Hong Kong Using Children to Hunt for Piracy

westcoaster004 writes to tell us that according to The New York Times the Hong Kong government will be using some 200,000 youths to scour the internet for piracy. Members of the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and nine other youth organizations will be drawn from with the first 1,600 being "sworn in" this Wednesday. From the article: "Tam Yiu-keung, the Hong Kong Excise and Customs Department's senior superintendent of customs for intellectual property investigations, said the program should not raise any concerns about privacy or the role of children in law enforcement. The youths will be visiting Internet discussion sites that are open to all, so the government program is no different than asking young people to tell the police if they see a crime while walking down the street, he said."

Search != Stumble Upon

[Lord Grey]

From the article summary:

The youths will be visiting Internet discussion sites that are open to all, so the government program is no different than asking young people to tell the police if they see a crime while walking down the street ....

From the article:

Starting this summer the Hong Kong government plans to have 200,000 youths search Internet discussion sites for illegal copies of copyrighted songs and movies, and report them to the authorities.

Asking someone to report a crime they've happened to see is very different from asking them to actively search for a crime and report it. I would be pretty concerned if the government asked my son to explore dark alleys at 3am, just to figure out if drug deals are going on in that part of town. Asking children to do something like that is a form of indoctrination, making the implication that "ratting" to the government is grand thing to do. If the government needs help like this, they should offer up a bounty on the illegal material let some idle adults collect the prize.

they had better be prepared

[Anonymous Coward]

to see porn and all its flavors, casiono/poker scams, spyware, popups, circle jerks, top20 gateways and all the other scum that floats on the bottom of the warez scene

Bad idea

[frosty_tsm]

The first problem with this that comes to mind is that there are a lot of piracy websites that have images unappropriate for kids.

Yes, yes, I know that any kid can go online and find whatever they want to look at. I'm getting at that maybe this isn't a task for children (in the government-run sense).

Re:Its not that hard

[timeOday]

I don't think the main point is to find the Warez, but rather to "educate" the children by enlisting them in the battle.

Wow, what a bad idea

[grasshoppa]

First of all; Warez sites have porn. Not just a boob here and there either. Real live penetration. Often times, you have the weirdest fetish shit to deal with too.

So let's dump that on 200k kids. Lovely.

Second, kids are idiots. Truly, they are. I remember when I was a kid, I was an idiot. So now we are turning out 200k kids in to an enviroment ripe for molestation. And porn, lest we forget.

This is a bad bad idea, no mater how you slice it.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

this reminds me of...

[56ker]

The massive attempts (and manpower) China require to keep their Great Firewall of China up to date. Who knows if these "Youth Ambassadors" won't just have their task expanded to include reporting on objectionable material? After all currently Hong Kong isn't covered by the GFC.

Re:Oboy!

[RobertLTux]

Breaking news: Chairman Moa is doing 3,500 RPM in his grave.

and in other news Chairman Mao is doing 75,00RPM in his urn.

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[PitaBred]

Adults shouldn't have the amount of collective free time that children do. This is a way to capitalize (in a communist way) on an untapped pool of labor that the human rights people won't get upset about.

Sounds familiar.

[Jason9x19]

"With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police."

Self invoked Godwin's....

[rts008]

"Asking children to do something like that is a form of indoctrination, making the implication that "ratting" to the government is grand thing to do."

Not a new idea (Hitler Youth, anyone?), but it seems our capacity for learning from history seems tied only to short-term memory.

I think the "...asked my son to explore dark alleys at 3am, just to figure out if drug deals are going on ..." was a little overdone, but I do agree with you in principle.

Face it, it is hard for the would be dictators/over-control types to acheive their agenda unless.....they "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", to use an old /. meme.

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[Reality Master 101]

I would be pretty concerned if the government asked my son to explore dark alleys at 3am, just to figure out if drug deals are going on in that part of town.

I think there's a wee bit of safety difference between exploring dark alleys at 3am and surfing the net.

Asking children to do something like that is a form of indoctrination, making the implication that "ratting" to the government is grand thing to do.

So you're saying that you'll teach your children to ignore any crimes they see and just bury their head in the sand? If they see a little old lady being beaten, they should just stay out of it and not "rat" to the government on the criminal? I'm sure your children will turn out to be fine citizens.

Reminds me of

[Anonymous Coward]

Living in a post-communistic country, i remember from my schoolyears how we were 'trained' to look for and report saboteurs, spies and evil western agents. Given the state paranoia, the agents were portrayed as almost mythical creatures, with ninja-like capabilities, evil to the bone. The result was that everyone i know wanted to be western agent, so cool, merciless, almost invulnerable, able to get anywhere ...

So .. way to go China! :)

Re:Sounds familiar.

[whitehatlurker]

'Who denounced you?' said Winston.

'It was my little daughter,' said Jason9x19 with a sort of doleful pride. 'She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.'

