More Funds Requested for FBI to Find P2P Child Porn

Last week the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs heard a request to increase the FBI's budget for stopping child pornography, through a bill funding the creation of a next-generation network monitoring and database system to watch P2P networks, web sites, and chat rooms. The system would actually amount to expanded access to an existing system based in Wyoming that is already being used to find online child porn traffickers.

The Department of Justice actually had the opportunity to have the Wyoming system several years ago. In 2003, Microsoft provided $7 million to develop the Canadian Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), but the DoJ turned down Microsoft's offer to deploy the system in the U.S. because it was then involved in an anti-trust dispute with Microsoft. The Wyoming system ("Operation FairPlay") was developed as an alternative.

Opponents worry that the high number of false positives usually associated with computer-automated surveillance and tracking systems could be a problem, especially since it is often difficult to explain technical system bugs to juries.

Council of Europe sets filtering "best practices"

The Council of Europe (separate from the European Union) has released a document that proposes filtering standards that balance concerns over pornography, violence, and racism online with freedom of expression and an open Internet. The Council contends that filters could legitimately be deployed in public places such as schools or libraries, but that strict limits should be placed on such filtering to prevent it from becoming overbroad.

The Council makes several recommendations:
* users must be told when content is being filtered;
* they must have a simple way to challenge the accuracy of the filter; and
* manual overrides should be put in place when practical so that users can quickly get access to blocked material.

The Council assumes that some sort of Internet filtering will take place, whether at home or school or even statewide, and one of its concerns is to push for filtering standards and interoperability. See this article for more information.