"Kerry L. Bonin" wrote:
> Assuming the body of child porn in circulation is of some reasonable size,
> and grows far less rapidly than adult porn, it should be feasible to
> construct a "fingerprint" style database by scanning the collections the
> FBI (and some postmasters) are known to have in their posession.
>
> An automated tool could then conceivably be created in conjunction with a
> statefull inspection firewall or statefull passive line tap to recognize
> when significant quantities of registered porn are being transmitted.
>
> The obvious counter for this would be encryption or steganography, which
> was also mentioned.
I know little about the JPEG format, but wouldn't it be simple enough
to switch colors 1 and 2 in the palette, then swap all references to
those colors in the image? Or doesn't it work that way? Assuming it
does work, there could be a dozen versions of the same image, visually
identical but not bit-wise identical.
Encryption would be the obvious counter to this. Even in societies
where it's legal, though, the combination of tool inconvenience and
big-brotherish suspicion of encryption where not provable necessary
is preventing the widespread use.
I don't see how stego would be of great use to a widespread network
of kiddie pr0nners; any large group will let something slip, and
once it's known there's a secret it's not that hard to find.
I'm more interested in the extension of these tools to other
information Big Brother would like to ban. The technical challenges of
banning or protecting ASCII text files are different than those for
binaries, so I don't know if the same tools would be used.
Oh, and for the benefit of Big Brother, my ex-wife's attorneys, and
future employers, I'm not especially interested in kiddie porn. I'm
interested in the technical and social challenges here.
--
Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel
518-374-4720 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
