Jeremy Hunt: Telcos must block teens from sexting each other The likes of Facebook must stop under-18s from sending each other sexually explicit pictures, UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt has told a Parliamentary committee. Giving evidence to the Health Select Committee about suicide prevention yesterday, Hunt demanded that social media companies must take responsibility for stopping …
"It's only a Freudian slip if it's inappropriate, which is not so in this case."
I think you'll find it's a Freudian slip if it's appropriate rather than inappropriate, or more precisely reveals what you really think. i.e. if people think he's a berk, and accidentally call him Jeremy Berk instead of Jeremy Hunt.
We don't know if that's what those who have accidentally mispronounced the H as a C really think, though. We can only speculate.
Perhaps he could even change his first name to Mike to make it more obvious.
How much money would be spent, for what benefit? This from a supposedly right-of-center government?
I do favor tough punishments in cases where someone does revenge or blackmail porn. Including when minors do it to other minors.
But that's not the same thing as putting up huge guardrails at great cost to protect people from their own stupidity, is it?
The people who will benefit are almost certainly offshore software houses who will charge billions for failing (like they did with the nhs system). The fact that many of the MPs best friends have shares in these companies is purely coincidental and doesnt need declaring to anyone... anymore than the thankyou christmas presents that just by coincidence include massively expensive family holidays etc.
Corrupt... you bet, just better hidden than most third world dictatorships
I was at the Doctors Surgery yesterday and I said I felt sorry for them having JH as their Minister/Secretary of State for Health. I pointed out what a wonderful person he'd been at the DCMS and how well his vanity project the Local TV stations* were doing**. I was only able to have a blood sample taken after we'd both stopped laughing.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Local_television_channels_in_the_United_Kingdom
**https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/09/london-live-local-content-channel-4-5-ofcom
Presumably this is more "think of the children" stuff to justify extending compulsory age verification from the porn sites used to justify the law to now include social networks. And what could possibly be wrong with forcing Facebook et al to semantically scan every message posted, in case one of those teens tries to write something dirty?
This has nothing to do with how the modern world works. This is how teenagers work, and have done since forever. And idiots like Hunt have always been trying, and failing, to change this.
Quite simply the government cannot legislate the removal of hormones from teenagers. Just like you cannot tell them that their body is illegal, they do not own their phone's camera, and they cannot be doing anything with either without the government's permission.
Apart from that, I can think of a good half dozen ways that this could be easily circumvented. Even if the tech was foolproof, which it isn't.
How can you take on a position of power/responsibility and not have a clue about how the modern world around you actually works?
By studying PPE at Oxford university and joining the Oxford University Conservative Association, along with Bojo and Cameron.
@Dan 55
By studying PPE at Oxford university and joining the Oxford University Conservative Association*, along with Bojo and Cameron.
*Other political parties are available - Labour,New Labour and the Lib Dems have a fair smattering of candidates as well - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Oxford_people_with_PPE_degrees
Imagine being as radical as Canada and appointing cabinet members who have some real life experience in the subject that thy are responsible for e.g. Farmers in agriculture, Lawyers in Justice and an academic as Minister of Science......
And you do have to smile at the logic behind choice of Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. He was a Queens Scout.
Its all about the old boys network.
Sure you are only 40 but we will give you a job running an international bank because you are 'so experienced'... ooh, you sunk the bank? Never mind, now you have even more experience (and a huge pension pot) why not let us put you in charge of a retail chemist chain... obviously the experience is relevant! Similar occurs at the top of government.
But try this...
I have 20 years coding and 15 years project managing secure, embedded consumer product.... but try getting a job in a bank... ooh no, you have no experience in banking, or perhaps in defense... ooh no, no experience in defense... (yeah, but I did get my degree from the military...)
Yup, one rule for the old boys and another for the rest of us scum
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"No there isn't"
Oh there is. The false positives are through the roof. The false negatives, likewise. But it does occasionally permit a legitimate image or block an explicit one.
