Comment on lemm.ee plans for mitigating image upload abuse

bdesk@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• nxfsi@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s a known tactic by trolls to upload cheese pizza and then notify the media/the authorities themselves because context doesn’t matter when it comes to CSAM

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• TWeaK@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  getting the authorities involved

  How do you imagine that playing out? This isn’t some paedophile ring trading openly, this is people using CSAM as an attack vector. Getting over-enthusiastic police involved is exactly their goal, and will likely do very little to help the victims in the CSAM itself.

  Yes, authorities should be notified and the material provided to the relevant agencies for examination. However that isn’t truly the focus of what’s happening here. There is no immediate threat to children with this attack.

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  • WalkableProgrammer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How do you imagine that playing out?

    FBI: Whoa that illegal

    Admin: Ya

    FBI: We’re going to look for this guy

    Admin: alright

    END ACT 1

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    • TWeaK@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This isn’t something the FBI have much involvement with. The FBI deal with matters across states.

      This isn’t America, where you have a bunch of separate states unified under one American government. People haven’t been posting porn to lemm.ee. People have been posting porn to other instances, which has seeped through to lemm.ee.

      Getting the Estonian law enforcement involved is like trying to get the Californian government involved in dealing with a problem from Texas. Estonian law enforcement have no jurisdiction over lemmy.world or any other instance, and giving them an opportunity is only going to lead to locking down lawful association and communication in favour of some vague “think of the children” rhetoric. And, like I say, it won’t do anything to curtail the production of CSAM as the purpose of this attack has little to do with the promotion of CSAM.

      Frankly, it could easily be more like:

      lemm.ee: We’ve got a problem with illegal content

      Estonian law enforcement: Woah that’s illegal.

      Estonian law enforcement: You’ve admitted to hosting illegal content. We’re going to confiscate all your stuff.

      lemm.ee is shut down pending investigation.

      Meanwhile, if lemm.ee continues its current course of action, yet someone notifies law enforcement:

      Estonian law enforcement: Woah, we’ve got a report of something dodgy, that’s illegal.

      lemm.ee: People tried to post illegal content elsewhere that could have come to our site, we blocked and deleted it to the best of our ability.

      Estonian law enforcement: Fair enough, we’ll see what we can figure out.

      It really matters how and when the problem is presented to law enforcement. If you report yourself, they’re much more likely to take action against yourself than if someone else reports you. It doesn’t do yourself any favours to present your transgressions to them, not unless you’re absolutely certain you’re squeeky clean.

      At this stage and in these circumstances, corrective action is more important than reporting.

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      • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You’re assuming that no American user saw any of the content. I think the FBI could absolutely get involved if the content was seen by anyone in the US, let alone by people in more than 1 state. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on child abuse or cyber crimes but the FBI devotes massive resources to investigation of crimes against children and could potentially at least help other agencies investigate where this attack originated from. And if the FBI were able to determine that the attack originated from the US, I assure you the DOJ is far less kind to people who possess, commit or distribute that type of horrible child abuse than they are to rich old white men who commit a coup. You’re kind of acting like this is just another DDOS attack rather than the deliberate distribution of horrific images of child abuse to a platform that in no way encourages distribution of child abuse material.

        Anywhooooo the problem was much worse on lemmy.world since they were the main target of the attack. Does anyone know if they reported it?

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• sunaurus@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The Lemmy.world team is getting some authorities involved already for this particular case. I am definitely in favor of notifying law enforcement or revelant organizations, and if anybody tries to use lemm.ee to spread such things, I will definitely be involving my local authorities as well.

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