Please respond to the discussion post and the two student post below:

Discussion:

Reviewthe following article:  

Consider howthis problem might be resolved: law, norms, the market, or architecture. 

Develop a 500word point paper on this situation. 

Timothy’s post:

As Cameron mentioned above, the fact so many of these images are being hosted on one platform is extremely harrowing. However, in cases like this, the gut reaction is to provide law enforcement and these agencies with what they are requesting: less protections on all individuals and backdoors into these encrypted systems. While the fact there are a number of people who pose a sexual threat to children (per the UKs National Crime Agency they estimate there are 300,000 such people in the UK), there must always be a balance of protection of an individual’s right to privacy and that of the greater good. Even if that number is accurate, there are 67.08 million people who live in the UK (Population estimates, 2022). Law-abiding individuals depend on encryption for protecting their sensitive files (e.g., encryption allows a laptop to be protected from a thief who may want to steal a persons confidential information much as the way encryption in transit protects your information when it is being sent to or from a website). Organizations also use encryption to protect things like source code, trade secrets, and other confidential information.

Architecturally, no legitimate platform wants to be known as the harborer of anything illegal, and Meta (previously Facebook) which has moral and ethical obligations, a board, and shareholders, does not want to be known as the platform for anything heinous. As such, it should improve its own internal capabilities to protect children from predators. If any wrongdoing is discovered, immediately notify the authorities.

Additionally, laws and norms can provide strong influences and deterrents. Laws should maximize any punishment for those found guilty of such crimes. Law enforcement can utilize existing technologies to discover illegal activity and prosecute those found responsible. Law enforcement should also focus on training and forensic analysis to help catch those who would commit these acts.

Norms can also aid in this effort. Acts like those mentioned in the article are universally abhorred and that attitude can be leveraged across cultures to help report when this activity is known or discovered. However, when something is as ubiquitously regarded as evil across the planet, there may be little that can be done with how much pushing norms there is, as Cameron accurately pointed out.

Unfortunately, encryption while overall an incredibly positive thing, can present challenging cases when it comes to dealing with those who would abuse it, especially when it comes to children.

References

Population estimates. (2022, March 02). Retrieved from Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates

Dasaratha post:

Child sexual abuse is a major public health concern today in our society and the world. Annoying about the fact that Facebook was responsible for 94% of the 69 million child sex abuse images which was reported by U S technology companies last year. Facebook announced plans to fully encrypt the communications of their software services like messenger app, Instagram and whats up was already encrypted meaning only the sender and the recipient can read or modify the messages. This changes were made to the platform to improve the privacy of their users as mentioned by the company. The law enforcement agencies are not in favor of the end to end encryption method because it will impact on their ability to target the perverts and protect children online from these viewing or sharing of obscene or indecent images.

 

The National Crime Agency has warned that the number could drop to zero if Facebook does not implement end to end encryption. Even though this encryption helps with the user privacy and whereas it will impact the law enforcement agencies to identify or go after the perverts.

 

We should recommend to implement stricter laws and policies to control the exposure of these obscene images and content sharing in the social media platform. As stated by Ms. Patel in an open letter to the firms co-founder Mark Zuckerberg asking to halt its end-to-end encryption proposals. We should call for and make the society to be aware of public safety to be embedded in systems and for law enforcement to be given access to content and make approximate decisions on those.

 

We also need to bring in strict rules and regulations to the social media platform services and corporations to adhere to the policies, if not hefty fines should be imposed and stricter controls should in place to remove them out of business to protect children and society.

 

The main line of business and revenue comes from online Companies advertisements, banners of their products and services. They need to monitor these and bring control and polices about the content for which they can support or else businesses need to move out to better social media platform providers and services. This will definitely bring a change to the corporations who manage these social media platforms and services since they will loss revenue and business. With these stricter requirements and policies they will be careful and comply with their sponsors and business.

 

The fundamental architecture of the Internet is still good, whereas additional security implementations which will help identify or track the users, content to some extend or to audit their involvements and study of pattern would assist. Companies need to implement stricter access management in controls so that first it prevents the content stealers to expose these images.

 

In conclusion, we need to bring stricter controls and policies for the social media platform providers. Encryption is the ideal method to implement but at the same time provide access to law enforcement to be able to identify the users and track down their activities which will help them in the aid of investigations and prevent major issues in the society.

 

References:

Gillespie, T. (2020, October 12). Facebook responsible for 94% of 69 million child sex abuse images reported by US tech firms. Retrieved from Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/facebook-responsible-for-94-of-69-million-child-sex-abuse-images-reported-by-us-tech-firms-12101357