The efforts of the UK government are certainly commendable, but they do not apply to the most dangerous source of child pornography, P2P networks where every day thousands of gigabytes of such material are transferred. So far elusive customers and secure network will now be easier to follow thanks to researcher Robert Patton from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, which over the past few years worked on solving the problem.
Patton's team has developed software, BitPredator that automatically monitors P2P traffic and analyzes it in search of illegal content, respectively, using the torrent files and RSS feeds used by sexual predators. With BitPredator, another software called BitThief is also used. The software was developed at the ETH in Zurich, which allows overview of the content before full torrent download, all without giving details to the rest of the network what it is and without leaving traces on the use of these files.
[Ed – There has been a lot of discussion about the intent of what the Prime Minister, David Cameron wants with his new war on Pornography. On the whole the program looks like a good thing. Cameron wants to remove access (via the Web) to child pornography or any other images that exploit children. He also would like to block or limit children’s access to the rest of the porn world. To do this he is asking for web hosts, search providers and ISPs to begin blocking this content from access. Most people would agree that these are two very commendable goals. The problem is that this type of block removes all porn from everyone, it is an extreme form of censorship and one that should be, for the “legal” porn, be avoided. The problem is that too many politicians try to piggyback larger and more restrictive laws on the premise of protecting children. Getting rid of all the child pornography is a very good thing, but how about we provide better tools and education to parents so they can police their kids instead of blocking it from everyone…]
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