Lawyers insist Facebook searches for revenge porn | Ireland

While a women’s advocate applauds the Saskatchewan government’s plans to give victims of revenge porn more power in court, she says the move won’t shift the cultural attitudes behind the harmful practice. In Wednesday’s throne speech, the provincial government announced plans to change the Privacy Act to allow victims of revenge porn the option to sue their bullies in small-claims court. Revenge porn is typically when private intimate images are publicly shared online without authorization. The province said that relying solely on the Criminal Code to crack down on this type of cyberbullying has been difficult because the burden of proof is so high. The changes will “put the onus on the person that circulates it to prove that they had the consent of the person who was in the pictures,” said Justice Minister Don Morgan to reporters Wednesday. “It’s a tool that we want to give to victims in our province,” he…

  A New York state bill that would outlaw ‘revenge porn’ has been shelved until next year, after a late lobbying effort by tech giant Google succeeded in blocking a vote in the state Senate. The bill, which existed in legal limbo since 2013, was pushed through the State Assembly after a New York Post article last year highlighted the problem. It would have made the distribution of sexual images without the consent of the person shown punishable by up to a year in jail, and it would have helped victims sue web hosts to remove the images. Governor Andrew Cuomo had vowed to sign the bill once it passed the Senate and made its way to his desk. However, after a last-minute lobbying campaign by The Internet Association, working on behalf of Google, senators adjourned for the year without a vote, putting the bill on ice once again until…

  A post-graduate researcher warns revenge porn offenders could be slipping through through the cracks. Tess Upperton, who wrote her honours dissertation on criminalising revenge porn, is calling for new legislation to specifically target the increasing problem. Revenge porn is the common term for the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, which currently falls under the Harmful Digital Communications Act. Charges and convictions under the Harmful Digital Communications Act have more than doubled each year since it was introduced in July 2015. Netsafe CEO Martin Cocker, the Approved Agency for the Act, said it was reasonable to expect revenge porn court cases to continue increasing. Ms Upperton said there’s been “a bit of complacency” since the Harmful Digital Communications Act was passed in 2015. “The law here might start looking a little bit dated and not quite up to scratch in terms of how we view and treat victims.” Ms Upperton…

FACEBOOK wants to stop revenge porn BEFORE it happens - by getting people to send in their own naughty sex pictures. The social network is testing a system which uses image recognition to identify revenge porn and automatically delete it. Getty Images Social media makes it terrifyingly easy to spread revenge porn But this can only work if Facebook has copies of the dirty pictures in the first place. Zuckerberg’s firm is running a pilot scheme in Australia and has teamed up with the Office of the eSafety Commissioner to trial its new idea. Julie Inman Grant, e-Safety Commissioner, said people who were worried about “image-based abuse” should give Facebook their sexy pics. “It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending it through the ether,” she told ABC. Getty Images Would you be…

A 31-year-old Seattle man was sentenced to one year in jail on Friday for posting nude photos of women on two different websites in a bizarre case of “revenge porn.” Jeremy “Silo” Walters, a photographer and computer technician, pleaded guilty to first-degree computer trespass and four counts of cyberstalking, a gross misdemeanor charge. He faced a standard sentence of up to 90 days behind bars, but agreed to an exceptional sentence for abusing the trust of one victim and to avoid prosecution for a domestic-violence charge involving a woman he apparently dated for a time. According to charging documents, Walters was hired by a woman in June 2011 through an ad posted on Craigslist to transfer data from an old computer to a new one. Included on her hard drive were several hundred explicit photos a friend had taken of the woman, along with nude “selfies” she had stored for her personal…

Jesy Nelson was 20 when she won X Factor with band Little Mix in 2011. Since then, the group have enjoyed number one singles and toured the world. But along with success, band member Jesy has also faced online abuse which negatively affected her mental health and contributed to a suicide attempt four years ago. Now she wants to highlight the consequences of cyberbullying, and has shared her story in a new documentary for BBC Three. Our entertainment correspondent Chi Chi Izundu sat down with her. Source link

With days left in the legislative session, the New York State Senate passed a bill on Wednesday night that would criminalize the sending of revenge porn pictures without consent of the person in the image. Websites like IsAnyoneUp.com or MyEx.com have been targeted by courts and lawmakers nationwide for posting not only posting private images without consent of the subject but also publishing sensitive information including name, location and social media links. Brooklyn attorney Carrie A. Goldberg operates a private practice that has handled cases related to online-privacy-sex invasions and volunteers with revenge porn advocacy group End Revenge Porn. Goldberg said she was glad to see the state prioritizing recognizing revenge porn as a crime but does see more work to be done both online and off. Why is this law necessary in New York State? I think that New York is responding to the need that is rippling throughout…

Fox News Channel sued TVEyes, a $500-per-month TV and radio broadcast search service, for copyright infringement on Tuesday. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, alleges that TV Eyes makes versions of the cable news network’s “award winning programming” available on its site for paid users without Fox News’ permission. The lawsuit accuses TVEyes of misappropriating “the entirety of the works that Fox News has developed at great expense and to reproduce, to distribute, to publicly perform and/or to publicly display verbatim copies of the works” without authorization. Also read: Fox News’ Shepard Smith Stumping For ‘True Blood’ Cameo According to the suit, Robert Bruder, director of client relations for TVEyes, admitted that the site was already using Fox News’ content when he approached the channel seeking a license to use that work. “Mr. Bruder notified Fox News that TVEyes had been using Fox News’s content without…

