Comment on lemm.ee plans for mitigating image upload abuse
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year agogetting 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.
WalkableProgrammer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
FBI: Whoa that illegal
Admin: Ya
FBI: We’re going to look for this guy
Admin: alright
END ACT 1
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year 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:
Meanwhile, if lemm.ee continues its current course of action, yet someone notifies law enforcement:
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.
lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 1 year 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?
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Local authorities will be the contact point of the admins (or authorities of where the servers are hosted). They’ll investigate what they can and then ring up euro/inter/whatever pol as necessary to have other forces handle stuff in their respective jurisdictions.
As to the current case the ball is clearly in the field of lemmy.world admins and their local authorities (Germany? Hetzner, I think, as so many) as they’re the ones with the IP logs. Even if the FBI gets a tip-off because an American saw anything they’re not exactly in a position to do anything but go via Interpol and ask the BKA if they’d like to share those IP logs.