Millions of OnlyFans paywalls make it hard to detect child sex abuse, cops say
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"Cops want more access to OnlyFans to detect more child sex abuse, report says."
Yep, that's why.
Yep, that's why.
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Isn't there already a lot of verification done in order to have an OnlyFans in the first place?
Doubt cops would do much better. But I can think of other reasons they might want access to any account...
Doubt cops would do much better. But I can think of other reasons they might want access to any account...
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Yeah, and I need the keys to Fort Knox to make sure any pyrite didn't find its way in there.
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CSAM and the people who produce it are abominations but there's no fucking way I trust the police on this, especially not in the current political environment. Giving cops such access will be used for persecuting women far more than stopping CSAM.
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Seems like this is more access than they needed to give - full access to any account that is being investigated - instead of needing to get a warrant first. Automatically scanning for content already in the database seems fine as well (this is a moderated platform after all). I don't see why OF should just give all the creators nudes to the government without any process at all.
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I am sorry, in the U.S it's called the 4th Amendment. Police don't get access unless they can convince a judge they have probable cause, and even then it's not total access.
OF content leaks like crazy, I am sure they can find other means to discover new CSAM.
OF content leaks like crazy, I am sure they can find other means to discover new CSAM.
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Verification? Yes, but based on the section of the article that references Reuters: "One girl told Reuters that she evaded age verification first by using an adult's driver's license to sign up, then by taking over an account of an adult user."
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I'm an adult and trying to apply for an account is extremely tedious. I believe them when they say illegal content is low. It would be much easier to upload illegal images to google drive and sell the drive link to people on 8chan or where ever.
There isn't really any reason to think there is more of it on onlyfans than on any other website that allows anyone to upload porn for free.
There isn't really any reason to think there is more of it on onlyfans than on any other website that allows anyone to upload porn for free.
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Maybe they can shift some of their MRAP, robot dog, and shotspotter budgets to OnlyFans. I know OnlyFans hasn’t promised the Chief of Police a job after but, if you think about it, OnlyFans promises everyone a job.
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Summary: Onlyfans is doing a ton of work to police the content. This is known to be imperfect, just like everything else in the world. Some cops and "experts" are miffed that they don't get absolutely unlimited power over everything in the world. It is, however, important to present all of this in a way that makes Onlyfans sound as bad as possible.
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This comes across as a bit dishonest. Onlyfans grants access when there is an investigation. That's how the laws work.
Why should Onlyfans, or any website, be forced to give full access to their website for law enforcement to search for any reason? The vast majority of Onlyfans members are doing things that are legal but maybe morally dubious to some people.
Anyone who thinks law enforcement wouldn't abuse this in so many different ways, including facilitating sexual assault and trafficking by law enforcement officers, is naïve.
Fuck "papers please".
Why should Onlyfans, or any website, be forced to give full access to their website for law enforcement to search for any reason? The vast majority of Onlyfans members are doing things that are legal but maybe morally dubious to some people.
Anyone who thinks law enforcement wouldn't abuse this in so many different ways, including facilitating sexual assault and trafficking by law enforcement officers, is naïve.
Fuck "papers please".
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Also what is this trend of news sites investigating sites and going on about how police don't have total access.
They say journalism is dying, if this is what Reuters etc are doing for clicks, then they can't die fast enough. It's bad enough how they (news sites, not necessarily just Reuters) mindlessly parrot talking points in support of KOSA and other think of the children laws.
They say journalism is dying, if this is what Reuters etc are doing for clicks, then they can't die fast enough. It's bad enough how they (news sites, not necessarily just Reuters) mindlessly parrot talking points in support of KOSA and other think of the children laws.
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The special interest groups that was behind the Pornhub hysteria are well known, their goal is to shut down all porn sites by making them unable to operate by holding them to impossible standards. It's got nothing to do with CSAM, that's just an excuse.. it's the war on porn.
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There are a relatively small number of reporters and outlets who create these stories, and a few more who reliably amplify them. You just happen to have news sources that are regularly in the amplifying pipeline.
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Link to the investigation does not work. it should be: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/onlyfans-sex-children/
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J.C. Helios
Ars Praetorian
Cops wanting unfettered access to every communications platform? Must be a day ending in "y."
arstechnica.com
Signal CEO: We “1,000% won’t participate” in UK law to weaken encryption
The UK's Safety Online Bill would require Signal to police user messages.
arstechnica.com
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It's a war on women earning income. They might use it to pay for things without their husbands' approval, like medical care, or transportation, or divorce attorneys.
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Law enforcement should never have ‘total access’ anywhere.
If law enforcement wants access they can cough up a warrant.
‘For the children’ is covert speak for: we want it.
You’re supposedly a journalist Ashley. Supposedly.
Where’s your integrity?
If law enforcement wants access they can cough up a warrant.
‘For the children’ is covert speak for: we want it.
You’re supposedly a journalist Ashley. Supposedly.
Where’s your integrity?
