I might be a bit slow sometimes

I was just wondering how many people tried it out after reading that though, to check that it works and to see what happens, inadvertently adding themselves to the police database of dodgy characters. Then again, I can just picture Pete Townshend's excuse now. "Well, your honour, I'm so sickened by what is put on the internet that I, er, thought I'd best check all 100,000 phrases to make sure my computer was safe!"

 

Likewise I have never found any links to these sites either so I can’t believe that it is something that is easy to do however on the way to work this morning Nicky Campbell (radio 5) was talking to somebody who happened to mention that sometimes they used peer-to-peer sites and unrelated buzzwords – apparently the word ‘asparagus’ is a bit of a buzzword within the paedophile community. This would go some way to explaining why it's not easy to find things by accident.

The other thing that puzzled me was the use of the word ‘censorship’ in a sentence that suggested they didn’t want to go that far. When challenged about this Nicky did not, in my opinion, get a satisfactory response. As Nicky quite rightly pointed out some things go beyond censorship and this is definitely one of them.

 

My understanding is that most of this stuff isn't indexed by the main search engines (simple enough for sites to do using robots.txt) and that what is uses a combination of random words or nonsense search terms for a "Googlewhack". Apparently lots of it is available in the "Dark Internet", where normal folks do not go by accident (you are not even talking domain names, but purely ip address and obscure folder paths to hacked servers).

You wouldn't find child porn by searching for "Give me child porn now", but you might find some with "Asparagus Monday clasp six vertical carpets" (completely made up but gives the idea).

 

I've been using the internet 20 years and thankfully I've never stumbled across any kiddy pictures.

I've seen some porn that I've actually been looking for, lorry loads of porn that I never wanted, never asked for, but, to be honest, wasn't too upset about seeing (particularly in that period around 99 to 01 when spyware and pop-ups were the bane of your life, but the software available wasn't sophisticated enough to deal with it) enough gay porn to sink a ship that I certainly didn't want, certainly never asked for and wasn't very pleased to see (I used to think I had a fine ****, now I realise I've got a button mushroom) and some pretty disturbing stuff that adults do to one another that has given me nightmares, again that I didn't ask for. But, thank ****, I've never seen any child stuff. Hopefully that will still be true on the day I die.

 

I hope they don't ban the search term asparagus. I like asparagus. Makes your piss stink though.

 

Yep, the consensus among techies is that it won't work, but will appease the Daily Mail readers. Its the equivalent of brushing away the cobwebs and then claiming your house has no spiders.

Imagine the fun that they could have if the decide that the new term for a kind of extreme porn (some kind of gay BDSM with violence for example) is a Cameron. Every search for David Cameron could potentially be blocked...

 

It makes some peoples wee smell, but not everyones, also, some people don't have the ability to smell asparagus wee smells.

DNA is amazing.

 

I was going to check on that but then wondered what else would be returned from asparagus sticky wee!

 

Whilst I do agree with you that some things go beyond censorship, I think there is a fear that once governments start blocking one thing they'll go on and block others. In some ways I'd like to see these sites monitored and people who access regularly (so you can ensure it wasn't just hit by accident) to be traced and prosecuted.

 

Good point.

 

Nonces thread.

 

A better gesture from Google, Bing and Yahoo would be to fund volunteers to work with the police to trap and track down those peddling this. Cameron has gone with an eye catching and vote winning cheap option which solves nothing, like most thing, money is needed to actually employ people to find, trap and prosecute. If you get enough of them a tipping point is reached where the risk/"reward" is not worth it and it becomes less of a problem. Mind you, given the close links between the Conservatives, William Hague, their associates and some well known child-abuse scandals in places like North Wales and certain B&Bs in London, I don't see them moving heaven and earth to really do anything more.