

More than half of the cases involved a sibling or friend of the child.” The Internet Watch Foundation said over a one month period it saw 51 examples of self-generated abuse imagery – where children are manipulated into recording their own abuse before it is shared online – including a child aged between three and six. “Children as young as between three and six years old are becoming the latest victims in a growing trend of self-generated child sexual abuse, a report from an internet safety watchdog has said.” Edward Snowden covered some examples of these tactics in an article about child sexual abuse material. Politicians will claim they care about these kinds of topics it gives them more control. These are topics about which folks are under-informed, with narratives that folks are often unwilling to question. Whenever governments want to ramp up surveillance on private citizens, you can always expect them to claim one of two things: terrorism or child sexual exploitation. Increasing government surveillance and scanning or collecting private social media messages could be used to target political opponents or protest groups communicating legally and well within their rights.ĭespite what your feelings on January 6th may be, the government took steps to violate the privacy rights of citizens involved in peaceful protests, including those who may have just been in the area of the Capitol and did not attempt to enter any buildings. “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the six-page letter asserted. 29 letter from the National School Boards Association that asked Biden for federal resources to help monitor “threats of violence and acts of intimidation” against public school members and other school officials. The FBI has openly targeted parents, recently calling some a domestic terror threat for attending school board meetings. There is a track record of misuse and abuse, as well as the inability of government and third-party storage centers to sufficiently protect against data breaches. Mass government surveillance is terrifying, to say the least. We should learn from that mistake and not repeat it.
ELIZA BLEU HOW TO
Innocent American citizens had their privacy violated, because the government knew how to pull our heartstrings while simultaneously playing on our worst fears. Who wouldn’t want to protect America against terrorism, right?Īs we now know, the Patriot Act was used far outside the scope originally intended. I often think about the Patriot Act and how it was sold to the American people. Unfortunately, there is not a simple answer, because many of the solutions offered can cause more problems than they solve. The European Commission has proposed a new regulation that would require chat apps, including tech and social media platforms, to selectively scan users’ private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and “grooming” behavior.Ī knee-jerk reaction to this news for the average citizen may be, “Yes please get all of the predators!” I’m with you if that’s your first thought but, I must think of the unintended consequences, and draw the line somewhere. It must address it at scale but, at what cost? We can’t just let tech companies off the hook with this problem. Obviously, there is a massive problem of online exploitation which often destroys the lives of victims and survivors. In 2021, over 29.1 million of the 29.3 million total reports were from electronic service providers like Facebook/Meta. Who wouldn’t want to help as many children exploited as possible especially given the ever-rising number of victims? In 2021, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline received 29.3 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitations, an increase of 35% from 2020.