Mine's the one with the pocket full of training images for my smut filter, thanks.
The Lib-Dems speak sense until someone gives them a sniff of actual power, at which point they throw sense out of the window and fall into line with whoever's wafting it their way - witness the government we have now, which they are *directly* responsible for. Pointless bunch of oxygen thieves.
"[...] witness the government we have now, which they are *directly* responsible for."
The coalition Lib-Dems blocked several Tory actions - eg the Snooper's Charter and the DCE. The electorate punished them for the Tory things they couldn't stop - thus giving free rein to the Tories with a majority in this term.
And the Tories would never have got in *at all* except for the Lib Dems enabling them. Plus they did *nothing* to block things like the no-longer creeping privatisation of the NHS - they just nodded through the Health & Social Care Act. Sorry, but they chose to throw in their lot with a bunch of vicious, corrupt, callous scumbags. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uvllh4bQbc
Nicomach, you are directly responsible for this government. The Lib Dems blocked all the laws which just passed, over and over, until you decided to blame them for the Tories existence and got them smashed so thoroughly that half their seats went to the Tories giving them free rein to do whatever the hell they like.
Stay away from politics, your fingers are working for the Tories.
Seriously... where would you go? I'm not sure there's anyplace that's not screwed up in one form or another. I thought about jumping ship (I'm in the States) but everyplace I considered was just as depressing.... different levels, different types, but still couldn't see myself going there.
OK, let's ignore the technical hurdles for now. We know that they exist, but we also know that most politicians don't have a clue about technology, so put it on the back burner and look at other issues.
Firstly, on "cyber bullying", they are asking a private company to scan each and every message sent by under 18s, looking for key words/phrases. This is difficult in itself, will take a lot of processing power, and would end up with enough false positives to drive people nuts. Especially those who, like me, use insults as a method of expressing friendship. This will just push people onto alternative platforms.
Second, on sexting, I'm sure it would be possible to identify sexually explicit images. Google, for instance, has done a lot of work on this for image searching. However, again, it will just push people onto alternative platforms.
Third, how will they know if a user is under 18? It's well known that people lie about their age on Facebook et al. One of my cousin's FB pages shows their age as several years older than they are, because they signed up below FB's minimum age and lied on the form. Are they going to insist on people providing ID to sign up?
"Are they going to insist on people providing ID to sign up?"
That is the probable intention - everyone tagged as to what they do on-line. Whenever a minister says they are doing something IT related "to protect the public" - or more likely "to protect children" - then alarm bells ring.
There's an attack vector for the hackers if I ever saw one. FB (and the rest) would have to keep copies of the ID so what more to the crims need to instigate mass ID theft eh?
Then there is the case where we don't have Government ID in this country. It is not illegal to NOT have a passport or driving license (and the kiddies are simply not old enough to have one)
Jeremy, you need to get out of your bunker more and experience the real world. No Jeremy, that's not Farnham in genteel Surrey. That's hardly the real UK.
I could go on but I'd probably explode.
I mean how can a social media, ISP or Mobile operator know the age of the user, who may not be the account holder (or PAYG anonymous), or on WiFi on Phone/Laptop/Tablet anywhere, or people may lie about age to a website (I'm over 21 and have a different age on every website that asks for it. Why should they know my real birthday?).
This is merely nuts unlike Investigatory Powers Act which is evil and nuts.
@Mage, you are clearly one of the few who can help Mr ?unt if your handle is anything to go by; he seems to think software engineers can magically write a program for anything.
Perhaps instead of asking himself questions about why not this or that, he could try asking a genuine expert.:
@Chris G
I'm thinking of changing my name by deed pole to "Cassandra". No-one important has ever heeded my dire warnings over the last 40 years. It's true have not been fullfilled... YET!
