Is it works to fight with a child pornography with this law?

[Athanasiy]

There was a pedophily scandal in Ukraine , where they say , some politicians were involved.
The case has not been proved yet , so there is no right to call them criminals.
But as a reaction , probably starting from the new year , there will be a new law , which will allow you to have internet only by registering with your passport , and there will be total control over your internet.
Also there will be much control over the internet providers who will have a big responsibility over their clients.
This law seems a noble , because it is an attempt to fight with porno and child pornography industry.
But I personally think , in the society where I live , there will be some dangers in this new law , not only by restricting peoples freedom .
For example , the fights between the clans of politicians or fluentil business people , can use or abuse this law for different purposes.
What if some one can send the virus to some ones computer and the innocent person can be called guilty , whose activity had nothing to do with porno or child porno ?
What about the family albums , some pictures of child on the beach , also can be qualified as a child porno ?
And who knows if this law will not serve some different motives for some different purposes to have control over the people ?
And to abuse their freedom and activity for different purposes ?
Its interesting , how this law works in United States ?
Does it work in practice ?

 

[surritter]

I think it is a dangerous law – mainly because, as you wrote, the government will have “total control over your internet.”

Freedoms are good, but they do have the problem of bad people misusing the freedom. So it is a delicate balance. But to grant total control to the government might be setting up an opportunity for a dictatorship in your country.

In the USA, we debated restrictions to our freedom after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The Congress passed something called the “Patriot Act,” and many citizens felt that it went too far. (Things like tapping phone lines and more power to search people, etc.)

So there is no absolute answer. As terrible as child pornography is, I personally feel that allowing a government to monitor everything a person does at home on the computer is a slippery slope to future problems.

 

[Elvenwarrior]

It’s a highly dangerous law that smacks of socialism. It’s clearly a violation of a person’s right to privacy!

Political ideology aside, it can’t really be effective for a number of reasons. 1) One being the scope of it; it’s impossible to effectively enforce considering the number of people who use the internet.

1. Second they’d have to prove it was the person who registered for the internet who actually used that computer or internet account for illegal purposes. Besides the obvious “someone else having physical access” it’s not all that difficult to steal someone’s internet identity, and actually “piggy-back” on their internet connection. It’s a relatively easy thing to do for any half-decent hacker within wi-fi range, even if it’s encrypted.
2. Third, and probably most problematic of all, your computer can be hacked remotely, from another country, to access child pornography from other countries. There are documented cases of this to date. Computers are commonly hacked for other reasons as well, this will give hackers just one more reasons. In fact, the U.S. Pentagon’s network of computers was recently attacked by hundreds of computers in different countries in an act of terrorism with none of the owners or regular uses of the computers having any knowledge of it.

Reports are the North Korea is suspected of “testing” the US cyber-defenses of the Pentagon (they were unable to break through, but they did bog the system down significantly), but it’s impossible to prove it beyond to the point where anyone can do anything about it because of the way they did it. Namely, the people (presumably the North Koreans?) used other people’s computers and ISPs in other countries to launch the attack. All the bouncing of signals from one server to another got things so scrambled that it’s practically impossible to find the source with enough certainty to do anything.

I could argue several other reasons, mainly dealing with privacy, but those are three very good (or at least I think so) reasons why it’s a terrible law just from a technical standpoint without even touch the ethical side.

Edit: And to clarify legally as far the US is concerned, it is not legal to monitor private use of computers without a search warrant from a judge (much like searching someone’s house requires one previous to), although under the Patriot Act (I’m not sure which parts of it are still in effect) if the proper authorities deem someone’s activity to be “obviously” involved in “terrorist activities” the government can monitor private communications (including a computer). While how often this has happened is widely exaggerated, there was some abuse, because what constitutes “probable cause” isn’t clear.

It’s a slippery slope that should illustrate how even relatively limited power to the government to monitor private communication under only select circumstances is dangerous and open to heavy abuse. In general the government in the United States cannot monitor private communications without the proper search warrant from a judge who will only issue such a search warrant if enough evidence is presented to justify it. So by and large it’s not allowed in the US, although there are ways for the government to get permission to do so.