Policing the dark net

[Lysander]

Just saw something on the BBC about MS and Google trying to block all child porn images [which is impossible] and they are talking about policing the dark web.

Now, surely this is just rherotic and they will forever be chasing their own tail. It's bad enough trying to police the surface web, and they want to police the 'dark web' as well? This woman was saying, "well, it's really important that the engineers [engineers?] do their very best to stop this and police the dark web".

Can't imagine anything effective coming of this whatsoever. Just like it's impossible to effectively police and/wipe out the criminal underground in the real world, the same is true of the virtual work. Unless anyone disagrees?

 

[Lysander]

Porn is a more accurate term because it covers non-abuse cases such as where kids have taken videos of themselves etc, which seems to be all too common these days.

Indeed. "Child abuse" is a more socially acceptable term than "child porn" because it's more vague and additionally points the blame away from purely the user but to the creator as a third party.

 

[Lysander]

They're going to block about 100,000 terms [100,000?] from Google. Seriously though, what idiot types in "child abuse images" in Google in order to get their kicks?

Mind you, it's probably the curious and the newbies they're more likely to snare. Pete Townshend was hardly an IT wizard.

 

[Lysander]

Not so long ago Google were telling us that it was impossible for them to remove child abuse images from their searches, amazing what CEOs will tolerate if it costs them a few bucks to fix.

Isn't this just about giving people the idea that something is being done? This is all down to pressure from Cameron, and I'm sure he's doing it just to win public favour. I'm sure most people at MS and Google know that this won't make any big long-term difference whatsoever.

 

[Lysander]

Is TOR not funded and backed by many governments as they use it for their own confidentiality?

Thought that was the whole reason why it would never be compromised. Why would the security forces block their own tooling?

Is there a TOR splinter program? I always thought it was possible for the governments to compromise it because it was initially built by them. Unless there are TOR spin-offs isn't it like using a police channel to organise a robbery?

 

[Lysander]

If that was the case then every un-wanted dark web site would be shut down would it not?

Are all of them accessible through TOR only?