I've stopped writing software last year and hardly do electronics now. I was asked recently if I had thought of a job in IT. I explained I'd left that behind in 2004 and I'd sooner die (possibly literally) than go back to Windows IT (I might do Linux IT if there was no on call, no on site, 35 hr week, no shifts and £70K)
via an id card
And of course the id card will have bio metrics so you will also need to have a connected camera to allow the isp to verify the bio metrics from the card that will have to be plugged in a special socket. Then you will need special software on your machine that allows the machine to know if the card is in and it is you as you claim (so no covering the webcam up, no being away from the machine... Then they will have you by the short and curlies
It is about control... they control you, from the moment you are born to the moment they kill you off or lock you up as no longer useful to them.
"I just ask myself the simple question as to why it is that you can't prevent the texting of sexually explicit images by people under the age of 18, if that's a lock that parents choose to put on a mobile phone contract. Because there is technology that can identify sexually explicit pictures and prevent it being transmitted,
"I ask myself why we can't identify cyberbullying when it happens on social media platforms by word pattern recognition, and then prevent it happening," Hunt told the select committee. "I think there are a lot of things where social media companies could put options in their software that could reduce the risks associated with social media, and I do think that is something which they should actively pursue in a way that hasn’t happened to date."
Image / post scanning and the obvious processing power required to do this, the research, the coding, the testing, the technical limitations, the money and the false positives would make this very expensive to implement. No company is going to do it this unless they are given no other choice.
Did Mr Hunt research his speech or did he he just think it sounded good?
I can't help thinking you meant to post this comment under this story...
"Isn't that how the electoral system works? Someone had to vote for these clowns."
More distressingly, someone has to write up / broadcast what these clowns say, but as they don't understand it's b*ll*cks either, they report it as something other than a massive pile of bullshit (from a very unwell bull). Yes, the politicians deserve unending criticism for the amount of BS they peddle, but journalists who write / say / film it, without challenging it, are little better than an empty vessel. (Good thing empty though, easier for carting the BS around).
The BBC employs arts graduates for everything. They dont have a single person that understands the first thing about technology (just look at Rorys reports)
They are not alone in this
They have also abdicated ALL responsibility for reporting and just regurgitate speeches or press releases as instructed without stopping to ask what? This is part of the process... degrade the knowledge of the average person, control the news, control the thinking and control the person. All people can be controlled if all their inputs are controlled and monitored. This is not about controlling porn etc. this is about controlling sources of information.
Given the comments to date, I can only assume none of you have seen the damage done by such 'sexting' activities. The daughter of a friend of mine was driven to the point of despair, depression and severe eating illness, courtesy of lads 'havin' a laff' by sending dic pics and other obscene material to her via smartphone. The damage was devastating.
Hunt maybe lacking a technical grasp of the issue but his flagging this as a serious concern is laudable. This isnt the same as anything in previous generations - it is bullying by remote with no escape through distance.
Rather than being so arrogantly superior, perhaps one should think of the average non-tech literate user of all your technical wizardry and instead think of ways to achieve a solution rather than taking the piss. It's sort of the job description of being in tech anyway, isnt it, rather than being some twat in the server room hell-bent on seeing everthing burn 'coz we know so much more than you bastards'.
I've been in IT for 30+ years, chief cook and bottle washer, and sure would send most of the comments' authors out the door in 2 seconds flat with attitude like that. Cart and horse - getting it wrong is why this country got rogered by the banking world.
I think the derision is aimed at the technical ignorance shown, not at the thought that there could be a serious issue. Claiming there is a technical solution which doesn't exist in any practically usable form, and then basing kneejerk legislation on such claims, is not a sensible thing to do.
There is already legislation which would be perfectly satisfactory for prosecuting the perpetrators of that sort of harassment. I have a teenage daughter myself, and were she subjected to that, my first call would be to the police. As noted, one can also block numbers easily enough. Kneejerk demands for magic code that reads minds are stupid enough in business, but stupider and much more dangerous in government.
