all ages do be involved in this activity as the stories on the news in recent years has shown this.

What has this world come to some seriously evil people around
wouldn't know who to trust anymore to be honest.

Older men were young once (and a lot hornier then I presume?).


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0317/1224292406514.html

From the English Indo report:

Among those arrested were schoolteachers, taxi drivers, IT consultants and scoutmasters.

Thirty-three of the 121 offenders arrested in Britain have been convicted. Their ages range from 17 to 82.

Knasher

In the countries that implement these types of plans your can only draw two conclusions about their politicians. Either they are ignorant of the obvious issues with this sort of filtering and negligent for making decisions without understanding. Or they are callous, fully understanding the harm they are actually doing to the people who are trying to combat child pornography and just want to be seen to do something for political gain.

I wish I could say I have more faith in our lot, but the very best I can hope for is that they don't have the money to implement such a poorly thought out plan.

ElectroJazz

murphthesmurf wrote: »

The people that came to meat her

was that supposed to be a pun?

dub45

Knasher wrote: »

In the countries that implement these types of plans your can only draw two conclusions about their politicians. Either they are ignorant of the obvious issues with this sort of filtering and negligent for making decisions without understanding. Or they are callous, fully understanding the harm they are actually doing to the people who are trying to combat child pornography and just want to be seen to do something for political gain.

I wish I could say I have more faith in our lot, but the very best I can hope for is that they don't have the money to implement such a poorly thought out plan.

Its the gardai that are doing this.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51018185/Garda-Letter-to-ISPs-Requesting-Blocking

murphthesmurf

ElectroJazz wrote: »

was that supposed to be a pun?

IRCA

murphthesmurf wrote: »

This issue has now been referred to the Data Protection Commissioner for his adjudicaiton on whether or not this approach is indeed legal.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/30/irish_police/

tazzzZ

funny thing about that official garda letter is that its writen by a d/supt who you can guarentee has little or no education in this sort of thing. tbh the letter reads like some1 who doesnt know wat they are talking about.

to look at this i would think they dont have a clue wat to do but they cant be seen to be doing nothing and this is their solution.

murphthesmurf

IRCA wrote: »

This issue has now been referred to the Data Protection Commissioner for his adjudicaiton on whether or not this approach is indeed legal.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/30/irish_police/

I'm not surprised, legally these things are extremely difficult and complex. they have to make these water tight, or they'll end up with offenders convictions being quashed or thrown out of court. From what I've seen so far, this is about as water tight as the Titanic shortly after it came to rest at the bottom of the ocean.
Blocking sites doesn't stop people from wanting to get hold of this stuff, they'll just get hold of it some other way. There is most likely a simple way around it too, by using a VPN like this http://www.giganews.com/vyprvpn/ or similar, which are freely available for a monthly subscription. It took me 30 seconds to find that, how long will it take a determined paedophile and his perverse friends.
We need to catch them and put them away, not just make it more frustrating for them, and drive them to use better more difficult to detect technology. Any pervert who has half a brain is prob using something similar to above already, and would not just openly search for things in google. The FBI in America are constantly finding these sights, they get the ip address's of the users and arrest them, and destribute the details of foreigners accessing them to the police in their own country. They shut 1 down, another starts up.

Sparks

psni wrote: »

Forget your stereotypical old man in a trenchcoat too, crimes of this nature are committed by teenage minors, single men, single women, married couples, professionals, people in positions of trust, family members... the list is just endless.
<snip>
No offence to members of AGS, but you're at least 10 years behind the times in your thinking and strategies on this one.

The really odd thing about it is that that point about stereotypes is the very very first thing they drill into your head on day one of the most basic introductory courses on child safety in sport. Using case studies. Which are pretty, well, unpleasant (don't plan on a good nights sleep after one of those courses if you have any empathy). And the sheer inventiveness these.... people bring to getting away with this sort of crime is mindboggling.

So why the AGS are taking this approach to the problem is really rather hard to understand. It's basicly "See no evil".

Cathaoirleach

vibe666

you've had your internet access blocked for posting pixelated images of very small text that people can't read? :eek:

:pac:

on a more serious note, you can see the people trying to pass this bill/law/whatever using the "well if you don't like it then YOU must be a pervert" defence, but it's very hard to defend against that without it looking like that's what you are.

the fingers in the ears approach never solves anything. if they REALLY want to do something about it then they should be properly educating kids (and more importantly parents) to the dangers online and doing more to actively seek out both the people who produce the content and the people who seek it out online.

what this needs to deal with it is big investments in technology & training, honeytrap sites, sting operations, undercover work and good old fashioned kicking in doors and seizing equipment followed by VERY harsh sentences.

the only way to reduce any (whatever it is) illegal activity is to make it more and more likely people will get caught doing it AND make sure the punishments are harsh enough to make them think twice about it in the first place.

