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Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

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Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#51

Post by lalaland1125 »

Tepix wrote: post #21
wolco wrote: post #19

This makes me think. Any data in a certain form could be used to generate an image. What if someone added data in a form that only later after a viewer appeared will it reveal this type of content. This would make any system with that data immediately illegal. Looking down the road what it was encoded in dna would it be illegal for someone to read another person's dna? If someone had a tattoo on there face of one of…

Remember that every imaginable image is also somewhere in the digits of pi. You "just" have to find it. Does that make the number pi illegal? I guess not. Does it make programs illegal that can calculate those digits of pi? Doesn't sound reasonable, does it?

This analogy to "storing information" in the digits in pi is simply incorrect. The reason why it's incorrect is that in order to "store information", your access key must by definition be smaller than the data you are storing. This is not the case for "hiding" things in the digits of pi. In general, the index offset needed to find something will have more bits than the target information. This is clearly not the case for storing information in a blockchain as you only need a small index to find the transaction.

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#52

Post by kbenson »

Tepix wrote: post #25
blincoln wrote: post #5

Possession of this type of image is a federal crime in the US.[1] When I took a digital forensics course about five years ago, we were told that if we ever discovered any on a system we were investigating, it needed to be reported to the FBI immediately or we could also be charged. If someone does this in a way that goes unnoticed, and it's discovered after long enough that rolling back is impractical, does that effe…

Related: What's the smallest piece of data that qualifies? Can a 16x16 image be illegal? What about a 64x64 image? What's the situation like if you have two chunks of data (perhaps at two separate locations on the blockchain) and only if you XOR them you get the illegal image?

What if we took different size sliding windows, and moved them across a large dataset, and fed the resulting chunks to a pornographic image detector to look for what is likely a completely random set of data that can be re-interpreted as pornographic (or more importantly, illegal in some manner)? How much does creation matter compared to existence, compared to use? Does a formation of clouds or rocks that looks a certain way also fall under this category?

With regard to illegal child pornography, I'm sure it has a lot to do with the wording of the law, but I think the intersection of how laws are defined and how they may conflict with the natural world (including randomness) is itself interesting.

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#53

Post by bilbo0s »

jMyles wrote: post #42
giornogiovanna wrote: post #8

> He said there was "ongoing research" to find ways to remove such content from block chains but these were "not yet mature". Either you have centralization, which nobody wants, or you have a bot that everyone agrees on to censor things, and people will will always find ways around bots. Are there really any other alternatives?

One possible alternative, with its own drawbacks, is no censorship at all.

Problem is, that alternative leads to you being thrown in prison if they find child abuse images encoded in a block chain that you have on a storage device in your possession. Understand, the law is the law. Whether or not you knew the images were encoded in that chain is irrelevant to the Feds. (At least in the US.)

(Actually, now that I think about it, I guess everyone would say they didn't know the images were there if they were caught in that situation. So I guess that's probably why the Feds just arrest you and charge you with child abuse. That would suck. Just don't use any block chain where that would be possible. Not worth it.)

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#54

Post by shiado »

Given any arbitrary stored sequence of bytes, one can always devise an algorithm which converts those bytes into other meaningful sequences of bytes. This is interesting because it would appear that the liability of possessing CP on the blockchain is dependent on the ease of converting those bytes into a meaningful sequences of bytes of an image file, but where does it stop? Do the bytes have to be a raw sequence of exact image bytes stored contiguously? Does simply flipping the bits make the byte sequence lose enough 'meaning' to get rid of liability? If one requires the bytes alone to have the 'meaning', then what about image compression and the associated algorithms? There are some heavy-duty thought experiments with this type of problem that the courts are probably ill-equipped to address.

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#55

Post by 21 »

jMyles wrote: post #45
21 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the easiest for the government to destroy blockchain is to just declare it illegal.

Do you seriously think that will be effective? Have you never heard of marijuana?

Well, in that case embedding child porn on it will not help either, would it? I was just highlighting the massive fallacy of parent.

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#56

Post by bilbo0s »

jasode wrote: post #6

The inevitability of "defacing" the blockchain was discussed back in May 2017 as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14434786 Global public blockchains are too tempting a target for that type of thing. It will interesting to see how this plays out and whether government agencies respond (or ignore it).

> It will interesting to see how this plays out and whether government agencies respond (or ignore it)...*

I don't think I'd count on government agencies ignoring child abuse images.

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#57

Post by wmf »

neuralzen wrote: post #39
mayniac wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest solution is probably just limiting how much data you can add to the ledger. There's no real reason why people need to add more than 10kb of information to a transaction. Cryptocurrencies aren't meant to be image hosting platforms anyway.

That isn't exactly true, the whole reason IPFS and Filecoin exists is to supply this service.

Filecoin doesn't store data on the blockchain, only metadata; one side effect of that decision is that nodes won't get tricked into downloading illegal data.

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#58

Post by jMyles »

21 wrote: post #55
jMyles wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously think that will be effective? Have you never heard of marijuana?

Well, in that case embedding child porn on it will not help either, would it? I was just highlighting the massive fallacy of parent.

I think that attempting to pretextually take action based on some threat (and let's be honest, "think of the children" is one of the primary vectors for this) is more likely to curry political favor (and provide political cover) than mere censorship.

So yes, I think that embedding illicit material is a more likely tactic than prohibition. The latter - because it will be such a colossal failure - will only serve to show the state's inability to control the internet, and that's exactly what the state is trying to hide right now.

Re: Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

#60

Post by kbenson »

giornogiovanna wrote: post #49
anotheryou wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking your last step further: Is any half illegal? Or only the one created at a later date? Reminds me of the library of babel https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?wvlbf.j,qkfjo,wpyrd...

Well either half is utterly meaningless without the other, and could actually be arbitrary, right? So you'd have to have them both together for it to be illegal.

What about an encrypted image? The encrypted data is meaningless without the key, so do they have to be put together for it to be illegal?

I imagine for someone that doesn't know what's in the file, and doesn't have the the key, it's likely not illegal? For someone that doesn't know what's in the file and does have the key, it probably is, since I think it's about possession, and likely the same for those that know what it is and have they key. But for people that do know what it is and don't have the key? What about that? What about if they don't have the key, but know how to easily get it if they want?

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