Firstly it took several weeks for my mate and his wife to realise it was going on. The poor girl, being only 14 at the time, was embarrassed/humilitated and didnt say a word. It was only after she changed dramatically over the course of a month, not laughing, hiding in her room, not eating, etc, that her parents decided it was more than just teenager angst and investigated. By then the damage was done and she had deleted the texts out of desperation (she didnt know who was sending them). It was reported to the school and then the police, both of whom told the kids they identified to stop it - that's it. They had to move her to another school in the end and only now, 3 years later, is she starting to be herself again.
Firstly it took several weeks for my mate and his wife to realise it was going on. The poor girl, being only 14 at the time, was embarrassed/humilitated and didnt say a word. It was only after she changed dramatically over the course of a month, not laughing, hiding in her room, not eating, etc, that her parents decided it was more than just teenager angst and investigated. By then the damage was done
Firstly, I sympathise, and am in no way derriding you or any involved in this.
However, I was bullied at school. This was before mobile phones were so common, and the internet was only available on a full-sized computer. I was made fun of, hurt, and more, for several months. My parents eventually figured out what was going on, for similar reasons to the situation you describe, and got the school involved. By then the damage was done. Luckily, I was able to continue at that school, although it was a long time before I could go there without being on the verge of panic.
What I am saying is that bullying, which is what was happening to her, has been around for many years. It is not right, but focusing on the technology element is not the correct way to deal with the problem. It seems like the "easy fix", but we should be working on reducing bullying in general, not just the technological aspect.
"The poor girl, being only 14 at the time, was embarrassed/humilitated and didnt say a word."
This was obviously an upsetting time, but I don't think the solution is a technological one. Would there be demands then that it be extended to detect and block obscene phone calls automatically? (remember, landline phones are quite dumb devices). The solution must lie in society's response to such actions and, as others have said, education and public awareness. For example, it must be made perfectly clear that there is absolutely no stigma to receiving such a message, and how to go about dealing with it - I think ChildLine have a department that covers this.
In your example, plenty of existing harassment legislation could be used (& ways to find out who sent the images)
Depending on recipient age / senders age / age of people in pics various other laws could be broken.
Too may kids will do bullying whatever (if by some magic sending of nude selfies was banned then it would be something different to achieve the similar effect, be it printed pics in the persons bag, hacking the targets phone / computer / etc to set it as background image etc, etc.
Given that there will never be summary execution for bullying, you will not stop bullying (being a psycho bully still seems to be job requirement for many a CEO)
The false positives from attempting to id offensive pics / messages would make it hopeless (and all credit card age verification would do is lead to a rise in price of credit card details from dodgy crim sources / use of gens to give Luhn test pass number format if only that level of CC verify used)
@Gezza
Rather than being so arrogantly superior, perhaps one should think of the average non-tech literate user of all your technical wizardry and instead think of ways to achieve a solution rather than taking the piss.
Having a friend whose daughter suffered similarly, I sympathise. But I would contend that in the first instance, the correct approach is to educate. Educate Parents, Educate the kids.
Mobile phones offer blocking on a per number basis - a couple of nasty texts from the same number - block it. Defriend and block on Facebook, coupled with appropriate privacy settings works to eliminate huge amounts of shit from a timeline.
While technical solutions may be held up as an answer, they are a poor second to training the kids to always be cautious. Kids understand the concept of secrets and how, once they are out there, they cannot be put back under wraps. I tell my kids that the web is the same.
They understand for example that though Snapchat dumps a picture after seconds, a screen grab lasts for ever.
There would be a very valid case for using public funds to educate younger tech users - and parents - about this rather than pissing it up a wire on some fantasy firewall.
The problem lies in society in general, where lads (and it is pretty much always lads, although not always) gang up on someone and bully and more of less peck them to death. Stopping sexting does not change the urge to do it and ways to do it. I remember a Polaroid camera being used to stuff a girl's school locker with dick photos. Dicks can be drawn on anyone's notebooks, or any obscenity or word ("spazz") aimed to hurt. It's the ugly sight of a bunch of young people (as I say, usually boys), bonding by all of them turning on someone vulnerable and hunting them down. 'Lord of the Flies' described this rather well.