Dermot Illogical

psni wrote: »

Forget your stereotypical old man in a trenchcoat too, crimes of this nature are committed by teenage minors, single men, single women, married couples, professionals, people in positions of trust, family members... the list is just endless.

The owner of this site will verify that I'm a police officer, and I'm going to stick my neck out and say that filtering will achieve absolutely nothing.

No offence to members of AGS, but you're at least 10 years behind the times in your thinking and strategies on this one.

+1 to all of the above, including occupation.
If anything a policy like this would be counter-productive.

I was waiting on someone to post those stupid images from the "repost thread" :rolleyes:

I would fully support the gardai investigating anyone who has clicked on these websites more than once.
If you have nothing to hide you can explain yourself and allow your PC to be examined.
Await flaming from the PC brigade.

Johnmb

RVP 11 wrote: »

I was waiting on someone to post those stupid images from the "repost thread" :rolleyes:

I would fully support the gardai investigating anyone who has clicked on these websites more than once.
If you have nothing to hide you can explain yourself and allow your PC to be examined.
Await flaming from the PC brigade.

No, you'll just be flamed by the "people who aren't idiots" brigade. If this filtering is allowed, anyone who thinks it will actually achieve anything is an idiot, all they have to do is look to what has been done in other countries. Any anyone who thinks such action will only be applied to sites displaying child porn is incredibly naive to say the least. (Seriously, are there actually any sites dedicated to child porn? I doubt it tbh, that kind of stuff was driven underground pretty early on)

Johnmb

Johnmb wrote: »

No, you'll just be flamed by the "people who aren't idiots" brigade. If this filtering is allowed, anyone who thinks it will actually achieve anything is an idiot, all they have to do is look to what has been done in other countries. Any anyone who thinks such action will only be applied to sites displaying child porn is incredibly naive to say the least. (Seriously, are there actually any sites dedicated to child porn? I doubt it tbh, that kind of stuff was driven underground pretty early on)

People who aren't idiots brigade.....are you a member or a tool?:pac:

Johnmb

RVP 11 wrote: »

People who aren't idiots brigade.....are you a member or a tool?:pac:

Safe to say, you don't seem to be a member.....

jor el

Stop with the petty insults.

Johnmb

Well, in fairness my initial post's reference to "idiots" was aimed at the bright sparks who came up with this idea, not a poster. And I think that reference is a valid description, not an insult. They are starting years after other countries have tried to solve the problem, but instead of starting from the current level (i.e. learning from what those other countries have done), they are starting from scratch, and repeating the same mistakes needlessly. Not only is that a waste of time and money, but it protects the people who are involved in child porn. The Gardai are taking a course of action that will actually make it easier and safer for people so inclined to get involved in child porn. That is a disgrace. There is a reason such actions have been deemed failures in other countries, that reason is that those actions don't achieve anything. They don't catch those people, and they don't stop those people. So the Gardai are helping to protect those people by wasting resources on things that won't catch or stop them. I'd be hard pushed to come up with a better example of actions that would satisfy the definition of idiot than that.

vibe666

if china can't stop it's citizens getting round "the great firewall", i very much doubt that the garda can implement anything that is going to stop perverts from accessing dodgy websites.

as has already been said, all its going to do is push them further underground and make them harder to catch.

it would be a much more effective solution to keep net access open and use the money saved to improve the tools and resources used to catch them in the act, so that the first they know if it is when they get their front door kicked in.

dub45

I realise this is not directly related to the thread but I do think it needs airing.

There is far far too much information being held by companies in god only knows what circumstances. It is only a question of when rather than if data is stolen.
In the last couple of days alone there have been two very serious data breeches.

I was appalled recently to discover that there are now over 4,000 firms in Ireland in the direct debit system. Each of these firms is allowed hold bank information etc. Can you imagine how many of these firms are actually secure?
I doubt very much if there is a security audit as part of being admitted to the direct debit system. How many companies are holding credit card details in non secure circumstances.

There used to be a link on the bbc website to the story of a man who lost everything because he bought a book on line and his cc details were used to buy child porn.

TJM

For those of you who are concerned by these proposals - please take a minute or two to contact the Minister for Justice, Minister for Communications and your local TDs to let them know why this is flawed and will not in fact protect children.

Contact details at the bottom of this post:
http://www.digitalrights.ie/2011/03/29/garda-plans-to-introduce-web-blocking-in-ireland/

and a sample letter / email is here - feel free to cut & paste or modify:
http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2011/03/29/garda-siochana-seek-implement-website-blocking-legislation-oversight/

Disclosure: I am the chairman of Digital Rights Ireland