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One of England's top police officers, Shaun Sawyer, wants citizens to go after internet giants that have wronged them.
Sawyer, who is chief constable in Devon and Cornwall and is national lead for human trafficking and modern slavery, made the suggestion in an interview with The Sunday Times, published over the weekend.
In a paywalled article, he told the Murdoch organ that if someone is a victim of an “Internet-enabled crime”, they should sue the platform involved.
Describing the internet as a “safe space for organised crime”, he said Silicon Valley company abuses were “becoming a human injustice”.
The comments coincidentally (?) came after American authorities last week shuttered Backpage.com, a site accused of supporting human trafficking by allowing publication of advertisements for "escorts".
Sawyer believes platforms like Facebook need more policing, and he also criticised “liberal” laws.
So it's down to users, apparently: if people with the resources of the person in the street start suing the platforms, he argued, they would start using their resources to spot abuse.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Tuesday April 10 2018, @03:38PM (3 children)
Yeah, the problem there is that's the moment where they become liable for same.
If they forbid abuse in their TOS, maybe take some basic precautions that apply to everyone (disallowing *.evil files, for example), and then a bad actor comes in and uses their service for evil, it's the bad actor's fault, and liability.
If they start "using their resources to spot abuse" then they are no longer legally merely a communications medium, but rather a participant, and if they fail to spot a particular bit of abuse, it's their fault and liability, even be it the same bad actor above doing the actual evil.
If a scammer calls your elderly relative and bilks that person out of their life savings, you can't sue the phone company for being liabile.
But if the phone company had a "Department of preventing Evil" that failed to stop that scammer, then their failure incurs liability on the part of the phone company. It would be insanity for them to "use their resources" to do that without adequate legal protection ahead of time, and that protection isn't forthcoming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @04:13PM (2 children)
lol
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @04:17PM
I commented before finishing reading and completely agree with the rest of the original comment.
Even file extension blocking is useful in making attacks involve more steps where the user can realize something is fucky.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @06:29PM
You laugh, but I had to deal with a company that implemented that.
All .doc and .pdf email attachments are stripped out.
But the company requires you to send them forms in those formats. Hmmm... what to do? Company policy is to send DOC or PDF files named with a different extension. Now THAT is ironclad security!