Sen. Al Franken is urging the FBI to more quickly and aggressively pursue and prosecute revenge porn, marking a rare burst of attention on a controversial topic about which Congress has typically been quiet. In a letter to FBI Director James Comey, the Minnesota Democrat asked for more information about the agency’s authority to police against revenge porn, or the act of posting explicit sexual content online without the subject’s consent, often for purposes of humiliation and extortion. Its popularity has ballooned in recent years, and victims are disproportionately women. “The digital age has brought many benefits for free speech, commercial activity, and the sharing of information, but new technologies can pose significant threats if bad actors are not held accountable to our nation’s laws,” Franken wrote in his letter. “As technologies rapidly advance, it is our responsibility to ensure that our nation’s laws keep pace with those technologies. But…

The City Council is poised to criminalize “revenge porn” locally following years of inaction by state lawmakers — who have let a similar bill languish in Albany since 2014. Under a proposal by Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), anyone who posts someone’s “intimate image” without permission could be sent to jail for a year and slapped with a $1,000 fine. The legislation would also expose offenders to civil penalties — including “compensatory and punitive damages” — even without a criminal conviction. Lancman’s bill — which has the support of Mayor de Blasio — is being “primed” for a vote by the Public Safety Committee, his office said Friday. Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside) introduced similar legislation in Albany three years ago, but it has yet to win the support of the Codes Committee. “There’s people who blame the victim for taking the pictures or allowing that significant other to take the pictures…

  Ohio lawmakers are working on legislation that would protect victims of so-called revenge porn; the unauthorized posting of intimate photos on the internet. Victims say the objective is to humiliate victims and in some cases, to profit from the posting of photos that were taken in private. Katelyn Bowden of Youngstown says her explicit photos turned up on-line when a thief stole her ex-boyfriend’s cell phone. Police even knew who took her phone. “I was told the only thing that was illegal was the theft of my cellphone. The only crime committed was cellphone theft. My body didn’t matter. The cellphone had more rights than me,” Bowden said. Bowden along with Belinda Berry founded BADASS or Battling Against Demeaning and Abusive Selfie-Sharing. It’s a grassroots organization aimed at helping victims of revenge porn. Berry says she became a victim of revenge porn when she had taken photos with a…

  Jack Greiner Published 11:14 a.m. ET Sept. 5, 2018 | Updated 11:14 a.m. ET Sept. 5, 2018 Jack Greiner, attorney for Graydon(Photo: Provided, Provided) On the list of negative consequences of the internet age, “revenge porn” has to rank high. For the unaware, revenge porn occurs when a former significant other posts intimate photos following a breakup. It is hurtful, invasive and any number of other adjectives. Many states (40 plus the District of Columbia) have enacted statutes to address the problem. But the question persists, are those statutes constitutional? Like it or not, the practice implicates the First Amendment. The most recent case to address the issue comes from an appellate court in Wisconsin. That court decided the Wisconsin statute is constitutional. The court concluded the statute was sufficiently narrow to survive the constitutional challenge. The case presented fairly typical facts. The defendant, Norris Culver, posted nude photos of a woman…

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) — Added protections from harassment due to broken relationships are signed into law. Pat Warren reports revenge porn is now a punishable offense. Annmarie Chiarini’s bad breakup has helped change the way the state views intimate Internet postings. In a WJZ investigation, Chiarini goes public with her experience as a victim of revenge porn. She tells WJZ an ex-boyfriend posted explicit pictures of her on the Internet. He had taken the pictures with her permission, but posted them in revenge after she broke up with him. “There I was, and there was my first and last name, and there was the town where I live, and there was the college and the campus where I teach, and there was a solicitation for sex,” she said. Chiarini went to police for help. “I sought help from law enforcement, and it was the same shake your head. ‘There’s nothing…

  Facebook is expanding its fight against revenge porn with a pilot program that asks users to send their naked photos so Facebook can block the photos before someone else shares them. Facebook’s been testing the system in Australia and is extending the trial to the U.S., Britain and Canada, BBC News reports. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis said the company was updating its pilot program targeting the non-consensual sharing of images on the platform. Rather than having to report an image after it’s already been shared around Facebook (the company already has a system in place for reporting and removing those images), Facebook will let users upload an image before it’s been seen by others, CNET reports. Facebook users worried about intimate images being shared on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger can contact their relevant local organization and submit a form. Facebook’s Global Head of Safety…

  The bill would not only have made the nonconsensual dissemination of sexually explicit images a misdemeanor, but it would have also helped victims sue web platforms for failing to remove the offending images. It’s that last part that appears to have lured Google and web-hosting sites into the fray. According to the New York Post, the Internet Association—the self-proclaimed “voice of the internet economy” and a lobbying group that works on behalf of Google, Amazon, and many other tech giants—lobbied hard against the bill. What the Post calls its “11th hour campaign” led the state Senate to take no action on the bill before leaving for summer recess, effectively killing the legislation until next year. The bill had already passed the Assembly, and New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, had pledged to sign it, which is why advocates for its passing are understandably frustrated by the loss. “Big Tech, especially Google,…