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Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

bbc.com

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Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#161

Post by vasco »

wat10000 wrote: post #57
Onavo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people on hacker News talk about requiring cops to do traditional police work instead of doing wide ranging trawls using technology, this is exactly what they meant. I hope you don't complain when the future you want becomes reality and the three letter agencies come knocking down your door just because you happened to be in the same building as a crime in progress and the machine learning algorithms determined…

The grim meathook future of ubiquitous surveillance is coming regardless. At the very least we could get some proper crime solving out of it along the way.

That's probably the worst attitude one could have about this topic in the whole space of possible opinions there is.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#162

Post by nprateem »

Aurornis wrote: post #30

Am I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living? > "So we narrowed it down to [this] one address… and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence… information on schools," says Squire. > The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender. There’s a…

They couldn't ID the child initially.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#163

Post by tqi »

Aurornis wrote: post #59
1024core wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facial recognition is very powerful these days. My friend took a photo of his kid at the top of Twin Peaks in SF, with the city in the background. Unfortunately, due to the angle, you could barely see the eyes and a portion of the nose of the kid. Android was still able to tag the kid. I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here. It is obvious that Squire and colleagues are working for the Law Enforcement. If F…

> I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here This story was from more than a decade ago. Facebook had facial recognition after that, but they deleted it all in response to public outcry. It’s sad to see HN now getting angry at Facebook for not doing facial recognition. > I hope when Zuck is lying on his death bed, he gets to think about these choices that he has made. Are we supposed to be angry at Zuckerberg…

> Or is everyone just determined to be angry regardless of what they do?

People decide who they think are the good guys and who they think are the bad guys first, then view subsequent events through that lens.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#164

Post by somenameforme »

ipaddr wrote: post #124
Ancapistani wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hav heard this many times, but never found a single example - and I’ve looked. Everyone I’ve researched on the registry richly deserved it. I challenge you and anyone else reading this to find an example of someone who is on the sex offender registry due to public urination.

https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/201...

I'm not sure that's what you meant to link to. The description there is beyond lurid, and that guy only ended up on a registry after a lot of shenanigans.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#165

Post by vasco »

jacquesm wrote: post #102

So, I had a friend. Had because he's dead. He did this work for a decade and a half and then couldn't deal with it anymore. In that time he put countless assholes behind bars. At some point he stopped responding to my emails so I called the unit and they were absolutely devastated, this guy was the backbone of their operation, the one with by far the most computer experience of all of them. RIP Ronald. It is very har…

That last bit is not really how it works. I've been in a small company that law enforcement would routinely reach out to for help with solving crimes because they thought we'd have relevant data.

99% of requests are wild goose chases based on nothing. Like literally dumb requests that are not only irrelevant, the request wouldn't even get past that cops boss, much less a judge. But a cop can just ask whatever they want regardless of merit or relevance and it's up to you to say yes or no.

In those years we received two requests with warrants that made more sense but when I see "company denied to help" I understand why. Most cases it's a random cop fishing for private info that has nothing to do with anything. And when it's true, just get a warrant then.

Otherwise you're more likely to be jeopardizing innocent people's data than actually helping anyone.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#166

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

Another example of tiny details being used to catch sex offenders is this story about marks on people's hands: https://www.wired.com/story/sue-black-forensics-hand-marking... / https://archive.is/89vOJ

It turns out that, even if all you can see is the assailant's hands, that may be enough to identify them.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#167

Post by tqi »

gnarlouse wrote: post #133

On the one hand, this is a beautiful (but depressing) story about humans standing up for each other. On the other hand, this is clearly propaganda from the BBC to push police state functionality on the UK population by pre-justifying it. "See what happens? Never mind the part about it taking six years. Let us see everything in your fucking lives, you twats."

Plus a chance to dunk on their biggest competitor for ad revenue and clicks (Facebook)

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#168

Post by liamwire »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #160
furyofantares wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever looked at one of the registries? The ones I've seen have had details about the offense(s).

We don't have public ones here in Australia, so no I've never looked at one. Having details would make it harder to play down the offenses. But only if someone bothers to check.

Queensland allows residents to see the details of offenders in our local area, but you need to provide extensive ID to do so, and leaking that information is itself a crime. Daniel's Law was introduced in 2025 so this is pretty recent.

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#169

Post by [deleted] »

vasco wrote: post #155
noufalibrahim wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Damaged parents are often the kinds of people who are taken advantage of by sex offenders. I think it requires a social fix of some kind.

However damaged someone is they have a duty of care to their children. There's someone else with a blame in the story but to excuse this is very wrong.

[deleted]

Re: Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

#170

Post by meowface »

nebezb wrote: post #20

I’ve spent just a teeny bit of time helping international ICE investigators (not that one; internet child exploitation) postpone PTSD with technology. It seems like after two years of their job, they’re going to have a mental break. So postponing is all you can really do. It’s disheartening how underfunded these agencies are compared to, what feels like at least, the severity of the crimes they’re up against. These f…

AI for helping mitigate PTSD, or helping with the investigations?

Because the latter basically entails helping create a surveillance state. Which in theory could be an acceptable trade-off, but it seems disingenuous to say "AI companies have no financial incentives here" when the big issue is that AI companies would actually be helping to establish powerful dragnet surveillance capabilities. There would need to be a strong democratic process around this.

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