There is a growing menace these days that is comically characterised by the cartoon character Helen Lovejoy from the long-running series "The Simpsons".
Mrs Lovejoy is the pious and gossiping wife of Reverend Lovejoy and given to outbursts of "Won’t somebody please think of the children!" whenever there is a moral panic.
This has now passed into popular usage as the standard cry whenever something needs to be done about something as a knee-jerk reaction, out of a sense of outrage with no real evidence of why it might be beneficial.
Now contrast this against the very real scourge of child pornography and one has a very difficult situation.
Hotline.ie is a service by which Irish people and organisations can report suspected instances of "illegal content on the Internet, particularly child pornography or activities relating to the sexual exploitation of children."
The service is "supported and funded by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland whose members are determined to take measures to counter the use of their Internet facilities for such illegal purposes."
Hotline.ie has helped to ensure that Ireland has one of best record’s anywhere in the world in making sure illegal material is kept from widespread availability on the Internet.
Hotline releases annual reports of its activities, findings and actions against illegal content. It was the release of its 2012 report recently that was picked up the Irish Examiner however that rang alarm bells for me.
First of all, the report said that four cases of child pornography were reported as being hosted in Ireland in 2012. This shocking finding was further qualified by saying that this was the largest number of such instances ever reported in one year.
However, the Examiner’s coverage went further and gave some detail as to the way that this material was hosted that had visions of Mrs Lovejoy and her infamous refrain running though my head.
"In three of the cases, criminals used cloud computing, a technology which allows people to use Irish-based servers but control them from another country.
"Hotline.ie, set up by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland, said cloud computing was creating a "more complex" situation for watchdogs and law enforcement."
Now, to the uninitiated, this sounds like a clear indictment of cloud computing that should immediately have a mob of torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding, morally outraged citizenry, led by cries of "Won’t somebody please think of the children!" heading for the local cloud computing establishment determined to torch the place.
But what does it actually mean?
Well, the report states that "The first case in 2012 related to misuse of a foreign based webcam service by someone utilising an IP address located in Ireland to stream video of child pornography. Hotline.ie forwarded this report to the Garda for action.
"As it did not involve content hosting in Ireland the ISPAI member was not required to effect take-down and Hotline.ie closed the report. This became a matter of international police investigations."
So, not actually a cloud computing case really, more of a case of misuse of networks.
Continuing, "The second case was a report made by Meldpunt, the Netherlands Hotline via IHRMS (see next section) of images of child pornography which were hosted on a cloud service which has servers based in Ireland. Our Content Analyst found that it was being "mirrored" on two other servers belonging to the same operator and so two reports were derived. This means three reports refer to the same content but held on three different servers. Put another way, there were only two reports of different content being distributed from Ireland in 2012."
So what is actually happening here is that content is being mirrored from one server to another, across geographical boundaries, which was a common practise long before the term ‘cloud computing’ was ever coined.
The report goes on to say: "As we have mentioned in previous reports, the situation is becoming more complex with the advent of cloud services and the fact that these straddle jurisdictions, not just adjacent countries, but around the globe."
Without reproducing the entire report, suffice to say that what emerges is that the ease with which computer networks cross geographical and political boundaries, allowing both control and access from almost anywhere, has made the tracking and tracing of illegal material more difficult. However, none of this has been prompted or made exclusively possible by cloud computing.
The report in the Irish Examiner gives the impression that this sudden jump in the instances of this vile material being either routed through, mirrored on or accessible via Irish infrastructure is as a direct result of this new technology known as ‘cloud computing’ when in actual fact this is not remotely the case.
Remote server access and control has been a feature of the Internet for just about as long as the Internet has been called the Internet.
What the Hotline.ie report points out is that the situation has been exacerbated by the advent of cloud computing services which adds an additional layer of complexity when dealing in such issues, but it does not say it makes them suddenly possible where they were not before.
When we are, as a society, so prone to outrage, it is irresponsible of the media to allow such glib attribution of such a heinous crime to so nebulous a term as ‘cloud computing’. There is a duty among journalists to ensure that there is greater accuracy in reporting of technology to ensure that it does not become the scapegoat to which we attach all of our ills. But it is also incumbent upon the industry to ensure that when technology jargon gets adopted in the mainstream that its abuse is challenged-lest we open our doors one day to face the angry mob with our local Helen Lovejoy crying "Won’t somebody please think of the children!"
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