"where lads (and it is pretty much always lads, although not always) gang up on someone"
I call bullshit. In my school of about 80-85% boys, those 20% of girls routinely crushed me. The boys, meh!
You're mileage may differ, but a blanket statement like that is nothing better than codswallop!
I can only assume none of you have seen the damage done by such 'sexting' activities. The daughter of a friend of mine was driven to the point of despair, depression and severe eating illness.
Yes. Sexting is terrible. So are lots of other things.
However the proposed remedy is less useful than aspirin or coca cola to reduce hate crime. agism, rape, unwanted pregnancies or terminal cancer.
It does nothing, which means it's a distraction from finding real solutions to problems.
In the case you mention, it's not actually sexting that is even the real issue, but bullying. I changed school to get away from it as often it's nearly random who they pick on, and once it starts, often only death or moving away solves it.
We moved country once, and our children were bullied on the school bus, or out of sight of teachers simply because they had a different accent. We moved again (25 years ago) and no trouble since.
Solution to direct Phone abuse: New SIM. I was getting fake twitter/facebook SMS. Vodafone swapped my SIM and moved call credit for free.
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oh cobblers
Bullying from a distance???? You can swap your phone, get numbers blocked etc it is not difficult to control on an individual level. If you don't want people laughing over photos of your short and curlies, beer belly or sagging boobs then don't let people take them... its not rocket science
It is NOTHING to do with this. It is much simpler, they want to exert control over what you can and cant see, they are using porn, sexting, etc as an excuse to get the wedge in, once in they will keep banning, and you wont know what, they will keep snooping and you wont know what on, they will control you with inability to see news sources they dont approve of and fear of being prosecuted if you dare to try and find a way around it.
Control, pure and simple. They are scared of the people that they have bullshitted and lied to for decades working out what a bunch of frauds they are. Terrorism... pah, porn... so what, bullying... oh my heart bleads. Try wearing glasses and having red hair 40 years ago and you KNOW what bullying is, and I wish I could have escaped by turning a phone off... I couldnt. it was in my face (literally) every hour at school, every walk to school and home, every sports club, every social club, the cubs, the scouts... everywhere, and yes I coped ... there was no damned choice.
"Taking an explicit photo of anyone under 18 is an offence" including taking a picture of yourself.
So, say, the mirror is broken so you want to use your camera to check out how your new swimwear looks, congratulations, you're now a sex offender! And don't even think about sending the picture to anyone else to ask their opinion...
"I think you may be taking your analogy a bit too far, or we'll all end up on the sex offenders register."
That is the problem with loosely worded laws that rely on a subjective interpretation of the word "indecent". It is not only nudity - but also any fully clothed pose deemed "provocative".
Family albums throughout the country will contain images that fail to pass those criteria. They only become contentious when the police decide that they want to investigate the family - even if only because of a malicious anonymous phone call. I know of two cases where the judges were very critical about the prosecution's evidence. One relied on an extreme interpretation of an innocent family picture - the other on a still culled from a home video.
It is human nature that being sensitised to seeing something in a particular way - will result in that interpretation becoming dominant. Another example of the power of "confirmation bias".
Making an obscene image where the subject is intended to appear to be under 18 is an offence - so a 40year old women on a hen party in a school uniform is child pron
How can a 40 year old woman be made to appear to be under 18? That's just not possible.
Wait ... was that law written by sexually frustrated women?
"How can a 40 year old woman be made to appear to be under 18? That's just not possible."
Somewhere in the DCE reports about what pr0n is to be blocked by ISPs - there was a specific mention for wearing clothes that represented someone young.
A Bristol judge recently stopped a lap dancing club from using posters to advertise St Trinian's themed nights. No doubt there are many family albums that contain photos of scouts and cubs performing the Gang Show "Up Girls and At 'Em" sketch. Nowadays that sketch is annotated "for girls only".
"Why is 18 chosen - the UK age of consent is 16."
