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Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain

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31–40 of 83 posts

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

#31
post #18

So, the easiest for the government to destroy blockchain is to supplant their own illegal images onto the blockchain themselves...

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

Is there a difference? Is it easier to pass laws specifically outlawing something, or to dismantle something with current laws?

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

#32

> 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?

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.

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

#33

So, the easiest for the government to destroy blockchain is to supplant their own illegal images onto the blockchain themselves...

If you still believe the big bad government is afraid of cryptocurrencies, you must have missed the last five years where governments generally adopted positions from just not caring to genuine curiousity to some mild action against the worst fraud at the extreme.

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

#35
post #25
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?

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...

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

#36
post #25
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?

There was an artist that had these very low resolution pieces of at that up close looked like just some colored blocks.... but at a distance looked suggestive / pornographic (just gonna use that word and not worry about exact definitions here).

It was interesting.... so is the image suggestive then, or isn't it?

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

#37
post #25
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?

[deleted]

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

#38
post #25
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?

Like most things, there isn't a magical number, and the notion that there should be (or that there is, but not codified) is a dream that tech people would have to imagine how the world works. They think they outsmart the law with various technicalities and hypothetical solutions - but in the end it comes down to a judge's interpretation, and no amount of "well actually"ing will get you around that.

So you might think "a 16x16 image can be illegal?! ridiculous!" - well tough, the law doesn't care about how many pixels the image contains, despite a hacker's incredulity.

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

#39
post #32

> 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?

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.

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

#40
post #21
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?

Humans often aren't reasonable, nor are we computers with the capacity to instantly recall large sets of data (such as whatever billion digits of pi would be necessary to encode an image.) And U.S. law agrees: it's possible for numbers to be illegal, the same way certain speech is illegal, and in fact the same way certain images are illegal.

It's mildly annoying on its surface but that dissipates when you stop and think about why things are the way they are.

(It's possible I misread your comment and we agree.)

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