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How about this? They can get their "unlimited access" if they have every single interaction they have with technology monitored and publicly reported so we can make sure that they aren't abusing this level of privilege. After all, what would such pure goodhearted people have to hide?
Because I'm betting most of these anti-porn activists are the most perverted, pedophilic, sexually abusive people possible. In my experience, those who protest against a "sin" the loudest are those who are most sinful.
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I cannot stress enough that having to tell journalists not to trust the government finally helps me understand what the word "nonplussed" means.
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While I'm sure there are the "typical" horrendous exceptions, and this isn't without any issues either, given the platform and what's being said, most of the "abominations" here are probably teens "abusing themselves" and claiming to be over 18.
I mean, what an unbelievably ridiculous way to put up anything else. Why would you? It would hardly be an efficient way to post of find anything and given the attention paid to identity it's probably the worst, most inconvenient, most dangerous possible place to do that except maybe Youtube, if that. Screams of the usual disingenuous "think of the children" nonsense from social "values" crusaders/politicians and anti-privacy/security opportunists.
And of course there isn't even the pretense that further access is actually necessary for anything in the first place. What would this do that as not being done already? Probably little to nothing.
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It's not perfect and mileage does vary, but it's the best we've got.
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Depends on the amendment. 2nd? You bet. 4th? Not really. It's been stepped on so many times.
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2nd is also conditional, depending on a skin tone in relation to a brown paper bag.
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Yes, this person right here is guilty of.... uhhhh, "not thinking of the children." Why won't you think of the children?! /s
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"would-be creators must provide at least nine pieces of personally identifying information and documents, including bank details, a selfie while holding a government photo ID, and—in the United States—a Social Security number."
"Reuters found that none of these controls worked 100 percent of the time to stop bad actors from sharing CSAM."
These are actually pretty solid controls. Far better than most others. And VERY few non-technically-automated controls will ever work 100% of the time. I'm a CISO....we have several hundred controls over various risks at my company, and nobody would ever expect most that involve human activity (such as account validation, configuration review, audits) to work 100% of the time. That is simply not realistic.
That is why you layer them, based on the "Swiss Cheese" model of risk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model) where you implement multiple layers of controls (like OnlyFans appears to have) to drive control failures to as low a number as possible. If Control 1 has a failure tae of 5%, control 2 has one of 5% and control 3 has a failure rate of 5% (and all are additive and independent of each other), then your "moderately effective" controls aggregate into a highly effective control environment with an expected failure rate of only 0.000125% .
But that number, for almost everything in the real world, will NEVER be zero. We can't expect that, nor should we base our analysis of their control infrastructure on an unobtainable "100% success" benchmark.
If the Center does indeed have unlimited access (as the article states), then they should be performing random audits against a suitably large sample size (there are statistical methods in the audit literature to help determine this), to determine if the controls appear to be working sufficiently, and base additional controls on any control failures noted there.
They actually appear to be doing a pretty decent job.
"Reuters found that none of these controls worked 100 percent of the time to stop bad actors from sharing CSAM."
These are actually pretty solid controls. Far better than most others. And VERY few non-technically-automated controls will ever work 100% of the time. I'm a CISO....we have several hundred controls over various risks at my company, and nobody would ever expect most that involve human activity (such as account validation, configuration review, audits) to work 100% of the time. That is simply not realistic.
That is why you layer them, based on the "Swiss Cheese" model of risk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model) where you implement multiple layers of controls (like OnlyFans appears to have) to drive control failures to as low a number as possible. If Control 1 has a failure tae of 5%, control 2 has one of 5% and control 3 has a failure rate of 5% (and all are additive and independent of each other), then your "moderately effective" controls aggregate into a highly effective control environment with an expected failure rate of only 0.000125% .
But that number, for almost everything in the real world, will NEVER be zero. We can't expect that, nor should we base our analysis of their control infrastructure on an unobtainable "100% success" benchmark.
If the Center does indeed have unlimited access (as the article states), then they should be performing random audits against a suitably large sample size (there are statistical methods in the audit literature to help determine this), to determine if the controls appear to be working sufficiently, and base additional controls on any control failures noted there.
They actually appear to be doing a pretty decent job.
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I never consider myself as naive, but it seems I bloody am. I never even considered that a "mainstream" T&A pay website would have CSAM on it.
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It's a sad day when the optimistic take on this potential 4th Amendment violation, justified by the nearly-infinitesimal percentage of the hundreds of millions of OF posts that may contain CSAM, is that LEO just want free porn.
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Yes, an occupation whose members are regularly found to illegally abuse their access to information for personal use, including stalking women, must have instant, round-the-clock, free access to ALL OF THE PORN to make sure nothing illegal is happening. That sounds reasonable.
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Just a reminder that humans heavily abuse their access to spy on people. Be it the CIA stalking the cute barista or a LEO abusing the background check history so they, too, can stalk the cute barista, their base instincts inevitably get the better of them.
Power corrupts.
Power corrupts.
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