!8 is the age of majority in the UK. Under that age they are technically called "children" as far as laws go. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 removed the previous sensible distinctions between under 16s and those aged 16/17. Before 2003 pictures of the latter were allowed to be more explicit - although falling short of hard pr0n poses.
IIRC There is a legal exemption - possibly only in some UK jurisdictions - for a married couple where one or both are under 18.
Back in the day the soaraway sun frequently featured a certain Sam Fox topless modelling on page 3 at 16.
Which would now be massively illegal with changed rules.
Unfortunately cannot retrospectively apply the new rules (inconsistent in the extreme but that's a whole different thing) and get the Sun shut down.
As I recollect she didnt get a year older for the whole of my degree course.... she turned up once or twice a month, including I recollect a rather fetching school girl outfit... mmm
Ooops, that just means I admitted to being a sicko and should be chemically castrated, hung, drawn, quartered and finally shot
"[...] forced to carry out actions dictated by the blackmailer on pain of the captured footage being sent to the mark's friends, family and colleagues."
The blackmailer's weapon is always given to them by the attitudes of society. If nudity, even sexual, was seen as a normal part of being human - then the blackmailers would have no leverage.
The blackmailers would then be guilty of extorting money - if they even tried it.
How is it, that at the tail end of 2016, we still have people in positions of authority and power who don't have seasoned, experienced and knowledgeable technical advisers?
Why does the House of Commons not have a select group of experts they can mandate all MPs to run this sort of idiocy past prior to it being given air-time?
Why do the mainstream media organisations not have tech-savvy people (and I don't mean the usual muppets they trot out for a three-minute session on the news when the latest iPhone drops, or - worse - Stephen Fry) who can pick apart this sort of nonsense?
I give up, I really do.
"How is it, that at the tail end of 2016, we still have people in positions of authority and power who don't have seasoned, experienced and knowledgeable technical advisers?"
Politicians pride themselves in having no knowledge of the subjects they are in charge of. It only slows them down. They are not interested in facts or feasibility, they say what they want and it is another person's failure if it can't be done. This is more prevalent now than in earlier years but it is not new. The best example I can think of is generations of Treasury ministers wanting to spend more and reduce tax at the same time while reducing the deficit.
Politicians are by definition inherently untrustworthy.
"Why does the House of Commons not have a select group of experts they can mandate all MPs to run this sort of idiocy past prior to it being given air-time?"
They had one of these for drugs, remember? They ignored them when the evidence and science didn't conform with their policy desires, and then sacked them when they had the temerity to point out to the public, who they server, that the ministers had ignored them.
What makes you think that the result would be any different for experts in any other field?
The politician who makes most progress is the one who makes the most illogical statements.
Which is how the current lot got into power. How else would a civilised society end up with a Health Secretary like Jeremy Hunt, and laws like the Investigatory Powers Act 2016?
It's highly infuriating for people who have logical minds!
>there is technology that can identify sexually explicit pictures and prevent it being transmitted
Technology that only works well after the fact and after a bean counter has gone "Nope, I don't like this image. Illegal!"
I knew the braindead fucks in charge were utterly clueless about technology, but wow.
I think you should just have said these braindead fucks are clueless. They are clueless about everything. I reckon most of them are so stupid they need someone to dress them in the morning.
What amazes me is that these rectums think we believe they are somehow elected.
IF the British people had a set of balls between them we could line these damned politicians and civil servants up on the cliffs of dover and shoot the damned lot.
Isn't this the social media equivalent of Trump's Wall? Hunt's "Impossible to Build, Bloody Stupid Naughty Fence"?
If this is such a problem (and I'm sure it is), ban under 18's from owning phones that can display pictures, censor all sms for obscenities (eg fucking, tit, Hunt) then force the use of computers under adult supervision. There, sorted. In addition the parents will save a fortune on phone bills and may actually get to see the kids occasionally ...
More importantly, while they're monitoring all communications to protect the children, they'll wind up with this lovely datastore that they can ensure the high moral standards of all citizens!
It's the stasi with computers, no more, no less.
