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April 9, 2005

Microsoft versus child pornography

Microsoft and the RCMP are teaming up to fight child pornography. Their first tool seems to be a data mining system that lets law enforcement do a better job with the data they already have. That seems fine, but here's what MS claims to be working on:

CETS is just one of several initiatives at Microsoft aimed at stemming child pornography and promoting online safety for children. Child-protection experts at Microsoft are working with the Windows development team on potential ways of building protective mechanisms directly into the platform. "There is a group within the Windows team that is looking at these issues and making proposals," Cranton says.

See also here:

t's unclear just how far along Microsoft has gotten with the idea, but Hemanshu Nigam, a Microsoft lawyer whose background includes investigating child pornography at the Department of Justice, has begun working directly with the Windows development group to explore what's possible. "They're looking at, 'What can we do to not have our products used for child exploitation?'" says LaMagna.

Just how would Windows distinguish between an innocent image of a 7-year-old taken by a loving parent and something that crosses the boundary into child pornography? One clue may be that child-porn consumers seldom store a single image. "They're collectors," LaMagna says. "There are patterns that can be looked at."

Yeah, that's just what I want Windows to do, grovel through my files looking to see if I'm a child pornographer. Do I even have to go into all the ways that this could go wrong?

Posted by ekr at April 9, 2005 7:54 AM | Filed under:

Comments

Posted by: Bob McGrew at April 9, 2005 12:31 PM