The challenge of course is that in the absence of a silver bullet solution, that people working to combat all forms of child exploitation are simultaneously trying several things, ranging from going to the source as you suggest and arresting people, to trying to interrupt the online tools that they may use or that might fund/support them, etc.  So they don’t approach it as a binary choice between trying these ecosystem measures vs going to the source – they are working all the levers.

It is unfortunately a very difficult problem. FWIW, a recent NYT article on this was interesting – see https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-abuse.html Headline is “The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong? Online predators create and share the illegal material, which is increasingly cloaked by technology. Tech companies, the government and the authorities are no match.”

JL

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces@nanog.org> on behalf of "Aaron C. de Bruyn via NANOG" <nanog@nanog.org>
Reply-To: "Aaron C. de Bruyn" <aaron@heyaaron.com>
Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2019 at 2:53 PM
To: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Cc: NANOG mailing list <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: This DNS over HTTP thing

"For the children!"

"Stop resisting!"

"I was in fear for my life!"

The age-old cries of the oppressor.

The problem is that children are being kidnapped, trafficked, and abused.  DNS blocking doesn't solve that.  It's not a technical problem.

Go to the source--the kidnappers, traffickers, and abusers and give them 50 years in the electric chair.

Go to the consumers and do the same.  That will solve the problem.

-A

On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 11:33 AM John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:

In article <20191001074011.n4xjouqg6lhsvti7@nic.fr> you write:
>Note that the UK is probably the country in Europe with the biggest
>use of lying DNS resolvers for censorship. No wonder that the people
>who censor don't like anti-censorship techniques.

Most UK ISPs use the Internet Watch Foundation's advice intended to
block child sexual abuse material.

Circumventing it enables people to access that material.

We can shout CHILD PORNOGRAPHY just as loud as you can shout
CENSORSHIP so perhaps we should both stop now.  There are plenty of
valid reasons for a DNS resolver to block some results.

R's,
John