Teenagers are both psychologically a bit fragile and yet are still people--so there's a good number that are going to be dickheads, no matter what the technology says about it.
Is not what the general population (yes, massive over-simplification) think it is: the fact that it exists in the first place.
The problem is the growing gap between what tech actually is and does, and the understanding of that among those who are elected to govern.
This is compounded in two ways (probably more):
1) The rate of tech change is speeding up whilst politicians seem to get dimmer for every generation.
2) The current mood is "post truth", i.e. experts are idiots. This does not bode well for dealing with change.
[side note: if rate of tech change is compound like interest rates, we are in for more of this, faster. Where's my Mars ticket?]
actually, to extrapolate your glib answer, ie he would emulate Canute, is (unintentionally) quite interesting in that he would be demonstrating (as indeed Canute was) that he does not have God's power to command the elements and that actually the common man should take control of his own destiny, not sit around on their fat arse.
"I just ask myself the simple question as to why it is that you can't prevent the texting of sexually explicit images by people under the age of 18, if that's a lock that parents choose to put on a mobile phone contract. Because there is technology that can identify sexually explicit pictures and prevent it being transmitted,"
Don't ask yourself - ask technology experts - oh, right, my mistake...
...ask that nice man/spiv Grant Shapps/Michael Green, I'm sure he has lots of great ideas.
How???
Short of banning <18s from using mobile phones, or pretty much any internet-connected IT device, I cannot see how this could possibly be achieved.
You might as well be trying to legislate to get the wind to stop blowing from the northeast or the rain to only fall on Tuesdays between 8:00 and 10:00pm.
Obviously... I just have to go to school with them, bed with them, the bath with them, the toilet...
TBH yes we should take care of our kids (I do) and we should protect them from harm BUT they have to live, they have to learn and they have to make mistakes.
I did when I grew up, as did many generations before. Yes we were told about the flasher in his mac but yes we still walked to and from school.
Technology does exist to censor images. It 'just' has rather a high false positive rate, and a non-zero false-negative rate.
The 100% effective rate is to ban the sending of images between mobile phones. That probably wouldn't be popular.
However, there are image processing algorithms that can be applied, together with a bit of AI. They rely on colour analysis (looking for skin tones) and extracted/inferred shape analysis. What doing this does, apart from using cpu cycles, is identify a higher proportion of images of naked people than blind chance, and let through (mostly) innocuous images. Google use such algorithms. They are not perfect, and subject to obvious gaming.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/572010/ - Identifying Nude Images
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1039832/ - Neural networks for web content filtering
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4624399/ Screening for Objectionable Images: A Review of Skin Detection Techniques
Real-time technique:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.16.2675&rep=rep1&type=pdf - A SOM Based Approach to Skin Detection with Application in Real Time Systems (direct link to pdf)
I am NOT so silly as to say the above are the magic bullet solution sought by politicians for the problem - but unfortunately poor reporting might be making people think such systems are more capable than they actually are.
A technological fix might reduce the problem by restricting some problematic images, but it won't be perfect, it will cost money and resources, it will make mistakes, and it doesn't address the underlying hormonal and cultural causes.
Many years ago a friend was approached by a start-up web service that used video for some sort of one-to-one social meeting club. He decided that what they effectively wanted was a real-time video analysis that detected a pattern of regular hand movements. While theoretically possible - technology at that time wasn't up to it.
and if they rely on such technologies then anyone who is a real pervert and really wants to send such stuff will of course create apps that suitably encode the data and decode the far end (just a standard encryption should do this well enough to prevent a man in the middle filter)
And..........er..........how, exactly is this miracle of modern science to be performed? These pig-ignorant, technically illiterate politicians are all the same. They seem to think that because we all now live in a technological world, that just about ANYTHING can be done at the wave of a hand at the behest of the government. It's about time these idiots had some qualified advisers around them to explain how things actually work - preferably in words of one syllable.