G Orwell [online-literature.com]

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[post-tech-guy]

Either communist or facist, either way it is a recipe for disaster. Remember the Hitler Youth, they were instructed to do similar actions with rating out people who didn't agree with the Third Reich

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[SP33doh]

hardly the same thing? what if one of the kids stumbles upon hard-core pornography while searching for pirated things?

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[voice_of_all_reason]

You're confusing "illegal" with "wrong."

Substitute in a bunch of things for piracy in the above statement based on laws of different countries, like "homosexuality" or "democracy."

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[Sage Gaspar]

So you're saying that you'll teach your children to ignore any crimes they see and just bury their head in the sand? If they see a little old lady being beaten, they should just stay out of it and not "rat" to the government on the criminal? I'm sure your children will turn out to be fine citizens.

So you're saying you'll teach your children to report every crime they see? Old lady jaywalker is SOOOOO busted.

since this is Hong Kong

[Simonetta]

Since this is Hong Kong, one must wonder if they are looking for pirated materials in order to wipe out their competition, or are they looking for something new to pirate that hasn't as yet received wide exposure.

    The idea that the children of Hong Kong are being sent on a crusade to supplement the RIAA is absurd, and should not be taken on face value.

    Perhaps the Hong Kong politicians who have received gifts from the pirates along with honorariums (to cover expenses, of course) from the RIAA need to show everyone involved on both sides that they are making 'a sincere effort' to address the 'problem'.

Do not be fooled!

[posterlogo]

The article makes it sound like this is another communist China authoritarian/totalitarian scheme to use the people for state aims. Do not be fooled! This program is the brainchild of MPAA/RIAA. Why not do it domestically?

FTA: "The program may work better here than it would elsewhere, local officials suggest. Hong Kong teenagers are surprisingly obedient, possibly because of a Confucian tradition and very strong social pressures to study hard and serve the community."

That's right! Their kids are more brainwashed! Go MPAA/RIAA.

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[S.P.B.Wylie]

There is a difference between reporting a crime when you see it and hunting for it. You are making kids agents of the government to protect us. We are supposed to protect children, not the other way around. The big problem is that when you have children looking for crimes, they land in the environment of that crime, and from what I have heard about the sites that have piracy, that is not a safe place for children. So, in that manner, it is a lot like sending children down alleys to look for drug exchanges.

Will you have children looking for online molesters soon? They are the most qualified to do so, even if it does put them in a dangerous situation.
Think about it.

Been done

[JazzLad]

Reminds me of the late '30s - '40s in Germany.

Remember good little kids, it's your duty to report if your mommy or daddy have anything bootlegged.

-
Please do not mod funny, that would be insulting.

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[Catbeller]

It was pertinent to the topic, unlike your comment. It's not our fault the resurgence of fascism is becoming obvious.

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[Columcille]

Reporting illegal activity is one aspect of being a good citizen. Being willing to support law enforcement is another aspect. And this is hardly like walking down a dark alley at 3am. Risks to the child are nil.

Re:The real reason

[Jeremi]

Now let me ask you, what would China want with some 200,000 script-kiddies? Considering that the US of A already has a computerized powergrid, huge internet backbone/banking systems/telephone/cellular networks/freaking traffic lights and building ACs?

Sorry, but that's really dumb, even for a conspiracy theory. If you were the Chinese government and wanted to hack in to American information infrastructure, you wouldn't hire 200,000 children, you'd hire 200 really bright graduate students, and have them write automated attack programs. Not hundreds of thousands of amateur volunteers who are (a) not going to be very effective, and (b) are going to be impossible to keep quiet about their activities.

There's also the minor detail of China having the USA as their largest customer -- attacking the USA is hardly in their economic interest.

Re:The lesson....

[some1somewhere]

And I can tell you, this is the reality of how these kids are viewing it.

Only the "uncool" and "morons" are actually signing up. In fact, even those that do sign up, are just all reporting the same websites to gain "credits", they are not actively doing anything.

All the while, they are doing the searching on their pirated WinXP computers...

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[from_downunder]

I agree there is a resurgence of fascism, and I feel that this is a Bad Thing(tm)

However, I think you'll find that many will either pretend that certain views are not fascist, or even claim them to be a Right Thing(tm)

Re:The real reason

[ErikTheRed]

1) Hong Kong (of China) is producing about 0% of quality games/movies/software
2) Hong Kong is losing about 0% due to piracy each year?

Ahem... Hong Kong has made some damned good movies (including some [imdb.com] of [imdb.com] my [imdb.com] all-time [imdb.com] favorites [imdb.com]). And I'm sure they get pirated.

Re:Search != Stumble Upon

[paedobear]

Most of those "freedoms" were set up by Chris Patton, at the end of British rule, chiefly to piss off the communists. It's not like the mainlanders WANTED "one country, two systems", it was something they had to take up to avoid killing off the goose that laid the golden eggs.