Dear Mr Hunt,
May I please take a few moments of your time to draw your attention to an old adage that has served many of us well over the years? Your colleagues in Cabinet might also find it useful so please feel free to circulate it to them.
It is better to say nothing and risk being thought a fool than to speak out and remove the doubt.
May I also make a suggestion about an alternative way of solving the problem you wish to address?
Rather than relying on a post - facto technological solution to this problem why don't you contact your friends in big pharma and ask them to produce medication that prevents children from doing stupid things? Children have always tended to engage in activities that have unfortunate results, and as another adage has it "prevention is better than cure".
Assuming that such a drug can be developed I could see it having applications in the adult population as well, and I would suggest that you and your Cabinet colleagues would make an ideal group upon which trials of this drug could be carried out. It would improve the governance of this country immensely.
Yours faithfully
Commswonk.
During WW2 and in the conscripted army afterwards - it was often reckoned that bromide was added to tea to reduce the soldiers' sex drive.
Modern anti-androgen drugs already have that effect on men - but not sure they have any effect on women. However studies have suggested that when used to "castrate" sex offenders - all they do is make them seek out more extreme sexual stimulation.
In South Africa in the 1970s it was said that the Afrikaner families kept their daughters under tight control until they were 18 - and they often quickly became pregnant after that. The English-speaking families were said to add birth control pills to their teenage daughters' daily breakfast cereal.
Unfortunately there is no law yet to prevent the stupid from breeding.
If you go back to the 30s and 40s there was a large body of opinion that said the human race was doomed because the breeding of the stupid was out doing the breeding of the clever so the average IQ was falling
is to disqualify politicians who make profoundly stupid comments from re election.. ever.
Imagine how the world would improve.. slowly, true, but eventually we could hope for a government free of complete retards.
as for sexting, cyber-bullying, kids doing stuff their parents dislike.. well thats a societal issue. Parents dont have the survival strategies to pass on to their children relevant to the 'threats' said children are encountering. All the old behavioural rules that made up a culture are actually proven survival techniques in the environment that culture operates in. The environment has changed, the threats are different, and the people raising children need to come up with rules and cautionary tales, a basic toolkit of responses appropriate to whatever we are calling this modern age.
"the internet is not your friend", "anything written/recorded/transmitted will be broadcast to the world", "Other people will record you - regardless of your wishes", "Even if you change your mind, your original posts remain"
"I just ask myself the simple question as to why it is that you can't prevent the texting of sexually explicit images by people under the age of 18, if that's a lock that parents choose to put on a mobile phone contract. Because there is technology that can identify sexually explicit pictures and prevent it being transmitted."
I just ask myself the simple question as to why the Health Secretary is poking his beak into the remit of the Culture Secretary (or whatever that job title is nowadays), instead of just sticking to his own job, that he doesn't even do well. Because the method of identifying and blocking inept politicians is already in place. It's called an 'election'.
"I ask myself why we can't identify cyberbullying when it happens on social media platforms by word pattern recognition, and then prevent it happening."
Again, I ask myself why you are still in government, local or national, when you simply don't have a clue!
There was I sitting at my desk, seeing the brexit failing to progress, watching the inexorable growth of the civil service and my tax bill, seeing the accelerating decline of our armed forces (they were supposed to protect us and now only one of the dozen ships we have left can manage no better than to fire some thing at the enemy, and thats only iron balls), I see the road system in disarray, airport runways being approved when apparently there isnt even a plan of how to do it.... and the government is so confident that this is all ok that it worries about a few people a year stupid enough to pose naked for a photo and then get upset when someone shares it ... .the people concerned are morons (so are probably all either in the house of commons or house of lords), they deserve to lose everything and frankly wasting more government time, police time and adding to the costs and hassle of my internet and mobile phone access is disproportionate.
Add to this that I was told that after a judge sentenced a guy to a suspended 6 month sentence for repeatedly sexually assaulting several underage girls that the crown prosecution saw no chance of a larger sentence on appeal so there would be no appeal (or investigation of the obviously perverted judge)
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